Watching GP Charlotte coverage this weekend got me thinking about Modern again. Looking back, I started getting into Modern late in 2012 with an Affinity deck ($9 Mox Opals!) but never finished it. I began building GW Hatebears at the end of 2013 and had it finished about a month before the new bannings and unbannings. Hatebears felt kind of bad since it was trying to be Maverick in a format without Wasteland, Stoneforge Mystic, and Green Sun's Zenith, so I moved into a new deck after another 2 months: Scapeshift. I love ramping and doing stuff with lands, and it plays what is possibly the sweetest Blue card, Cryptic Command, so it seemed like a very natural choice.
I tried to play a lot of Modern last Spring and Summer leading into the PTQ season and GP Worcester but I ended up being too busy to go to any PTQs and by Fall I was just playing Legacy instead, despite having the option to play Modern locally twice a week. Since then my Modern deck has remained virtually untouched. A lot of players have strong feelings about Modern; I'm honestly still not sure where I stand on it. The essence of Modern is simple and appealing. People want to build a deck that they can play a long time from a larger cardpool and with strategic depth that Standard Magic simply can't offer. While this experience best describes Legacy, the Reserved List and other factors have made the entry costs of that format quite prohibitive, and thus Modern has to provide a microcosm of that experience to both the Pro Tour and a wider audience. Unfortunately Modern can still be quite an expensive format, especially when Wizards has shown a willingness to ban entire decks out of existence. While the incessant bannings make Modern seem unhealthy, they have shaped it into a format that can offer something different from others. Due to the paucity of individually powerful cards in the format due to bannings, decks built around synergy and redundancy have arisen, which has certainly caused complaints about the over-effectiveness of sideboard cards and BGx decks that can efficiently disrupt synergies. But the nature of the format has allowed unique and quintessentially Modern decks to arise such as Twin, Amulet, Boggles, Living End, Tron, Ad Nauseam combo, and Pod. While some of the bannings seem absurd, they may be necessary to ensure Modern doesn't simply become a worse version of Legacy, but something different instead.
While it isn't for everyone, at the end of the day Modern is here to stay. It has become a very popular format and will only continue to grow as it inevitably gets cheaper with the reprinting of staples. However, in the wake of the MM2 release and accompanying financial upheaval, it remains unclear when prices reach a level where this growth can finally and completely be realized.
I tried to play a lot of Modern last Spring and Summer leading into the PTQ season and GP Worcester but I ended up being too busy to go to any PTQs and by Fall I was just playing Legacy instead, despite having the option to play Modern locally twice a week. Since then my Modern deck has remained virtually untouched. A lot of players have strong feelings about Modern; I'm honestly still not sure where I stand on it. The essence of Modern is simple and appealing. People want to build a deck that they can play a long time from a larger cardpool and with strategic depth that Standard Magic simply can't offer. While this experience best describes Legacy, the Reserved List and other factors have made the entry costs of that format quite prohibitive, and thus Modern has to provide a microcosm of that experience to both the Pro Tour and a wider audience. Unfortunately Modern can still be quite an expensive format, especially when Wizards has shown a willingness to ban entire decks out of existence. While the incessant bannings make Modern seem unhealthy, they have shaped it into a format that can offer something different from others. Due to the paucity of individually powerful cards in the format due to bannings, decks built around synergy and redundancy have arisen, which has certainly caused complaints about the over-effectiveness of sideboard cards and BGx decks that can efficiently disrupt synergies. But the nature of the format has allowed unique and quintessentially Modern decks to arise such as Twin, Amulet, Boggles, Living End, Tron, Ad Nauseam combo, and Pod. While some of the bannings seem absurd, they may be necessary to ensure Modern doesn't simply become a worse version of Legacy, but something different instead.
While it isn't for everyone, at the end of the day Modern is here to stay. It has become a very popular format and will only continue to grow as it inevitably gets cheaper with the reprinting of staples. However, in the wake of the MM2 release and accompanying financial upheaval, it remains unclear when prices reach a level where this growth can finally and completely be realized.
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