What incentive? Higher prize payouts. Duh. But the profitability is in winning plus personal marketing. We're getting away from the topic of "the meta," but I think this stuff matters too. Pro gamers rarely just profit on prize money alone. They get sponsorships, they stream live to huge audiences. I'd argue there is no MtG pro who knows how to brand his or her self properly. If the pros want more money, then they can try to market themselves. This is the social media era. Add some personality, some showmanship, and personal branding on top of skilled play, and people will click to watch.
I agree with everything you've said but I do think there are a few who have a 'brand' that is followed. Kenji, Hoogland, Caleb D and LSV all have a fairly large following based on their personalities more than their deck choices. They're a rarity, but we are definitely starting to see Magic pros properly brand and market themselves.
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.
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.
Elvish Piper and Tooth And Nail are nearly the same thing. What's the problem? Progenitus turn two is not overpowered... Just use a counter spell or a board wipe. It is no more broken than a turn two win infect deck. Gah. Oh well. I guess getting a Blightsteel Colossus turn two to four is much more fair. Am I missing something here? Why does no one want this card? Genuinely confusing.
Elvish Piper and Tooth and Nail aren't even *remotely* close to the power of Natural Order. Elvish Piper is an awful creature that sees no play outside of edh for a reason. Tooth and Nail requires an entire deck to be built around it and at best you can entwine TN on turn 4. Natural Order can happen on turn 3 with regularity, and faster if people look to build around it more than just throwing it in a random elves/value shell. It would absolutely make elves a tier 1 deck and has the potential to cause even more degeneracy than that.
Most mechanics are mechanics that they’d want to print enough depth in to make it a draft archetype. They don’t want to just have Noble Hierarch - they want you to be able to draft the ‘go tall rather than wide’ exalted deck so they have to print enough Exalted cards to make that playable. They won’t just have Snapcaster Mage, they’ll want a draftable Flashback deck. They won’t just drop in Mox Opal, they’ll want Metalcraft to be an ideal you can draft for and play in limited. They not only want to keep the quantity of mechanics down for the sake of complexity, but for the sake of draft cohesiveness.
Sure, but I'm willing to bet they're a little more concerned about Modern right now. Also, that's a fine mentality for printing, but it's also what prevents things like Noble Hierarch from being reprinted. "Not the right set", "didn't include exalted as a theme this year"; how many other cards suffer this fate and can't be printed in a set because some other card got in and created a theme? If they intend to solve this issue and give the community the adequate amount of reprints they desire (or as economically viable as possible), they're going to have to increase the velocity of valued reprints. Doing this is going to require some loosening of that mentality.
We may just get Hierarch as the only Exalted card in a set; it's still very playable in a draft setting as a solo Exalted creature. Hierarch may also just be an incredibly good talking point, you mention Opal as requiring a more build around setting and I can agree that not all cards can be jammed into a set so haphazardly. Though, I still think that in order to increase the velocity of reprints the way I think WotC seems to be thinking, then they'll have to loosen the reins on themes a bit. What's the alternative? More masters sets in a year?
I guess it boils down to what you think the recent survey really means to Modern. If a modern centric set is released, do you think they'll build it for draft first? Or modern first? Given next to none of that survey seemed to care about draft in a serious fashion, I'm inclined to think they'll build it for modern first, then fill in the rest of the 80 to 90ish% of the set with draft supporting cards.
It'll be interesting no matter what WotC decides to do. It's certainly another pivot point for the company.
The problem we are seeing in the market is the more enfranchised players are still here while the casual and fair weather crowd left. Wotc knows we will weather the storm and wait for the relief, which is why they are so new player focused.
I've been joking that they got three rav sets in order to print modern fetch and shock in standard. Ironically, it would give alpine moon a purpose.
Data for this? Wizards has been touting that Dominaria was right up there with Khans in terms of success and popularity.
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.
All of this, and from a business perspective (and WOTC *is* a business, despite what some think) has good reason to want people to be buying and playing with the newest cards. If they don't have constant streams of revenue, they don't have a business, then none of us have a game to play. They're tasked with striking a balance with eternal formats and standard that is precarious, at best.
I missed the joke, but since 'SJW' is a politically charged word, unrelated to MTG, its probably best to leave it or pull in an infraction. I've been infracted for less.
Bingo. It's a derogatory stupid term that doesn't have any place here.
VERY interestingly there is a question about player interest in a product that would contain cards that would be legal only in modern and not standard. This is the first time I can recall them even floating around an idea like this and it's very exciting. I'd highly recommend taking this survey and leaving your feedback. This could be a *huge* thing for the format for both reprints and cards that would be perfect here but are way too strong or warping for standard.
I've been on GW Company (or Valuetown) for a while now and I absolutely love grinding people into dust and decimating manabases. I've also been experimenting with various Counters Company lists to very good effect as well. In my search for more sweet GW decks (there just aren't enough of them) for modern, I've been trying to recreate the tool box-y feel of Pod while trying to maintain the value gameplan if need be. What I've come up with is this (keep in mind, this is a first draft of the deck and I haven't run games with it yet) - http://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/eldritch-value-experimental/?cb=1533748996
Has anyone tried anything like this? The closest thing I've seen is some of those Saheeli Chord lists, but that manabase just seems too loose to me and I'm not a fan of Saheeli in general.
Went 3-1 at Modern Monday last night as practice for another PPTQ on Saturday. Beat Burn, Eldrazi and Taxes, and Hollow One. Got destroyed by UW Miracles. I'm confident in saying that that deck is easily our worst matchup, as the combination of RIP, Terminus, Jace, Teferi, and many more sweepers is just too much. Even something as stupid as Timely Reinforcements shuts down our ability to apply pressure.
Per the advice of various players who have done well with the deck, I'll be swapping a land for a Breeding Pool and adding three Unified Will to the sideboard to help fight against control. Just hope you dodge it.
I don't necessarily think that BR vengevine is 'too strong' or can't be dealt with or anything - but Faithless Looting and Ancient Stirrings will continue to create busted modern decks as long as they exist and should be banned for the same reason Pod is banned, because those two cards limit the types of cards that wizards can print that interact with the graveyard and are colorless.
That's an interesting angle to look at, but that argument essentially works against any cantrip. There's a difference between the consistency buff of cantrips and a reusable consistency engine like Pod.
My only point with these two is that by leaving them in the format, we will continually have near broken artifact and graveyard based decks as new cards are printed that interact in these way in every single set that is released. *If* bridgevine is broken (we don't know this yet), then they'll need to ban something. Rather than banning the continually problematic enablers, they'll have to look at the new pieces that come out, which *to me* seems much less fun in the long run. It just seems that we're always one not very busted card away from another new dominant graveyard or artifact based deck, and it's just getting old.
I don't necessarily think that BR vengevine is 'too strong' or can't be dealt with or anything - but Faithless Looting and Ancient Stirrings will continue to create busted modern decks as long as they exist and should be banned for the same reason Pod is banned, because those two cards limit the types of cards that wizards can print that interact with the graveyard and are colorless.
"Each year, new powerful options are printed, most recently Siege Rhino. Over time, this creates a growing gap between the strength of the Pod deck and other creature decks."
There is a chance that wizards was more concerned with specifically pod decks against non-pod decks in that announcement, but from much of the analysis that has come in the last three years, it's clear that they don't want to continually break a card pool through the addition of new cards.
I agree with everything you've said but I do think there are a few who have a 'brand' that is followed. Kenji, Hoogland, Caleb D and LSV all have a fairly large following based on their personalities more than their deck choices. They're a rarity, but we are definitely starting to see Magic pros properly brand and market themselves.
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.
Elvish Piper and Tooth and Nail aren't even *remotely* close to the power of Natural Order. Elvish Piper is an awful creature that sees no play outside of edh for a reason. Tooth and Nail requires an entire deck to be built around it and at best you can entwine TN on turn 4. Natural Order can happen on turn 3 with regularity, and faster if people look to build around it more than just throwing it in a random elves/value shell. It would absolutely make elves a tier 1 deck and has the potential to cause even more degeneracy than that.
Data for this? Wizards has been touting that Dominaria was right up there with Khans in terms of success and popularity.
Yeah, this one is gonna be a no from me dawg.
All of this, and from a business perspective (and WOTC *is* a business, despite what some think) has good reason to want people to be buying and playing with the newest cards. If they don't have constant streams of revenue, they don't have a business, then none of us have a game to play. They're tasked with striking a balance with eternal formats and standard that is precarious, at best.
Bingo. It's a derogatory stupid term that doesn't have any place here.
Stop.
VERY interestingly there is a question about player interest in a product that would contain cards that would be legal only in modern and not standard. This is the first time I can recall them even floating around an idea like this and it's very exciting. I'd highly recommend taking this survey and leaving your feedback. This could be a *huge* thing for the format for both reprints and cards that would be perfect here but are way too strong or warping for standard.
1x Archangel of Thune
3x Birds of Paradise
2x Courser of Kruphix
2x Eternal Witness
1x Fairgrounds Warden
2x Kitchen Finks
2x Knight of the Reliquary
4x Noble Hierarch
1x Qasali Pridemage
1x Ramunap Excavator
1x Scavenging Ooze
1x Selfless Spirit
1x Shalai, Voice of Plenty
1x Sigarda, Host of Herons
1x Spike Feeder
3x Voice of Resurgence
4x Eldritch Evolution
2x Path to Exile
1x Bojuka Bog
4x Forest
4x Ghost Quarter
1x Gavony Township
2x Horizon Canopy
2x Plains
2x Temple Garden
4x Windswept Heath
3x Wooded Foothills
In the GW facebook group, someone recently top 8'd a PPTQ with a list that looked similar but had some different eldritch/chord targets, but still looked to play a value-esque game while having outs that the value decks don't have in the Angel combo to win through severe stalls or when way behind. This seems absolutely fantastic to me and I can't wait to try it out. I'm imagining the sideboard will have various packages for the different decks you can expect in the meta consisting of creatures like - Sigarda, Host of Herons, Gaddock Teeg, Thalia, Guardian of Thraben, Loaming Shaman, another Ramunap Excavator, Reclamation Sage, Linvala, Keeper of Silence, Wilt-leaf Liege, Cataclysmic Gearhulk, Thragtusk, Obstinate Baloth, Windborn Muse, Aven Mindcensor, Kataki, War's Wage, etc.
Has anyone tried anything like this? The closest thing I've seen is some of those Saheeli Chord lists, but that manabase just seems too loose to me and I'm not a fan of Saheeli in general.
Per the advice of various players who have done well with the deck, I'll be swapping a land for a Breeding Pool and adding three Unified Will to the sideboard to help fight against control. Just hope you dodge it.
My only point with these two is that by leaving them in the format, we will continually have near broken artifact and graveyard based decks as new cards are printed that interact in these way in every single set that is released. *If* bridgevine is broken (we don't know this yet), then they'll need to ban something. Rather than banning the continually problematic enablers, they'll have to look at the new pieces that come out, which *to me* seems much less fun in the long run. It just seems that we're always one not very busted card away from another new dominant graveyard or artifact based deck, and it's just getting old.
"Each year, new powerful options are printed, most recently Siege Rhino. Over time, this creates a growing gap between the strength of the Pod deck and other creature decks."
https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/feature/banned-and-restricted-announcement-2015-01-19
There is a chance that wizards was more concerned with specifically pod decks against non-pod decks in that announcement, but from much of the analysis that has come in the last three years, it's clear that they don't want to continually break a card pool through the addition of new cards.