MTG's new Modern format starts out with some insanity

[SineSwiper]

MTG's new Modern format is an attempt to fill a gap in-between Legacy (mostly super old cards) and Standard (only cards from 1-2 years ago). While Standard gets pretty expensive because of popular decks within tournaments, Legacy goes beyond expensive to basically being a format only for the hardcore 10-years-running player or the super-rich. Certain "required" Legacy cards can cost $70 a piece (which you would need 4 of). Furthermore, with the wealth of combos available from that many cards, it's not uncommon to have some Turn 4 or even Turn 0 wins with some super insane shit. Standard is pretty quick, but not that quick.

Modern tries to dump the super-expensive 10-year-old cards, but expand the universe of cards beyond both Standard and Extended (which uses around 3-4 years of cards). I personally don't play Modern, but I spotted a new ban list that really made me wonder. One of these was a key piece of a deck called "Twelvepost". This deck is madness. I've seen some pretty sick shit, but this was unique in its sickness. Never seen something involving a speed mana dump. Just watch:



Yes, you can't see the card descriptions, but I'll post the major ones here. Go fullscreen and set to the highest resolution on the videos.

[Don]

Pretty sure Green Sun's Zenith is banned. There's a lot of cards that don't even seen that powerful that are banned on the modern format.

Primeval Titan seems overpowered even if you're not trying to do anything crazy with it since it can pull any two land, not just basic lands.

I've been playing Magic: 2012 and the Archenemy mode is pretty fun. I think they should incorporate the Scheme cards into MTG, though whoever draws "My Crushing Masterstroke" (control all nonland permanents you do not control this turn, creature gain haste) would pretty much have a guaranteed win.

[SineSwiper]

Pretty sure Green Sun's Zenith is banned. There's a lot of cards that don't even seen that powerful that are banned on the modern format.

Yeah, both it and Cloudpost are now banned. I was really puzzled by the Ponder/Preordain bans, but this article does give some good insight into why these cards were banned. They seem so innocent, but that Turn 1 "derandomization" really does have a huge impact on win conditions. I'm surprised they didn't do the same for Index, Mystic Speculation, Serum Visions, Sleight of Hand, Halimar Depths, Condescend, or Sage of Epityr.

Primeval Titan seems overpowered even if you're not trying to do anything crazy with it since it can pull any two land, not just basic lands.

Yep, and that's precisely why people crave this guy. He's still $15 a pop, even with the reprinting on M12. The guy was a cornerstone in Valakut decks last year. Even Commander decks have him most of the time. I wanted to buy him for a deck I was building, but I'm not spending $11 (MTGO) for one card in a 100 card deck, even as good as he is.

I've been playing Magic: 2012 and the Archenemy mode is pretty fun. I think they should incorporate the Scheme cards into MTG, though whoever draws "My Crushing Masterstroke" (control all nonland permanents you do not control this turn, creature gain haste) would pretty much have a guaranteed win.

I dunno. That game seems to be more random than skillful for the same reason you stated.

[Don]

I was reading on some of the popular decks and it makes me wonder if it's even possible to have a game that last more than 5 turns. Sure the Scheme cards are ridiculously overpowered but I think having a game that is completely random (and potentially more than 5 turns since plenty of Scheme cards can effectively reset the whole board) is no worse than a game that is over by turn 5.

[SineSwiper]

This is why I don't play in formats like Standard, Modern, or Pauper. I've played Standard quite a bit before I realized that there was zero room for creativity. Pauper sounds good on paper, but it boils down to the same amount of cards in Standard, and the same number of decks that work. Despite the name, some of the really old Pauper cards can get quite expensive.

All of my time with MTGO nowadays is spent playing EDH/Commander. Draft is also a format with some amount of creativity, though it's one of the toughest formats to get the hang of and the cards change every 3 months or so.

Overall, though, 4 player Commander is where it's at. The single-card rule with a 100 card deck means that you have to get a lot of different types of cards to play with, not just 10 sets of 4 cards for repetitive bullshit. I never netdeck and I can create some winning decks with some ideas. Some cards can be expensive, but they are not required to get a good deck. I've built decks from $5 worth of cards. I'm at the point in my collection where I can afford to grab a $5 card, since half of the cards of my new decks are already available. Plus, you only need to buy one card, and it's available. (The sole exception is my Relentless Rats deck, but that card is special for a reason.)

Commander does have some "required" cards, but since it's a 100-card deck, it's more like "recommended" cards that you should probably have in most decks. You tend to see these "common" cards, but there's also plenty of diamonds in the rough that I find even now. Older cards that not a lot of people know about, but should probably be used in a lot more decks. That's part of the fun of Commander. MagicCards.Info is my primary resource for this sort of thing and learning the search prefixes on that is a must. For example, I built a "Mana Acceleration for X Spells" deck with WG, so I searched for this and this.

[Don]

Well a card like Vampire Nighthawk would be pretty much a no brainer to play, but it's not like its presence alone guaranteeds you to win the game, even if you have four of them. On the other hand 4 Primeval Titans can get you pretty close to winning (you'd pretty much have access to all your lands and able to draw whatever else you need that much quicker). I had an Archenemy game where I had 6 Primeval Titans and I had no lands left in deck after the last one came out. None of the M:2012 decks are even designed to be deregenerate but when you have every land out there, you can usualy get to the more interesting stuff very quick, not to mention M:2012 has only basic land, compared to any realistic deck that should feature something other than basic lands.

[Flip]

Do they compensate you online somehow for the cards that become banned? I mean, they make the friggin things, if people are spending a ridic amount of money on virtual cards only to have them not legal to play... I'd be pretty pissed. Granted, its not like people are playing for real money anyways, which makes the whole thing pretty silly.

Ive shared before, that I was really into MTG in middle/high school 15 years ago and while the game nowadays seems like it would be fun, I cant fathom myself spending a shit ton of money for just 'fun'... which winning is. Atleast an MMO or a game like Diablo with a set fee makes it fair for pretty much everyone to find elite gear, but what i know now (yet didnt realize 15 years ago) was how tilted the scales were for people who just spend a LOT of money in MTG. Also, back then there was no real Internet so deck building seemed intuitive and crafty. Now, everyone will just copy some broken deck that is posted online. Information is just too easy to share nowadays to make any deck creation unique or creative. Each new set, eventually, sunsets another set in the Standard format... forcing you to buy more cards to stay legal in that format. Its a friggin money printing machine. The game was fun, but Im glad i got away from it. In fact, it got away from me all by itself because I couldnt keep up with Wizards of the Coast aggressive releases.

I agree that hobbies dont need to turn a profit. I like baseball and motorcycles, I put money into both and they will never pay me back, but for some reason I cant categorize MTG as the same thing. Its made to make you pay WotC, a lot, over a long period. Most hobbies you can put in an initial investment and enjoy it for a long time, possibly forever, yet MTG purposefully bans your cards and sunsets your sets so you have to keep buying forever to keep playing. Its a very unique business model that is pure fucking you all the time.

[SineSwiper]

Trust me. Take whatever experience you have from Duels of the Planeswalkers and throw it in the garbage.

Yes, Vampire Nighthawk is still a (damn) good card in real life, but that's partly because the Sorin deck in DotP is probably the only tournament-savvy deck in the whole bunch (which makes it unbalanced compared to everything else). The 2012 edition is a bit better, but Sorin is still a prick in that one, too.

Four Titans can get you far, but in most Standard/Modern games, you're never going to get a second one out. The only reason for having 4 in a deck is to make sure you draw one in almost every game. He can be killed by the numerous bury cards (Go For The Throat is a popular one), but at least you get the initial two lands out of him and possibly some good creature advantage or damage if he doesn't die right away.

Do they compensate you online somehow for the cards that become banned? I mean, they make the friggin things, if people are spending a ridic amount of money on virtual cards only to have them not legal to play... I'd be pretty pissed. Granted, its not like people are playing for real money anyways, which makes the whole thing pretty silly.

No. The people playing them were unfairly winning tourneys and stuff, so it's not like they weren't getting their use out of them. Plus, no card is truly banned in every format nowadays, so you can still get some money back selling them. The "good cards" (especially the cards that will likely get banned) start really high in price and devalue after a banning. (Case in point: Jace, the Mind Sculptor was upwards of $100 each before the Standard ban, but it's still worth $60 today. Fucking bullshit card took too long to get banned.)

Ive shared before, that I was really into MTG in middle/high school 15 years ago and while the game nowadays seems like it would be fun, I cant fathom myself spending a shit ton of money for just 'fun'... which winning is. Atleast an MMO or a game like Diablo with a set fee makes it fair for pretty much everyone to find elite gear, but what i know now (yet didnt realize 15 years ago) was how tilted the scales were for people who just spend a LOT of money in MTG. Also, back then there was no real Internet so deck building seemed intuitive and crafty. Now, everyone will just copy some broken deck that is posted online. Information is just too easy to share nowadays to make any deck creation unique or creative. Each new set, eventually, sunsets another set in the Standard format... forcing you to buy more cards to stay legal in that format. Its a friggin money printing machine. The game was fun, but Im glad i got away from it. In fact, it got away from me all by itself because I couldnt keep up with Wizards of the Coast aggressive releases.

As somebody who dived into modern Standard with a shitload of naiveté and wasted money, I've learned 5 things:

1. Standard blows. Everybody netdecks and your $50 deck is going to be blown away by their $500 deck that they copied from one of the Pro lists.
2. Duels of the Planeswalkers is a fucking scam. You learn jack shit from that game except the basic stuff everybody already knows. If it was filled with Tier 1 Standard decks, all games would last 5 turns and it wouldn't be any fun.
3. Losing really sucks. Especially when you've spend all day creating a deck, ordering the cards, getting everything ready, putting it in your backpack with all of the dice/counters you need, driving to the site, and losing to some guy that just copied a list of cards on the Internet.
4. Real Life™ MTG is a waste of fucking time, for the same reasons I listed in the last point. In the time it takes me to do all of that, I can build a deck and play 20 games via MTGO, all without any stupid dice or counters or missed rules or fucking with shuffling (which could make or break your deck in RL). Yes, the graphics look like it was made in 1995, but hopefully the new v4 (should be out early next year) is going to look closer to DotP.
5. Wizards of the Coast wants your money. Always. You can navigate around it, and they will make sure it's not too bullshit, but ultimately WotC wants big bucks and they WILL get your money.

That being said, again, Commander is where it's at. It's the fair version of MTG. If you keep it slow, you'll end up spending a little bit over what an average MMO costs (around $20/mo). Most EDH games (Elder Dragon Highlander; old name for Commander; good for abbr.) last around an hour or two, so you get plenty of mileage out of a game. And since it's a "casual" format, nobody is trying to build the ultimate Tier 1 deck to make money off of.

The other format I like is Draft. It's pretty fun to build a deck on-the-fly, but it is really hard to master just picking the cards and reading signals. At first, it's kinda expensive, but once you get good, you can somewhat get to the point of breaking even. (Expert players can make money or keep playing without paying anything.) You have to be extremely familiar with the cards, know what's good and what's not and why, and be able to make these kind of decisions with a timer going against you. However, it is also a good learning experience. I played it for about 3 months straight, with a lot of questions/answers/posts on the Draft forum at MTG Salvation. (If you get into the format, I highly recommend reading all you can there.) I didn't end up getting 1st place in a MTGO tourney after months of practice, but I did learn so much that I did awesome in a RL Draft and got 2nd Place out of 50-100 people in a NPH Intro Draft in RL.

[Don]

Don't act like I didn't play MTG before. Sure it may have changed in the number of turns you have before you lose but the same general idea for building a powerful deck never changed. And since there's the Internet now it's rather easy to see what combo works rather than spending a ton of money and consulting something like InQuest and figure it out on your own (and then get the cards you need). You don't have to be the one who think of a degenerate combo to see why it's powerful. DtoP you pretty much have at most 1 copy of any card that'd be considered remotely powerful so of course you can't do anything degenerate with it, but anyone who's played magic seriously knows you're supposed to keep the number of distinct cards down to an absolute minimum. Whether you have to cash to pull that off is another question altogether.

Stoneforge Mystic is banned in some format and it was rather obvious why when I saw that card, even though Gideon's deck is pretty weak.

[SineSwiper]

Oh, I played MTG many years before, too. But, DotP skews your POV for which cards work. Stuff like charms, which are good in DotP, and pure junk in Standard. All of the high costing cards aren't worth using in Standard. They don't even maintain a 60 card deck, and you could see how much you got mana screwed after you got the bonus cards. (Yet you couldn't remove out some of the standard cards to use those bonus ones.)

Stoneforge Mystic is banned in some format and it was rather obvious why when I saw that card, even though Gideon's deck is pretty weak.

I used to play against Mystics all the time and f'ing Cawblade. Between her and Jace, it totally ruined Standard, and they just let it go on for over a year. When they banned the both of them, it was already June, and they would be cycled out by Oct 1st, anyway. A very late ban that should have happened a year ago.

I hoping they learned their lesson with that one, hence the quick and heavy bans in Modern.

[Don]

MTG was never about having 15 lands to actually cast Emerkaul, at least I don't think anyone ever planned on winning like that. In the way back you got stuff like 'discard big creature and then animate dead', and sure the cards and abilities may change but the concept is always the same. There's obviously a lot of way to cheat the casting cost of the big stuff whether it's mana acceleration or some mechanism that completely bypasses the need to pay the full cost (Stoneforge Mystic is an obvious one). In DotP, the Mystic isn't even that powerful since most decks empty their hand pretty fast (so Sword of War and Peace not that useful) and the deck doesn't have reliable way to let you equip Argentum Armor without having 6 mana (and no mana acceleration in the entire deck).

But it's not hard to see there's got to be easier ways to reliably equip your doomsday weapon if you can actually build your deck, or that other doomsday equipment exists (simple search on google reveals plenty of candidates to tutor for a game winning weapon).

Just the fact that you're almost never allowed to have 4 of something that's actually good in DotP severely limits their power. Certainly no one would build their deck like that in real life, and it's not hard to see things could be a lot of different if you could have 4 of the powerful creatures instead of 4 of the 2/2 1G bears with no other special ability.

[SineSwiper]

So, are you actually interested in playing MTGO? I'd like to have somebody here that plays it. Registration is $10 (which gets you some cards from the start), and the game is a free download. You could build your own EDH deck from anywhere from $5 to $25. (Yes, you could go higher, but that would be excessive for a first deck.)

Draft is 3 packs, which are $4 each, but you'd want to read up on the format first. (There is also Sealed, using 6 packs. Very similar to playing draft, but you should read up on the differences.) Fun formats, but again, very hard to master enough to win rounds.

Anything like Standard, Modern, or Legacy is probably going to cost a lot more money, so I would avoid those. Pauper is out there, too, though some of the really old common cards can get expensive. You could still build a decent deck for Pauper, but like S/M/L, the Tier 1s tend to migrate towards the same ten decks, and that can get boring to play/lose against after a while.

[Don]

Nah, I'm the kind of guy who would keep buying packs until I get all the cards I want, so not going back on that path again. I played DotP precisely because that way I can get powerful cards without spending the crazy amount of money they'd demand. Back in the old days I had like the 2nd or 3rd best deck but I always lost to the guy who had the power 9, and I suspect it'd be pretty similar too since I like power cards but I'm not so crazy to buy them at the ridiculous prices they go for.

I tried a Draft a few months ago and like you said it is really hard to master so I doubt I have the time or willpower to go through that. It looks fun but it's also very tiring, especially when done in real life. In fact, after playing magic from a computer, I don't know how I used to be able to play magic in real life since it's about 10 times more tiring. I play DotP mostly to kill time before SWTOR come out. If that totally flop, I might consider investing time into another time-intensive hobby. Thanks for the offer though.

[SineSwiper]

Well, the thing about games like EDH is that you don't really buy packs for the cards. You just build a deck and buy the cards from the bots. Marlon MTGO has some pretty good prices with 8 bots active. Since a lot of the games go pretty long, cards that wouldn't be used in Standard, like Time Stretch, are really good cards in EDH, and only cost a buck. Most of the cards are going to be 5 cents. If the card is too expensive, just skip it and buy it later. After all, you have 100 cards in your deck, and spending a lot of money for 1/100th of your deck isn't really fruitful.

[Flip]

If youre making a 100 card deck you lose...

[SineSwiper]

This is EDH, not Standard. The deck is required to be 100-cards, all unique cards except for basic lands. One of the cards will be your Commander.

[Flip]

Oh ok, thats weird. That makes it slightly more interesting, but if you just mash 40 lands and 60 single cards together in a deck, whats the strategy? The 60 card decks might seem like the same old thing, but thats the point, decks have consistency and themes.

[SineSwiper]

Oh, there's still a theme, but you have to search for different cards for a theme. For example, one deck that I'm doing well with is... well, lemme get into a few basics here:

You start with 40 life, and a deck with 99 cards and 1 Commander (in a special Commander zone), which is a Legendary Creature. EDH is typically 4-player, and it's not uncommon for preparations to happen up to Turn 4-5. The Commander's color identity dictates what colors you can play in your deck. (CI is like card color, but it counts all of the color symbols throughout the card. So, Aerie Mystics would have a CI of WUG, because of the inside costs.) If your Cmdr dies, you can put it back in the Commander zone, but casting costs go up by 2 mana each time.

Anyway, the deck I've got has Chorus of the Conclave as the Commander, so it's a WG deck. I have various mana accels like Mirari's Wake, Mana Reflection, Land Tax, Collective Voyage, New Frontiers, Doubling Cube, etc. That gets me massive mana, and I have a bunch of X cards like Wurmcalling, Gelatinous Genesis, Protean Hydra, Orochi Hatchery, etc. Even with the smaller creatures I have, I can use my Commander to pump them to massive levels, and use stuff like Contagion Clasp, Contagion Engine, Doubling Season, Vigor to pump it up even more. Even have a few win cards like Helix Pinnacle to win outside of creatures.