Magic The Gathering Thread XXIII: Modern is Dead, Long Live Modern

[Gauntlet]

Most of the two-colour decks that are trying to aggressively curve out (like Boros, Gruul and Azorius aggro) in Standard right now are resolving this issue by leaning heavily towards one colour. The most frequent Boros lists run all Plains, four Sacred Foundry and 3-4 Clifftop Retreat, meaning all their lands make white mana to support Benalish Marshal and History of Benalia, while the only red card in the maindeck is usually Heroic Reinforcements, which only needs a single red mana source and is high enough up the curve that you have more time to draw red sources.

Generally the slower a deck is, the more it can afford to deal with a slightly clunkier mana base - the aggro decks above want to be curving out and spending all the available mana every turn, and failing to do so has real impact on its win rate. A slower deck with more impactful individual cards, like a control deck, is less worried about curving out and instead just wants to hit its land drops mainly. Non-aggro decks can much more happily play a tapped land on turn one, and spend turn three casting a two-drop and playing a tapped land, if it means they get to cast their 4 mana sweepers or big haymakers that stabilize the game. You still need to take your cards into account when building a manabase - Sultai lists often need to decide whether they want to run lots of Forests to enable turn 1 Llanowar Elves, or less Forests to enable turn 2 Thought Erasure instead, for example - but they generally have more card draw / library manipulation effects to help them find the land drops to actually cast their spells.

[Ninjaman]

Yes, but I am willing to run a worse card to reduce the chance of mana screw. I get two different colors to compensate for that, after all and multicolored cards are generally more powerful than monocolored ones.

A card that costs BR isn't easier to cast in a rakdos deck than a card that costs RR. Well it is ever so slightly easier to cast if their mana is split 50/50, but they rarely are, you'll usually see something closer to 30/70, and you'll only play double symbol cmc 2 cards in your main color.

And a deck that plays all basic with easy mana costs isn't going to suffer much less manascrew than a deck with duals and harder mana costs, if any less at all, but it is going to have weaker cards. I fail to see how that is ever a good trade off.

What I mean to say is that while, yes, the dual lands can help you with the manabase, they all come with drawbacks on their own,

That drawback is at worst coming into play tapped, and usually only sometimes. A drawback that is usually worth playing more powerful cards.

"and they are not necessary at all if you pick low-devotion cards,"

It's not necessary to pick low-devotion cards if you have a proper mana base.
Your mana base should fit your spells, not the other way around.

or play cards like Traveller's amulet or Elvish Rejuvenator.

Traveller's amulet is a bad card. It's much better to play a good mana base
The tempo you gained from playing a basic instead of an tapped dual, you lose twice with the amulet.

Elvish rejuvenator is a fine ramp card, but it doesn't do that much for mana fixing, at it takes until turn 4 to fix anything.

There is a reason why some cards are more color-restricted than others, after all - and while for a mono-green deck there is no difference between playing a Gigantosaurus and a Colossapede, the difference is huge for multicolored ones.

That's a bad comparison. Gigantosaurus is almost impossible to play in a multicolor deck. You can, it'll probably involve all your lands tapping for green though, with the other color just being a splash.
A CC card however can be played in a multicolor deck, and quite often are.

[Eskil]

It is a good feeling when you (in Arena) go up against a Persistent Petitioners deck...

...when you know that the deck you're running has Gaea's Blessing.

[Douglas]

It is a good feeling when you (in Arena) go up against a Persistent Petitioners deck...

...when you know that the deck you're running has Gaea's Blessing.

Did it go long enough for Blessing to trigger, and did the Petitioners player concede when it did?

[leninsbeard]

That drawback is at worst coming into play tapped, and usually only sometimes. A drawback that is usually worth playing more powerful cards.

It's not necessary to pick low-devotion cards if you have a proper mana base.
Your mana base should fit your spells, not the other way around.

Traveller's amulet is a bad card. It's much better to play a good mana base
The tempo you gained from playing a basic instead of an tapped dual, you lose twice with the amulet.

Elvish rejuvenator is a fine ramp card, but it doesn't do that much for mana fixing, at it takes until turn 4 to fix anything.

Maybe I just didn't want to admit the necessity of dual lands in MTG, and was a bit more stubborn than usual. That's actually a very good argument - especially about the cards I've mentioned. I'll need to think about it, and thank you for the insight.

[Ninjaman]

Maybe I just didn't want to admit the necessity of dual lands in MTG, and was a bit more stubborn than usual. That's actually a very good argument - especially about the cards I've mentioned. I'll need to think about it, and thank you for the insight.

You're very welcome.

[Douglas]

Just had an interesting Arena match, where my opponent stole my Vivien Reid and eventually got her emblem, and I had no way to get past all his blockers and Spires of Orazca, but I won anyway because my Wildgrowth Walkers had generated so much life gain that he couldn't kill me before decking out. Let this be a lesson, kids, don't mindlessly go for card draw (in this case, Vivien's +1) when your library is running low.

[Eskil]

Did it go long enough for Blessing to trigger, and did the Petitioners player concede when it did?

It triggered maybe half a dozen times, and they conceded a few rounds later when their last milling hit Gaea's Blessing as the first (and therefore only) card.

[Emmerlaus]

It triggered maybe half a dozen times, and they conceded a few rounds later when their last milling hit Gaea's Blessing as the first (and therefore only) card.

And that's why Persistent Petinnionner deck in Commander should be about self-milling. At least this way you have cards to protect your self-milling like Memory's Journey to protect you agains't graveyard hate and a second way to win like Laboratory Maniac.

I made a decklist Im pretty proud off for Sidisi Brood Tyrant deck, Human Tribal self-milling deck. Shame I'll never play it. One, because of the money needed and two, because I dont like the black color in general. Sure it can be awesome in gameplay and all but Im not a fan of the black color in general. Just not my thing lol!

[mythmonster2]

So, Modern's (and Legacy) gonna be getting cards printed directly into it through Modern Horizons, bypassing Standard altogether. What do y'all think about the idea? Any hopes? It's a shame there's no reprints in it, though.

[Douglas]

So, Modern's (and Legacy) gonna be getting cards printed directly into it through Modern Horizons, bypassing Standard altogether. What do y'all think about the idea? Any hopes? It's a shame there's no reprints in it, though.

They're finally making a card to actually represent Serra herself, rather than just referencing her in card names and flavor text? Took 'em long enough.

Her -3 really needs "named Serra Angel" added to the end.

[Ebon_Drake]

So, Modern's (and Legacy) gonna be getting cards printed directly into it through Modern Horizons, bypassing Standard altogether. What do y'all think about the idea? Any hopes? It's a shame there's no reprints in it, though.

There will be reprints though? The announcement outright says so. Or do you mean you'd want reprints of cards that are already in Modern? I guess it would've been nice to include some reprints of cards that are highly relevant in Modern but hard to come by.

Nice to have a Serra card at last, but I'm not keen on the art for it. I really wish they'd brought back someone like Rebecca Guay to do it. Heck, they could have just taken some of Guay's Serra art from the Homelands comic she illustrated.

[Eurus]

Considering that even Freyalise got a card a good while back, I'm also surprised that it took this long for Serra! I kinda like how she's just a bundle of references.

[enderlord99]

How many alternate win conditions can you stuff into a deck without making any of them completely unviable? Also, what's a decklist that does so? This is for casual play in the Legacy format.

No infinites, please; I don't like those.

[Ninjaman]

Modern Horizons look interesting, I'm just afraid it will be filled with cards that would be fine in standard, but arbitrarily skips it. Hope they utilize the opportunity to do some things they couldn't do otherwise.

[Techwarrior]

I'm excited for them to not print counterspell into modern even after being given the perfect opportunity to do so.

[Tvtyrant]

I'm excited for them to not print counterspell into modern even after being given the perfect opportunity to do so.

Honestly I want Moment's Peace. Being able to take two turns off against the hyper aggro decks is huge.

While I am at it, I really want Nimble Mongoose and stifle.

[ImperiousLeader]

Serra looks real awesome. Honestly, though, I'm probably skipping Modern Horizons. I don't play Modern, am not all that interested playing Modern, and it's another expensive draft environment.

[Emmerlaus]

Did you guys saw the latest Game Knight episode? I would have hâte facing a eldrazi deck. The only eldrazi I like is All that Betray cause I like to steal my opponent stuff lol

[Zhentarim]

For me, a common thread in all my decks is low cost creatures who overrun the enemy quickly.

With esper aggro, its a bunch of 1/1 creatures with flying with planswalker dovin as a possible draw to keep the fire burning if I’m playing against another aggro-ish deck.

Mono-Red is still better aggro, but a flying 1/1 esper creature deck still does a decent job.

[tgva8889]

There is a possibility that they just print Force of Will and a variety of other important and useful Legacy cards that aren't actually broken but help to balance the comborific nature of Eternal formats. The biggest problem with Legacy right now is that a lot of the cards can't be reprinted because of a promise Wizards made long ago, and the biggest advantage of Modern is that it's a similarly Eternal format but they can print whatever cards are legal in it whenever they want. It's possible they stop supporting Legacy in favor of supporting a Modern that is very similar to Legacy with most of the things people want to do, maybe minus some things if they decide those things are maybe not fun for anyone.

I don't know if they will do that, but I think they're going to have to reprint some rather expensive cards that aren't currently legal in Modern to drive the price of this set up, so who knows what crazy things we'll get.

[mythmonster2]

I dunno, there's a couple of very important cards that distinguish Legacy from Modern, and Force of Will is definitely one of those cards. Blurring the lines between the formats in that way doesn't sound like a good idea to me. Counterspell, on the other hand, I could definitely see, and apparently Wizards did consider it for Dominaria before ending up with Wizard's Retort, so they probably have thought about it before.

[Techwarrior]

Logic knot is already in the format, and almost serves the exact same role, while being occasionally unable to do it's job (against Tron usually). Counterspell isn't a huge upgrade for most U based control lists for that reason, and outside of control there aren't really any good U based decks.

The decks that do exist are Merfolk and Bant creature decks like Spirits. Merfolk isn't good enough for me to be scared of them getting counterspell over things like deprive and unified will, and Spirits actually struggles to make double U on occasion. Both decide are usually playing some number of the aforementioned Unified Will and Negate/Spell Pierce as well.

I personally did some testing about 6 months ago on literally just adding Counterspell to various U decks and the results were that it doesn't do very much because Logic Knot exists for most decide interested. It actually mostly helped U/B control decks most because it allows Counterspell, Snapcaster, and Tasigur to all be reasonable cards in the same deck and removed a lot of fighting over the yard. Overall, I would be happy for it's printing, but I don't anticipate it being some ridiculously busted card that warps the format. Being UU is a cost that can't be overlooked, and in creature decks, you usually want other cards like unified will more.

I will admit that my testing wasn't extremely extensive, but I feel confident that the card would be a nice addition without warping the format.

Force would however warp the format. I could go into detail on that, but suffice to say that Force is an incredibly ridiculous and unfair magic card only offset because Legacy is so degenerate to start with.

[Tvtyrant]

If modern needs a free counterspell I say Foil would be the correct one. It has real drawbacks but also real benefits.

Daze is easy to play around, so it could probably be modern as well.

[Techwarrior]

Do you want deaths Shadow to be T1? Daze is how you make deaths Shadow T1 until a banning. Free counterspells aren't what the format needs.

[Tvtyrant]

Do you want deaths Shadow to be T1? Daze is how you make deaths Shadow T1 until a banning. Free counterspells aren't what the format needs.

As compared to dredge and phoenix? Yes. Xerox decks are easy to hunt with stax style decks (IE chalice/moon decks.)

[Techwarrior]

Or, alternatively, we could have a non-rotating format that isn't fueled by degenerate cards like Thoughtseize, Force of Will, Simian Spirit Guide, and Faithless Looting

[Svata]

Thoughtseize isn't degenerate, though?

[Tvtyrant]

Or, alternatively, we could have a non-rotating format that isn't fueled by degenerate cards like Thoughtseize, Force of Will, Simian Spirit Guide, and Faithless Looting

I'm not sure I agree with your definition of degenerate. There are always best cards, that doesn't make them degenerate the way eldrazi getting two sol lands was or dark depths would be.

Death's Shadow is a fragile card that is exposed to abrupt decay and chalice, it is the yard decks that make spot removal bad.

[tgva8889]

That list of cards was kind of weird to make your point since right now it feels like Modern really is defined by 3/4 of those cards. But maybe that's just me.

Also, there's some suggestion that there is need for another non-rotating format between Modern and Standard. If that format is something Wizards is interested in making, then making Modern into "Legacy we can actually print cards for" might be something they decide to do. Again, who's to say if that would actually be good or not, but from Wizards' perspective it seems like a reasonable option. It's possible that if what you want is a non-rotating format that isn't defined by some degenerate old cards, maybe Modern isn't actually that format and they should make another one.

The biggest defining differences for Legacy and Modern, to me, are the different lands, Brainstorm, Force of Will, and Wasteland. 3 of those cards can be reprinted in Modern Horizons, and 2 would be huge selling points for the set if they were reprinted, so there's always a chance.