MTG Salvation

Yeesh. Think I'll avoid the Modern Reddits and this Thread for a while. The negativity and tantrums are absurd right now. Not a single good discussion on anything productive in the past week now.

As an LGS manager, I'm seeing a ton of speculators picking up all of our PW-related cards.

I think the majority of posts that have ever had the word "Tron" in them in the past 10 years have commented on how BS Turn 3 Karn is, and as someone who started with Skred Red, I also mirrored that sentiment. Nowadays there is plenty of hate to run against Tron, and it doesn't put up backbreaking numbers; however, admittedly the group think of "WOW **** TRON" does still remain.

I've thought for quite a while now that Hollow One is as far linear as Modern should go, so I was very happy to see KCI go. Nowadays I look at the top decks and think, "Gee, Skred or Soul Sisters feels like it would crap all over 80% of these decks pretty hard..."

Unfortunately, Modern has cooled off for quite a while in my neck of the woods, and I'm the area's TO now as well as weekend shop manager, so I never get to play in anything!

Maybe an analysis of Day 2 conversion rates would be better than this silly approach of, "ThE nUmBeRs ArE rEaLlY hIgH!" If there were 2,000 Dredge decks and 200 G/B Rock decks, the numbers become a bit hazier on the "best decks," or how degenerate GY strategies are.

Quote from whocansay »

What exactly is 'the Legacy treatment'?

Allowing older cards to continually balloon in price with only the barest smattering of reprints that take 5-10 years to come around again? This drives more casual players out of a format and shrinks the chances of a local meta developing by a large margin, in my experience. I wanted to see this effect avoided in Modern at all costs, as I've been fairly successful at keeping a small local meta of Modern players engaged; however, I was hoping this year would be a good year for Modern prices (after the last few being abysmal) and that more and more players would be getting into Modern and developing our local meta.

Now it seems more feasible to just sell out of physical cards when they spike and simply buy into MTGO if I feel like playing Modern more regularly.

Quote from Colt47 »

Quote from Crimson Lancer »

No reprints whatsoever; I'll be readying my collection for sale some time this year if WotC is planning on giving Modern the Legacy treatment....

Ha, no if anything the modern horizons set is a good thing. The issue modern had is that they tried to do this cash grab thing with nothing but masters sets serving as the reprint set. While this worked early on, the set fell out of favor ages ago after MM2. The combination of the price and the print run levels made modern staples hold their value or even go up as they tried to force people into playing standard. Commander hit a new low as well with Commander 2018, but those will rebound in price.

It "fell out of favor" because WotC started playing a financial market game instead of developing a successful, long-term business and player base. When the Mythics in a Limited Print Run $250 set are worth $1, it's not "the market's" fault that your product failed; you made a terrible product, and it deserved to fail.

Masters sets were a reprint set done terribly. Horizons isn't a reprint set. So the issue will still exist until they deal with it.

The only reason I would sell out of modern right now is because of the reprint promise. If they pull off this plan correctly, I'm envisioning the price on a lot of high cost cards to drop a lot. The reason is the price point on new boxes: If they release a set with liliana of the Veil and two other high cost mythics along with a bunch of legacy cards that only got one printing, along with the set being priced around 90-140 dollars a box on amazon, it will be opened like mad compared to a masters set. That means the price of cards like Noble Hierarch will fall long term as they get reprinted and cracked open.

What promise is this, and where are they reprinting these cards that will see enough of a print run and a price point that they actually affect the prices of Modern staples? An unlimited print run, possibly $6-per booster set exactly like Modern Horizons seems like it would have been the perfect place for such reprints, but that isn't happening, and they're apparently done with large-scale reprints, soooo....what is this set that's going to affect reprints? The Innovation set for the year is announced; what's left?

The fact is they have to get super aggressive on reprinting staples in paper because arena is going to push a lot of new players into paper magic. Once they go there, Modern is currently the defacto eternal format for people now. Legacy is insane due to costs of a few outlier cards because of the reserved list. Modern does not have the same issue. Rather, modern has the problem of too many cards and a company that wanted to milk the economy dry.

We've been saying this for half a decade. Consider me jaded, but I'm fairly pessimistic about the entire situation right now.

I find there's a bit of a difference between, "Meaningful Repercussions," and, "You Lose." Most people don't like the second one just because they tapped out once on Turn 3, especially if the deck in question has plenty of room for other interaction that can shut other people down while they wait for them to tap out and lose. Jund has a lot of interaction...but doesn't just kill you if you try and push through it with multiple spells a turn. Storm has a nasty combo that's fairly easy to interact with, but very little protection or interaction of their own. Twin just got to do both of those things, and a lot of people just don't seem to like that being a consistent thing in the format, WotC included.

So this is a bit of a blunt approach, but let me put it like this: My first deck was in 1995 or so, and it was about 90 cards, all of it Lightning Bolts and Mesa Pegasus with "enough" lands to play enough of them out to win a game here or there. It was a ton of fun, and I've enjoyed Magic ever since! However, I much prefer playing a finely-tuned 3-Land Belcher deck in Modern to running old Kamigawa-block White Weenie or some such. Sure, games went longer "Back in the Day", but there's plenty of potential in interesting, interactive decks in most formats right now, and Standard is quite enjoyable. All these Rose-Colored Glasses feel like a bunch of BS to me; decks weren't necessarily "more fun" in the past, we just played in a manner that felt more fun in our small groups.

Quote from Manite »

Quote from Crimson Lancer »

It's just hard to have faith in a company that has spent half a decade destroying consumer confidence. Their words are worth less than the cardboard they sell for so much.

"Destroying consumer confidence"? Even though their past few blocks have all been major hits? As have been the Commander products, Conspiracy sets, and Battlebond? Hell, pretty much all of their sets since Shards of Alara? About the only products that haven't done well are secondary products like Duel Decks and Masters. I don't know what evidence you have to back up that claim, but it sounds like distorted perception of reality to me.

No, their past few blocks have SOLD decently, though they ended print runs for Khladesh before the set even rotated due to their earlier mistaken ideas of "Quicker rotations is great, guys!" Which is the real problem: HASBRO directives that have led to constant shake-ups in how Standard works, more cards banned in 2 years than had seen banned in the last decade combined(!), and multiple terrible Masters sets smashed into the same year. Also, their newest Commander set wasn't highly-regarded, their treatment of Pros and Cheaters is constantly being addressed by fans and some of the best Pros around as "incredibly inadequate," and their communication is among the worst.

PROFIT MARGINS!!! do not inspire confidence in a consumer, IMO. A company that can actually adapt and move in tandem with their player-base is much more successful than a Blockbuster that just continues to make a ton of money doing things exactly one way....until it doesn't.

It's just hard to have faith in a company that has spent half a decade destroying consumer confidence. Their words are worth less than the cardboard they sell for so much.

Quote from tronix »

cmon, dont you think you are being a bit sensationalist here? killing legacy? turning modern into legacy? how does anything about this product say that.

i get that some people wish wizards would flood the market and stamp down prices in a serious way, but its just an unrealistic expectation.

what we do know though is that this is more supply of some expensive cards, and prices of those cards will drop. we know this because its observable. the drop doesnt last forever, but wizards hasnt said they arent going to do value reprints in ancillary products anymore; but rather that they are shelving the masters line because it wasnt panning out as they hoped.

i mean we literally have people complaining about 300+ dollar 'premium' products being stupid. guess what? they are going away!

in short: the masters line being retired does not equate to the end of wizards caring about card availability. it just means they think they can address it in some other way.

Wizards thinks a lot of things. Wizards has been fairly consistently wrong about those things for almost 2 years now, unless those things have to do with Arena or Standard after the rotation. How much faith can I have as a Modern player in such a company, given their past actions this year and last?

The "evidence" is that there are no products I can think of they could print Fetches in. The Guild Kits had maybe 3 needed reprints. Is 3 reprints per set going to satisfy demand? In limited print run products? Not remotely. If people are going to play Magic as a *game*, not a financial investment, Wizards has been going about things the wrong way. I have little faith they will suddenly do a 180 and "figure out" how to solve Modern's current supply and pricing issues.

We have seen little evidence they will solve these issues. It is observable from the past few years that they either don't care, or are being mismanaged by HASBRO. What else can I think but, "Sucks to be me?"

Quote from hokerjoker »

What do you guys think of the new Hogaak Vine deck being a potential t3 Violator with a fast clock and self sustaining combo kill? it seems like every time a new degen deck comes out... faithless looting is the culprit and makes decks with unfun play patterns thats hard to interact with.

I have never heard of this deck before. Maybe, for once, we can wait until a deck starts getting real results before talking about format-wide implications of something that may very well be just a flash in the pan.

Always enjoyed the Modern section, it was well organised, and popular, and dealt with a huge format well.
The general section worked well too.
I felt the Legacy section died a while back. I don't think the Legacy Mod was actually active for over a year, unlike the general staff and other mods- I certainly never got a response from any messages, and the arrangement did not work- the developing section was perpetually full of "my first vampire deck" type threads by people who literally had never played the format, and lots of top decks were missing from the main section even before the threads were lost.
I think Mtg needs a site like this, I note that the source has cooled down too.

I'm not posting as much, but I definitely think we need a place like mtgsalvation forums that don't turn into a chaotic reddit slug fest.

Brewing decks is what keeps this game alive.

It's definitely heartbreaking to a lot of us, but being here has been one hell of a ride. I've grown a lot since coming here, mostly because I joined up and was subsequently brought into the mod team while in high school. Maybe in that regard saying I've grown a lot is, well, inevitable and actually doesn't say much about the how MTGS has influenced me. All the same, despite working on something new, I'm really going to miss this place. I've dumped so much time into this site it hurts to see it leave. I feel like a different woman than I was when I first started (although I wasn't a woman to begin with, so I guess my mileage may vary), but I've seen so much come and go in this community. It wouldn't trade this community away for the world. We've had our ups and downs, along with State of the Meta being... well, State of the Meta (long may it reign!), but I've loved interacting with every single one of you.

Mark my words, I will make our new home better than what we have here. We're gonna make something awesome, just you wait.

Quote from AUTUMNTWILIGHT »

Didn't some right an article where only three archtypes exist...Combo, Control and Aggro.

Anyway I say UR Phoenix is some Combo/Aggro sense it really doesn't play much in the way of controlling elements in the mainboard.

i mean there have been hundreds of articles lol. thats the thing, people get hung up on what a deck is categorized as, id guess because the largely incorrect assumptions driving perception about what requires more or less skill. really though there isnt like some unified theory of magic that is commonly accepted with explicit definitions we can turn to. like people arguing tron is some midrange or control deck, which ive seen come up from time to time. who cares? the deck is obviously doing something very distinct from a deck such as UW control, or something like jund or GW value town; exhibiting play patterns and game plans that can be seen from limited to standard all the way through vintage.

as for UR phoenix, im not sure if youve played the deck but one of its strongest aspects is board control; especially against decks that are soft to bolt, gut shot, and thing in the ice flips. aside from the most explosive draws it has midrange elements

yeah this definitely disappointing, though im grateful for years of service from everyone in the background supporting this site through thick and thin.

something being in the works to carry on the soul of mtgsalv is heartening, and i would definitely join when and if it ever comes to fruition. as others mentioned a base of a traditionally styled forum would be great, and it doesnt need to be fancy or anything out the gates (im assuming some content-management-system is planned to be used). i dont think any social media integration is warranted (id personally prefer none). card linking functionality is needed of course.

it may also be helpful to establish continuity of the content from here, even with something as simple as linking the end of threads to new ones established at the new site. no reason not to leverage ongoing user generated content to set the tone of the new location as an information hub (mtgsalv is still going to dominate search algorithms for years to come). i havent looked too much into what discord offers in terms of integration plugins, but i think itd be neat to have a balance of 'chat' functionality and more comprehensive forum threads at some future point after things are established.

also dont forget (or feel bad about) asking for donations, and having links set up to take them. im not averse to chipping in what little i can from time to time, and optional crowdfunding can be a powerful tool.

cheers~

Quote from cfusionpm »

Quote from gkourou »

a small minority of users constantly bashed Modern so vocally, to a point I could not stand the health of the very thread itself at some times!

I mean, if you like the best decks all being degenerate graveyard and big mana, then Modern is awesome and healthy!

I mean, sure, if you ignore UWx Control, GBx, GDS, Humans, Spirits, Affinity (Hardened and not), Storm etc. then yeah, Modern has been a cesspool of "degenerate graveyard and big mana" strategies and the only solution to this problem would've been a an enchantment that consts 2RR.

/s

Quote from idSurge »

Glad to hear it will continue somewhere else.

The only thing I hope for, is this same format of forum. Not like Reddit, or other sites, but a nice traditional forum.

Consider me another supporter of this format. The Reddit-style comment thread does not lend itself to long form discussion.

Glad to hear it will continue somewhere else.

The only thing I hope for, is this same format of forum. Not like Reddit, or other sites, but a nice traditional forum.

Quote from idSurge »

Thats very possible, and would explain why it took so long for the cards to make it to single's sellers.

yeah the JPN alt art walkers are only showing up in JPN boosters/boxes and the soon-to-be promo packs replacing FNM and other misc promos when core 2020 rolls out. NA stores can directly order WAR japanese booster boxes, which is not usually offered. the time delay on fulfilling those orders means the perceived scarcity is driving up the prices on the alt-art walkers. there is also the fact that opening japanese boxes for them leaves you with a bunch of foreign cards that generally have lower value to native english users.

Quote from mapccu »

That being said...Last reprint was as a masterpiece and it's a lot of reprint equity. I can't see it popping up until next year really and it'll be in a supplemental set like MH1 more than likely (conspiracy, or whatever). Depends if you need it to compete, if so I'd pull the trigger.

MH1 may have some impact on it but probably not much. If anything it'll slow growth, not make it retract much given what the card does and how good it is.

chalice was reprinted in masters 25