It's outrageous to me that a small contingent of users in this thread (and the community overall: see Brad Nelson), as well as in the just-locked iteration of this thread, continue to talk about the format as if it is unhealthy, too linear, failing, broken, or some other unfounded criticism. I feel like this all started once those Day 1 Team PT numbers got posted and we never looked back. Or it's been continuing nonstop for years and it's more acute now in light of the Team PT numbers.
Over time I've come to realize a lot of people's complaints about Modern are, "Your deck does something that makes it hard for me to play my deck. So instead of accepting that the format has changed and my deck might no longer be good, I will instead complain about how the format is horrible, disgusting, degenerate, and these cards that make your deck possible need to be banned."
I've seen this multiple times. Every time some new deck pops up that makes it so people can't just pick up the exact same 75 they've been playing for 4 months we get the groans and moans about how Modern is "broken" or "degenerate" and that something needs to be banned to fix it. But it isn't. Modern is a non-rotating format yes, but the metagame is cyclical. What is a good deck today, might be a horrible deck tomorrow. Hell I have personal experience with this via Lantern Control. Before PT Rivals Lantern was in a good spot. You could do extremely well in Leagues or at tournaments, and the field wasn't overly hostile to you. Post PT Rivals things got a little more hostile, I mean the deck did win the PT, it's to be expected. But it ended up settling down a bit, but then KCI took off like a rocket, and all of the hate people have been packing for that deck has tangentially made Lantern almost unplayable right now. I'm sure we'll get to a point where the format calms down a bit and I can play my good ol' prison deck again, but until then I have adapted, and picked up a new deck. Now I get to throw V8's at people all day long.
Magic has definitely been around a lot longer so keep that in mind. With that said though, these numbers certainly aren't small.
The problem with Hearthstone is that the random elements of the game make it hard for players to consistently do well. Some people just lose tournaments literally because of die rolls. With that in mind, the fact that Pavel has won enough to put himself in 21st place if we place him on the MTG money leaders board is....just wow.
Skitzafreak, did you read my topic in the general forum about pro play? Supply and demand rules here. Pros shouldn't get paid to appear, because none of them draw enough eyeballs to justify it. There's a reason none of these guys are sponsored by red bull, verizon, pizza hut, budweiser, or nintendo.
This is a false equivalence fallacy. You cannot state as a fact that these players do not draw enough eyeballs when Wizards does nothing to promote them. And as for sponsorships, you do realize a lot of the Platinum level Pros are sponsored right? Sure it might not be Red Bull, or Verizon, but why the f%ck do we care about those sponsorships anyway? They don't matter to people who play Magic in the first place. Ultra Pro, Ultimate Guard, Dex Protection, you know companies that make products that Magic players use actively sponsor teams and players and it is where I am sure they get a bulk of their money from (if there are any random Gold or Plat Pros that are sponsored reading these, feel free to chime in to confirm or deny my claim here).
Then there is the fact that Wizards wants the PT to be a sole promotion for just Magic. They don't want to share the spotlight with Pizza Hut. They want people just thinking about Magic. That's why there's no sponsors, Wizards doesn't want to share the limelight.
Not enough people care about any particular individual pro or team. If Gabriel Nassif never played Magic again, there would be no change in viewer count. If the entire team cfb retired, there would be no change in viewer count. The fact that four guys can say "hey everybody we're trying another game over here!" and bring eyeballs is proof enough. You get what you deserve, and pros deserve very little. Side note, I found it great that the finals were a hearthstone pro pairing. It's always nice to remind the world that these few dozen MtG people aren't much better than any of us. They just catch breaks (the bye system at GPs is awful).
Again, this is all false equivalence. You can't state with certainty that player's wouldn't care about Pro players leaving. Because there are people that don't know pr players exist, because Wizards doesn't tell people about Pro players! If you go on League of Legends you see the pro players. In the dashboard you see the teams. Riot throws the players in your face because the company understands their importance. And by broadcasting them, we get to enjoy them being there. Pro players are only 'disposable' because Wizards wants them to be disposable. The rest of your comment just sounds like someone who is pissed off he isn't better at Magic, so I'm not even gonna touch that.
You want bigger payouts at events? So do I. Eliminating appearance fees for pro players, not paying for travel or lodging for e-celebs who don't draw, that turns into bigger payouts that are actually earned that weekend by winning. It means you or I have a shot at the cash. WOTC could, and should, sell promo tokens or lands to help fund bigger payouts, too. I'd buy half a dozen foil islands with classic artwork (or brand new, if it's good) if I knew the profit margin was being redirected to pro play.
Why are you advocating for not appear fees for tournaments? Do you just want to Magic competitive scene to just be people only going to a GP whne it's in their home town? What incentive is there for people to grind GPs and event every year to try and make Gold and Platinum if there isn't at least that (completely embarrassing) income at the end to tell them, "hey good job". What you are suggesting would literally kill the Magic Pro circuit. And maybe that's what you want, and I legitimately don't understand why.
Though I do agree with your point on Wizards could back-end funding for premier level events with premier level cards that can be purchased at only GPs or something. Instead of a booster pack of cards you can just buy a premier GP promo for X Dollars. That would be cool.
I think this is pretty disingenuous, especially when they literally just had the largest pro tour payout they've ever had. No, it's not what League players or Hearthstone players get, but those games both have tens of millions of ad revenue and sponsorships pouring into their games as well.
Do they support the pro scene like pros or those dedicated to watching wish they would? Not really. That doesn't mean that they hate them, or don't care. They know tournaments are the lifeblood of the game, and they're financially incentivized to continue to care about that section of the game and community.
The largest Pro Tour Payout ever? Now that is disingenuous. Sure, the amount of money given away does seem much larger than usual. $850,000! Wow! That's a hell of a lot of money for a single Pro Tour! I mean, normal Pro Tours only have a payout of $250,000....and aren't team tournaments.
If you account for the fact that Pro Tour 25th Anniversary was a TEAM Pro Tour and the top prize needed to be paid out to THREE players, the prize pool for PT 25th Anniversary was only increased by $100,000. Honestly, that is pennies. In fact, there are very few people who actually see any of that prize increase. Let's go over every single prize metric to see who actually sees any increase in their prize payout.
Pro Tour Prizes. Standard Pro Tour Payout is bolded, PT 25th Anniversary Payout is in brackets.
1st: $50,000 ($50,000/player)
2nd: $20,000 ($24,000/player)
3rd: $15,000 ($15,000/player)
4th: $12,500 ($15,000/player)
5th: $10,000 ($9,000/player)
6th: $9,000 ($9,000/player)
7th: $7,500 ($9,000/player)
8th: $6,000 ($9,000/player)
9th - 16th: $5,000 ($5,000/player)
17th - 24th: $3,000 ($4,000/player)
25th - 32nd: $2,000 ($3,000/player)
33rd - 48th: $1,500 ($2,000/player)
49th - 64th: $1,000 ($1,000/player)
So yes, some placings made a little bit more money. The most pronounced is 2nd place where each player made $4,000 more than they would have at a regular PT if they had gotten the same placing. However the $850,000 isn't all that big of a number when you account for the fact that it was a team tournament. Of course they had to have a large payout! Do you think people are going to be excited for a Pro Tour where 3 people have to split the regular PT Winnings among all their team mates? Christ that's idiotic.
So WotC really only juiced the PT prize pool by $100,000. Or $33,333.33_/player for the team. Now let us shift over to the SILVER SHOWCASE!!! Where WotC paid $12,500 to HEARTHSTONE PLAYERS just to get them to show up! Please, you can't sit there and pretend like WotC actually gives a ***** about competitive players. The entire Silver Showcase Prize Pool was $150,000!! $50,000 MORE than what they added to the PT!!
I think it is fair to say this highlights the EV problem of MtG. The sentiments by the grinders is that this is some sort of side hustle instead of a hobby. We all know that even top level pros don't make that much money, so nobody should really go into this thinking they are going to end up in the black at the end of X years. This is a money sink, period, and the best 99% of us can hope to do is slightly mitigate the loss by accumulating enough inventory from prize support. That is a partial subsidy at best, not a profit.
This is my biggest problem with Wizards as a company. They give exactly 0 support to the people outside of their company that are helping to keep their brand alive. While I agree with the point that the casual playing crowd is much larger than those of us that are competitive, we are the ones singing the praises of Magic everywhere. WotC the past few years has been slowly killing off all support for professional play. I can see there being no appearance fee for any pro level in the next 5 years in this trend continues. In 10 years I can see the Platinum, Gold, and Silver pro levels all being squished into a singular Pro Players Club which only guarantees you entry into Pro Tours based on a pro point threshold. Wizards doesn't want to support those of us who try to play this competitively, who want to try to push this game as (for all intents and purposes) a sport.
There is a reason I still have the #PayThePros in my signature. Like here is a great example of how much Wizards doesn't give a *****.
The yearly season is almost over. World's will soon be upon us. Do any of you know what the Leaderboard for Player of the Year looks like right now? Because oh damn does it look amazing this year.
1st Place
Seth Manfield - 79 Points 2nd Place
Reid Duke - 78 Points 3rd Place
Luis Salvatto - 77 Points
Look at how close this race is!?! Any one of these players could hold the lead, or take the lead by doing well at the next GP. It's such an exciting narrative that can be pushed to garner excitement from the competitive crowd. But NOPE Wizards don't give a f&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&ck.
Hell even if you good the player of the year race the standings aren't at the top of the page. If you go to the Premier Play Leaderboard you have to scroll down an entire page's worth of text to even see the leaderboard. WotC doesn't care about what we want from the game. WotC doesn't care that we play the game. ***** WotC would love it if we all just bought 10 booster boxes of every new set and then lit them on fire.
Ive always loathed the idea of planned obsolescence, and that’s the whole basis of standard. I’m not terribly attached to any standard deck because before even building it I’m thinking about it rotating and getting upset. Why even bother.
It’s hard to make money off someone playing a RTR deck forever, of course and that needs to be considered. But if you take his deck away, does he happily buy a new one every few months? Or does he quit? Wouldn’t it be better to keep him in the game, maybe paying entry fees at an LGS, maybe getting exposed to new decks and new products that he might eventually want to try out? Worst case, maybe he helps LGS events fire?
The argument for Standard (imho) is that it is an easier way to incentivize new players to join the game. Want to learn to play Magic? Cool, we'll be playing decks with these last few sets where you can easily get your hands on the cards no problem! Compare that to Modern. It took me 2 weeks to find a playset of Goblin Lores and that was before Hollow One took off as a deck. Yes the planned obsolescence can be a bit frustrating, but it has a purpose and a good reason for existing within a 25 year old game.
Look at dickman's list. He maindecked 4 leyline of the void.
Adding a little bit of context here. In BridgeVine the main reason to mainboard Leyline of the Void is so that in creature match-ups like Humans, you can just swing your creatures sideways without the fear of your opponent killing one of their creatures and exiling any Bridge from Below that are in your graveyard.
Does it help against other decks that make use of the graveyard? Of course, but that's honestly just gravy.
With concerns to the League numbers, Modern Friendlies are showing to have 146% of the players of Standard Friendlies, with Modern Competitive having 121% the amount of players. Yeah, there is no contest for Modern being the most popular constructed format. The fact that it took Wizards this long to clue in that, "Oh we can make money off this crowd" is laughable.
It is depressing, because MM17 was really good overall. Then WOTC for some reason decided that this theme stuff mattered more.
Does the "for some reason" line up with Chris Cocks becoming the new CEO of Wizards of the Coast? I know for Standard legal sets they're designed almost a year in advance, so might the same be true for supplemental sets? Was Modern Masters 2017 the last Masters Set we might have had before Chris had a say in anything? Let me go grab my tinfoil hat....
The problem with Baleful Strix in Ravnica is that it is a coloured artifact. I am not saying it is an impossibility, but if WotC wanted to put coloured artifacts in the set, they'd probably have a mini artifacts-matter theme, and it would be more likely to be izzet since they can be like 'inventions' or something.
Ravnica is the wrong set for a Baleful Strix Modern printing. It would most likely be a core set of a Return to Alara.
hi Skitzafreak, that's goodnews! hope it will attract more brewers and fine tuners.
my primary concern about that list is that i feel there's too few discard/digging outlet. the list wants to put vengevine, bridge and bloodghast in the graveyard but it only has faithless looting, insolent neonate, and stitcher's supplier to do the job. i would like to put a salvage effect card in that list to help on that aspect.
The thing about the Bridgevine deck, is yes you want Bridge, Vengevine, and Bloodghast in your yard, but you don't need them all there at the same time. They are redundant win conditions. You can win with 1 Bridge in your yard, or 2 Vengevine, or 1-2 Bloodghast. You don't need all of them all the time.
As such the discard suite is actually enough to facilitate the needs of the deck.
Long time no see ladies and gentlemen. I come to you bearing the gift of a decklist. I saw this pop up on MTGGoldfish, having been posted as a 5-0 list in the Modern Leagues twice. The deck looks super sweet, and while it does eschew the Dredge cards, it definitely shows how Stitcher's Supplier may be the creature we've been wanting for Vengevine.
So I must say Stitcher's Supplier looks like one hell of a card, and has already earned some success in Modern.
Jund-Vine decks I think are probably one of the deck archetypes that can use Supplier do it's greatest point, and oh boy do these 5-0 League Lists look sweet.
God I love Magic sometimes.
That's the type of card that makes me want to dust off Abzan Rally / Aristocrats (or esper... would have to test that again). Once again, standard sets showing they are weak and have no impact on modern
I think that when people think of "Standard sets effecting Modern" they envision things like Eldrazi Winter, where the entire metagame was warped into an eldritch monstrosity.
However realistically, it's new sets providing some Modern decks with new cards for existing archetypes, or giving certain strategies a new card they need to become a break out deck.
I mean hell, look at some of the most recent 5-0 Humans lists running a full play set of Militia Bugler. New sets effects Modern, though usually only subtly
Nah Narcomoeba works really well with Surveil, I think that's why it is in the set.
Over time I've come to realize a lot of people's complaints about Modern are, "Your deck does something that makes it hard for me to play my deck. So instead of accepting that the format has changed and my deck might no longer be good, I will instead complain about how the format is horrible, disgusting, degenerate, and these cards that make your deck possible need to be banned."
I've seen this multiple times. Every time some new deck pops up that makes it so people can't just pick up the exact same 75 they've been playing for 4 months we get the groans and moans about how Modern is "broken" or "degenerate" and that something needs to be banned to fix it. But it isn't. Modern is a non-rotating format yes, but the metagame is cyclical. What is a good deck today, might be a horrible deck tomorrow. Hell I have personal experience with this via Lantern Control. Before PT Rivals Lantern was in a good spot. You could do extremely well in Leagues or at tournaments, and the field wasn't overly hostile to you. Post PT Rivals things got a little more hostile, I mean the deck did win the PT, it's to be expected. But it ended up settling down a bit, but then KCI took off like a rocket, and all of the hate people have been packing for that deck has tangentially made Lantern almost unplayable right now. I'm sure we'll get to a point where the format calms down a bit and I can play my good ol' prison deck again, but until then I have adapted, and picked up a new deck. Now I get to throw V8's at people all day long.
The problem with Hearthstone is that the random elements of the game make it hard for players to consistently do well. Some people just lose tournaments literally because of die rolls. With that in mind, the fact that Pavel has won enough to put himself in 21st place if we place him on the MTG money leaders board is....just wow.
This is a false equivalence fallacy. You cannot state as a fact that these players do not draw enough eyeballs when Wizards does nothing to promote them. And as for sponsorships, you do realize a lot of the Platinum level Pros are sponsored right? Sure it might not be Red Bull, or Verizon, but why the f%ck do we care about those sponsorships anyway? They don't matter to people who play Magic in the first place. Ultra Pro, Ultimate Guard, Dex Protection, you know companies that make products that Magic players use actively sponsor teams and players and it is where I am sure they get a bulk of their money from (if there are any random Gold or Plat Pros that are sponsored reading these, feel free to chime in to confirm or deny my claim here).
Then there is the fact that Wizards wants the PT to be a sole promotion for just Magic. They don't want to share the spotlight with Pizza Hut. They want people just thinking about Magic. That's why there's no sponsors, Wizards doesn't want to share the limelight.
Again, this is all false equivalence. You can't state with certainty that player's wouldn't care about Pro players leaving. Because there are people that don't know pr players exist, because Wizards doesn't tell people about Pro players! If you go on League of Legends you see the pro players. In the dashboard you see the teams. Riot throws the players in your face because the company understands their importance. And by broadcasting them, we get to enjoy them being there. Pro players are only 'disposable' because Wizards wants them to be disposable. The rest of your comment just sounds like someone who is pissed off he isn't better at Magic, so I'm not even gonna touch that.
Why are you advocating for not appear fees for tournaments? Do you just want to Magic competitive scene to just be people only going to a GP whne it's in their home town? What incentive is there for people to grind GPs and event every year to try and make Gold and Platinum if there isn't at least that (completely embarrassing) income at the end to tell them, "hey good job". What you are suggesting would literally kill the Magic Pro circuit. And maybe that's what you want, and I legitimately don't understand why.
Though I do agree with your point on Wizards could back-end funding for premier level events with premier level cards that can be purchased at only GPs or something. Instead of a booster pack of cards you can just buy a premier GP promo for X Dollars. That would be cool.
The largest Pro Tour Payout ever? Now that is disingenuous. Sure, the amount of money given away does seem much larger than usual. $850,000! Wow! That's a hell of a lot of money for a single Pro Tour! I mean, normal Pro Tours only have a payout of $250,000....and aren't team tournaments.
If you account for the fact that Pro Tour 25th Anniversary was a TEAM Pro Tour and the top prize needed to be paid out to THREE players, the prize pool for PT 25th Anniversary was only increased by $100,000. Honestly, that is pennies. In fact, there are very few people who actually see any of that prize increase. Let's go over every single prize metric to see who actually sees any increase in their prize payout.
Pro Tour Prizes. Standard Pro Tour Payout is bolded, PT 25th Anniversary Payout is in brackets.
1st: $50,000 ($50,000/player)
2nd: $20,000 ($24,000/player)
3rd: $15,000 ($15,000/player)
4th: $12,500 ($15,000/player)
5th: $10,000 ($9,000/player)
6th: $9,000 ($9,000/player)
7th: $7,500 ($9,000/player)
8th: $6,000 ($9,000/player)
9th - 16th: $5,000 ($5,000/player)
17th - 24th: $3,000 ($4,000/player)
25th - 32nd: $2,000 ($3,000/player)
33rd - 48th: $1,500 ($2,000/player)
49th - 64th: $1,000 ($1,000/player)
So yes, some placings made a little bit more money. The most pronounced is 2nd place where each player made $4,000 more than they would have at a regular PT if they had gotten the same placing. However the $850,000 isn't all that big of a number when you account for the fact that it was a team tournament. Of course they had to have a large payout! Do you think people are going to be excited for a Pro Tour where 3 people have to split the regular PT Winnings among all their team mates? Christ that's idiotic.
So WotC really only juiced the PT prize pool by $100,000. Or $33,333.33_/player for the team. Now let us shift over to the SILVER SHOWCASE!!! Where WotC paid $12,500 to HEARTHSTONE PLAYERS just to get them to show up! Please, you can't sit there and pretend like WotC actually gives a ***** about competitive players. The entire Silver Showcase Prize Pool was $150,000!! $50,000 MORE than what they added to the PT!!
This is my biggest problem with Wizards as a company. They give exactly 0 support to the people outside of their company that are helping to keep their brand alive. While I agree with the point that the casual playing crowd is much larger than those of us that are competitive, we are the ones singing the praises of Magic everywhere. WotC the past few years has been slowly killing off all support for professional play. I can see there being no appearance fee for any pro level in the next 5 years in this trend continues. In 10 years I can see the Platinum, Gold, and Silver pro levels all being squished into a singular Pro Players Club which only guarantees you entry into Pro Tours based on a pro point threshold. Wizards doesn't want to support those of us who try to play this competitively, who want to try to push this game as (for all intents and purposes) a sport.
There is a reason I still have the #PayThePros in my signature. Like here is a great example of how much Wizards doesn't give a *****.
The yearly season is almost over. World's will soon be upon us. Do any of you know what the Leaderboard for Player of the Year looks like right now? Because oh damn does it look amazing this year.
1st Place
Seth Manfield - 79 Points
2nd Place
Reid Duke - 78 Points
3rd Place
Luis Salvatto - 77 Points
Look at how close this race is!?! Any one of these players could hold the lead, or take the lead by doing well at the next GP. It's such an exciting narrative that can be pushed to garner excitement from the competitive crowd. But NOPE Wizards don't give a f&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&ck.
Hell even if you good the player of the year race the standings aren't at the top of the page. If you go to the Premier Play Leaderboard you have to scroll down an entire page's worth of text to even see the leaderboard. WotC doesn't care about what we want from the game. WotC doesn't care that we play the game. ***** WotC would love it if we all just bought 10 booster boxes of every new set and then lit them on fire.
The argument for Standard (imho) is that it is an easier way to incentivize new players to join the game. Want to learn to play Magic? Cool, we'll be playing decks with these last few sets where you can easily get your hands on the cards no problem! Compare that to Modern. It took me 2 weeks to find a playset of Goblin Lores and that was before Hollow One took off as a deck. Yes the planned obsolescence can be a bit frustrating, but it has a purpose and a good reason for existing within a 25 year old game.
Adding a little bit of context here. In BridgeVine the main reason to mainboard Leyline of the Void is so that in creature match-ups like Humans, you can just swing your creatures sideways without the fear of your opponent killing one of their creatures and exiling any Bridge from Below that are in your graveyard.
Does it help against other decks that make use of the graveyard? Of course, but that's honestly just gravy.
Does the "for some reason" line up with Chris Cocks becoming the new CEO of Wizards of the Coast? I know for Standard legal sets they're designed almost a year in advance, so might the same be true for supplemental sets? Was Modern Masters 2017 the last Masters Set we might have had before Chris had a say in anything? Let me go grab my tinfoil hat....
Ravnica is the wrong set for a Baleful Strix Modern printing. It would most likely be a core set of a Return to Alara.
The thing about the Bridgevine deck, is yes you want Bridge, Vengevine, and Bloodghast in your yard, but you don't need them all there at the same time. They are redundant win conditions. You can win with 1 Bridge in your yard, or 2 Vengevine, or 1-2 Bloodghast. You don't need all of them all the time.
As such the discard suite is actually enough to facilitate the needs of the deck.
4x Blackcleave Cliffs
4x Bloodstained Mire
3x Blood Crypt
3x Scalding Tarn
2x Stomping Ground
1x Mountain
Spells - 6
4x Faithless Looting
2x Lightning Axe
Enchantments - 4
4x Bridge From Below
4x Hangarback Walker
4x Walking Ballista
3x Goblin Bushwhacker
4x Gravecrawler
4x Insolent Neonate
4x Stitcher's Supplier
2x Viscera Seer
4x Bloodghast
4x Vengevine
2x Grim Lavamancer
3x Thoughtseize
2x Collective Brutality
2x Big Game Hunter
4x Leyline of the Void
2x Ingot Chewer
Enjoy
I think that when people think of "Standard sets effecting Modern" they envision things like Eldrazi Winter, where the entire metagame was warped into an eldritch monstrosity.
However realistically, it's new sets providing some Modern decks with new cards for existing archetypes, or giving certain strategies a new card they need to become a break out deck.
I mean hell, look at some of the most recent 5-0 Humans lists running a full play set of Militia Bugler. New sets effects Modern, though usually only subtly