Magic: The Gathering’s Modern format is a highly competitive and expensive game that allows players to build 60 card decks with cards from Eighth Edition forward. This format spans from Mirrodin to the most recent expansions, with a wide list of banned cards available. Modern is a constructed format that allows expansion sets, core sets, and Modern Horizons, except for the Modern ban list on Wizard’s website. It encompasses all cards printed in a core or expansion set using the modern card frame (plus some others from Time Spiral).
Modern is one of the most competitive and skill-testing formats of MTG, as it includes all sets from 2003-present, except for those specified on the ban list on Wizard’s website. Standard is any sets that make up the standard format. Modern is one of the most popular and skill-testing ways to play the collectible card game.
Currently, there are 111 sets in Magic: The Gathering Modern, including all sets starting from Eighth Edition to Murders at Karlov Manor. With an immense card pool and some of the best decks, Modern is a non-rotating format that offers plenty for competitive players with dozens of archetypes to choose from.
📹 The Rise and Fall of Modern (Magic: the Gathering’s Biggest Competitive Format)
This video discusses the decisions made by Wizards around the Modern format. join my discord …
📹 MTG – Magic Defined – Modern: What is the Modern format in Magic: The Gathering?
Modern is a constructed format that allows cards from all sets from Eighth Edition and forward to be played, so long as that card is …
There’s no new player pipeline anymore. Used to be if you wanted to get into magic without a collection, you’d drop $10-15 at a time on drafts, then use the cards you drafted to play standard, then use your standard collections to play eternal formats. Now the standard cards dont interact with eternal so you either draft forever, drop $500 at once, or proxy everything.
MH1 did some damage. MH2 stepped up, and said “hold my beer”. But the real culprit is the shift in philosophy by Hasbro. It’s no longer about the game, it’s only about “how can we make the most money, with the smallest amount of effort”. This reminds me of mtggoldfish’ reprint problem article from a couple of years. Seth thought there would be diminishing returns on reprinting fetches etc, but never did he anticipate what would actually happen (5-6 versions of the same card). Now that Hasbro has hit the ceiling with magic, d&d is their next target and boy are they in for a bad day.
I got into Modern shorty after I started playing Magic in 2015 where I turned my standard Esper Dragons list into a Modern deck. I was still in highschool at the time, so it took me a while to get the manabase for it. After the release of SOI I changed the win-con from Dragons to the Unburial Rites/Gifts Ungiven package. I always loved attending FNM those days since there was an LGS within walking distance to my house and my highschool friends would all attend too. One of them ran UB Faeries, another did U-Tron, and another Tooth-and-Nail. After the release of Modern Horizons we fell out of the competitive scene due to costs and swapped to EDH. I still attended every once in a while, but the banning of Opal caused my favorite deck at the time, Lantern Control, to be nigh-unplayable and I fell out of the scene. To this day I still think that while the card was almost banworthy, it died because of Urza’s release in MH1. I recently got back into the format, but I can’t help but feel jaded every time I see Ragavan or Omnath. It just reminds me of how Modern used to be, and how it will probably never be that way again.
2019 pre War of the Spark was one of my favorite times in Modern. Phoenix was dominant, but there was still a healthy metagame around it. Tron, Lantern, Shadow, Burn, Dreadge, UW Conrol, Humans, and GB Rock were all solid, had play against each other, and consistently shared top 8 spots at GPs and SCG events.
First of all, I’d like to add context to my comment by telling a bit of my history with Magic. I started playing back in 2009 but was 100% kitchen table enjoyer until 2014 when I started playing EDH and finished High School. I slowly creeped up my decks power levels searching for more competitive experience with EDH, never actually reaching CEDH because it wasn’t really a known thing until 2020. I have however followed Modern and Legacy tournaments and metagate from 2015, focusing more on Modern because of it’s cheaper price tag and arguably longer games since the format didn’t have as explosive and polarizing matchups as Legacy. Two years ago a friend of mine convinced me to come to our local FNM and one borrow of his decks. I instantly fell in love. I played couple of FNM’s that Winter and Spring before finally acquiring a Modern deck in late Summer of 2021. I have played in every FNM we had in our city after that, traveled for bigger tournaments in Finland (country I live in) which we had 6 or 7 after Summer of 2021 I think. I enjoyed the power of the format compared to Pioneer, which I play as well, but I also loved the “downgrade”, at least in terms of power level, from Legacy, which I also started playing last Spring. Now, we’ve had multiple discussions, within our FNM group, about the Modern format during last 6 months as the uproar of the Modern community against current metagame and MH-sets feel became stronger and players wanting the good old days back. Most of the people I’ve spoken to agree that the current metagame is the best in Modern’s history and most balanced and most enjoyable.
I used to adore modern. Now i just play pauper (a format I hope to God wizards doesn’t find a way to monetize), cube, and play 2018-era modern decks with friends. With the exception of my pauper decks, everything I run is proxied. Wizards can kick rocks as far as I’m concerned—MH1 and 2 shattered any trust I had in them, as well as any hope for their ability to maintain magic healthily in the longterm. And all for a quick buck 🙁 Hope it was worth it, Hasbro!
I think you’re looking at the “golden years” of modern through rose-tinted spectacles – it wasn’t all that much different in terms of price really. Wizards has been hawking heinously expensive piles of cardboard for a lot longer than Modern has been a thing. The only difference is that in the old days of modern, a lot of the high prices and overcentralizing cards were accidents. When they printed Tarmogoyf for example I genuinely think they had no idea it was going to be a $200 card. The egregious thing about current Modern prices is that the prices have stayed this high despite multiple reprint and supplementary sets nominally intended to make the format more accessible. Why? Because they’ve done every trick in the book to undermine that accessibility in the name of profit: increasingly expensive packs, rarity upshifts, “draft focused” premium masters sets that consequently are full of chaff cards, strategic staggering of important reprints across multiple sets, banning old cards for the sins of new powercrept cards, and now with Modern Horizons just straight up obsoleting half of the format to drive demand for the shiny new mythics only available in premium-priced packs. MH1 and especially MH2 were calculated attacks designed up milk players for as much as possible. The best trick of all though is how WOTC, intentionally or by accident, exploited the elitism of its playerbase to defend it at every turn. Every time I criticised WOTC business practices on reddit or youtube, there were legions of nerds coming out of the woodwork to tell me that magic is plenty affordable if only you treat it as a stock market and not a game.
It really is unfortunate how F.I.R.E design effectively introduced cards and ideas that made Modern a rotating format. I remember back when I started playing in 2016 that Liliana of the Veil was the scariest card to see your opponent drop on turn 3 and a Tarmogoyf becoming a 4/5 commanded being Path to Exiled. Cryptic Command was an insane tempo play and if Burn had a good game they could finish you off on Turn 4, Turn 3 if they drew the absolute nuts. It was UNHEARD of to have a deck see more than 10% of the meta share. Nowadays if you connect with a Ragavan on turn 2 you’ve effectively won the game on the spot against most decks and an 11/11 Hammer Wielder can be headed your way on the same turn. Liliana of the Veil? Try Wrenn and Six on for size. Remember the last time you played a Tarmogoyf? Just looking at MtGGoldfish you can see that even with all of these different “decks,” we can see some odd similarities: almost all of the non-land cards are from Modern Horizons. EIGHT out of the TOP TEN most played creatures were released in MODERN HORIZONS ALONE, 7 of them in MH2! It doesn’t help that Ledger Shredder is also amongst the top ten and is another product of F.I.R.E. design. The last basion in the top 10 is Magus of the Moon for Pete’s sake! So yeah, I’d rather not have an MH3.
I played modern from the moment it came out and this article glosses over a lot of that time. I remember when certain cards were extremely oppressive and were banned to help the format well before Eldrazi winter–cards like Splinter Twin and Birthing Pod. The bans were good for the format and so were the later bans mentioned here. Wizards was proactive about the bans of Oko and Uro and Field of the Dead. MH1 and MH2, while they introduced great cards, did make the format much more expensive in the rush to get the new tech first. The fact that these cards were so expensive reinforces the health of the format when taken as a snapshot in time. If there had been more supply and less players, the cards would have gone down in value and been more reasonable to buy. Supply and demand… What really hurt modern (and is still doing so) in my opinion is 1. Covid all but eliminated paper magic for a time, and events suffered; 2. In the push to digitize MTG, Wizards eliminated so many tournaments and in-person magic that there was no reason to keep playing standard and modern, and a lot of players went the casual (and much less expensive) EDH route; and 3. Wizards forgot that this is a game first and not just a money mill. Just a couple thoughts on my mind as i watch this article. Keep grindin’ those games.
Horizons sets aren’t the evil, WotC’s handling of them has been. If you were to take out the following cards, people would look at MH sets as the best things to happen to modern. – Hogaak – Astrolabe – W&6 – Urza’s Saga – Ephemerate – the Evoke Elementals (but Fury and Grief specifically) – Ragavan – Unholy Heat (Obviously, thr LotR set belongs in yhis discussion too. Specifically,ToR and Bowmasters.) And I think that’s about it. No one minds that Enchantress, Merfolk, and Asmo decks are a thing. In fact, the format is better because they are here. We need a company that will see cards like these and instead of chasing $$$ think about the impact they will have on the format.
The constant changing of the format with power creep is the reason im taking a break from mtg to play yugioh’s time wizard format, its formats that are based on a certain year with its banlist so the cardpool doesnt change. Also, these older cards are heavily reprinted so its easy to spend around 100$ to build a full deck.
As someone who started playing modern after MH2 came out, I personally love the power level of the format and the MH2 cards are some of favorite Magic cards in general.Compared to Standard and Pioneer it’s a much more explosive and interesting format in my mind. I think the price of the cards is the main issue, and this is might really come down to a supply and demand situation. The real culprit for the extreme prices we see on singles like Ragavan and Wrenn and Six might just the existence of the Mythic Rare slot, making the most sought after cards also the most rare by leaps and bounds over regular rares really inflates the prices in the secondary market.
In your Golden Age of Modern, decks were well over $1000. Karn Liberated was a $80-100 card and Tron was a $800+ deck. The best deck at the time was Humans, which was also one of the most expensive decks in the format: prior to reprints in Ultimate Masters, Cavern of Souls and Noble Hierarch were $80 each. Meddling Mage was $20. Aether Vial was a $30 card, etc. I was only able to buy into Humans because of UM cutting $400 out of the deck (Cavern and Hierarch hit $45 after that, at least for a while, before going back up). Even Burn wasn’t cheap as Goblin Guide was a $20 card and you needed fetches, which prior to reprinting were $25-80 depending on which ones you got. So I don’t think you can completely talk about price as a deterrent as Modern was fabulously expensive during it time of greatest popularity (which is why it was so pricey). It’s really about how people feel about the format and how much they want to play it.
I started in the golden age and it was a great time and I had fun for years playing almost every top deck. I stuck it out during war of the spark and MH1 but I was very quickly losing patience with WOTC. One of my main complaints was they wouldn’t just ban the new problem card, they would ban a format staple instead like Faithless Looting hoping that would solve the issue only to later have to ban the real problem like Hoggak. This happened several times. I was already on the verge of quitting and was perusal some announce article of all the upcoming products that included Street Fighter cards, some other set printed into Modern directly, etc. I started unsleeving before the article ended and cashed out. It was the right decision.
I’ve been playing Modern at the same local store for the last 4 years and I have only seen a few new faces ever since I started playing. We used to be 40+ players at the Modern FNM. The store even had to ask the restaurant next door to use their tables! Nowadays, it’s a miracle if they can pull 16 players on a Friday Night. They even told us they are reducing the prize pool if less than 16 people show up. The EDH event, on the other hand, consistently brings over 50 people. There are no new players getting introduced to Modern over time and some are even quitting…
I started playing Modern seriously when Jace TMS was unbanned and man was that a great time to play Modern. I built 3-4 tier 1 decks that lasted me until MH1 and 2 completely warped and ruined the format. Now if I want to compete I need at least $500-$600 of upgrades in basically all of my decks. Eternal format it is no longer.
I 100% agree. I was a big modern fan. It was the only format I played. It has just gotten worse and worse. I think there are a ton of problems with modern, but there are two that stick out to me- Triomes and the pitch elementals. If I could get rid of anything it would be the pitch elementals. However, the triomes just make mana way to easy as well. Wren, Ragavan, Urza’s saga are also issues, but I would like to see those without the triomes and pitch elementals. Modern is so gone to me I just don’t know what WOTC can do now. All of the “brews” now are just a small number of cards in every deck and a slightly different win con or addition of 1 different card. The largest draw to modern was the fact that you could play your favorite deck for a long time and at least be competitive. That is gone and so are a lot of the original modern fans. From a pure play stand point the games can be entertaining, but from an overall standpoint Modern has definitely become boring and sideboard dependent. Boring and dependent are two things that inevitably cause the death of a game. We shall see what they do, but modern may be to far gone for help at this point. I hope not.
Well put. Myself for example. In the past i could upgrademy modern deck with relatively ease. But after MH i cant never catch up. I couldn’t upgrade my jund deck in like a year. There was w6, eho throwed my lilis tobthe garbage, then came the monkey with lurrus and overprices baubles… soon after lurrus was gone and i had to rebuild again. Its a never ending “pay a ton or leave the store being last”. And i love modern, but this has been too much and ended up not playing magic for a while now.
I think you’re absolutely right. WoTC wants formats like modern to buy lots of packs again. They are forcing modern players into the standard grind because they see short term profits. This is exactly the kind of thing that wall-street investigator found. Printing too many cards too quickly for short term profit, while destroying the longevity and collectibility of the game itself. Hasbro doesn’t care, I think. They see MTG as temporary, and are trying to pump up the numbers as much as possible. DnD is also going through something similar. A bunch of limited products squeezed between regular products and announcements of the new edition coming out. They want people to be FORCED to buy new products, or quit the hobby.
Great article. Awesome points. I played both G Tron and GDS. I abandoned Tron when I found I couldn’t afford the what was a $10 Mycosynth Lattice on Monday but somehow shot up to $75 on Tuesday. I picked up Lurrus and enjoyed GDS having had to retire Tron. Soon afterwards, Ragavan insured that both my irl modern decks would be retired as I couldn’t then afford to continue. As of today, Tron is an option but I just don’t feel like it’s the same. And MTGO prices!!! Covid somehow gave WOTC the ability to “overnight” triple and quadruple prices. 2020 in January what was 1 tix somehow became 15 tix by February. Then you would think years later the prices would have stabilized…. Nope. I have left legacy as well. Pauper is a breath of fresh air when you need it but it doesn’t help the disappointment of realizing the format you once loved is nolonger accessible because you’re poor…
I totally agree, although I am more of a commander player myself, it has a similar problem, the best cards are the most recent ones, with exception of a few old jank cards, overtuned ones or very specific fits. Think about modern horizon cards, tashas oracle, dockside extortionist and so on. I do like new toys, however it way too quickly invalidates decks. In the last few sets for instance a competitive urza deck could pick up a artifact tutor that is in itself an artifact, multiple other artifacts that are practically upgrades (urza’s battlethopter over shimmer myr for instance or moon snare prototype over springleaf drum, or both). I do like a few new cards every now and then, however needing to reconsider 1/20th to 1/10th of the deck every half a year or so is just to much, I want to be able to dust off an old favorite and still play it just fine after a year without having the “oh, I should have put these 10 cards, too bad”.
I like MH2 cards and think they’ve made modern a much more interactive format than it has been in a long time. For a lot of the ‘golden age’ of modern, a lot of matchups were basically just two linear decks seeing who could do their thing first. I think modern play is a lot more interesting and enjoyable now. I agree that price is an issue, but hopefully that could be addressed by lowering the price of eternal sets. I’d rather the format health be shaped by printing new cards than banning old ones, and doing that via standard sets isn’t always feasible. I’m cautiously optimistic about MH3. MH1 had design mistakes and ended up needing several bans, but MH2 hasn’t had any cards banned yet, and I’m hopeful that wotc can avoid ban-worthy cards in MH3 as well.
I actually wanted to try Magic again but I wonder if it’s even the same game I used to play. I started with Beta, Unlimited, antiquities, The Dark and Arabian Nights. Is it still the type of game where you have to throw money at? I remember when things like the black lotus, Moxes etc… It got so bad that my deck was stolen and that’s when I quit.
I had spent a while collecting the cheaper cards I needed n then when I had the money n most of my family n friends had stopped playing so I needed proxyless decks to go play at the cards store so I go ally dropped the funds to finish my Hardened Scales deck. But I was busy with work n couldn’t get to a modern night at the LGS for 3 months n 2 months in they banned Opal… 0_o my baby!! 😭😭 The real problem with MTG is that WOTC has forgotten how to balance card power based on rarity n mana cost n colour identity. I used to teach new players by showing them Birds of Paradise cuz it is a perfectly balanced card. But it’s pointless to even explain y anymore cuz new cards never follow that philosophy. They used to know how to make creatures n struggled with balancing spells n the decided to make all the spells cost more mana unless they cost more money n the creatures r basically just spells with bodies now n the bodies r just as string as the vanilla creatures used to be.
Personally, I love where Modern is at now. I got into Modern right after MH1 came out. It’s been a blast the entire time I’ve played it, and the current Iteration of Modern is the most fun I’ve ever had. I don’t see it being a problem at all, other than maybe the price points being high. They aren’t realistically any higher than before though… You’re buying some more expensive cards, but the previous most expensive part of building decks in Modern (fetches, shocks, fast lands) are all fairly cheap at the moment. It’s evened out.
As a person been playing modern for years the power creep from Standard and MH2 to me has destroyed the format. 4-5c decks being rampant. Older archetypes having a hard time staying afloat and the constant changes are annoying. I’m a kind player and I find it sad that Lili a card considered one of the best Walkers in 2019 is being pushed out.
I stopped playing in paper altogether. Modern and Legacy were my favorite formats and were just too expensive to play in. The price of fetch lands has come down since but MH2 and Ragavan have made it impossible to get back into it at this point. I just play on arena now and I think that’s what WOTC’s goal was along.
Both MH1 and MH2 released while I was in college with limited income, and most of my decks built throughout Highschool became unplayable due to the higher power level of the cards that I was not in a position to obtain. I really disliked the Modern Horizons format for basically forcing me to play low tiered decks for years since I could not afford the chase mythics of those sets, especially in MH2. Now that I have a decent job and am able to splurge on cards a bit, I have come to love the play patterns, interactivity, and power level of post Modern Horizons, but I hate that I was only really able to enjoy the format once I started working full time after these sets’ release.
I have played the entire length of modern. I remember all these events. I really liked MH or the prospect of it. Through sunken cost fallacy I bought into MH2; just as heavy. Modern players are separated by their love of a certain thing (archetypes, card styles, basics) these divides are so ingrained and deep there’s no unity. A heritage format; this only caters to entrenched players. My POV, I’m fine with this cause I own all the good cards from the “golden era”. New players this not as easy. Do I want MH3? In the interest of format shake up yes. In the perspective of banning cards, power creep, free spells, Gandalf in Modern? Idk 🤷♂️ can I walk away? Can I do whatever I want? Yes. Do I want too? Idk 🤷♂️ Roast me in the comments…
In pre MH1 modern cards like Goyf and Lili used to be investments (not good investments imho but still, players brought them because they could play them for years). Now the price of a deck might be around the same but it lost it’s function as an investment. Cards that used too be good get pushed out or banned all the time. My 2 cents is that if you are fine spending 1000+ on a deck of cards that now “rotate” due to power creep and ban hammers you are out of touch with reality. Are you really spending 300 bucks on a playset of a card that might get a better alternative printed or banned entirely? Magic is a fine game but there are so many other cardgames that don’t cost thousands of dollars (and better ways to spend your money then cardboard).
When it became too expensive to keep up with modern, that was part of the reason I quit playing standard and limited. I liked modern way more and if I was to keep up with my favorite format, the formats I didn’t like as much had to go . I don’t think wizard thought about that, yes I was slightly spending more money but I was only buying singles at that point I stopped buying packs cause I didn’t play limited anymore. I was playing less magic at FNM’s and stopped going to them completely. I then switched to playing mtgo cause it was less expensive but I wasn’t cracking packs I was buying singles or a third party site. I finally ended up selling all my cards and decided to only play mtgo and now I play from time to time and lost my love for the game.
For me modern died because of the expensive Manabase. Most Manabases have cost between 400-700$ (prices are lower now but not that much.) And if you want to build a other archetype it was not unusual you needed to buy a other set of fatches and shock lands. It just feels so bad to pay so much money on a land cards compared to some epic monsters. The real fail was that wizzards didnt print playable lands as uncommons.
2016 was not only Eldrazi winter that made people loose interest. Modern had been plagued with having lots of linear decks that could win as early as turn 3 consistently and they banned the only deck that kept things in check, Splinter Twin. 2016 was when I stopped playing modern, MH2 made want to return to modern. Modern Horizon 2 has been great for Modern in general and I rather them trying to add more powerful cards than trying to push Standards powerlevel to insane hights just so Modern players buy the new set
I started Plating modern on Affinity and the started playing urza ThopterSword. My decks have always been good enough to bring to any FNM or RCQ only recently I switched to a new homebrew that I think is more powerful. I’d say modern right now has more room to brew but I do agree that MH1 and MH2 cards make up to much of the format staples
I might be a biased, but formats tend to be good when control is good. Aggro can go underneath, then combo and midrange try to go over aggro, then control has to adopt to aggro, combo and midrange and you have a living meta game. When all threads are undercosted and provide card advantage answers are bad. With the good mana of modern even the decks with the good threads can plasy good answers, so you just play those decks. Modern was the greatest right before MH2. I played a lot of Esperka and the metagame was really balanced in my memory.
Too much product, too many free spells, and the “you must have your deck’s rares be >80% from MH 1 or 2” problem have ruined modern for me. I genuinely don’t think it’s possible to brew in modern anymore without using MH cards. And even if you could brew new, cool decks with MH cards, you are limited to such a small pool of cards to choose from in those two sets.
As someone who started playing magic during the Return to Ravnica block, hearing the phrase “modern was designed to be cheap” just seems like such a weird concept to me. I know that was during the time when cards like Tarmogoyph were at their all time peak in terms of price, but even back then I though that modern was still way too expensive to get into. Now I WISH the price of modern was what it was back then….
I mean it cost me 1000 plus dollars to build abzan back in the day. It wasn’t exactly cheap to jump from deck to deck. I mean to play a a competitive burn optimized list it cost 600 dollars. The key was and still is to buy the lands. The land base is always one of the most expensive elements. You can move the lands around.
Good article! I just recently started playing modern, built a budget tron, realized it’s not good in my meta and switched to Affinity, also for budget reasons. I could hold my own against most decks for a game or two, but the modern horizons cards are just so oppressive. Ragavan is the devil incarnate if you ask me. The problem I could identify for me and the people at my LGS is, that modern becomes stale, even though tournaments have a great variety. It just feels like a race, probably just like legacy which I have never played, but more exhausting and less fun. In Legacy and Vintage you can do degenerate things which is fun. Either you own or you get owned and no hard feelings are taken, because this overpoweredness balances out over time. In Pioneer and Pauper you get to play magic like you used to in your childhood. Cast a bunch of creatures or find a fun combo that needs 3-4 pieces to win and the game is not just over on turn 2 or 3 when a monkey attacked twice or a free elemental destroyed 2 manadorks on your side. just my 2 cents.
I think we need a mass ban and unban. Almost like a reset to the meta to allow more brews. My choices would be to ban EVERY MH2 Evoke Mythic (sorry Subtly and Endurance for the friendly fire) and also ban Wren and Six, Urza’s Saga, Teferi, Time Raveler, Ragavan, and Murktide Regent. To counter this, Unban Splinter Twin, Birthing Pod, Mox Opal, Arcum’s Astrolabe, Mystic Sanctuary, and Umezawa’s Jitte. Some of these might be a shock to you, but think of the shakeup this will cause. So many top tier decks will fall into new decks and cause more brewing. We could even see totally new competitive decks floating around! The downside of this, in my personal opinion, is banning all these cards would make people so angry that they spent $200 on Solitude, $200 on Urza’s Saga, ect ect, and now they are worthless. This is an issue that I do not have an answer for unless they do a buyback program of say 25% of the cards worth at the day of banning. Is this the best idea? Is this stupid and I should just shut up? I do not know, but this is my opinion on how to revive the current format. A total Hail Mary of a decision by WOTC to potentially save the best format ever made. If you want to have constructive discussion about my choices, feel free to respond to my post. Please don’t flame me because I might have the wrong idea. I am just giving my two cents that I BELIEVE might work. I have no power to make this happen, just a nobody with a small voice in the community.
Honestly i just want a modern masters set print to demand, reducing all recent atrocities to rare, 3.99 packs, and just give players access to this format. I won my first fnm back into modern and I played against a different deck every round and I haven’t had fun like that in a long time. Modern is so much fun, and I pray that it won’t follow in the footsteps of legacy.
I want to return to playing Magic physically after stopping when I was a child, but finding it hard. I like the idea of the draft and play to earn idea of it where you are socializing playing and trading, but everyone says it is not even worth it anymore 🙁 I have my mono black from 2004 when I stopped still around I think somewhere maybe I’ll sell that to get a budget deck or sth lmao
Modern has always been crazy expensive because of the mana base and how sought certain staple mythics were. Modern Horizons kept it fun to play but having taken out so many top decks from the picture was not a move that stood well with many players who saw its stability as a reason to invest over a grand for certain archetypes. See Humans, Jund, Hollow One, UW Control, etc. Imagine having spent 300$ for a full playset of Snapcaster mages only to find them virtually unplayable after MH2 got released.
Coming from other card games before starting to play Magic, it seems like Modern has developed a very particular set of issues that are both happening in other games and unique to Magic. On one hand, Modern seems very much like Yugioh’s standard format where theoretically there’s no set rotation and all your old decks are still playable, but due to banlists, powercreep and erratas, there might as well be rotation in the format because playing with most older decks very quickly becomes miserable. The way that Yugioh kind of offsets this is they have a relatively aggressive reprint policy, which keeps the price of a lot of older playables down, which is very much not the case in Magic. The powercreep seems kind of inevitable in an eternal format and I’m not really sure what you do about it other than introduce some kind of rotation, but you can at least keep the costs manageable with reprints, which it seems like Wizards is mostly unwilling to do
I absolutely despise the MH sets. Started playing mtg just a couple of weeks before what you called the golden age and learned to play the game in that version of modern. When I compare the format we have right now to that modern I just feel disheartened. Wizards essentially burned my favorite game to play to the ground in front of my eyes and all I can do is leave the format to not spend an astronomical amount of money every other year for upgrades to a deck that probably won’t survive the rotation anyway. Not to mention how pushed cards have gotten lately in general. I just give up.
i beleive there are cards that have been introduced with the MH sets that help fill holes between standard and modern cards like force of negation, ignoble hierarch, even counter spell. but where MH1 pushed and had break out cards like Hogaak, MH2 upended the format in non-player friendly way, a point a agree with you on. i think Modern should have a player presence at the table, in a similar that edh has one, Modern should be helmed by it’s players not Wotc.
Speaking as someone who follows competitive Magic but can’t really afford to participate (walled into budget EDH), it’s frustrating to hear people defending how “MH2 balanced the format”. It’s balanced between $800+ piles that can often lock a game by turn 4. Even trying to play a janky “off meta” deck will still be paying out the nose on the mana bases and interaction to avoid getting blown out. Also, people will talk about the price of MH2 as if you only need to get the new MH2 cards. But if you’re not already enfranchised, you’ll have to get the MH2 mythics ON TOP OF the already pricey mana base. Plus, with the faster game speed, there is less room for a sub-par mana base. (Pardon, this is pretty rambly)
I think that I agree with you on an airplane level. Overall, the format is more balanced today, but there is a bigger money wall to the cards. The business side of things here are kind of a blind spot. There is a certain point, where the MSRP to the product was eliminated. This might not be such a bad thing, I know its easier to make money without a floor, but the printing was increased more than ever, while MSRP was removed, and we started getting these cases and boxes where they say commander legends but its dnd, or we get 2×2 but really its commander, and so on. It is tougher to manage risk, re-order, or decide how many boxes to order. Is there going to be another supply chain issue? Printing Problems? is it going to be like MH2 where they charge a lot but its never gone away? Modern lost favor when pioneer was chosen for the protour, leading to a large number of the influencers moving away from that kind of league content, and fewer discussions. Who knows how much that MH2 collector box really costs in the end? Amazon lets wizard skip the LGS, and undercut the companies that train large groups of people to use their product, effectively cannibalising their own business making commander the only commander we commander commander in the command zone with commanders. All of the problems you mention were exacerbated by MH2, but I think once MSRP was off the table, that really changed the LGS support of modern and those events. Decks at the high tiers have always been expensive.
The article has valid points. But the fact is, modern is cheaper than it was 5 years ago. Sure, it’s not entirely filled with cards we used to love and play, but I remember when jund was over 2k to build. Or when snap was $80. There are cards from horizons that I don’t like, but overall it’s created a bunch of new archetypes. Plus the format is full of interactive/midrange decks now, where it wasn’t that long ago when everyone complained that modern was a “two ships in the night format” where it was just two people playing solitaire. Both horizons sets have created headaches, but overall I consider them net positives. Burn is also still a good (albeit less than before) entry level deck. At a recent double RCQ in my area, two burn decks met in the finals.
Free spells are a feels-bad, even if they’re not that powerful. Modern should be the format of fetchlands and no free spells. Also, if a card is too powerful for legacy, it’s too powerful for modern. Wrenn and Six is busted and Ragavan is one of the best creatures ever printed. A lot of the old cards on the banlist need to come off. It’s a just that cards like Ragavan can be legal, but artifact lands can’t. Artifact lands aren’t a problem in any format except pauper.
I think the idea that modern was created with the intention of allowing players to create decks and only make small upgrades over time is fundamentally false. The format was created to allow players to use older cards, yes, but there was never an intention for the format to only have small shakeups. I admit that its sad to see old, good cards become obsolete, but the format was also pretty boring for years. There were years in a row where the top decks were all relatively the same. If I wanted to make a midrange deck, it was always golgari goyf. Another huge factor was the excitement around standard. Standard is where Wizards actually makes their money from card purchases. If players arent excited for standard, then they wont buy packs. Standard was becoming massively underpowered in comparison to modern. So much so that there was hardly a point in buying new packs for modern players. They took a risk and increased the power of standard, but it was clearly a big mistake with Eldraine and Ikoria. I do agree with the price issue. Thats my biggest issue in modern right now. For some reason these chase mythics or rares are only being reprinted in select areas to maintain its expensive price tag. Its already horrible enough that fetchlands are expensive af, but I now need to spend 200$ for a playset of ragavan? Hell no
You should check out pre-modern. It is a closed format using sets from 4th edition to scourge (the pre-modern card frames) that will never have new cards and is everything that used to make modern fun (although with a different era of cards). The decks are still cheap although it is growing. My whole website is about the format if you are interested.
I got into mtg in 2006, when standard was kamigawa, coldsnap and ravnica 1. I lost interest and didnt have the money to play after morningtide came out. Ive tried to keep up with the game over the years and when modern was announced as a format that stores where going to support, i was elated. Almost all my decks were usable and there were cheap singles i could use to bolster them if i needed to that had been printed over the gap years. I quit again after JtMS was every deck. Ive still tried to keep up because u really enjoy the game. But design and development over the oast 6 or so years has gotten sloppy as hell and clearly lack playtesting before print.
I really like a comparison Nizzahon did back during Theros: Hero’s Downfall used to be a rare, a staple card, and worth the cost of 3 mana – now it isn’t anything but a slightly better Murder Power creep isn’t always a bad thing, but it has to be managed; Hoogak pushed things too far and needed to be remedied, but another card that gets touted as “has power creep gone too far” is Questing Beast Is that a card that’s been pushed too far, is the context of it being in standard whilst War of the Spark was available a justification, or is it a card that primarily just looks pushed? I don’t think Modern Horizons is a bad thing overall, but that cards like Hoogak are when Wizards can’t admit they screwed up – that’s the real dangerous part more so than anything else
Making the cost for multicolor decks higher and enabling more monocolor/tribal strategies as viable 40%+ winrate would significantly reduce the deck cost especially for entry level decks. $500 for a mana-base to play 4 or 5 color decks which enable you to play all the most expensive cards in one deck is clearly no healthy for the financials of the format even if it does enable a vast array of viable strategies to be played.
Magic Aids makes this point. Modern is a format where a sudden reversal with no signs showing is not allowed. Hence the argument against Splinter Twin, the old control combo that kept other more degenerate decks inline, while being relatively easy to beat. Now, due to so many free cards introduced into the format, all decks must play incarnations and the force series to remain competitive. Legacy was the format we can point to, and see what happens when decks play free cards that do not require any signals that a player has them. While it is fun to watch, it is a roller coaster of highs and lows, with a win happening in one turn, in most games. Modern was a more grindy format where decks won over several turns, and anyone can look at a board state, and know who was winning. The example given was an old burn game. If burn opens with guide, and swift spear. Then you know burn is winning on board. Tack on an eidolon, and you would believe burn has won the match, in old modern. Especially if the opponent only has one land over the three turns of the match. In current modern, an opponent with a single plains or swamp open, can evoke an incarnation, blink it, and the block the last creature. Effectively, removing all of burns progress and gaining enough life to equate to a burn card. Likewise, with so much great, any non-land targeting, removal, most decks struggle to keep a single non-land permanent on the board over two turns. To me, the only real way to fix the format, is to ban the incarnations, and unban splinter twin.
Personally looking forward to Mh 3, I mean I mostly play commander and dip back into my first love Legacy, but hey new cards are fun right? Joking aside modern as it was intended is so far removed from where it is now, nothing hurt more than seeing Mardu Pyro, my deck of choice on an mtg goldfish list of modern decks of the era, Its shame the new crap ruins what was historically fine and would have continued to be, but that doesnt make money so yeah.
Final thoughts feel about right. Modern being a format of forever decks and minor upgrades outside of meta shifts and cheap upkeep was the draw. Wotc recognizing they needed an eternal format free of the RL as a way to retain players when they lose interest in standard and the money treadmill. As modern grows, it feels like there might be some necessity for straight to modern cards just to massage the meta with things that shouldn’t go to standard, or Pioneer, and it would have been a good way to manage the expense of what should be reprinted win to provide accessibility and value. But Hasbro stock must go up and why not monetize a beloved format into the ground. Necessitate new cards, sell them at a premium, and shake up what built the audience in the first place. I’d love to play Modern but not for $1000 a deck with cards near exclusively from premium priced sets
i want a horizons 3 but have most of the top end be reprints that the format needs (mh2 and mh1 cards will be alot + fetches and such) and make the commons and uncommons interesting vs just “good” cards that you need to build around or with ( think cards like spreading seas) also if possible price the set normaly to a standard set to encourage people to buy and open it to hell. i stand by building blocks of decks should be cheap but finishers can be a little more expensive as buying the core of a deck (lands and removal) should be cheep to let people get in and tunning the deck to what end game would be more where the price ley.
i agree with this a lot, i started playing around the table with my dad at 7 or 8 and then when i was probably 12, this was around the 2 ravnica sets where modern started falling, i went to my LGS for the first time and then i started playing against people there at FNMs with my homemade green eldrazi deck with a bunch of random commons i thought were cool, me and my dad got stomped by goblins and burn over and over because that was the people there, but thought it was so amazing and made me love the game more and start getting into the game much more. I got into commander, kept playing and then the weekend after i win my first commander sunday event, COVID hits and I couldn’t afford a PC so i was stuck unable to play competitively for those couple of years. during that time, i continue to play around the table but i watched a lot of articles and researched the competitive scene a lot, built a boros blitz lumimancer deck when i saw a article of it and absolutely fell in love with it, and then a few months later modern horizons 2 hits. Around this time was when i started getting into webcam cEDH on my school computer which is what i mostly do now, and i was never able to play my blitz deck competitively until one day, the first FNM in forever i was able to go to happened, and that’s when the reality of this article struck for me. Modern was my favorite format from the beginning, me and my dad would play homemade essentially modern decks when i was little so i was used to 60 card, but my blitz deck just got stopped by dress down and evoke elementals and it was brutal.
Literally. I havent played competitve since 2018/2019 and all three of my decks–UW control, GDS, and Bant spirits–are completely unplayable. My bridgevine got banned bc they decided to print hogaak which made it way too strong and then Ur phonex got banned too. Now when I want to get back I cant without spending at least 300 despite have the tools to build five decks
Having a non-rotating format with budget in mind was an awesome idea, but WotC obviously didn’t make “enough” money from it. (whatever that means…) I still enjoy perusal you, websitefireball, etc playing modern, legacy and vintage, but I will never enter myself, due to the “upkeep cost”. And I think modern horizons 3 is inevidable… I have fun at MTG Arena in historic format (even as bad as it has gotten in terms of f2p) but a non-rotating format certanly helps. But since the playernumbers there are dropping rapidly, I think we will be back to “play magic online and pay money” or “get friends or a local games store and pay money” to play competative formats soon…
Fully agree. Well, not fully maybe. I’d say modern was also pretty great before 2018, with Eldrazi being a very brief mistake (it only lasted for one PT and change). I really, really, really dislike the MH sets. Both for the actual cards in them and for the concept behind them, along with the FIRE design philosophy of regular sets at the time. Almost all the old modern decks have been destroyed by now. Old staples like Goyf, Lilly and Snapcaster have been reduced to laughable junk rares. I still have my old burn deck which is fringe playable (upgraded with Canyons, an example of an acceptable card to introduce to modern), but I just don’t want to buy into new decks, for fear of having them get banned or made irrelevant with future releases.
I appreciate that Modern may have healthy gameplay now, but ultimately the price and rotating nature of the format forced me to sell out of the format and buy in to Pioneer. MH1 changed a lot in the meta, but it still felt like modern (kind of, I think despite Hogaak eating all the hate that W&6 is arguably the most problematic card of the set). MH2 ripped off the power creep band aid and made modern more closely resemble legacy. I’m not necessarily against rotating formats and changing card pools, but they need to be priced accordingly, and Horizons Mythics are absolutely not that.
The problem is not wotc printing new powerful cards but the cost said cards end up having on the secondary market. A play set of Ragavan costs probably more than a whole red burn/prowess deck. Same about that cycle of elementals. Heck even Seasoned Pyromancer has reached a value on the second market that just not reasonable. This greedy high value speculation on the cards on the secondary market pratice just generates a sort of Gatekeeping situation on the format, where if you dont have the money you are forced to play inferior / budget decks or dont play the format at all. On top of this, wotc knows there are very few things they can do about it, they cant regulate the price of the singles unless they start to sell singles themselfs. Hasbro wants the massive influx of profit and not the democratization of the game because they know there are massive whale’s collectors out there that will just simply buy the stuff at high prices, therefore they take advantage of this bad situation with the secondary market and just start selling high priced singles themselfs with all the “special colections” products such as “secret lair’s” and so on. Even the modern masters and horizons collections are sold as premium with less packs per box and higher value per pack which just contributes to the inflated value of mythic rares printed in such colections, and does very little to deflate the monetary value on the secondary market of high profile cards that end up being reprint such as fetch lands for example.
Moderns main appeal to me was always playing cards from a different era, not playing “too powerful for Standard” cards released today. It’s cool and everything that new cards lead to new decks for Modern, but that happened already before (see Hollow One). Modern Horizons is a big mistake, and tramples the legacy of the cards and decks that came before it. Unfortunately, I don’t think it’s going away and “Standard with a glossy coat of Modern painted over it” is here to stay.
I don’t see bans as a bad thing, if anything they should be more frequent. Whilst you mention players need to accept “a loss to their percentage points” if they don’t buy new cards they also need to accept that if they are chasing those few percentage points they risk a financial hit if their Ragavan or pitch elemental for instance gets banned. With that in mind how much healthier would the format look if WOTC did just ban all the pitch elementals and Ragavan?
Harry, as you pointed out nothing is stopping WOTC to print more Uro’s, Oko’s, Once upon a time, and more crap in standard sets. It’s not MH2 that’s the issue, i’s WOTC not caring. There was a article of Sam Black and Brad NElson I think about playtesting MH2. Rephrasing – Did someone test the latest version of Urza’s saga that was sent to the printers ? No…
At first i thought magic was out of their minds. Grief is still a little touchy. I’ve learned all they were trying to do is slow games down. Fury really shouldn’t be doublestrike, Grief should have only allowed one discard per evoke. But they had to make these cards hands down playable if they wanted everybody to list them. That was the intention btw.
You could argue that “golden age” of modern grew a little bit stale over time. I know that the money argument is there. But modern did go from having a stable deck to one that has more content. This change in use case is what a portion of the player base wanted and wants. Although targeting popular outrage is surely better for article clicks, it should also be considered that WOTC is actually doing what it’s customers want them to do. If you dont plan to go to any tournament the best investment might just be scrapping your ego and get a good color printer. I personally started only playing proxies a long time ago with my play group. I usually still spend about 50 bucks a month just on sleeves and ink. And that is more than enough for any hobby in my opinion. 1k for a deck? Insane. People need to get some perspective and buy some Gold for your rent and kids instead, srsly! .. just print lol
I’ve heard the opinion that we, the MTG player and content creator community, need to band together to fight against the greed and poor practices of Wizards (Case in point: Magic 30) and by doing so, reduce the average participation costs for insert your favorite format that isn’t Legacy or Vintage. My question is how? How would/could we, as a community of humans for a hobby game, do that? Banding together with enough people, enough purchasing and media power, to influence the card and general company choices that Wizards (Or Hasbro depending on who you ask) makes Is exceedingly difficult. There’s no worker’s union for MTG, and there’s no real unified opinion either. It’s true that a lot of players don’t like $1,000 decks, me included, but there’s a near equal number of players (factoring pure numbers as well as more enfranchised players with bigger wallets (and in Wizards’ minds company stakes)) that would argue that this is just the natural course of a hobby game, it gets more expensive as time goes on, and Wizards would be foolish to make one of their main marketing streams cheaper (from what I’ve seen based on general MTG content viewership statistics, Commander content buy-in-large rakes in the most views, followed by Modern, with Pioneer winning third). Trying to get a disunified set of hobbyists to band together for something inessential like their hobby is not going to lead to lower bars for entry and lower upkeep costs for your favorite formats. Not because it wouldn’t work, but because the idea itself is a non-starter.
Specifically on the price point you made, literally in the screen shot yoh showed of old modern decks cost similar amounts of money or even more (jund at 2k). I agree that being able to get cards from standard sets is useful, but if someone wants to enter modern and they didn’t play standard, such as if they came from edh, it is going to be the same price basically. Also burn is still good and cheap so I don’t know why you made that point.
Modern has officially fallen. It was waning but Modern Horizons 2 has finished ot man, the whole meta revolves around MH cards, always. There’s not a deck that doesn’t have at least one MH or LoTR card in it, you might go searching on MTG Goldfish right now or scryfall to prove me wrong, that you actually might find a deck without a card from those sets. I doubt it. Even if you would have to search for it, proving my point that the meta revolves around these sets, based on what Wizards feels like prinitng. Even then, the deck would probably contain some stupid standard card, like a companion or leyline binding or something similar. This is the problem, modern was supposed to be and was a solid format but with the printing of very powerful and downright just stupid cards (Uro, Oko, Once upon a time, field of the dead etc.) in standard and similarly powerful MH cards it has now become an abominaton. It is neither the old modern nor standard, it somewhere between, where it is affected by new sets being printed into it as much as standard and ironically unlike standard you cannot be like “I’m glad that rotated out.” Modern is essentially just now whatever MH has in it plus some modern cards and the OP standard cards. Guess why that is? Well all of those cards are expensive, also they are very necessary to play certain decks. You might think I am some 2018 boomer rambling here, you might be right, still even thought Eldrazi tron was annoying and dredge was strong (I hate dredge) as well as phoenix.
I think it’s totally fair to price people out of modern now that Pioneer exists. Modern now looks a lot more like legacy which is truly an unplayable format for many players due to the reserve list. During the « golden era » decks were still absurdly expensive. Fetchlands were 3x what they are now, tarmogoyf, lotv, bob, jtms were all over $100 – in this current modern format, not even ragavan has that price tag. Cool article and summary nonetheless! Loved the format of it
Never really played modern but almost each of your point can be made for legacy. It’s really a concern to me and a part of the community tgat our format has become a rotating one with each modern horizon set and some commander decks.. Fuck it, I hope it will stabilize. Not every player can afford nor enjoy this state of the game and it is everywhere.
I have liked some of the results from having modern horizons 1 and 2, but I do think it has to stop, and standard should be used to sneak in some new cards aiming to synergise well with older cards that were pushed out by modern horizons in order to bring them back. Think cryptic, snapcaster, path, lily, bitterblossom, arcbound ravager, and similars. MH3 right now would be a terrible idea.
MH1 (with the exception of Hogaak) really just added a lot of cool new tools to the format and expanded on the playable decks. MH2 created cards that were so good that not playing them is hard to justify. That being said, this golden age you’re talking about still cost tons of money to buy into. It might have been a bit cheaper overall, but not by a lot, really. Also, despite the heavy shift, I personally like the state of the format right now. Like any mtg format, it definitely has problems, but I think that it still creates fun and interesting games. Finally, I don’t want an MH3. Not for awhile anyway. Leave the format alone for a few years, then go ahead and shake it up if you must.
I do not want a modern horizons 3. Every modern horizons set so far has seen the increase of free spells (forces, evoke elementals). Is seems like these free spells are something wizards wants in modern. It’s not something I want in modern, this is what we have legacy for. Modern was fine when it was all the good cards from past standards. You don’t need to print cards specifically for modern. It defeats the purpose of modern to do so.
While doing chase mythics is a good way to extract money from existing competitive players, i think it’s a terrible long term plan. If you go to your LGS for the first time with a $50 jank deck, and get crushed by multiple $1000 decks, you’re just gonna quit and go play something else. Specialy if you realize those decks are gonna be useless in a year. I think the sweet spot is around an average cost of $400-500, with at least two or three tier 1-2 sub $200 decks. Wizards can print great non-mythic cards in the supplemental sets, and that could help a lot with the price.
I think wizards needs to chill with the printing of all these new sets. Too many cards entering all these formats. Fast for people to keep up. Also a forces them the have to make more powerful cards in every set, increasing the power level drastically throughout the years rather than a gradually happening
modern horizons should have only been reprints from old sets that were too powerful for standard but were right at home in modern. Edit: this article is now more relevant than ever, with LOTR: tales from middle earth being a soft MH3. i”ll say this Commander is king, Standard is dead, Pioneer is the new modern and Modern is the new Legacy
Yes, I would like a Modern Horizens 3, however, Modern Horizons sets shouldn’t come out every other year. Every 5 years would be great. Unban DRS please. The cost of modern is sort of wonky of a complaint, I remember Goyfs going for almost $400 a playset and same with fetchlands. Decks now that we all have fetch lands are very interchangeable with the manabase while gathering staples. The price tag isn’t as nuts as it could’ve been if fetches weren’t reprinted. Mana shouldn’t and interaction should be cheap, spells should be expensive they do everything we need them to do to win games
Cost to play the game has reached LUDICROUS levels of insanity. When you have to drop $1000 to be able to compete at a level that might get you top 10….. (Modern… heck top Standard deck right now is about $400, Pioneer runs you about $400… Commander CEDH $1000) This is just stupid costs… and the real issue is that the cards that make the cost so high.. are the staple cards that everyone really needs to make multiple decks work.. but have limited reprints or no reprints… WOTC has found a way to encourage price gouging and pay to win… You have investors who snatch up entire stocks of needed cards in formats.. inflating the costs of the decks and the cards.. NEW players are not going to play in ANY TOURNAMENTS.. MTG NEEDS TO REPRINT THE STAPLES… Especially the lands that have gotten out of hand in price. Cheaper cards… are GOOD FOR EVERYONE… Remember….. that Shivan Dragon is not on the Reserve list and while the Alpha and Beta versions can run you $4k-6k each… the reprints are as low as $0.20 SO lets not kid ourselves that investors would be harmed by reprints.. Original card values for older sets are always going to be valuable.
Once, magic was a game. Now, in my opinion, it’s more and more a stock game and sometimes you can play it as a boardgame. Don’t make me wrong, magic has always been an expensive game but now it’s so expensive that nobody want to start the game anymore. I didn’t say anything about commander once (oops…)
I most certainly do not want a modern horizons 3. Besides a handful of staple decks like tron and burn, almost everything in modern is either just MH2 the gathering, or it’s bad to the point of being unplayable. Whenever someone brags about making a new deck, a quarter of the deck is always just MH2 cards minimum.
MH1 and MH2 were super popular and successful products. However, there were indeed fails as a way to shake up format. Non rotating formats should be taken care of with minimum additions. These two products arguably ruined Vintage and Legacy as well. People are moving to other old school formats like 93/94 and its variants and maybe pre-Modern. I can’t wait to see how “MH3” LotR hits the format. If they manage to find the right balance to add new cards without killing the wallets and balance, sure. However, 100% it will be another cashgrab.
They’ve long since driven me away from Modern but even though I’m not invested in the format I would absolutely loathe another Modern Horizons. Truth be told though, it has ALWAYS been prohibitively and unreasonably expensive! No deck for any format should ever coast more than the price of it’s equivalent volume of cards in sealed product. I don’t believe that’ll ever be the case but pretending that it was ever an accessible format is dishonest! You could’ve bought a used car or gone on holiday for the price of building and maintaining a Modern deck!
So basically Ha$bro and WotC only care about short term gains and not a sustainable game…. It doesn’t matter anyways, Commander is the exclusive future of MtG and that format is completely unsustainable as the main format for MtG. Rule 0 will not keep it held together forever and it is not good for wotc with the extreme rise in proxying that it is causing. We need to go back to a standard first focus, where cards are made specifically for standard and only standard, then have 1-2 nonrotating formats and EDH that only get to use standard cards. Thats really the only long term sustainable model.
With almost no local meta still playing modern and almost no big tournaments I say modern is dead. MH2 and the removal of GPs killed it. Today we play legacy with proxy. Some of us own the cards some just print them. We have a great time and not a single euro will go into WotC pocket. Their greed brought this on them self. They killed modern, arena killed standard. The removal of GPs kill all competitive play. What we have now is a proxy casual community that will not spend a single euro for WotC products.