Sunday, December 21, 2014

Is Modern a format? Is it a thing, really?

Hi Everyone!
This week I saw a lot of articles hating on Modern so I thought I'd take a minute to throw my two cents in.

Most of the articles were on how Modern is dead. The articles had a weak set of reasons that I'm not even going to waste my time picking apart. I'm going to offer one simple point that shouldn't really blow anyone's mind. Modern was created as a non-rotating format where players could get a deck and play it for a long time. So,just because a highly anticipated set comes out, it does not mean modern will be "flipped upside down".

Many articles also said that Legacy is more popular now than Modern. Two things, first, that's just not true, second, that's only Online. I'm going out on a limb on this one, but I'd bet that Wizards could (if they wanted, assuming the reserved list didn't exist or didn't continue to honor it) have just released "legacy masters" instead of Modern Masters so they could grow the legacy format and could have all around avoided having to create the entire Modern format, but the reserve list exists and Wizards does honor it.

I will say that modern is the only format (excluding the card Shahrazad) that has cards (reguar cards that were played in standard at one point) banned for reasons other than power. Eggs wasn't fun to watch, Storm got neutered a couple times, Jund was too good (while this is over power, it wasn't necessarily the power from a single card, it was due to power of the synergy between cards), Sensei's Divining Top, is banned because it "takes too long". Many bannings were so the format was more marketable and some were to prevent a single dominant deck (even though their bannings have made Twin and Pod the only two decks you should consider playing if you want to win the next Modern GP, but hey, what do I know, I just look at results and make assumptions).

Happy Holidays!

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