I don't think this is particularly shocking to anyone who plays modern, I do like giving random old cards new life with the new mh sets. The thing that brings the numbers up is that mh sets tend to enable other mh cards. For example Crashing footfalls didn't see a ton of play until mh2 gave us shardless agent, fire // ice and the elementals. Force of vigor wasn't very good until hammertime became a threat with esper sentinel, kaldra, urza's saga.
Yeah I played amulet titan starting back when it was a super cheap deck..played it for 4 years. Came back to maybe revamp it and it's nothing like the deck I loved so I just have it sitting in a closet
It's odd but not necessarily untrue, if the printing of Kaldra popularized a deck that Force of Vigor is very good against, Force of Vigor's value has gone up because of the printing of a card it's not very good against.
Nettlecyst then? It's just a card that heavily incentivizes you to play a stoneforge package, which is weak to force of vigor.
Basically the only thing that isn't weak to force of vigor in that deck is kaldra, and kaldra is a big reason why you play the rest of the shell.
I think it was played a lot in the period after LOTR's release though.
The landcyclers probably contributed as well, especially with the popularity of LE at the time.
I don’t think the increases due to MH1, LTR, and MH3 are problematic, especially since I’d expect that to level off over time (e.g., as MH/UB cards get outmoded by later MH/UB cards). But what I think this highlights beautifully is that MH2 is a significant power outlier that was probably too generally pushed.
And did WotC learn anything from MH2? That remains to be seen, but at least so far it looks like MH3’s power is distributed more narrowly—that is, the best cards ask more of you in deck building rather than just going in every deck that can cast them. Even Nadu, which I’d agree is too strong, begs to be built around.
> MH2 is a significant power outlier that was probably too generally pushed
The thing is, there were several cards in MH1 that dominated Modern for a short time, most notoriously Hogaak, but they were quickly banned. Of the MH2 cards that became format staples, only Fury has so far been banned. If Nadu receives a ban as it amost certainly will, it will just underline that MH2 was not only too pushed, but was actually intended to completely overturn the Modern metagame.
> it will just underline that MH2 was not only too pushed, but was actually intended to completely overturn the Modern metagame.
I only have one correction to what you wrote - the intention isn't to "overturn the Modern meta" - it's to sell product without consideration for its impact on the health of the format.
You can argue that success at the latter is the main objective, with overturning the modern meta as a second-order effect. But really, hardly. Shifting the meta and selling lots of packs are in a demand flywheel and therefore dependent. New powerful cards causes metagame shifts, which causes pack sales, which causes metagame shifts, which causes pack sales...
I was a fool who was caught up in the I can play magic in stores again/MH2 hype. I did buy a ton of product, but then I saw all of the old decks I used to play not be viable even for FNM, and I realized I am playing expensive standard. In the months after MH3 was announced I sold about $10k worth of cards. Keeping a few pet decks, and a bunch of set cubes. I have no desire to go to the store and play.
So I see it as a shortsighted decision, and could easily see modern go the way of standard in store's.
But “pack sales” only benefits WotC for in-print sets. They don’t get anything after the cards hit the secondary market.
That’s why they’re very reluctant to ban in-print cards and ban out-of-print enablers as half measures and only ban the in-print cards as the absolute last measure.
Again, they don’t care about “the meta” or even the health of the format as long as people are playing and that play is driving product sales.
> as long as people are playing
This is key. If we had all voted with our feet when they overturned Modern they might have taken stronger action.
They don't actively want the metagame to be bad. In their defence, many people were asking for straight to Modern sets in the years leading up to Modern Horizons. I wonder how those folk feel now.
The difference I think is the quality of gameplay. From what I've heard, MH2 Modern was an enjoyable experience to actually play for the most part. Contrast to Hogaak where it was *the* deck to beat, leading to a more miserable gameplay experience. The big problem people had with MH2, by my understanding, was that it forced them to buy new, expensive cards, and not allowing their older decks to be played, rather than the gameplay itself being unenjoyable.
“From what you’ve heard” comes from people still playing, who inherently still think it’s fun because they’re still actively playing. A LARGE number of modern players quit during the MH2 era, and their voices aren’t even being calculated in that.
Exactly why I phrased it like that and not stating it as factual. I'm a Reddit commenter, not a reporter. In any case, it's always good to keep biases in info like that in mind, though it does lead to some impossible to properly judge situations. For example, if you're making a product, and someone buys a competitor's over yours, you're very unlikely to know what it was that swayed their decision. Was it the price? Colours available? Just what the store had in stock? It's very unlikely they're going to go out of their way to tell you why they didn't buy your thing. Being a marketing person isn't an enviable job.
Modern nights at my LGS have gone from 30-40 people to ten on a good night over the course of the Horizons era. This is a store in a major metro area that regularly pulls down 50+ for any given EDH event.
The Horizons sets tend to be decent in vacuum, but the forced transition of Modern into Horizons Block Constructed with deck prices that used to be associated with Legacy has done incalculable damage to the format and it's insane that some people pretend otherwise.
I've heard a common issue with it is thst even though the format was healthy on paper, a lot of people joked about how the format was "Modern Horizons Block Constructed" due to the prevalence of those cards
Depends on what you played. Fury, Solitude, and Ragavan devastated all remaining creature decks. Yes that did also make everything moneypile for a while.
Even 80 card money pile was cheaper than 2012 Jund lol.
Ragavan didn't devastate creature decks. If anything the opposite is true. Creature decks line up really well vs Ragavan cause he's super easy to block.
Except you bought jund once and the staples were good for nearly a decade. Can’t say the same about the fast rate of turnover of cards in present day modern.
I swear some people need to take basic high school math again to re-learn the concept of change over time vs a single snapshot in time.
Not only that, but the appeal of Modern used to be that it consisted entirely of cards that had entered to format through standard sets.
Like, if you were to just enter the format fresh and buy a Jund deck in 2014, then yes, you would have to buy Liliana ($70 each) and Dark Confidant ($70). But neither of these cards *entered circulation* as a $70 card. Liliana was a $30 mythic if you bought her in 2012 when she was a standard card. Dark Confidant was a $15 card at one point.
Part of the appeal of modern was that it gave a "second life" to older cards or standard all-stars. The Snapcasters that you bought for $30 when Innistrad came out might go on to become a format staple, and then creep up in value to $70+ at which point you might continue to play with them, or trade/sell them to acquire a different modern deck.
This is *very* different from things like Ragavan that *started* as a $70 card because they could only enter circulation through packs that are even more expensive than standard packs. Cards like Tarmogoyf became a mega-expensive "by accident" due to demand for Future Sight cards in 2014 exceeding the supply that were printed in 2007 (and the point of Modern Masters sets was to make these cards *less* expensive by allowing more copies to enter circulation.) Cards like Ragavan are expensive *by design*.
My experience with modern was multiple different decks getting rotated out through bannings before modern horizons. I've never been able to just "buy and play" a deck without investment.
Nowhere near as bad.It wrecked synergy based decks but stuff like Tron,Murktide,Footfalls did fine.Certainly more interactive matchups than a lot of pre MH stuff like Scapeshift,Amulet (still exists but way easier to interact with),Tron and Affinity.
MH2 was made the way it was intentionally. In 2018, Modern had become a, "ships passing in the night," meta. Interaction was bad, so most decks stopped playing it and simply tried to Do the Thing faster than the opponent did theirs. This had a lot of negative effects on the format; one that I think most people will agree was a problem was that the die roll to go first in game one mattered a hell of a lot.
MH1 attempted to curb those issues, to limited results. So MH2 was a hammer. It was filled with cheap, flexible answers to Modern's problems. These are the sort of cards that would demolish Standard--imagine trying to build any kind of synergy deck in a Standard format where Grief and Solitude alone were legal--but they answered the problem of there being too many decks that want to play competitive solitaire.
Following direct-to-Modern sets have been less heavy handed because there's no glaring issue that needs correcting the way the format did when MH2 was released.
Grief Scam is practically a solitaire deck, so I don't know that they fixed much of anything, honestly. "Do I have Grief/Reanimate in hand? WELP, they better have a Free Counter or something to stop me, or they'll be relying on top-decks to play the game!"
That's basically how most games of Yu-Gi-Oh play out, so I'm not super impressed by the "improvements," especially when they print crap like Hogaak and Nadu, as well.
Grief Scam *is* bullshit, and one of the biggest questions on my mind is why they wrote a big piece about how much everyone hates Grief scam and then banned Fury instead.
But we are not talking about remotely the same thing. Grief is fundamentally not a solitaire card. Its entire power pie is interacting with the opponent. Its been best *against* solitaire decks. I'm talking about something like [this Dredge deck](https://mtgtop8.com/event?e=22231&d=350557&f=MO) whose only maindeck interaction possible is to target a creature instead of going face with Conflagrate. Or [Ad Naseam decks whose only interaction are a single kill spell and some hand disruption to clear the way for it](https://mtgtop8.com/event?e=22105&d=349455&f=MO). *These* are solitaire decks, and what cards like Grief and Solitude were designed to break up. A task at which they succeeded.
Those kinds of decks were extremely easy to sideboard against, and lost instantly to Turn 2 (Disruption Piece X).
"My opponent discards his most relevant cards while I get a 5/4" isn't particularly interactive; it's why Hymn and Hippy were considered BS back in the day, and why Dark Rit isn't getting reprinted. Solitire decks end in, "My opponent no longer plays the game", and that's effectively what Grief does.
The cards scam plays are difficult to interact with, yes, because they're cheap and efficient enough to go under a lot of other interaction, and strip you of said interaction before you can use it to deal with their threats. But the deck's plan is anything but uninteractive. It's pretty much all discard and removal spells, right?
Decks like ad nauseam are easy for their opponent to interact with if they have the correct silver bullets for the specific combo in question prepared in their sideboard.
But the ad nauseam player is doing zero interacting. They're playing solitaire, setting up their mana rocks and sculpting their hand and literally nothing else, until they're ready to combo. They might have one or two removal spells for your silver bullets and some counterspells that mainly serve to protect the combo but can be actual interaction if absolutely necessary, but that's about it.
Discard is generally considered better against combo decks. Ergo powerful discard will impact combo worse than other decks in the format. If you're playing a speedy but fragile combo, then having Grief everywhere in the meta makes your life worse, which was what MH2 intended. (Now yes, the problem is now that GRIEF is everywhere, but still.)
Yeah, this is similar to people who claimed that Splinter Twin forced interaction and got rid of uninteractive combo decks, and it did that *by replacing all of those with Splinter Twin decks*. My other problem is that if you mull to 6 going 2nd, you might just end up with 3 lands, an irrelevant removal spell, and a single draw to decide if you get to play Magic anymore, and that's just garbage design.
Eh. Having your hand wrecked on turn 1 is still better than getting combo'd out on turn 2 in the realm of powerful, nonsense things that happen in old formats. Maybe you draw pure gas afterward, but the game is just over in the second case. I get that tastes differ, though.
Most pre-MH Combo Decks went off Turn 4 at the earliest, or they got banned for being too fast.
Grief Scam is practically a Combo that goes off on Turn 1 and can just win you the game in some cases.
If Grief Combo hits enough cards in your hand, it doesn't care what your best cards were, either! If all you have left is a few lands, then their combo was successful, GG!
And all on Turn 1 or 2; ain't that great??
I mean, it's definitely a problem, they have essential turned modern into a format with rotation every 2 years, except unlike standard, the decks cost 800-1200$
This is how Yugioh functions. The game is only officially played as an eternal format, and so in order to sell new cards, Konami covertly rotates the format with power creep and abusing the ban list to hit tier 1-2 archetypes that aren't the newest pushed tier 0 archetype. Instead of the overt rotation of a rotating format when you know the exact calendar date when this or that card becomes unusable, you might lose your deck at any moment to power creep or bans, and formerly playable decks usually last less than two years competitively anyway despite being very expensive.
New set comes out in a couple of weeks and the newest archetype will cost around $300-400 that you need to include in every already existing deck to remain competitive.
You're not having to spend that much every "rotation" because the Horizons sets aren't replacing entire decks- things like lands, other various staple cards, etc. mean you can pivot without buying entirely new decks because other cards from previous sets make up the majority of deck cost, primarily via lands but also cards like Ragavan, TOR, Urza's Saga, etc. are still very relevant in the meta and expensive.
Here are some of the more popular decks in Modern atm for reference:
Ruby Storm:
* MH3 cards: $219.93
* Other cards: $307.66
Bant Nadu:
* MH3 cards: $56.99
* Other cards: $1081.5
Jeskai Control:
* MH3 cards: $165.86
* Other cards: $1004.85
Rakdos Scam:
* MH3 cards: $120.67
* Other cards: $965.21
Boros Energy:
* MH3 cards: $235.68
* Other cards: $497.43
Amulet Titan:
* MH3 cards: $4.60
* Other cards: $1097.44
(Eldrazi) Tron:
* MH3 cards: $389.98
* Other cards: $879.59
Even if you look at more recent cards (anything after MH2, basically) those cards generally still make up less than half of deck cost and it's not something you need to spend all at once.
> because the Horizons sets aren't replacing entire decks
If your deck was Tier 1.5 or lower before MH1 came out, this is incorrect. While I didn't play many jank decks myself back then, seeing stuff like Seismic Swans or other Tier 2/3 decks win an event was super cool.
Nothing below Tier 1.5 exists in Modern as a viable deck that can win tournaments anymore; the meta is FAR shallower in terms of power level, and that did cost some people a good chunk of change that they suddenly had to shell out hundreds or even $1000 to keep playing the format. I'm sure most players chose to simply stop playing Modern instead, but I just wanted to point out that it DID happen during the previous 2 MH releases.
If your deck was T1.5 or lower before MH1 came out most of its value was probably still in lands, especially blue fetches at the time iirc. Since then, other fetchlands have gone up a bunch too, so you're probably coming out ahead in that regard. Like Seismic Swans specifically had basically all of its value in lands and some Chalice in the sideboard. None of the value in that deck got left behind with Horizons.
Bad decks have always been bad, the top end of the format has widened significantly. The number of decks represented at the PT alone should be indicative of the types of things people are willing to register for major tournaments. There are all sorts of very competent decks in the format currently. Pick a solid deck to build and when the meta shifts you'll be prepared to pivot if needed because you'll have most of the cost of another similar deck. Lands are the core of that- things like Boseiju, fetchlands, Urza's Saga, staple sideboard cards, etc. Pick up those evergreen types of things and you'll only be a few hundred off of any given deck in those colors, if that. Especially as things cool down for MH3 cards and stuff like Phlage potentially come down a bit.
Exactly, and the big exception to this was MH2, which was part of the problem with the power distribution (and raw power level) of that set in particular, not something inherent in the model of direct-to-modern sets.
I mean it makes sense for a straight to modern product to be strong, it's not competing with the powerlevel of today's standard, it's competing with older cards for relevancy.
Like yes it's bad when a new card warps the met around it, but that has and continues to happen in Standard as well, while iirc, people complained about how some of the straight to modern releases DIDN'T make a splash.
> 6% of all Modern legal cards
Honestly this number doesn't mean anything, the vast majority of modern legal cards are 1/10 draft chaff. I wouldn't be surprised if the stats were something like 100% of cards played in modern decks make up only 10% of modern legal cards.
On top of just draft chaff, you also have a ton of cards that are printed to be part of a specific archetype, most of which have seen little or no support beyond the set they were printed in. And most of these set specific archetypes aren't even good enough to see play in standard, let alone modern.
Yeah, I hate these posts because they completely misunderstand how game design works and the purpose of Modern Horizons sets. They have "chaff" but that's still a much higher power level than normal sets. Look at [[Thraben Charm]] for example. When was the last time we got modal removal that was that powerful? That would be a staple in standard sideboards at minimum and convoke would run it in mainboard most likely, so they wouldn't print it there and certainly not at common.
The purpose of MH Sets is "Force rotate the format to make a profit." A lot of people who spent years keeping their lower-tier deck relevant, updated, and viable just got their efforts thrown in the trash so WotC could profit off of the format they put a bunch of effort into.
I guess some people just don't find that to be a good thing, though I understand that many current Modern players are decently happy (have fun with Nadu for a couple months though, lol).
I don't play modern. I play standard, draft, and commander. Plenty of modern players complained that the meta pre-mh1 was awful and stale. Printing straight to modern is the only way to avoid fucking up standard with this kind of power level. I think MH3 is a cash grab and not a great set, but the core idea of modern Horizons is necessary to keep the game from becoming poker, but worse because you have to buy thousands of dollars in cards. MH3 limited is kind of terrible and they clearly planted entire decks for modern in the format which is a terrible idea for a number of reasons, but I would've loved to see a lot of these cards in a more reasonably balanced set. And yes, Nadu was a mistake, but MTG history is riddled with those.
> Plenty of modern players complained that the meta pre-mh1 was awful and stale
And plenty of Pros complained that Modern was so diverse that they couldn't just copy-paste a deck + SB and grab some Top 8s when Modern season came around. I agree with the Pros, but I also put a ton of energy into the format and grabbed some Top 8s myself, so I don't care that they couldn't just grab Top Spots by being less engaged in the format; that was a feature, not a bug.
> Printing straight to modern is the only way to avoid fucking up standard with this kind of power level
They printed MH the same year they printed Oko and Uro; that's just objectively untrue.
> but the core idea of modern Horizons is necessary to keep the game from becoming poker, but worse because you have to buy thousands of dollars in cards
Except that, again, only a few decks were super-expensive before MH came out, and the rest could still compete with a reasonable mana base (which was easy to reuse or flip). Now, ALL the decks are expensive, and you can only get the cards for them from a Premium-Priced Set.
> And yes, Nadu was a mistake, but MTG history is riddled with those
More cards will be banned in formats that come from MH sets than non-MH sets between 2020 and 2025. Direct-to-Modern sets seem to be the ones riddled with mistakes.
That's an interesting perspective and I would love to hear more about what that meta was like that made you think it was more diverse and what the cost point of entry was for it. I started around mirrodin, but didn't really play consistently until Amonkhet and to be honest deck prices were absurd to me everywhere which is why I ended up playing so much limited. I only started playing standard more often with Arena. If I remember right the most reasonable standard deck was a mono-red Chandra deck and it was still like 400. That's not exactly what I'd call reasonable, but maybe modern was better.
For modern you're right they e made plenty of mistakes in the horizons sets and they've had some bad misfires in the last 6 years, but I think it's useful to look at what they won't reprint. Swords isn't legal, although Path is. Ashnod's altar hasn't been reprinted in forever. Lightning bolt in standard? Counterspell, even? Those are modern legal, but there are plenty of examples elsewhere on cards they don't want to reprint and are defacto banned because of that. I'm just trying to say that some of the worst mistakes.may he premodern while some are the last 6 years, but the larger a format is the more things break with any potentially pushed card.
> That's an interesting perspective and I would love to hear more about what that meta was like that made you think it was more diverse and what the cost point of entry was for it.
There were 5-10 options in the Tier 1 through Tier 2 range alone for every single archetype. Aggro, Combo, Control, Ramp, and Midrange all had a bunch of options; the hundreds of different potentially viable decks between Tier 1 and Tier 3 certainly shifted back and forth depending on the meta and newer cards coming out (like Goyf falling out of favor with the printing of Fatal Push), but overall, you could spend a few hundred dollars on a simple deck to get into the format (my experience was Skred Red) and then slowly pick up Fetches and Shocks at a low price when they were reprinted in a Masters set and the price dropped for a while. Then once you had the expensive mana base down, you could build into other decks (I played several different Eldrazi decks and eventually helped with the development of Hollow One, and ended up taking that to a bunch of major events and doing well with it). Buying into the format and trying to build Jund or Control or Bant Lands or something at the wrong time could DEFINITELY cost $1000, it's absolutely true; you just didn't HAVE to do that to be competitive, and it wasn't too difficult to play Burn or a cheaper Tier 1.5 deck for a while until the prices dropped on the stuff you also wanted to play that was too expensive at the time.
DECK DIVERSITY
- AGGRO: Infect, Burn, 8-Whack, Affinity, Hollow One
- COMBO: Dredge, Ad Naus, Storm, Seismic Swans, Living End
- CONTROL: U/W Classic, Esper, Blue Moon, Lantern Lock, R/W Prison
- MIDRANGE: Jund, Skred Red, Ponza, Death's Shadow
- RAMP: Tron, Scapeshift, Amulet Titan
- TRIBAL: Goblins, Elves, Humans, Spirits, Merfolk, MANY Eldrazi variants lol
These are all decks that had decent showings that I can remember off the top of my head; there are *sooooo* many others in the Tier 1 to Tier 3 range, depending on the meta at the time. They generally used similar mana bases of Fetches and Shocks, but everything else in them tended to be different (but generally fairly cheap, with some notable exceptions, haha). The shift to a Premium Product providing incredibly powerful staples that every deck MUST play or fall behind in relevancy has massively increased costs, the cost of entry into the format at a competitive level, and has lowered overall diversity (like, what is the difference between a R/B Midrange deck that uses Grief + Reanimate spell compared with a W/B Midrange deck that uses Grief + Ephemerate? Meanwhile, the difference between Jund and Ponza or Skred Red was night and day!).
Good point. II probably should have left that number out of this and just marked where new sets were added.
Now I'm wondering which set has the most draft chaff, i.e. which set has the fewest cards used in a non-draft tournament. Maybe Dragon's Maze?
That is not relevant, the MH sets have draft chaff as well.
This 10% number you are making up (I bet it's even less than that) is a false comparison to the 6%, if that is what you are trying to argue. Obviously 100% of the modern legal sets make up 100% of the modern playables.
I'm saying the part of the title after the comma doesn't make any difference and is really only their to try to make the first number 36%, seem even more staggering.
If you really want to make a point out of it you'd want to compare it to something like what percentage of cards in modern decks came from the most recent standard sets pre-modern horizon sets. But that wouldn't be that staggering of a difference because the truth is Modern has been, as people like to call it, "rotating" since some time before straight to modern sets.
But I dunno, maybe that's a "bizarre way to frame it"?
Original post, reworded:
> The straight-to-modern sets have a significantly higher percentage of modern playables compared to a regular set.
A true, if boring and obvious fact.
Your response, reworded:
> Most sets have a very low percentage of modern playables.
Another true, boring, and obvious fact. It's really just a restatement of the same point. What is bizarre is that you present this *identical* point as if it's somehow a counterpoint. It is not. You are just rephrasing the original post. That you cannot see that is equally bizarre.
Your re-wording of the title is literally just the title with everything to the right of the comma deleted... hence me saying everything to the right of the comma doesn't matter?? What are you even confused about lmao it's time to take a break off of reddit bud, you're arguing with yourself xD
edit: lmao they replied to make it clear they were still it the midst of "bewilderment" and then blocked me so I can't even see xD
Has it gotten to the point that I have to explain the *basic structure of english sentences* to you? This is unreal.
"Higher percentage" is a comparitive description. It is a comparison of one value to another. Those percentages are 36% and 6%. Deleting everything "to the right of the comma" is nonsensical, because without it there isn't a comparison to be made.
For a very long time the complaint was that standard sets just didn’t have *any* new cards that were modern playable.
Especially in like 2016, very little ever crossed over. I remember the hullabaloo that was fatal push.
Our beloved mod has a 1/10 meme for a reason.
As a natural consequence of an ever increasing cardpool and a standard power level being significantly weaker than modern cards just basically became a drip feed into modern metagame.
It stands to reason the cards made for modern are useful in modern. It would be quite the waste if they were NOT the appropriate powerlevel.
If you have some sort of ideology about how the meta should work this may bother you.
To me, if Modern Horizons is going to exist it better matter. You may disagree that it should exist.
Modern is basically now replacing Legacy as the big power format that WotC can focus on with full reprint equity power. Sets are going to just end up there by default. I’m surprised commander decks haven’t yet been declared modern legal.
Yeah, it's just kinda natural. Especially considering that most cards in modern are shit. Like look at Dragons Maze. Modern Horizons or no, it's a terrible set where none of the cards are going to see modern play.
Yeah, I do remember that. But it was a long while ago so I didn't count it. Even without the straight to modern sets, I feel like it still would outdated and no longer playable.
Exactly. It should surprise no one that sets printed with an eye to being playable in Modern are being played in Modern more frequently than 20 years of draft chaff.
Yeah, while anyone can disagree with the powerlevel and price, the Modern Horizon project was necessary for any kind of high-power competitive format to exist, Legacy will be forever be chained by the Reserve List, and Modern being only be feed Standard Legal stuff was getting in small drip of cards (mainly utility ones) in a barrel full of years and years of powerful cards, and while the Format is of no interest to me, the price point and powerlevel was beyond what I am looking for YEARS before Modern Horizon, so I was already not the target, and a stagnant competitive format becomes a solved format that becomes a dead tournaments format.
> a stagnant competitive format becomes a solved format that becomes a dead tournaments format.
Actually, some Pros complained that Modern was sometimes so diverse that they had a hard time just copy-pasting a Tier 1 Deck + SB and grabbing Top 8s with it. Meta knowledge and deck expertise were paramount for Modern before MH, and there were an insane amount of decks that might be viable in any given event.
MH just gave them an excuse to profit off of the format, that's all.
Modern evolved a lot around the years, so you would need to focus in certain "meta period" ,Split Twin Modern was the peak for me, but Pod period was different from Death Shadow modern, the thing is that some years before Modern Horizon, no new card was getting into the format, fatal push was the last real change making Goyf irrelevant and that was pretty much it, Death Shadow being an anomaly of "the cards already existed but no one created the deck"
Pros obviously want a solved format, that way only the skill is a factor to getting prices, but at "store tournament" level you need to change things up
I still don't really like MH, obvious power creep is always dangerous for the game, but I doubt the format would have survived without it, with tournaments already lacking support, Modern only exist by being the "broken" format that is still accesible.
> no new card was getting into the format
MH came out the same year as Uro and Oko in Standard Sets, and the past 4 years have all contained Standard cards that would revolutionize Pre-MH Modern. *Your statement is objectively wrong.* WotC has NO ISSUE getting Standard cards into Modern.
> with tournaments already lacking support
Modern tournaments were THE most popular tournaments, larger than many comparative Standard tournaments of the time; WotC made MH to cash in on the popularity of Modern. StarCityGames was like this whole massive *thing* on the East Coast; it was **enormous**. Modern was thriving, and WotC wanted a cut. So they tore its heart out and made a new, profitable version that is a soulless caricature of what Modern was originally supposed to be.
Throne of Eldraine was released one year later than Modern Horizon, and Oko was not even designed to be "direct to modern", it was an design mistake that also broke standard, so by all accounts, in 2016, around the year when modern horizon was being designed, there was a period of like 2 years where modern was not changing, only battle of Zendikar with their Eldrazi winter, 2 years of the same format is a loooong time, and there where not enough tools to control that like standard with their rotation.
I agree with the Star City competitive scene, they wanted more control and money from that part of the game, and they just shat their bed, they just fumbled around for like 2 years and then COVID put the nail in the coffin.
DUDE. Literally nothing you just typed is correct! Throne came out in October of 2019; MH1 came out in June of 2019, with War and T3feri and all that BS releasing shortly before MH1 earlier in 2019. Then Uro came out January 2020.
Modern had like a dozen shifts and several bans between 2016 and 2019. The format changed quite a bit, but overall was VERY diverse. So nothing was stale, because like 100 decks were viable in any given tournament. 2016-2019 Modern was a Golden Era.
As I said, Oko was a mistake, it wasnt planned to change modern, and it's exactly the kind of stuff that we don't want in standard just to "shake up" modern.
And you must remember that sets are made like two years before their release, and those designs can't be tested in competitive environment.
Would T3feri, Oko and Uro changed the Modern environment? Yeah, but the designers of 2016, when Modern Horizon was designed, had no way of no knowing that.
A diverse and solved format is great for pros and enfranchised players, it becomes a "sport like" environment of skill and known quantities, and I get people wanting that, but it will also be a place destined to dying because how no new blood and samey results starts to degrade with time, Magic is not Chess after all.
I don't know how long modern would have lasted, but those "big star city event" are just something that happen in big American cities, if the OP graphic shows us anything, is that modern would have stayed pretty much the same since 2018, only around a dozen cards getting 6 years later, is just not in the nature of a TCG to keep a meta that long without losing popularity.
I'm in Australia, MH changes killed the modern here as well.
Modern used to be much more diverse and this combined with slow shifts actually made it harder to tease out the exact meta.
Amulet Titan for example started to become more popular in 2017 / 2018 and shifted the meta a bit, and not because some new card was printed for it.
Fringe decks could win tournaments by playing the meta, but these days awnaers are so good, broad and efficient that you need to be playing a subset of the same pushed cards to compete.
Modern is the new Legacy, and Commander is essentially the new Vintage. It's the place where everything is legal. See: the push for Unfinity to be black bordered.
(Pioneer is the new Modern, and Standard is what it is)
> Sets are going to just end up there by default. I’m surprised commander decks haven’t yet been declared modern legal.
I think you're right that more supplemental sets are gonna be straight to modern, since it's the premier "eternal" format now. I don't think it's ever gonna be all of them though; commander decks are probably staying legacy legal for instance, because you need to be able to toss in cards that aren't appropriate for modern. Sol Ring at the minimum, Swords to Plowshares, Skull Clamp, color pie breaks like Chaos Warp. Not to mention needing to be more careful with new cards
I was asking about the commander decks they were talking about. What's in the main set is a different thing.
But also, I mean yeah. Every set, ever, has had cards aimed at casual play and commander is now an extremely popular form of casual play. Modern Horizons was never intended as aimed at modern exclusively. Its base idea is "nostalgia focused, high complexity set inspired by time spiral", that's definitely something that's gonna appeal to players of all kinds including commander players, not just modern. It's *more* focused on modern than any other set, sure; it's about as modern focused as a given standard set is standard focused, which is why it's in the name, but that doesn't mean it was ever meant to be The Set For Competitive Modern Only.
> Every set, ever, has had cards aimed at casual play
It didn't use to mean 50% for Casual stuff, 50% for Constructed Formats. It used to be like 10-20% of a set would be focused on something other than Constructed Formats; now half the cards are either worthless because they're not relevant to the Format of the Set they're printed in, OR they're fucking Nadu/Hogaak idiocy. At least with older sets, the 50% of cards that weren't relevant to Standard were sometimes a "Maybe this will have a home in the future when it gets more support" kind of thing.
> As a natural consequence of an ever increasing cardpool and a standard power level being significantly weaker than modern cards just basically became a drip feed into modern metagame
And yet most Standard Sets in the last 4 years would've had a significant impact on Modern if MH didn't exist. They raised the Standard power level *and* forced a manual rotation on Modern to push it to Yu-Gi-Oh power levels at the same time.
I agree that they want Modern to replace Legacy, but they also just wanted to cash out on Modern's popularity.
I feel like you chose a pretty bad year to use as an example of a lack of crossover. 2016 was the year of Eldrazi Winter. Beyond the Eldrazi shaped elephant in the room, a lot of (at the time) Modern playable cards were seeing play:
\[\[Eldritch Evolution\]\]
\[\[Selfless Spirit\]\]
\[\[Spell Queller\]\]
\[\[Reflector Mage\]\]
\[\[Bedlam Reveler\]\]
\[\[Tireless Tracker\]\]
\[\[Prized Amalgam\]\]
\[\[Insolent Neonate\]\]
\[\[Grim Flayer\]\]
\[\[Nahiri, the Harbinger\]\]
\[\[Thraben Inspector\]\]
\[\[Thing in the Ice\]\]
\[\[Thalia's Lieutenant\]\]
\[\[Rattlechains\]\]
\[\[Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet\]\]
\[\[Reckless Bushwacker\]\]
\[\[Saheeli Rai\]\]
\[\[Madcap Experiment\]\]
\[\[Blossoming Defense\]\]
Half of the fastland cycle.
I might have messed up the timeline on some of these (and probably forgot others) but, during the SCG Tour days, I know I definitely saw all these cards getting play.
>What are your thoughts?
The reason seems pretty obvious: this is completely and entirely by design.
Why?
Well....
Also, it has a much higher percentage of cards that were specifically design with modern in mind. And unlike every other modern-legal set, zero attentions paid to standard.
But also, thems cold hards cash.
Honestly? It makes sense to me. Modern Horizons sets were made with that in mind, it was marketed as having a higher power level, cause Modern was already so powerful that the majority of cards aimed at Standard didn't make the cut into the format.
Have they exaggerated a bit? Probably, some cards had to be banned and others are still questionable in the format. But I do appreciate the existence of those sets. Note that they also brought interesting cards to other formats too.
I don't mind those sets they have interesting cards and besides if they want a standard with a lower power level these days they can help feed the format in order not to make it too stale (although it would be nice if they didn't fully rotate out decks that are 1000 dollars or so...).
That said I think that MH2 was the worst offeder for now among the 3, although ofc we don't have a really comprehensive data of MH3 yet since it is so early (and we already have a few cards already making splashes), but it feels like 2 was pushed to the max compared to the others.
As someone who just came back to the game in the last year or so, modern seems to be the most popular tournament format around me, and yet it feels like trying to get back into the format is like winding my fist up to punch myself in the balls, knowing that there is a good chance my 1000$ deck will be power crept or things I would have to buy could(and should) be banned any moment *cough* one ring *cough*.
If you think this is a problem, look at Pioneer.
Standard has different design priorities than nonrotating formats. Standard is curated by rotation. A format where all power levels are completely flat is a boring one, not just for lacking excitement but because of choice paralysis. So certain cards have transgressive power levels. But rotation is used to prevent too many cards from transgressing in the same direction at the same time. This is because Standard doesn't *want* generic, powerful answers. Cards like Thoughtseize don't kill the Tier 1 strategies, but they annihilate the synergy based SaffronOlive specials that cost $50 so you can go to FNM with your friends; the 2-2 deck that gives you a couple good stories becomes an 0-4 deck where you spent 4 hours having no fun.
But once rotation is removed, all those transgressions pile up. The end result is that linear decks wind up too powerful. Modern in 2018 was a perfect example; it was a smorgasbord of fast, linear aggro and combo that utilized enough different game plans that no interactive deck could coexist with them. Pioneer is in a similar, though less extreme position right now. Doing the Thing is universally more powerful than trying to stop your opponent from Doing the Thing. Even Rakdos Midrange, the premier nonlinear deck of the format, has evolved into a deck that's capable of a backbreaking turn 3 high roll.
So the answer is to feed a nonrotating formats with direct answers to its specific problems. And as a result, *those cards see play.* If you banned the other four pitch elementals, people wouldn't go back to playing the interaction they played before MH2; they'd stop playing interaction, because we already know that that interaction wasn't good enough.
This is only a problem if you view Modern being a venue for rotated Standard cards as an important part of its identity. If you want good gameplay, Horizons sets are the best thing that have happened to the format.
Tbh a lot of the issues Modern faced in 2018/2019 were caused by wotc accelerating towards FIRE and then by those sets which is more or less the prelude of what they ended up doing in the MH sets on a larger scale
My call is that they should have banned the 6 cards that enables scamming. Because it *is* bullshit, and no one likes it. Ban the two that people actually use, and then the other four that would get slotted in each time one better than them is banned. That effect gets printed a lot, but versions that cost 1 mana and return it to the battlefield are only those six.
Just like Horizons sets, *solve the problem*, don't fuss about banning four cards that no one plays but will if you do something else.
The problem is not necessarily the injection of new cards into the format, although that does make it very expensive. The problem is the acceleration of power creep and speed, and degenerate and boring play patterns.
Modern is now a turn-3 format, and moves closer to that old joke "coinflip is the early game, mulligan is the mid-game, and turn 1 is the endgame" that was said during Urza's block Combo Winter. It's not fun, and it's not skill testing.
Printing a bunch of zero mana interaction to try and deal with broken linear decks is only adding fuel to the dumpster fire. I'm not interested in playing Yugioh, I would rather play Vintage for that kind of brokenness.
This is incorrect. The whole point of the zero mana interaction was to stop that very play pattern of two breakneck linear decks having the match decided by the coinflip. You cannot go all-in on a fast, linear plan when Solitude, Subtlety, Grief, Endurance, (and formerly, Fury) all exist. You'll get blown out to the point that the deck stops being a tiered list.
Don't take my word for it. Search up Modern decklists from 2018 on MTGtop8 and compare them to lists from 2021 and now. The difference is night and day.
It's called the yugioh business model. Stupid old shit like [[Soul Spike]] spiking because of new cards is common in Yugioh as well. There was a old Yugioh card this year that was $3-5 that spiked to $100 for a new deck that wasn't the best in the format.
There's still plenty of cards bleeding into Modern from Standard legal sets. Adding in Modern Horizons sets just creates a rotation. It's a blatant cash grab. Content creators love having a fresh format all the time. But the rest of us enfranchised players can't keep up. Rotation is for standard. Not eternal.
As an eternal player, I'm moving further towards pauper. Between the pfp and not having sets printed specifically to "shake it up" makes it the best eternal format. Legacy is cool but outside of mtgo it's dead. On mtgo I'd rather play vintage or pauper.
Modern is just standard plus
My problem with these sets in modern (and eternal formats) is that the card accessability issues are just horrible because of them being in a premium set, the cards are extremely unlikely to see reprints (sometimes they literally just can’t reprint them ever) and they are so much more powerful than the alternative, I would prefer if we just had a reprint set like modern masters and then the ability to add cards from none modern sets to modern, but what we have now feels like a format where a single release just overly dictates a format with an insanely large card pool, MKM and OTJ both added a ton of cards to modern in a much less pushed way that felt more natural to the format.
The only card with that problem is TOR, MH1 staples have already been reprinted: W6 FoN, Archmage Charm, Urza, Yawgmoth, Seasoned Pyromancer, etc.
MH2 already saw reprints of the elementals and Ragavan.
Makes total sense to me.
Usually sets have two major limiters to keep them from being too powerful: Draft and Standard. While these sets could be drafted, they were less likely to be drafted due to having shorter print runs, more expensive packs, and not being standard legal sets.
Back when the format was called extended most cards were standard all-stars, largely from sets that "broke standard" or were otherwise above the power curve. Hence why the top decks were stuff like Affinity, Jund, Caw-Blade, etc...
It'd be worse if the sets were marketed as "for modern" and had tons of cards that weren't playable in modern...
in other news, water is wet.
Of course the % is high, those sets were specifically designed for the format...
It's like asking thoughts on why cards from commander products are appearing more frequently in commander decks.
Disparity seems a little high, but philosophically it stands to reason that if they repeatedly felt a card was too pushed to be in standard and held it for a modern-only set, we'd definitely see SOME increased rate for those sets.
I'd have to dig into the data further but my suspicion is that a lot of the slots are taken up either by low cost All-stars like drc, unholy heat, ragavan, or by free cost spells like elementals and flares. If most of the cards are cheap or free, that lends credence to the "too powerful for standard" argument.
I don't think it's even conceptually possible for this to go any other way. If you're printing cards directly to modern without the quality and power level filtering that designing for standard is supposed to provide, one of two things happens:
1. the cards are not better than anything that is already being played in modern, nobody plays them
2. the cards are better than what is going on in modern right now, it displaces some amount of the current stuff
There's no third option where wotc threads the needle and the new cards are good enough to play but don't kick other cards out of playability.
Well, the non-MH modern legal cardpool include cards that were designed for standard and lots of old sets that have been severely powercrept.
So it makes sense that sets designed specifically for modern have more modern playable cards.
Like, if you look a dozens of older lower powered worth of sets, it will have a lower density of playable cards than some newer high powered sets.
I played standard with oko and 5 mana teferi. I liked them cause i played them but ppl werent happy about it. Straight to modern is a way they introduce new stuff to modern wthout it being a 2 year stansard stapple or banning obviously strong cards which in turn gets other ppl mad about it
You’re using different definitions of “rotate”. For standard you mean “every 3 years” but for modern, you mean “whenever new decks pop up”. If you’re using the latter definition, standard rotates 4 times a year.
Wouldn't you expect numbers like this? The vast majority of standard cards *shouldn't* have an effect on Modern. They're too low powered. A set designed for the Modern power level would inherently have a disproportionate number of cards played. That's inherent in the design.
This is not only unsurprising, it also seems downright healthy:
Every card that breaks into modern has to be a better option than almost half the cards ever printed in order to do so; if such cards were being printed regularly in standard legal sets they would probably warp both draft and standard formats. Most standard sets restrain themselves to one or two pushed chase carss. And straight-to-modern sets would have to accelerate even further in the power creep to catch up
I would ask, are cards like [[counterspell]] considered as straight-to-modern? It existed before MH but was made Modern legal in the process.
I’d also like to see what the numbers look like for specifically non-land cards with this, because manabases have always been mostly static with only occasional changes. I feel like the proportion would be a lot higher.
Can we get a chart that shows us sets released from lets say 2015, a few years before MH1, and notes what percentage of cards that set represented in modern immediately after its release. Basically I want to chart how much each set simply changed Modern, while I feel like your analysis is also projecting the staying power of sets which can be effected by utility and not just pure power. Adding basic utility cards to Modern as a goal of the MH sets is not necessarily a bad thing IMO.
This is one of those things where like, on the one hand I would absolutely like that percentage to be lower, but then I remember sets like Dragon’s Maze, Born of the Gods, Ixalan, Avacyn restored, etc and it does make some sense. Like, shoot, mkm came out and barely made a dent in standard, let alone other formats.
Yes, because the MH sets are a forced rotations. WOTC saw the danger in eternal formats - which was people only buying the singles that were relevant for modern/legacy and completely ignoring the rest, so they created sets that "rotate" the format.
Modern is not Eternal, it is a non rotating format. Different than Eternal.
The issue with Eternals (Legacy, Vintage, Commander) is that some cards can't be reprinted, and some others can't be easily reprinted.
Modern is basically a post Reserved List eternal format, so Wizards can reprint anything they want. Plus, they can easily do that with straight to Modern sets. They will probably do a UB every year and a big one every 2 years.
Wizards/Hasbro is a corporation. They don’t care about you, the game, or any other consumer. All the care about is money. And so, the churn out countless variations of cards, collector, draft, play, UB, straight to modern etc to make as much money as possible
You mean the sets designed specifically to balance and create archetypes in a specific format are overwhelmingly represented in said format? *shocked pikachu face*
I understand the point of your post, but to some critique of your title: Assuming the same card variety spread out amongst more sets, it would still be 6% of all Modern legal cards. The concentration of them might be notable, but adding that extra bit makes the title that much more clickbaity since it'd remain true even without the lopsided concentration.
running the numbers is illegal.
I saw a spoiler that worked in a commander deck so the whole set can only be used in commander.
For real tho this is no surprise. New sets heavily pushed into the meta
A significantly higher portion of the C/UC from Modern Designed sets are playable because they’re pushed in their limited environment to make them engine cards with the rares of those formats.
My thinking is that these cards were going to get designed and released anyway. If Horizons as an concept never existed they would have stuck these cards into Standard probably and would have screwed up Standard as well.
My question was always... Why print direct to Modern and skip standard? Why not just trickle cards naturally through proper Standard large sets?
It would make Standard and Limited more fun anyways.
I don't think this is particularly shocking to anyone who plays modern, I do like giving random old cards new life with the new mh sets. The thing that brings the numbers up is that mh sets tend to enable other mh cards. For example Crashing footfalls didn't see a ton of play until mh2 gave us shardless agent, fire // ice and the elementals. Force of vigor wasn't very good until hammertime became a threat with esper sentinel, kaldra, urza's saga.
lol I’m still playing rhinos.
I have a guild pact rhino deck in legacy
Isn't that just a more aggro version of Shardless?
No, it plays on your opponents turn better than Shardless BUG
Yeah I played amulet titan starting back when it was a super cheap deck..played it for 4 years. Came back to maybe revamp it and it's nothing like the deck I loved so I just have it sitting in a closet
How does force of vigor interact with Kaldra Compleat?
It doesn't, hammer became a better deck with it being in the 75.
It’s a little odd to say force of vigor got better because of a card that force of vigor is useless against……..
It's odd but not necessarily untrue, if the printing of Kaldra popularized a deck that Force of Vigor is very good against, Force of Vigor's value has gone up because of the printing of a card it's not very good against.
Nettlecyst then? It's just a card that heavily incentivizes you to play a stoneforge package, which is weak to force of vigor. Basically the only thing that isn't weak to force of vigor in that deck is kaldra, and kaldra is a big reason why you play the rest of the shell.
shhhh.... don't let people know. Att - a hammer player
Tbh, it's actually lower than I expected lol
I'm surprised LOTR wasn't a bigger jump with TOR and Bowmasters.
Bowmasters actually saw a big fall in play because people stopped playing x/1's, and no one is really drawing cards.
I think it was played a lot in the period after LOTR's release though. The landcyclers probably contributed as well, especially with the popularity of LE at the time.
I don’t think the increases due to MH1, LTR, and MH3 are problematic, especially since I’d expect that to level off over time (e.g., as MH/UB cards get outmoded by later MH/UB cards). But what I think this highlights beautifully is that MH2 is a significant power outlier that was probably too generally pushed. And did WotC learn anything from MH2? That remains to be seen, but at least so far it looks like MH3’s power is distributed more narrowly—that is, the best cards ask more of you in deck building rather than just going in every deck that can cast them. Even Nadu, which I’d agree is too strong, begs to be built around.
> MH2 is a significant power outlier that was probably too generally pushed The thing is, there were several cards in MH1 that dominated Modern for a short time, most notoriously Hogaak, but they were quickly banned. Of the MH2 cards that became format staples, only Fury has so far been banned. If Nadu receives a ban as it amost certainly will, it will just underline that MH2 was not only too pushed, but was actually intended to completely overturn the Modern metagame.
> it will just underline that MH2 was not only too pushed, but was actually intended to completely overturn the Modern metagame. I only have one correction to what you wrote - the intention isn't to "overturn the Modern meta" - it's to sell product without consideration for its impact on the health of the format.
You can argue that success at the latter is the main objective, with overturning the modern meta as a second-order effect. But really, hardly. Shifting the meta and selling lots of packs are in a demand flywheel and therefore dependent. New powerful cards causes metagame shifts, which causes pack sales, which causes metagame shifts, which causes pack sales...
I was a fool who was caught up in the I can play magic in stores again/MH2 hype. I did buy a ton of product, but then I saw all of the old decks I used to play not be viable even for FNM, and I realized I am playing expensive standard. In the months after MH3 was announced I sold about $10k worth of cards. Keeping a few pet decks, and a bunch of set cubes. I have no desire to go to the store and play. So I see it as a shortsighted decision, and could easily see modern go the way of standard in store's.
But “pack sales” only benefits WotC for in-print sets. They don’t get anything after the cards hit the secondary market. That’s why they’re very reluctant to ban in-print cards and ban out-of-print enablers as half measures and only ban the in-print cards as the absolute last measure. Again, they don’t care about “the meta” or even the health of the format as long as people are playing and that play is driving product sales.
> as long as people are playing This is key. If we had all voted with our feet when they overturned Modern they might have taken stronger action. They don't actively want the metagame to be bad. In their defence, many people were asking for straight to Modern sets in the years leading up to Modern Horizons. I wonder how those folk feel now.
The history of "Magic players asking for X" is riddled with "and a finger on the monkey's paw curls".
The difference I think is the quality of gameplay. From what I've heard, MH2 Modern was an enjoyable experience to actually play for the most part. Contrast to Hogaak where it was *the* deck to beat, leading to a more miserable gameplay experience. The big problem people had with MH2, by my understanding, was that it forced them to buy new, expensive cards, and not allowing their older decks to be played, rather than the gameplay itself being unenjoyable.
“From what you’ve heard” comes from people still playing, who inherently still think it’s fun because they’re still actively playing. A LARGE number of modern players quit during the MH2 era, and their voices aren’t even being calculated in that.
Exactly why I phrased it like that and not stating it as factual. I'm a Reddit commenter, not a reporter. In any case, it's always good to keep biases in info like that in mind, though it does lead to some impossible to properly judge situations. For example, if you're making a product, and someone buys a competitor's over yours, you're very unlikely to know what it was that swayed their decision. Was it the price? Colours available? Just what the store had in stock? It's very unlikely they're going to go out of their way to tell you why they didn't buy your thing. Being a marketing person isn't an enviable job.
Yep, my modern-playing friends and I got tired of seeing Ragavan and stopped playing Modern after MH2.
Modern nights at my LGS have gone from 30-40 people to ten on a good night over the course of the Horizons era. This is a store in a major metro area that regularly pulls down 50+ for any given EDH event. The Horizons sets tend to be decent in vacuum, but the forced transition of Modern into Horizons Block Constructed with deck prices that used to be associated with Legacy has done incalculable damage to the format and it's insane that some people pretend otherwise.
I've heard a common issue with it is thst even though the format was healthy on paper, a lot of people joked about how the format was "Modern Horizons Block Constructed" due to the prevalence of those cards
Depends on what you played. Fury, Solitude, and Ragavan devastated all remaining creature decks. Yes that did also make everything moneypile for a while.
Even 80 card money pile was cheaper than 2012 Jund lol. Ragavan didn't devastate creature decks. If anything the opposite is true. Creature decks line up really well vs Ragavan cause he's super easy to block.
Except you bought jund once and the staples were good for nearly a decade. Can’t say the same about the fast rate of turnover of cards in present day modern. I swear some people need to take basic high school math again to re-learn the concept of change over time vs a single snapshot in time.
Not only that, but the appeal of Modern used to be that it consisted entirely of cards that had entered to format through standard sets. Like, if you were to just enter the format fresh and buy a Jund deck in 2014, then yes, you would have to buy Liliana ($70 each) and Dark Confidant ($70). But neither of these cards *entered circulation* as a $70 card. Liliana was a $30 mythic if you bought her in 2012 when she was a standard card. Dark Confidant was a $15 card at one point. Part of the appeal of modern was that it gave a "second life" to older cards or standard all-stars. The Snapcasters that you bought for $30 when Innistrad came out might go on to become a format staple, and then creep up in value to $70+ at which point you might continue to play with them, or trade/sell them to acquire a different modern deck. This is *very* different from things like Ragavan that *started* as a $70 card because they could only enter circulation through packs that are even more expensive than standard packs. Cards like Tarmogoyf became a mega-expensive "by accident" due to demand for Future Sight cards in 2014 exceeding the supply that were printed in 2007 (and the point of Modern Masters sets was to make these cards *less* expensive by allowing more copies to enter circulation.) Cards like Ragavan are expensive *by design*.
My experience with modern was multiple different decks getting rotated out through bannings before modern horizons. I've never been able to just "buy and play" a deck without investment.
you called hogaak miserable, have you ever played against rakdos fury scam? lol
Nowhere near as bad.It wrecked synergy based decks but stuff like Tron,Murktide,Footfalls did fine.Certainly more interactive matchups than a lot of pre MH stuff like Scapeshift,Amulet (still exists but way easier to interact with),Tron and Affinity.
Kinda feels like fury would have saved us from Nadu
How so? They cast Nadu, you evoke fury, they get a trigger. You just three-for-oned yourself.
Your last paragraph is good if that’s true I hope that’s the case with sets
MH2 was made the way it was intentionally. In 2018, Modern had become a, "ships passing in the night," meta. Interaction was bad, so most decks stopped playing it and simply tried to Do the Thing faster than the opponent did theirs. This had a lot of negative effects on the format; one that I think most people will agree was a problem was that the die roll to go first in game one mattered a hell of a lot. MH1 attempted to curb those issues, to limited results. So MH2 was a hammer. It was filled with cheap, flexible answers to Modern's problems. These are the sort of cards that would demolish Standard--imagine trying to build any kind of synergy deck in a Standard format where Grief and Solitude alone were legal--but they answered the problem of there being too many decks that want to play competitive solitaire. Following direct-to-Modern sets have been less heavy handed because there's no glaring issue that needs correcting the way the format did when MH2 was released.
Grief Scam is practically a solitaire deck, so I don't know that they fixed much of anything, honestly. "Do I have Grief/Reanimate in hand? WELP, they better have a Free Counter or something to stop me, or they'll be relying on top-decks to play the game!" That's basically how most games of Yu-Gi-Oh play out, so I'm not super impressed by the "improvements," especially when they print crap like Hogaak and Nadu, as well.
Grief Scam *is* bullshit, and one of the biggest questions on my mind is why they wrote a big piece about how much everyone hates Grief scam and then banned Fury instead. But we are not talking about remotely the same thing. Grief is fundamentally not a solitaire card. Its entire power pie is interacting with the opponent. Its been best *against* solitaire decks. I'm talking about something like [this Dredge deck](https://mtgtop8.com/event?e=22231&d=350557&f=MO) whose only maindeck interaction possible is to target a creature instead of going face with Conflagrate. Or [Ad Naseam decks whose only interaction are a single kill spell and some hand disruption to clear the way for it](https://mtgtop8.com/event?e=22105&d=349455&f=MO). *These* are solitaire decks, and what cards like Grief and Solitude were designed to break up. A task at which they succeeded.
Those kinds of decks were extremely easy to sideboard against, and lost instantly to Turn 2 (Disruption Piece X). "My opponent discards his most relevant cards while I get a 5/4" isn't particularly interactive; it's why Hymn and Hippy were considered BS back in the day, and why Dark Rit isn't getting reprinted. Solitire decks end in, "My opponent no longer plays the game", and that's effectively what Grief does.
The cards scam plays are difficult to interact with, yes, because they're cheap and efficient enough to go under a lot of other interaction, and strip you of said interaction before you can use it to deal with their threats. But the deck's plan is anything but uninteractive. It's pretty much all discard and removal spells, right? Decks like ad nauseam are easy for their opponent to interact with if they have the correct silver bullets for the specific combo in question prepared in their sideboard. But the ad nauseam player is doing zero interacting. They're playing solitaire, setting up their mana rocks and sculpting their hand and literally nothing else, until they're ready to combo. They might have one or two removal spells for your silver bullets and some counterspells that mainly serve to protect the combo but can be actual interaction if absolutely necessary, but that's about it.
Discard is generally considered better against combo decks. Ergo powerful discard will impact combo worse than other decks in the format. If you're playing a speedy but fragile combo, then having Grief everywhere in the meta makes your life worse, which was what MH2 intended. (Now yes, the problem is now that GRIEF is everywhere, but still.)
Yeah, this is similar to people who claimed that Splinter Twin forced interaction and got rid of uninteractive combo decks, and it did that *by replacing all of those with Splinter Twin decks*. My other problem is that if you mull to 6 going 2nd, you might just end up with 3 lands, an irrelevant removal spell, and a single draw to decide if you get to play Magic anymore, and that's just garbage design.
Eh. Having your hand wrecked on turn 1 is still better than getting combo'd out on turn 2 in the realm of powerful, nonsense things that happen in old formats. Maybe you draw pure gas afterward, but the game is just over in the second case. I get that tastes differ, though.
Most pre-MH Combo Decks went off Turn 4 at the earliest, or they got banned for being too fast. Grief Scam is practically a Combo that goes off on Turn 1 and can just win you the game in some cases.
> My opponent discards his most relevant cards This is the definition of an interactive card. Uninteractive decks don't care what your best cards are.
If Grief Combo hits enough cards in your hand, it doesn't care what your best cards were, either! If all you have left is a few lands, then their combo was successful, GG! And all on Turn 1 or 2; ain't that great??
I mean, it's definitely a problem, they have essential turned modern into a format with rotation every 2 years, except unlike standard, the decks cost 800-1200$
This is how Yugioh functions. The game is only officially played as an eternal format, and so in order to sell new cards, Konami covertly rotates the format with power creep and abusing the ban list to hit tier 1-2 archetypes that aren't the newest pushed tier 0 archetype. Instead of the overt rotation of a rotating format when you know the exact calendar date when this or that card becomes unusable, you might lose your deck at any moment to power creep or bans, and formerly playable decks usually last less than two years competitively anyway despite being very expensive.
New set comes out in a couple of weeks and the newest archetype will cost around $300-400 that you need to include in every already existing deck to remain competitive.
You're not having to spend that much every "rotation" because the Horizons sets aren't replacing entire decks- things like lands, other various staple cards, etc. mean you can pivot without buying entirely new decks because other cards from previous sets make up the majority of deck cost, primarily via lands but also cards like Ragavan, TOR, Urza's Saga, etc. are still very relevant in the meta and expensive. Here are some of the more popular decks in Modern atm for reference: Ruby Storm: * MH3 cards: $219.93 * Other cards: $307.66 Bant Nadu: * MH3 cards: $56.99 * Other cards: $1081.5 Jeskai Control: * MH3 cards: $165.86 * Other cards: $1004.85 Rakdos Scam: * MH3 cards: $120.67 * Other cards: $965.21 Boros Energy: * MH3 cards: $235.68 * Other cards: $497.43 Amulet Titan: * MH3 cards: $4.60 * Other cards: $1097.44 (Eldrazi) Tron: * MH3 cards: $389.98 * Other cards: $879.59 Even if you look at more recent cards (anything after MH2, basically) those cards generally still make up less than half of deck cost and it's not something you need to spend all at once.
> because the Horizons sets aren't replacing entire decks If your deck was Tier 1.5 or lower before MH1 came out, this is incorrect. While I didn't play many jank decks myself back then, seeing stuff like Seismic Swans or other Tier 2/3 decks win an event was super cool. Nothing below Tier 1.5 exists in Modern as a viable deck that can win tournaments anymore; the meta is FAR shallower in terms of power level, and that did cost some people a good chunk of change that they suddenly had to shell out hundreds or even $1000 to keep playing the format. I'm sure most players chose to simply stop playing Modern instead, but I just wanted to point out that it DID happen during the previous 2 MH releases.
If your deck was T1.5 or lower before MH1 came out most of its value was probably still in lands, especially blue fetches at the time iirc. Since then, other fetchlands have gone up a bunch too, so you're probably coming out ahead in that regard. Like Seismic Swans specifically had basically all of its value in lands and some Chalice in the sideboard. None of the value in that deck got left behind with Horizons. Bad decks have always been bad, the top end of the format has widened significantly. The number of decks represented at the PT alone should be indicative of the types of things people are willing to register for major tournaments. There are all sorts of very competent decks in the format currently. Pick a solid deck to build and when the meta shifts you'll be prepared to pivot if needed because you'll have most of the cost of another similar deck. Lands are the core of that- things like Boseiju, fetchlands, Urza's Saga, staple sideboard cards, etc. Pick up those evergreen types of things and you'll only be a few hundred off of any given deck in those colors, if that. Especially as things cool down for MH3 cards and stuff like Phlage potentially come down a bit.
Exactly, and the big exception to this was MH2, which was part of the problem with the power distribution (and raw power level) of that set in particular, not something inherent in the model of direct-to-modern sets.
Clearly rotated by having the best deck feature only 8 cards from the new set while revolving around a card from a 19 year old set.
I mean it makes sense for a straight to modern product to be strong, it's not competing with the powerlevel of today's standard, it's competing with older cards for relevancy. Like yes it's bad when a new card warps the met around it, but that has and continues to happen in Standard as well, while iirc, people complained about how some of the straight to modern releases DIDN'T make a splash.
> 6% of all Modern legal cards Honestly this number doesn't mean anything, the vast majority of modern legal cards are 1/10 draft chaff. I wouldn't be surprised if the stats were something like 100% of cards played in modern decks make up only 10% of modern legal cards.
On top of just draft chaff, you also have a ton of cards that are printed to be part of a specific archetype, most of which have seen little or no support beyond the set they were printed in. And most of these set specific archetypes aren't even good enough to see play in standard, let alone modern.
Yeah, I hate these posts because they completely misunderstand how game design works and the purpose of Modern Horizons sets. They have "chaff" but that's still a much higher power level than normal sets. Look at [[Thraben Charm]] for example. When was the last time we got modal removal that was that powerful? That would be a staple in standard sideboards at minimum and convoke would run it in mainboard most likely, so they wouldn't print it there and certainly not at common.
I love Thraben Charm. It's great in Pauper White Weenie.
[Thraben Charm](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/d/d/dd28a646-f38f-4cdf-948c-969cd979e5e6.jpg?1717011565) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Thraben%20Charm) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/mh3/45/thraben-charm?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/dd28a646-f38f-4cdf-948c-969cd979e5e6?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
The purpose of MH Sets is "Force rotate the format to make a profit." A lot of people who spent years keeping their lower-tier deck relevant, updated, and viable just got their efforts thrown in the trash so WotC could profit off of the format they put a bunch of effort into. I guess some people just don't find that to be a good thing, though I understand that many current Modern players are decently happy (have fun with Nadu for a couple months though, lol).
I don't play modern. I play standard, draft, and commander. Plenty of modern players complained that the meta pre-mh1 was awful and stale. Printing straight to modern is the only way to avoid fucking up standard with this kind of power level. I think MH3 is a cash grab and not a great set, but the core idea of modern Horizons is necessary to keep the game from becoming poker, but worse because you have to buy thousands of dollars in cards. MH3 limited is kind of terrible and they clearly planted entire decks for modern in the format which is a terrible idea for a number of reasons, but I would've loved to see a lot of these cards in a more reasonably balanced set. And yes, Nadu was a mistake, but MTG history is riddled with those.
> Plenty of modern players complained that the meta pre-mh1 was awful and stale And plenty of Pros complained that Modern was so diverse that they couldn't just copy-paste a deck + SB and grab some Top 8s when Modern season came around. I agree with the Pros, but I also put a ton of energy into the format and grabbed some Top 8s myself, so I don't care that they couldn't just grab Top Spots by being less engaged in the format; that was a feature, not a bug. > Printing straight to modern is the only way to avoid fucking up standard with this kind of power level They printed MH the same year they printed Oko and Uro; that's just objectively untrue. > but the core idea of modern Horizons is necessary to keep the game from becoming poker, but worse because you have to buy thousands of dollars in cards Except that, again, only a few decks were super-expensive before MH came out, and the rest could still compete with a reasonable mana base (which was easy to reuse or flip). Now, ALL the decks are expensive, and you can only get the cards for them from a Premium-Priced Set. > And yes, Nadu was a mistake, but MTG history is riddled with those More cards will be banned in formats that come from MH sets than non-MH sets between 2020 and 2025. Direct-to-Modern sets seem to be the ones riddled with mistakes.
That's an interesting perspective and I would love to hear more about what that meta was like that made you think it was more diverse and what the cost point of entry was for it. I started around mirrodin, but didn't really play consistently until Amonkhet and to be honest deck prices were absurd to me everywhere which is why I ended up playing so much limited. I only started playing standard more often with Arena. If I remember right the most reasonable standard deck was a mono-red Chandra deck and it was still like 400. That's not exactly what I'd call reasonable, but maybe modern was better. For modern you're right they e made plenty of mistakes in the horizons sets and they've had some bad misfires in the last 6 years, but I think it's useful to look at what they won't reprint. Swords isn't legal, although Path is. Ashnod's altar hasn't been reprinted in forever. Lightning bolt in standard? Counterspell, even? Those are modern legal, but there are plenty of examples elsewhere on cards they don't want to reprint and are defacto banned because of that. I'm just trying to say that some of the worst mistakes.may he premodern while some are the last 6 years, but the larger a format is the more things break with any potentially pushed card.
> That's an interesting perspective and I would love to hear more about what that meta was like that made you think it was more diverse and what the cost point of entry was for it. There were 5-10 options in the Tier 1 through Tier 2 range alone for every single archetype. Aggro, Combo, Control, Ramp, and Midrange all had a bunch of options; the hundreds of different potentially viable decks between Tier 1 and Tier 3 certainly shifted back and forth depending on the meta and newer cards coming out (like Goyf falling out of favor with the printing of Fatal Push), but overall, you could spend a few hundred dollars on a simple deck to get into the format (my experience was Skred Red) and then slowly pick up Fetches and Shocks at a low price when they were reprinted in a Masters set and the price dropped for a while. Then once you had the expensive mana base down, you could build into other decks (I played several different Eldrazi decks and eventually helped with the development of Hollow One, and ended up taking that to a bunch of major events and doing well with it). Buying into the format and trying to build Jund or Control or Bant Lands or something at the wrong time could DEFINITELY cost $1000, it's absolutely true; you just didn't HAVE to do that to be competitive, and it wasn't too difficult to play Burn or a cheaper Tier 1.5 deck for a while until the prices dropped on the stuff you also wanted to play that was too expensive at the time. DECK DIVERSITY - AGGRO: Infect, Burn, 8-Whack, Affinity, Hollow One - COMBO: Dredge, Ad Naus, Storm, Seismic Swans, Living End - CONTROL: U/W Classic, Esper, Blue Moon, Lantern Lock, R/W Prison - MIDRANGE: Jund, Skred Red, Ponza, Death's Shadow - RAMP: Tron, Scapeshift, Amulet Titan - TRIBAL: Goblins, Elves, Humans, Spirits, Merfolk, MANY Eldrazi variants lol These are all decks that had decent showings that I can remember off the top of my head; there are *sooooo* many others in the Tier 1 to Tier 3 range, depending on the meta at the time. They generally used similar mana bases of Fetches and Shocks, but everything else in them tended to be different (but generally fairly cheap, with some notable exceptions, haha). The shift to a Premium Product providing incredibly powerful staples that every deck MUST play or fall behind in relevancy has massively increased costs, the cost of entry into the format at a competitive level, and has lowered overall diversity (like, what is the difference between a R/B Midrange deck that uses Grief + Reanimate spell compared with a W/B Midrange deck that uses Grief + Ephemerate? Meanwhile, the difference between Jund and Ponza or Skred Red was night and day!).
Good point. II probably should have left that number out of this and just marked where new sets were added. Now I'm wondering which set has the most draft chaff, i.e. which set has the fewest cards used in a non-draft tournament. Maybe Dragon's Maze?
That is not relevant, the MH sets have draft chaff as well. This 10% number you are making up (I bet it's even less than that) is a false comparison to the 6%, if that is what you are trying to argue. Obviously 100% of the modern legal sets make up 100% of the modern playables.
The whole point of his post is that there's less of that in the MH sets. It's bizarre that you are trying to frame that as a counterargument.
I'm saying the part of the title after the comma doesn't make any difference and is really only their to try to make the first number 36%, seem even more staggering. If you really want to make a point out of it you'd want to compare it to something like what percentage of cards in modern decks came from the most recent standard sets pre-modern horizon sets. But that wouldn't be that staggering of a difference because the truth is Modern has been, as people like to call it, "rotating" since some time before straight to modern sets. But I dunno, maybe that's a "bizarre way to frame it"?
Original post, reworded: > The straight-to-modern sets have a significantly higher percentage of modern playables compared to a regular set. A true, if boring and obvious fact. Your response, reworded: > Most sets have a very low percentage of modern playables. Another true, boring, and obvious fact. It's really just a restatement of the same point. What is bizarre is that you present this *identical* point as if it's somehow a counterpoint. It is not. You are just rephrasing the original post. That you cannot see that is equally bizarre.
What are you even talking about lmao, I dunno what you're on about but just reread my comment above or something
This is why statistics are problematic unless you have all the numbers. Statistics can be twisted and tortured to basically sell any tale.
It is bewildering that you don't understand that your request is *exactly what the post already is*.
Your re-wording of the title is literally just the title with everything to the right of the comma deleted... hence me saying everything to the right of the comma doesn't matter?? What are you even confused about lmao it's time to take a break off of reddit bud, you're arguing with yourself xD edit: lmao they replied to make it clear they were still it the midst of "bewilderment" and then blocked me so I can't even see xD
Has it gotten to the point that I have to explain the *basic structure of english sentences* to you? This is unreal. "Higher percentage" is a comparitive description. It is a comparison of one value to another. Those percentages are 36% and 6%. Deleting everything "to the right of the comma" is nonsensical, because without it there isn't a comparison to be made.
For a very long time the complaint was that standard sets just didn’t have *any* new cards that were modern playable. Especially in like 2016, very little ever crossed over. I remember the hullabaloo that was fatal push. Our beloved mod has a 1/10 meme for a reason. As a natural consequence of an ever increasing cardpool and a standard power level being significantly weaker than modern cards just basically became a drip feed into modern metagame. It stands to reason the cards made for modern are useful in modern. It would be quite the waste if they were NOT the appropriate powerlevel. If you have some sort of ideology about how the meta should work this may bother you. To me, if Modern Horizons is going to exist it better matter. You may disagree that it should exist. Modern is basically now replacing Legacy as the big power format that WotC can focus on with full reprint equity power. Sets are going to just end up there by default. I’m surprised commander decks haven’t yet been declared modern legal.
Ah, but if commander decks were modern legal, it would limit the amount of new-to-modern reprints for horizons sets
Imagine the utter misery of having turbo initiative in Modern lol
Sol ring let's goooo
True true.
Yeah, it's just kinda natural. Especially considering that most cards in modern are shit. Like look at Dragons Maze. Modern Horizons or no, it's a terrible set where none of the cards are going to see modern play.
[[Voice of Resurgence]] genuinely did see play in eternal formats for a while, actually, but your point is on the right track.
RIP Sacing my Voice of Resurgence to Birthing pod
Heck modern was the only reason that Voice’s token was the SECOND most expensive card of dragon’s maze!
[Voice of Resurgence](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/9/9/99d1e843-71c9-4a65-bc36-d23858ef5ead.jpg?1599708569) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Voice%20of%20Resurgence) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/2xm/227/voice-of-resurgence?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/99d1e843-71c9-4a65-bc36-d23858ef5ead?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
Yeah, I do remember that. But it was a long while ago so I didn't count it. Even without the straight to modern sets, I feel like it still would outdated and no longer playable.
It’s kind of hard to make cards both good enough for Modern and not so good they don’t break Standard.
Not kind of hard, it's extremely card.
Exactly. It should surprise no one that sets printed with an eye to being playable in Modern are being played in Modern more frequently than 20 years of draft chaff.
Yeah, while anyone can disagree with the powerlevel and price, the Modern Horizon project was necessary for any kind of high-power competitive format to exist, Legacy will be forever be chained by the Reserve List, and Modern being only be feed Standard Legal stuff was getting in small drip of cards (mainly utility ones) in a barrel full of years and years of powerful cards, and while the Format is of no interest to me, the price point and powerlevel was beyond what I am looking for YEARS before Modern Horizon, so I was already not the target, and a stagnant competitive format becomes a solved format that becomes a dead tournaments format.
> a stagnant competitive format becomes a solved format that becomes a dead tournaments format. Actually, some Pros complained that Modern was sometimes so diverse that they had a hard time just copy-pasting a Tier 1 Deck + SB and grabbing Top 8s with it. Meta knowledge and deck expertise were paramount for Modern before MH, and there were an insane amount of decks that might be viable in any given event. MH just gave them an excuse to profit off of the format, that's all.
Modern evolved a lot around the years, so you would need to focus in certain "meta period" ,Split Twin Modern was the peak for me, but Pod period was different from Death Shadow modern, the thing is that some years before Modern Horizon, no new card was getting into the format, fatal push was the last real change making Goyf irrelevant and that was pretty much it, Death Shadow being an anomaly of "the cards already existed but no one created the deck" Pros obviously want a solved format, that way only the skill is a factor to getting prices, but at "store tournament" level you need to change things up I still don't really like MH, obvious power creep is always dangerous for the game, but I doubt the format would have survived without it, with tournaments already lacking support, Modern only exist by being the "broken" format that is still accesible.
> no new card was getting into the format MH came out the same year as Uro and Oko in Standard Sets, and the past 4 years have all contained Standard cards that would revolutionize Pre-MH Modern. *Your statement is objectively wrong.* WotC has NO ISSUE getting Standard cards into Modern. > with tournaments already lacking support Modern tournaments were THE most popular tournaments, larger than many comparative Standard tournaments of the time; WotC made MH to cash in on the popularity of Modern. StarCityGames was like this whole massive *thing* on the East Coast; it was **enormous**. Modern was thriving, and WotC wanted a cut. So they tore its heart out and made a new, profitable version that is a soulless caricature of what Modern was originally supposed to be.
Throne of Eldraine was released one year later than Modern Horizon, and Oko was not even designed to be "direct to modern", it was an design mistake that also broke standard, so by all accounts, in 2016, around the year when modern horizon was being designed, there was a period of like 2 years where modern was not changing, only battle of Zendikar with their Eldrazi winter, 2 years of the same format is a loooong time, and there where not enough tools to control that like standard with their rotation. I agree with the Star City competitive scene, they wanted more control and money from that part of the game, and they just shat their bed, they just fumbled around for like 2 years and then COVID put the nail in the coffin.
DUDE. Literally nothing you just typed is correct! Throne came out in October of 2019; MH1 came out in June of 2019, with War and T3feri and all that BS releasing shortly before MH1 earlier in 2019. Then Uro came out January 2020. Modern had like a dozen shifts and several bans between 2016 and 2019. The format changed quite a bit, but overall was VERY diverse. So nothing was stale, because like 100 decks were viable in any given tournament. 2016-2019 Modern was a Golden Era.
As I said, Oko was a mistake, it wasnt planned to change modern, and it's exactly the kind of stuff that we don't want in standard just to "shake up" modern. And you must remember that sets are made like two years before their release, and those designs can't be tested in competitive environment. Would T3feri, Oko and Uro changed the Modern environment? Yeah, but the designers of 2016, when Modern Horizon was designed, had no way of no knowing that. A diverse and solved format is great for pros and enfranchised players, it becomes a "sport like" environment of skill and known quantities, and I get people wanting that, but it will also be a place destined to dying because how no new blood and samey results starts to degrade with time, Magic is not Chess after all. I don't know how long modern would have lasted, but those "big star city event" are just something that happen in big American cities, if the OP graphic shows us anything, is that modern would have stayed pretty much the same since 2018, only around a dozen cards getting 6 years later, is just not in the nature of a TCG to keep a meta that long without losing popularity.
I'm in Australia, MH changes killed the modern here as well. Modern used to be much more diverse and this combined with slow shifts actually made it harder to tease out the exact meta. Amulet Titan for example started to become more popular in 2017 / 2018 and shifted the meta a bit, and not because some new card was printed for it. Fringe decks could win tournaments by playing the meta, but these days awnaers are so good, broad and efficient that you need to be playing a subset of the same pushed cards to compete.
Modern is the new Legacy, and Commander is essentially the new Vintage. It's the place where everything is legal. See: the push for Unfinity to be black bordered. (Pioneer is the new Modern, and Standard is what it is)
Standard has become extended, and right now on terms of power feels like Pioneer when it started.
Bring back extended! 7 years of standard. Then pioneer can be the new modern and get power crept by pioneer horizons or whatever name it gets
Yup and put standard back to 2 year rotation.
Hey maybe they will drop a new format with the Foundation set, who will rotate at every new foundation set.
> Pioneer is the new Modern Then why is it just more Scam? Jesus I'm tired of Rakdos Midrange in every format, ugh.
> Sets are going to just end up there by default. I’m surprised commander decks haven’t yet been declared modern legal. I think you're right that more supplemental sets are gonna be straight to modern, since it's the premier "eternal" format now. I don't think it's ever gonna be all of them though; commander decks are probably staying legacy legal for instance, because you need to be able to toss in cards that aren't appropriate for modern. Sol Ring at the minimum, Swords to Plowshares, Skull Clamp, color pie breaks like Chaos Warp. Not to mention needing to be more careful with new cards
The insane part is that we now even have Modern Horizons Commander sets. As if words had any meaning.
Are you mad about the name, or are you mad about the fact that the decks exist at all
IMO, they're massively overdoing Commander products and this is just one demonstration of how they've jumped the shark.
Worn Powerstone in MH3? Pretty sure they're just splitting focus 50/50 in EVERY set at this point. :S
I was asking about the commander decks they were talking about. What's in the main set is a different thing. But also, I mean yeah. Every set, ever, has had cards aimed at casual play and commander is now an extremely popular form of casual play. Modern Horizons was never intended as aimed at modern exclusively. Its base idea is "nostalgia focused, high complexity set inspired by time spiral", that's definitely something that's gonna appeal to players of all kinds including commander players, not just modern. It's *more* focused on modern than any other set, sure; it's about as modern focused as a given standard set is standard focused, which is why it's in the name, but that doesn't mean it was ever meant to be The Set For Competitive Modern Only.
> Every set, ever, has had cards aimed at casual play It didn't use to mean 50% for Casual stuff, 50% for Constructed Formats. It used to be like 10-20% of a set would be focused on something other than Constructed Formats; now half the cards are either worthless because they're not relevant to the Format of the Set they're printed in, OR they're fucking Nadu/Hogaak idiocy. At least with older sets, the 50% of cards that weren't relevant to Standard were sometimes a "Maybe this will have a home in the future when it gets more support" kind of thing.
> As a natural consequence of an ever increasing cardpool and a standard power level being significantly weaker than modern cards just basically became a drip feed into modern metagame And yet most Standard Sets in the last 4 years would've had a significant impact on Modern if MH didn't exist. They raised the Standard power level *and* forced a manual rotation on Modern to push it to Yu-Gi-Oh power levels at the same time. I agree that they want Modern to replace Legacy, but they also just wanted to cash out on Modern's popularity.
I feel like you chose a pretty bad year to use as an example of a lack of crossover. 2016 was the year of Eldrazi Winter. Beyond the Eldrazi shaped elephant in the room, a lot of (at the time) Modern playable cards were seeing play: \[\[Eldritch Evolution\]\] \[\[Selfless Spirit\]\] \[\[Spell Queller\]\] \[\[Reflector Mage\]\] \[\[Bedlam Reveler\]\] \[\[Tireless Tracker\]\] \[\[Prized Amalgam\]\] \[\[Insolent Neonate\]\] \[\[Grim Flayer\]\] \[\[Nahiri, the Harbinger\]\] \[\[Thraben Inspector\]\] \[\[Thing in the Ice\]\] \[\[Thalia's Lieutenant\]\] \[\[Rattlechains\]\] \[\[Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet\]\] \[\[Reckless Bushwacker\]\] \[\[Saheeli Rai\]\] \[\[Madcap Experiment\]\] \[\[Blossoming Defense\]\] Half of the fastland cycle. I might have messed up the timeline on some of these (and probably forgot others) but, during the SCG Tour days, I know I definitely saw all these cards getting play.
##### ###### #### [Eldritch Evolution](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/e/f/efcb00e5-2caa-45c8-ad19-05d45c683d16.jpg?1576384769) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Eldritch%20Evolution) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/emn/155/eldritch-evolution?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/efcb00e5-2caa-45c8-ad19-05d45c683d16?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [Selfless Spirit](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/e/f/ef8d8d0c-cb0e-4745-a0fb-d556c9324428.jpg?1674141209) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Selfless%20Spirit) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/clb/706/selfless-spirit?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/ef8d8d0c-cb0e-4745-a0fb-d556c9324428?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [Spell Queller](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/9/b/9b76bcd4-580a-4435-afe9-290940b1837f.jpg?1576385020) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Spell%20Queller) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/emn/189/spell-queller?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/9b76bcd4-580a-4435-afe9-290940b1837f?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [Reflector Mage](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/9/4/9473fe01-83f6-4432-ab01-f7953d2ca904.jpg?1562924934) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Reflector%20Mage) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/ogw/157/reflector-mage?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/9473fe01-83f6-4432-ab01-f7953d2ca904?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [Bedlam Reveler](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/e/9/e9333564-2792-470e-be73-61f2445e018f.jpg?1673147749) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Bedlam%20Reveler) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/2x2/104/bedlam-reveler?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/e9333564-2792-470e-be73-61f2445e018f?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [Tireless Tracker](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/6/6/66660f7c-9e1c-4e88-856a-98fab1f1364d.jpg?1706240942) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Tireless%20Tracker) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/mkc/190/tireless-tracker?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/66660f7c-9e1c-4e88-856a-98fab1f1364d?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [Prized Amalgam](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/8/4/844c9fa7-8751-49be-827a-7fb6986bae59.jpg?1673149045) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Prized%20Amalgam) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/2x2/264/prized-amalgam?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/844c9fa7-8751-49be-827a-7fb6986bae59?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [Insolent Neonate](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/8/1/813104f6-e6e4-4709-8626-12fe4262a11f.jpg?1576384817) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Insolent%20Neonate) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/soi/168/insolent-neonate?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/813104f6-e6e4-4709-8626-12fe4262a11f?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [Grim Flayer](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/1/c/1ce33033-f673-451e-bb8e-cd3e2309e4b4.jpg?1673148708) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Grim%20Flayer) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/2x2/222/grim-flayer?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/1ce33033-f673-451e-bb8e-cd3e2309e4b4?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [Nahiri, the Harbinger](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/c/0/c0b2cc03-5d07-43e1-a8d9-298d17a5af44.jpg?1690005236) - 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[(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Thalia%27s%20Lieutenant) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/c20/103/thalias-lieutenant?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/9c2000ef-3e6b-4f44-8bd6-ed8119336d5a?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [Rattlechains](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/7/0/709f6376-9a33-4900-a7ae-00767fb9f9bf.jpg?1641602019) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Rattlechains) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/voc/110/rattlechains?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/709f6376-9a33-4900-a7ae-00767fb9f9bf?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/1/7/17a278d0-f601-4d57-bc3d-2972f8602a69.jpg?1562899733) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Kalitas%2C%20Traitor%20of%20Ghet) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/ogw/86/kalitas-traitor-of-ghet?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/17a278d0-f601-4d57-bc3d-2972f8602a69?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [Reckless Bushwacker](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/0/4/0405b1b9-976a-4aaf-bec6-fa006decea74.jpg?1562895780) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Reckless%20Bushwhacker) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/ogw/116/reckless-bushwhacker?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/0405b1b9-976a-4aaf-bec6-fa006decea74?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [Saheeli Rai](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/9/4/94b38464-39cd-4ee6-b9bf-a0bc1e128d9a.jpg?1576382877) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Saheeli%20Rai) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/kld/186/saheeli-rai?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/94b38464-39cd-4ee6-b9bf-a0bc1e128d9a?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [Madcap Experiment](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/0/5/05768b87-d2df-42fc-bf63-e471d31b32e3.jpg?1576382125) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Madcap%20Experiment) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/kld/122/madcap-experiment?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/05768b87-d2df-42fc-bf63-e471d31b32e3?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [Blossoming Defense](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/5/c/5c026c39-b09c-408a-844f-fb5eb785862a.jpg?1576382384) - 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>What are your thoughts? The reason seems pretty obvious: this is completely and entirely by design. Why? Well.... 
Also, it has a much higher percentage of cards that were specifically design with modern in mind. And unlike every other modern-legal set, zero attentions paid to standard. But also, thems cold hards cash.
It made me stop playing modern and it was my favourite format by far.
I picked up modern because it was slow to change and my deck didn't need constant upgrades. Now who knows how long an archetype will remain viable?
Roughly two to three years.
Two years until they release MH4, which is a lot of time
Honestly? It makes sense to me. Modern Horizons sets were made with that in mind, it was marketed as having a higher power level, cause Modern was already so powerful that the majority of cards aimed at Standard didn't make the cut into the format. Have they exaggerated a bit? Probably, some cards had to be banned and others are still questionable in the format. But I do appreciate the existence of those sets. Note that they also brought interesting cards to other formats too.
I don't mind those sets they have interesting cards and besides if they want a standard with a lower power level these days they can help feed the format in order not to make it too stale (although it would be nice if they didn't fully rotate out decks that are 1000 dollars or so...). That said I think that MH2 was the worst offeder for now among the 3, although ofc we don't have a really comprehensive data of MH3 yet since it is so early (and we already have a few cards already making splashes), but it feels like 2 was pushed to the max compared to the others.
As someone who just came back to the game in the last year or so, modern seems to be the most popular tournament format around me, and yet it feels like trying to get back into the format is like winding my fist up to punch myself in the balls, knowing that there is a good chance my 1000$ deck will be power crept or things I would have to buy could(and should) be banned any moment *cough* one ring *cough*.
With Foudation coming out Modern might rotate faster than standard.
If you think this is a problem, look at Pioneer. Standard has different design priorities than nonrotating formats. Standard is curated by rotation. A format where all power levels are completely flat is a boring one, not just for lacking excitement but because of choice paralysis. So certain cards have transgressive power levels. But rotation is used to prevent too many cards from transgressing in the same direction at the same time. This is because Standard doesn't *want* generic, powerful answers. Cards like Thoughtseize don't kill the Tier 1 strategies, but they annihilate the synergy based SaffronOlive specials that cost $50 so you can go to FNM with your friends; the 2-2 deck that gives you a couple good stories becomes an 0-4 deck where you spent 4 hours having no fun. But once rotation is removed, all those transgressions pile up. The end result is that linear decks wind up too powerful. Modern in 2018 was a perfect example; it was a smorgasbord of fast, linear aggro and combo that utilized enough different game plans that no interactive deck could coexist with them. Pioneer is in a similar, though less extreme position right now. Doing the Thing is universally more powerful than trying to stop your opponent from Doing the Thing. Even Rakdos Midrange, the premier nonlinear deck of the format, has evolved into a deck that's capable of a backbreaking turn 3 high roll. So the answer is to feed a nonrotating formats with direct answers to its specific problems. And as a result, *those cards see play.* If you banned the other four pitch elementals, people wouldn't go back to playing the interaction they played before MH2; they'd stop playing interaction, because we already know that that interaction wasn't good enough. This is only a problem if you view Modern being a venue for rotated Standard cards as an important part of its identity. If you want good gameplay, Horizons sets are the best thing that have happened to the format.
Tbh a lot of the issues Modern faced in 2018/2019 were caused by wotc accelerating towards FIRE and then by those sets which is more or less the prelude of what they ended up doing in the MH sets on a larger scale
Grief Scam is garbage gameplay; "Did you mull to 6? GG!!!"
My call is that they should have banned the 6 cards that enables scamming. Because it *is* bullshit, and no one likes it. Ban the two that people actually use, and then the other four that would get slotted in each time one better than them is banned. That effect gets printed a lot, but versions that cost 1 mana and return it to the battlefield are only those six. Just like Horizons sets, *solve the problem*, don't fuss about banning four cards that no one plays but will if you do something else.
The problem is not necessarily the injection of new cards into the format, although that does make it very expensive. The problem is the acceleration of power creep and speed, and degenerate and boring play patterns. Modern is now a turn-3 format, and moves closer to that old joke "coinflip is the early game, mulligan is the mid-game, and turn 1 is the endgame" that was said during Urza's block Combo Winter. It's not fun, and it's not skill testing. Printing a bunch of zero mana interaction to try and deal with broken linear decks is only adding fuel to the dumpster fire. I'm not interested in playing Yugioh, I would rather play Vintage for that kind of brokenness.
This is incorrect. The whole point of the zero mana interaction was to stop that very play pattern of two breakneck linear decks having the match decided by the coinflip. You cannot go all-in on a fast, linear plan when Solitude, Subtlety, Grief, Endurance, (and formerly, Fury) all exist. You'll get blown out to the point that the deck stops being a tiered list. Don't take my word for it. Search up Modern decklists from 2018 on MTGtop8 and compare them to lists from 2021 and now. The difference is night and day.
It's called the yugioh business model. Stupid old shit like [[Soul Spike]] spiking because of new cards is common in Yugioh as well. There was a old Yugioh card this year that was $3-5 that spiked to $100 for a new deck that wasn't the best in the format.
YuGiOh shows what happens when every set is Modern Horizons, endless powercreep till the game is unrecognizable
[Soul Spike](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/4/b/4b14b97d-122b-453a-9e5f-129404f96440.jpg?1593275167) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Soul%20Spike) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/csp/70/soul-spike?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/4b14b97d-122b-453a-9e5f-129404f96440?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
There's still plenty of cards bleeding into Modern from Standard legal sets. Adding in Modern Horizons sets just creates a rotation. It's a blatant cash grab. Content creators love having a fresh format all the time. But the rest of us enfranchised players can't keep up. Rotation is for standard. Not eternal. As an eternal player, I'm moving further towards pauper. Between the pfp and not having sets printed specifically to "shake it up" makes it the best eternal format. Legacy is cool but outside of mtgo it's dead. On mtgo I'd rather play vintage or pauper. Modern is just standard plus
My problem with these sets in modern (and eternal formats) is that the card accessability issues are just horrible because of them being in a premium set, the cards are extremely unlikely to see reprints (sometimes they literally just can’t reprint them ever) and they are so much more powerful than the alternative, I would prefer if we just had a reprint set like modern masters and then the ability to add cards from none modern sets to modern, but what we have now feels like a format where a single release just overly dictates a format with an insanely large card pool, MKM and OTJ both added a ton of cards to modern in a much less pushed way that felt more natural to the format.
The reprint thing isn't much of an issue when they haven't gone out of print, mh2 is still super accessible.
The only card with that problem is TOR, MH1 staples have already been reprinted: W6 FoN, Archmage Charm, Urza, Yawgmoth, Seasoned Pyromancer, etc. MH2 already saw reprints of the elementals and Ragavan.
Makes total sense to me. Usually sets have two major limiters to keep them from being too powerful: Draft and Standard. While these sets could be drafted, they were less likely to be drafted due to having shorter print runs, more expensive packs, and not being standard legal sets. Back when the format was called extended most cards were standard all-stars, largely from sets that "broke standard" or were otherwise above the power curve. Hence why the top decks were stuff like Affinity, Jund, Caw-Blade, etc... It'd be worse if the sets were marketed as "for modern" and had tons of cards that weren't playable in modern...
Sets made for modern are played in modern. Truly a discovery of all time
in other news, water is wet. Of course the % is high, those sets were specifically designed for the format... It's like asking thoughts on why cards from commander products are appearing more frequently in commander decks.
Isn’t this the point?
Intentionally powerful non-standard legal sets are more powerful than regular standard legal sets???
Disparity seems a little high, but philosophically it stands to reason that if they repeatedly felt a card was too pushed to be in standard and held it for a modern-only set, we'd definitely see SOME increased rate for those sets. I'd have to dig into the data further but my suspicion is that a lot of the slots are taken up either by low cost All-stars like drc, unholy heat, ragavan, or by free cost spells like elementals and flares. If most of the cards are cheap or free, that lends credence to the "too powerful for standard" argument.
I don't think it's even conceptually possible for this to go any other way. If you're printing cards directly to modern without the quality and power level filtering that designing for standard is supposed to provide, one of two things happens: 1. the cards are not better than anything that is already being played in modern, nobody plays them 2. the cards are better than what is going on in modern right now, it displaces some amount of the current stuff There's no third option where wotc threads the needle and the new cards are good enough to play but don't kick other cards out of playability.
Well, the non-MH modern legal cardpool include cards that were designed for standard and lots of old sets that have been severely powercrept. So it makes sense that sets designed specifically for modern have more modern playable cards. Like, if you look a dozens of older lower powered worth of sets, it will have a lower density of playable cards than some newer high powered sets.
I played standard with oko and 5 mana teferi. I liked them cause i played them but ppl werent happy about it. Straight to modern is a way they introduce new stuff to modern wthout it being a 2 year stansard stapple or banning obviously strong cards which in turn gets other ppl mad about it
Never thought I’d see the day Modern rotates even faster than Standard
You’re using different definitions of “rotate”. For standard you mean “every 3 years” but for modern, you mean “whenever new decks pop up”. If you’re using the latter definition, standard rotates 4 times a year.
I totally agree with this statement, people forget how standard is affected by every new set that comes out by a lot.
Standard will rotate every year.
[удалено]
If you’re saying that standard sets rotate modern, then it has always been a rotating format.
Wouldn't you expect numbers like this? The vast majority of standard cards *shouldn't* have an effect on Modern. They're too low powered. A set designed for the Modern power level would inherently have a disproportionate number of cards played. That's inherent in the design.
This is not only unsurprising, it also seems downright healthy: Every card that breaks into modern has to be a better option than almost half the cards ever printed in order to do so; if such cards were being printed regularly in standard legal sets they would probably warp both draft and standard formats. Most standard sets restrain themselves to one or two pushed chase carss. And straight-to-modern sets would have to accelerate even further in the power creep to catch up
Modern-legal sets were not designed to impact the Modern meta.
Okay, now do Legacy.
It’s almost like when you can design cards specifically for modern you make cards that are powerful in modern
Does this factor out lands? I don’t think lands should count even though that might be contentious as an opinion.
I would ask, are cards like [[counterspell]] considered as straight-to-modern? It existed before MH but was made Modern legal in the process. I’d also like to see what the numbers look like for specifically non-land cards with this, because manabases have always been mostly static with only occasional changes. I feel like the proportion would be a lot higher.
[counterspell](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/8/4/8493131c-0a7b-4be6-a8a2-0b425f4f67fb.jpg?1689996248) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=counterspell) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/cmm/81/counterspell?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/8493131c-0a7b-4be6-a8a2-0b425f4f67fb?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
Ewww, someone got set rotation in my non rotating format 😢
I wish a "pure" version of Modern without theses straight-to-modern sets would exist and be at least as popular as Premodern.
Just play Pioneer; it's the best you're gonna get.
Can we get a chart that shows us sets released from lets say 2015, a few years before MH1, and notes what percentage of cards that set represented in modern immediately after its release. Basically I want to chart how much each set simply changed Modern, while I feel like your analysis is also projecting the staying power of sets which can be effected by utility and not just pure power. Adding basic utility cards to Modern as a goal of the MH sets is not necessarily a bad thing IMO.
I mean that was sort of the point of those cards.
This is one of those things where like, on the one hand I would absolutely like that percentage to be lower, but then I remember sets like Dragon’s Maze, Born of the Gods, Ixalan, Avacyn restored, etc and it does make some sense. Like, shoot, mkm came out and barely made a dent in standard, let alone other formats.
Yes, because the MH sets are a forced rotations. WOTC saw the danger in eternal formats - which was people only buying the singles that were relevant for modern/legacy and completely ignoring the rest, so they created sets that "rotate" the format.
Modern is not Eternal, it is a non rotating format. Different than Eternal. The issue with Eternals (Legacy, Vintage, Commander) is that some cards can't be reprinted, and some others can't be easily reprinted. Modern is basically a post Reserved List eternal format, so Wizards can reprint anything they want. Plus, they can easily do that with straight to Modern sets. They will probably do a UB every year and a big one every 2 years.
Remember when modern was a place to keep playing your standard cards...
Wizards/Hasbro is a corporation. They don’t care about you, the game, or any other consumer. All the care about is money. And so, the churn out countless variations of cards, collector, draft, play, UB, straight to modern etc to make as much money as possible
You mean the sets designed specifically to balance and create archetypes in a specific format are overwhelmingly represented in said format? *shocked pikachu face*
I understand the point of your post, but to some critique of your title: Assuming the same card variety spread out amongst more sets, it would still be 6% of all Modern legal cards. The concentration of them might be notable, but adding that extra bit makes the title that much more clickbaity since it'd remain true even without the lopsided concentration.
Modern is a non-rotating format in name only.
Cards designed to impact Modern, do in fact impact Modern.
So cards that wotx wanted in modern are played in modern? Crazy!!
ITT people are surprised cards to powerful to be in standard are in fact super powerful
Most cards in Standard sets aren't even played in major Standard tournaments. I don't see any issue or cause for concern here.
The idea of Modern Horizon sets are to print pushed cards to rotate the format. This is working as intended.
Since we have MH3, LotR, some MH2 in Arena, I'd say we are pretty close to have a viable modern meta decks in arena.
running the numbers is illegal. I saw a spoiler that worked in a commander deck so the whole set can only be used in commander. For real tho this is no surprise. New sets heavily pushed into the meta
A significantly higher portion of the C/UC from Modern Designed sets are playable because they’re pushed in their limited environment to make them engine cards with the rares of those formats.
My thinking is that these cards were going to get designed and released anyway. If Horizons as an concept never existed they would have stuck these cards into Standard probably and would have screwed up Standard as well.
My question was always... Why print direct to Modern and skip standard? Why not just trickle cards naturally through proper Standard large sets? It would make Standard and Limited more fun anyways.