As these forums drift to the internet graveyard, I would like to share a few parting thoughts. I joined this website nearly a decade ago, when Modern was announced. I spent a lot of time reading these forums, and little bit of time posting on these forums. I played through all the bannings and unbannings, each and every one, and I have to say that Modern is fine. It was always fine and it will always be fine. Formats don't last for ten years if they aren't fine. That Origins forward format that no one remembers? Gone. Didn't even last a year. Modern has the ability to correct itself and when it doesn't, Wizards takes action. These forums, at one place, were a veritable hive of real discussion. And to those people, I say;
Modern is fine, and will be fine.
This website is a veritable treasure trove of deck lists, deck musings, deck theory, and it's all nicely categorized for anyone who wanted to seek this information. Mad respect to the people who contributed in a meaningful and the organizers who made the meaningful things easy to find. My hat is off to all of your collective hard work for the past ten years. Sheridan is a goddamn treasure, and his writings here and on modern nexus are real gems in a sea of low effort deck list 'articles' by people who play the game for a living. I have nothing but respect for you Sheridan. You do the good work.
However, the people on these forums, idSurge and cfusionpm and the other handful of the rest of them that drive their agenda down peoples throats and parrot the same tired lines with their free time for the better part of the past ten years saying that Modern is awful and stifling meaningful discussion; You guys won't be missed. You've wasted all of your time, and by extensions a lot of our time with your regurgitated, entitled, petulant crap. The amount of pure garbage that the group of you used to domineer conversations that could have otherwise been productive is staggering, to say the least. Whatever platform you find yourselves on after this ship sinks, know that the lot of you are at least in part responsible for driving participation down and costing the website views purely to satiate your internet egos.
MTGSalvation, goodnight. Sleep well.
- xBattleSpawnx
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Earthbound21 posted a message on The State of Modern Thread (B&R 20/05/2019)Posted in: Modern Archives -
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Torpf posted a message on The State of Modern Thread (B&R 20/05/2019)Posted in: Modern Archives
Please don't.Quote from gkourou »Those last days of mtgsalvation mean there are not admins around anymore. That said anybody who wants to make inappropriate/illegal posts gets to have his chance now. Don't forget, everybody. Those are your last posts! You will have to look upon them for the time to come and we can look down on those posts and say "maybe it's for better that this forum came to an end". -
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k0no posted a message on The State of Modern Thread (B&R 20/05/2019)Haha.Posted in: Modern Archives
I just want to state, before the site gets archived forever, that the nonsense mental gymnastics people are doing, in order to get riled up and call for bans for a card that isn't even released yet are staggering.
I hate it. I hate the knee-jerk "everything's a problem" mentality every time a new set comes out, or a deck happens to do well at a tournament. I hate the inscrutable need some people have to just complain and call for bans at every turn, completely ignoring the twenty, thirty times when they did exactly the same thing but everything was fine after the format adjusted.
It's completely exhausting being surrounded (in a community sense) by players who instead of appreciating new things or incorporating new variables into the landscape have to see every new thing as a terrible, insurmountable threat.
It's baffling and frustrating that players of a format like modern will spend their mental energy creating a philosophy which argues against the natural churn of the format and retreat into stagnant ban-talk, complaining that things aren't staying the same instead of innovating and altering their approach.
If there's one thread I'll be glad to see disappear from the face of the planet, it'll be this one. For most of the last half-decade it's been the more or less the same small-ish crew of complainers, endlessly riling each other up in an echo chamber of perceived problems and issues that only exist if you lack imagination.
End of an era. We'll miss the primers and the genuine discussion about how to improve and innovate on the constant shifting metagame. We'll miss the people who put in effort and time to help others understand this complex game. Those generous people who lent their knowledge and expertise will be remembered. Nobody will miss the fragmented ban-driven panic and negativity. Its a complete waste of everyone's time and when this site bites the dust next month, I'll feel content to say goodbye to this thread forever. Good riddance.
Here's to a more positive discourse and the faint hope that the new website in the works curates spaces that engender positive, useful discussion instead of a blank slate for useless uninformed negativity to rule.
And with that, I'm out. If you've spent the last five years being angry at modern for a different reason every couple of weeks, ask yourself what you were really angry at, because it sure wasn't modern.
It's been a ride. I wish you all the best. -
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Zephyr Scarlet posted a message on The State of Modern Thread (B&R 11/03/2019)Every time I see a Twin apology post not-so-subtly masqueraded as "Control needs a tool to beat all things at all times just because" I feel tempted to just copy and paste substituting the Twin apology parts for ThopterSword / Death & Taxes / Delver / whatever random Tier 2-3 deck I feel like at the moment, but then I remember that I would get infracted for trolling while the endless Twin drivel with the same old arguments that have been dismantled several times throughout countless threads we've had to endure for 3 years straight would still go unpunished.Posted in: Modern Archives
Infraction issued for trolling/flaming. --CavalryWolfPack -
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Ym1r posted a message on Do you enjoy modern right now?Posted in: Modern
Well, maybe it's just my experience or perspective and I am completely wrong, but for the most part, I have seen toxic discussions coming from those who dislike modern.Quote from Bearscape »
But when you criticize the format you (rightfully) have the burden of proof, which is next to impossible with the massive amount of variance and tiny amount of data we have access to. You're not going to change anyone's mind on the internet anyways so once the discussion inevitably turns toxic I think a lot of Modern critics tend to just shut up.
If personal experience is of any value (which is not necessarily), I often have refrained from posting just because I can't bare another discussion around how "modern sucks cause it's linear", "unban Twin or modern it horrible" and so on. I would argue that even if it is true that people don't post their distaste for the format because they are afraid they will be bashed, then the same definitely holds true for the "other" side.
Further, people who mostly care about the format (i.e. ktk), are the ones who actually come in with all the possible data that we can have, and not the ones who are bashing the format (i.e. the ones as you said with the burden of proof). -
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k0no posted a message on The State of Modern Thread (B&R 21/01/2019)I wrote a lengthy rebuttal to your post just now, and decided to delete it because I'm almost positive you just kinda blurted out that comment without thinking it through. It's riddled with inconsistency, illogical or false assumptions and honestly I don't think it's worth even having a back-and-forth about. Just... DamnPosted in: Modern Archives -
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ktkenshinx posted a message on The State of Modern Thread (B&R 26/11/2018)Posted in: Modern ArchivesQuote from AUTUMNTWILIGHT »Alright Mad Statistician how would you bury KCI for good? What would you ban to make sure it stays dead?
To kill KCI, you ban KCI itself. I doubt Wizards will do that though as all they don't want to kill decks. They didn't even totally kill Eldrazi by banning both Eye and Temple! So a more likely ban is Trawler. KCI players will tell you this kills the deck, but history has showed that most strong decks survive bans like this: see Amulet, Death's Shadow, Infect, and Dredge for recent examples of decks surviving bans and evolving. All other ban targets are too cute and indirect (e.g. Ruins, Fair, etc.) or hit too many other decks that aren't offending (e.g. Opal, Stirrings).
Quote from Niallplaysmagic »KCI is currently the most busted thing. Banning it only allows the new most busted thing to take it's place. It will 'rotate' like this forever, and that's why modern gets so exhausting because you constantly have to prune back the branches of decks like this and the most innocuous cards are capable of breaking a deck in half - Cathartic Reunion, Opt, Ichor Wellspring, etc.
KCI is unusually busted and deserves a ban. It's not an artificial rotation. It's a targeted ban on a problematic strategy. The real problem, as I said before, is that there is so much endless and unjustified ban mania in Modern that when a truly bannable deck emerges, we are all too exhausted to address it seriously. After 2-3 years of calls with varying degrees of seriousness for bans on Cavern, Vial, Hierarch, DS, Temple, Company, E Bridge, Bridge from Below, Looting, Tron, Stirrings, Moon, Prime Time, fetchlands, Baral, Opal, Teferi, Nahiri, and others I'm too worn out to list, it's hard to have an informed discussion about a legitimate issue like KCI. -
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ktkenshinx posted a message on The State of Modern Thread (B&R 26/11/2018)Posted in: Modern ArchivesQuote from cfusionpm »Quote from ktkenshinx »Quote from cfusionpm »"are capable of" =/= "always does"
But who cares when decks are capable of winning? How is that meaningful in any way? It's even more meaningless when we have no clue how Hoogland defined those decks or even what decks are in that percent. It is significantly more valuable to know the actual turn distribution that games end, as this far more useful analysis shows.
The moment I'm home, I will see how this 2018 distribution compares to the distribution in 2015 Modern, which I know many view as the diverse golden age of multiple pillars with a low incidence of linear decks. That will allow us to see how Modern's speed has or has not changed since 2015 and the year of Twin, BGx, Bloom, and other 2015 mainstays.
If you're looking to make a deck choice decision, are the two really any different in their conclusions? Since I edited my last post to include an extra line, I'll paste it here again, since it directly addresses the practical uses of data like this: I don't know who could look at either of these and think: "You know, I think I want to play a deck whose win condition is a planeswalker ultimate on turn 10, or a 4/4 that I can't activate until turn 6, but realistically don't activate it until 10+."
They might say "Those other decks seem ill-equipped to win the long game, so if I can tune my answers to keep me alive until T5 I have a really good chance of leveraging stronger late-game win conditions." Both of those hypothetical and rhetorical positions are equally plausible.
Incidentally, as Kathal predicted, there is a very small difference in the turn distribution between 2015 and 2018 Modern. See the numbers below. An earlier version of this list combined the T0/T1/T2 numbers but I realized separating them is clearer. I'm not really sure what a T0 win is if neither player has a turn (seems like someone just forfeited before cards were played), so I might need to just remove that line entirely because it might not make sense.
2015 vs. 2018 cumulative win percentages by Turn N
T0: 0% (2015) vs. 0.5% (2018)
T1: 0% (2015) vs. 0.9% (2018)
T2: 0.9% (2015) vs. 2.4% (2018)
T3: 6.2% (2015) vs. 8.3% (2018)
T4: 21.4% (2015) vs. 22.2% (2018)
T5: 39.4% (2015) vs. 39.4% (2018)
T6: 55.7% (2015) vs. 55.2% (2018)
T7: 69.4% (2015) vs. 67.6% (2018)
T8: 79% (2015) vs. 77% (2018)
T9: 85.5% (2015) vs. 83.9% (2018)
T10: 100% (2015) vs. 100% (2018)
The biggest points of difference are in the T0-T3 wins and the T9/T10+ wins. In 2018, 2.2% more games end on T0-T3 than in 2015, which indicates a slight increase in early game speed. That said, 2018 also sees 2% more games go beyond turn 9+, which means the long games go longer than they used to. This ultimately results in no difference between the average turn on which games end: using weighted averages, that would be turn 6.43 in 2015 and turn 6.42 in 2018. -
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ktkenshinx posted a message on The State of Modern Thread (B&R 26/11/2018)Posted in: Modern ArchivesQuote from cfusionpm »It isn't so much that I care so much about the data, it's that people put way too much faith into the data we have. Data which is purposely misleading, chaotic, and non-representative. Data which then drives players to make choices for events that then create equally chaotic results. None of the numbers we have mean anything if we don't have underlying MTGO data sets, because WOTC has shown us time and time again that those are the core numbers they use to drive any meaningful decisions they make. GP numbers are a close second, but those are arguably a horrible metric to use (that's another discussion entirely).
Basically, when it comes to either making predictions about the meta or predicting what WOTC might do with B&R announcements, we are guessing with one arm tied behind out back.
And as a result, the best strategy for Modern is not to bother trying to understand or prepare for a "meta" that doesn't exist, but to play a proactive, fast deck, usually that is difficult to interact with. Then, hope that you either dodge your bad matchups or that your opponents aren't prepared for what you're doing. I do not feel this makes for a "healthy" format.
Your positions, both here and in the previous post, are just too overstated to be persuasive. At the very least, you need to attempt some kind of proof to make the allegation that a lack of MTGO data leads to "chaotic" results at the GP level, a "meta that doesn't exist," and that "none of the numbers we have mean anything." That's a string of significant allegation with basically no supporting evidence. It's particularly questionable because we already know from over two dozen of my posts by now that this has no impact on top or average player MWP between Standard, Legacy, and Modern. The floors/ceilings/averages/spreads are almost identical between formats. If Modern was this chaotic and unpredictable mess like you are alleging, we would not see this consistency between performances. There would be significant variance that, in fact, we don't see at all.
I'm 100% on board with the criticism that Wizards should release more MTGO data. But I have no clue how the lack of this data completely invalidates all our numbers to the point where "none of the numbers we have mean anything," which I assume to mean literally all of the GP/PTQ/MOCS/Challenge/SCG/other events we do have. This makes so many assumptions about the relationship between MTGO data and literally every player/tournament in the format, and we simply have no clear information about that relationship.
Ultimately, I think players like you, Hoogland, PVDDR, and others who are vocal critics of the current state of Modern are correct in identifying a Modern issue. That issue appears to be that the format is not as interactive as you would like it to be. Or, more credibly, that late 2018 Modern is less interactive than it was in previous eras, and that makes it less enjoyable. Those might be legitimate cases to make with the right supporting evidence. But bundling that criticism in with an allegation that our numbers are meaningless, the results are chaotic, and that we are preparing for "a meta that doesn't exist," is ineffective and misleading. Just as it is ineffective to say that 3/4 of decks are trying to win or establish an insurmountable game state by T3. *****, Twin was trying to do that. BGx still tries to do that. UW Control would be happy countering everything from T2 onwards. Let's clarify and refine our definitions before making these kinds of wild claims.
I'm not even saying the evidence isn't there. I'm sure it is! I was throwing some stats together earlier today comparing interactivity in GP T8s between years and finding some interesting things. There is a way to make this case, and I'm sure my way is not even remotely the only way. But the pure subjective rhetoric you are using is also not the way. Nor is the bad analysis Hoogland was doing in his article or the constant sound-bite storm on Reddit/Twitch/Twitter. -
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Ym1r posted a message on The State of Modern Thread (B&R 26/11/2018)Posted in: Modern Archives
At least some people are a bit sensible in this thread.Quote from tronix »modern is just on autopilot. wizards has plenty on their plate. arena is out and standard doesnt suck. modern has shown its ability to self correct, and any statements they might make has an equal if not higher chance to be turned on them. we see it even here how people scrutinize every quote under a microscope, and use it as the basis for arguments or whatever else. so what they could gain by saying anything is overshadowed by stirring up speculation and fear mongering and or having the quote continually thrown in their face from now until forever. staying silent is just less bad, and it isnt breaking from pattern.
We have discussed the concept of "laziness" from the side of Wizard's on several occasions. Really though, why would they make ANY comment in their B&R announcement? Imagine this, they say in their announcement:
"Modern is at a good point right now. While our focus is in other products such as Standard and Arena, we are keeping an eye at Modern, and nothing seems to be standing out as problematic. There is a surge of Ancient Stirrings which, for the time being, don't seem to be oppressive. Dredge is also on the rise and is also being monitored."
Even in such a calm statement about the state of modern people would go NUTS.
"Modern is horrible right now, two ships passing in the night, where do they see the healthy environment?"
"They don't care about modern, they don't test it, Arena will kill it"
"Ancient Stirrings ban incoming"
"Dredge ban incoming"
"WHY DON'T THEY TALK ABOUT SFM/TWIN, THEY ARE HORRIBLE PEOPLE, THEY DON'T WANT TO GIVE ME MY DECK WHICH I DESERVE"
To avoid these reactions they just say, no changes, and that's that. Anything else is, more or less, baseless speculation. Some people are doing some GREAT work with data from tournaments and provide calm, reasonable, and educated analyses, even if it's not always correct, as we don't have the backing of Wizards for this. For the most part though, most arguments are just emotional or unreasonable requests and/or demands.
If we see the majority of B&R announcements, they provide NO context for no changes, and only a couple, if even, provide information on why they kept things the same. So I don't see laziness, I don't see conspiracies to keep us from playing our favorite deck because they hate us/hate twin/hate SFM. They have no reason to do it. Would it be nice? Maybe (although as I argued with my example above possible also not). Are they obliged to do it? No.
As the voice of reason ktkenshinx has said multiple times in this thread, it is likely that there will be an unban, and it's a matter of time/timing.
Just play the format as it is. And if you HATE it because it doesn't have twin, then don't, there are 10 formats. But chill out. - To post a comment, please login or register a new account.
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Doesn't this have a bit of a correlation doesn't equal causation problem? Changes in incentives, prize payouts, number of modern GPs, CFB getting a monopoly on event hosting, etc could all attribute to a decline in attendance.
To kind of reinforce my point, Golgari Grave Troll was banned January 9th 2017 and the "result" was an 18% drop in GP attendance from the previous year
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I want to highlight this. I don't think the average player realizes how razor thin the margins on singles are (nor do they care), but without some equity in the game, there wouldn't really be the support necessary for tournaments and fundamentally the game itself. Without a decent EV, product isn't going to move, so while WotC doesn't necessarily care about the secondary market, they kind of have to pay attention to some degree. Afterall the secondary market is primarily LGSs and LGSs are primarily WotC's ACTUAL customers. Again it is a balancing act, but it is very easy to tank prices and ruin confidence in the people who are primarily buying the product (the LGS).
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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
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I personally feel the fact that control is doing as well as it is in such an open meta is impressive and indicates that they are in a healthy place. No deck has game against everything and some decks are going to take a long time to win. Some people enjoy the grind (Jim Davis being one of them). Personally control mirrors are especially yawn inducing, but some people enjoy it.
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I mean the very first post in the thread (and all B&R threads) summarizes this.
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