Sculpting the future of Modern!

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Newsletter
Thursday, February 15th

Well then!

Following Pro Tour Rivals of Ixalan and Grand Prix Toronto, many felt Modern was in a very healthy place. With so much diversity and so many decks to choose from, I, like many others, expected WotC's Banned and Restricted announcement on Monday morning to be a rather quiet one. But as we know by now, it was anything but! Jace, the Mind Sculptor and Bloodbraid Elf are back, but the question is, "Are they better than ever?"

Two-time Player of the Year, Owen Turtenwald, hasn't had his chance to share his thoughts just yet on Modern's most recent unbannings, but if you're one of the many people who believe Tron is a great answer to both Jace and Bloodbraid Elf, Owen did play the deck at Pro Tour Rivals of Ixalan and is happy to explain why. What does the outspoken Ben Friedman think about WotC's decision? Well, he's not much of a fan, but he's got a lot of reasons why and articulates them as only he can. As for our financial expert, Chas Andres? He's here to tell you not only where he thinks Jace and Bloodbraid will fall in #MTGFINANCE, but also where their interlocking pieces will settle as well.

While we won't get to see Jace and Bloodbraid this weekend at #SCGINDY, we will still get to see Magic's most popular format in action. Matthias Hunt, Ryan Overturf, Nick Miller, and the rest of the @SCGTour crew will be bringing you 15 rounds of Modern action all weekend long from Naptown. Join us starting at 10:30am ET at twitch.tv/scgtour!

— Cedric Phillips, Content Coordinator

March 3-4
Legacy

March 10-11
Modern

March 24-25
Team Constructed

A Megaton Of Tron
By Owen Turtenwald

Going into the Pro Tour, I was allergic to the idea of playing a Tron deck because I felt it was inconsistent and, to be honest, I believe I have a skill edge on the majority of the field, so I didn't want to play a deck that loses to itself some portion of the time. If I can instead play a deck that can keep more hands and have consistency issues less often, I feel like I'm better-equipped to play longer interactive games and give my opponents more opportunities to make mistakes.

It's actually funny because my best friend, teammate, and roommate, William Jensen, won the World Championship last year with Temur Energy, but a few days before the tournament, he wasn't sure if he should play Temur Energy or Ramunap Red. I urged him to play Temur Energy because I thought he was just a way better player than everyone else and he would win as long as his hand didn't dictate how to play the games. As it turns out, Temur Energy was just a way better deck than Ramunap Red and everything else—so much better they needed to ban it—but the underlying point remains the same: identify your strengths and play to them.

The End Of Modern's Golden Age
By Ben Friedman  

Let's go over some of the recent trends and pressures facing Magic. The large meta-pressure of powerful competitor brands in the digital space is omnipresent, of course. Hasbro is a publicly traded corporation, beholden to its shareholders and the need to maximize shareholder value. As such, Wizards of the Coast is incentivized to ramp up its production of sets with low development overhead and huge expected revenues (read: Masters sets), which it has done with gusto.

Modern Masters was released almost five years ago to much excitement, but now we are being overloaded with sets like Modern Masters 2017, Eternal Masters, Iconic Masters, Masters 25, and probably more in the future. This, right here, is too much of a good thing. Like tax cuts and deficit spending, it will provide a short-term boost for Wizards' bottom line, but if overused there are a number of damaging consequences, and eventually these "revenue steroids" will run dry. Non-renewable resources like a reprint of a chase mythic should be used carefully and conservatively.

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A Financial Look At
The Modern Unbans
By Chas Andres  

Modern won't be this good forever, of course. New cards will be printed. New ways to attack the format will be discovered. It's possible that things will continue to get better, but maintaining a long-term balance that leads to a format as diverse as Modern right now has proven almost impossible throughout the history of the game. Legacy, for example, has bounced back and forth between a brewer's paradise and a format with a dominant strategy or two over the past decade. Chances are Modern will hit a rough patch at some point. All formats do.

That's why I'm not a big fan of WotC choosing to act now. The upside ("Modern is still great!") is basically the same as it was before the unbannings, while the downside ("Modern is all about Jace now...") involves a backlash against the game's best and most popular format at a time when Standard is still recovering from a rough couple of years. I would have saved both unbannings for a time when Modern needed a shake-up. Instead, we get to hold our breath and hope that WotC didn't just throw a monkey wrench into Modern's gear box.

And that's why I was so surprised by the news on Monday. It wasn't that either card felt unreasonable to unban in a vacuum, it was all about the timing. In many ways, it felt like this was an announcement that WotC had loaded and ready to go for months, and the Pro Tour results didn't play into it at all.