WARNING: In this video I share my opinion.

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.

Just reinforces the old adage: “the best thing wizards ever did for is forget it existed”

The last point you made is so right. We need to organize more and be a community of players.

The modern sets should have been staple reprints that already existed within the format. That way newer players could get their hands on the cards they wanted while the prices dipped, and the format wouldn't become soo warped.

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.

Power creep was present in magic before as well, but it was like over 5 years you can see a power increase, now you can see one with every new set. Nothing makes me more sad in games than insane power creep. A minor power creep is fine, but not what's currently happening

I been playin modern since 2013 and sold my collection valued at over 10k this year as the format was nothing short of an addiction trying to keep my decks relevant. We proxy decks with a color printer and play whatever decks we want for like 15 bucks each (Paper, sleeves, ink and deck box cost per deck) we have 40-50 decks and play whatever we want against eachother at home now.

I love that Gavin Verhey helped create Modern and the helped drive a stake in its heart. Good Job, Wizards/Hasbro!

Good take. A take a lot of the Magic community doesn't want to admit. Cards that were once considered fair in the format were suddenly axed because they didn't mesh well with the newer ones have driven a lot of players away. I am also one of those players.

Damn... When affinity, jeskai geist, E-tron, mardu pyro, jund, hardened scales, UW control were all the top decks. ..That was without a doubt the best era of modern.

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.

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.

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 seemed to be lost on them that if they got to play "for free" through risky speculation on thousands of dollars worth of cardboard (an activity that not everyone can afford even if they don't find such a requirement nauseating), it was only through being subsidized by their less-established and less-obsessed fellow players. Not only was there no solidarity between Magic players in the face of WOTC, but many people took conspicuous pride in exploiting newer and less experienced players for profit in the form of hoarding and inflating the value of cards. Basically, we've arrived in this place today because of the complacency of players who already bought in, and their contempt for players who had not yet bought in. I hope at least some of these guys have, in the last few years of WOTC's most money-grubbing stunts yet, learnt their lesson somewhat about the ways companies will stab you in the back if you actively help them shoot down pro-consumer voices.

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.

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. And yes, most of the people playing in our LGS have been playing Modern before MH-sets. However, as Harry stated in the video, current policy of WOTC seems to battle against Moderns original meaning and reason why it was created in the first place. While I agree that overpriced mythics with insufficient reprints are a huge problem for the health of the game in general and, at the moment, mostly for Modern and EDH, I bring myself to disagree with people that seem to justify the criticism towards Modern with the price tag it has. Yes decks are less affordable, but shouldn't the criticism then be towarded against WOTC's reprint policy instead of the formant and most importantly players of the format. I've seen incredible amount of hate towards people who play 4cc/4c elementals, Scam, any deck with Ragavan or W6 in them just in general, just because they play the best cards (or how I believe the most expensive ones). I've not heard that such hate have occurred towards Tarmo-players when it was 150€+. Also I'm not seeing such hate against for example Hammer even tho it has been arguably the best Modern deck for a while, at least in Modo. So this bring to my main point. Every format is rotating format. Power creep is inevitable. People make mistakes, were they cards that slipped thru playtest (Oko) or greed (Hasbro), which accelerates power creep. But will it justify the hate? No. Will it justify constructive criticism towards Wizards, not players? Yes. All one can do is adapting the metagame and finding new ways to have fun. Find new deck archetypes, explore other formats, create custom events for your local players, for example Modern as it was 2015. If you just sit still and only cherish the old instead of cherishing both the new and the old you just find yourself being bitter. Sorry for the long comment. There's so much more I'd like to say and compare different viewpoints, find and tell arguments for and against current and past Modern, tell my own experiences and analyze the overall metagame, community, decks, power creep etc before and now, it won't fit in a KZfaq comment in any sensible way. Also this comment in most likely being read by 6 people till the end and 4 of them disagree with me and of those 2 tell me they did stuff with my mother so I find discouraging to use any more energy for this. Anyways I am open for discussion in replies if someone wants to. Always glad to exchange opinions and find new opportunities to discuss about the game (and format) that I love with people who, I hope, share the same passion as me.

As a former modern player back until mh1 came out. I swapped to pionner since they announced it and didnt look back, i do miss the golden years of post eldrazi winter modern. And i live in constant fear of a pioneer horizons, as i feel the format is great and cam grow organically over the next year.

How much I needed someone to say this! This is pretty much my case and I supose from many others. When mh1 came out I was pretty excited too, but toghether with the power creep modern started to feel like a rotating format, a very expensive rotating format...

Your choice of animation for this video is amazing! Well done!

The Opal Ban is what killed it for me. Dropped the format and never looked back. Luckily they started focusing on Commander, and now they're killing that as well lol.

Harry, you continue putting out the best MTG content! Truly great video! I really agree with your opinion and hate the thought of MH3.

Great video! It’s been fascinating watching modern evolve.

My local gamestore created a new format (common/uncommon singleton $15 max per card). It has been doing great the past month and brings life to all the bulk cards people have.

Great question! Very thought provoking. I don't see an end. Wotc has a parent company who is pressing on the gas and I don't see a stop in sight! Well done!

Not only the money and the cost of MH1, but also the 2 MH sets forced an artificial rotation to a format built on the appeal of non rotation.

I agree with you. 2018 was the golden age of Modern. I really enjoyed that year. At first I thought Modern Horizons was cool because it was something new and exciting, but now I think it is a mistake.

the issue is that they actually tried to grow the player base, but didnt manage to do so, and their advisory group just threw the option of extracting value before the inminent death of the game so they took it.

I used to go to modern twice a week at my LGS, now they don't even fire anymore because everyone has switched to pioneer

I played modern from the moment it came out and this video 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 video. Keep grindin' those games.

I think you’re right about the power creep. It sells cards though, so they can’t stop. They have two choices to keep creeping in Modern: more free spells, or find a way to invalidate the old free spells

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.

Very good production value, thanks for the entertainment and brain power!

It seems like the supplemental sets seem to become more and more of a cash grab. It makes me hope that the new heritage format idea gets more traction.

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!

Cool video, I think you could easily let more exploratory videos like this go a bit longer to really dig into the issues.

For the algorithm, keep at it Harry!! Love the content!

amazing video as always Harry. i was there at GP barca and didnt play against a single Hoogak in the Trial and main event ^^ lucky me

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.

Welp, Modern Horizons 3 is coming later this year. May the lord have mercy on our souls.

Great video. 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 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.

Right now the closest thing we have to old school Modern is Pioneer... So I guess it's just a matter of time before Pioneer Horizons becomes a thing

I do want a Modern Horizon's 3, and by that I mean simply a set that allows older cards to be rotated into Modern (And not cards specifically made for the format).

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 watching some announce video of all the upcoming products that included Street Fighter cards, some other set printed into Modern directly, etc. I started unsleeving before the video ended and cashed out. It was the right decision.

Great, looks like HarryMTG is back on the menu!

Hasbro forgot that the appeal of an eternal format was that it was eternal

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".

The only difference between Standard and Modern these days is that Modern allows for cards specifically made for Modern. Otherwise Standard is based on the last THREE YEARS of sets. That’s fucking INSANE for new players to play into.

Feels inspired by the rystic study videos. I like it.

EDH I going through the same thing. Commander is a rotating format now. Gotta keep the stock up.

Getting hacked is a miserable experience, hope you'll pull through it. Love your vids btw

do more vids like this, this is great

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 just came back to Magic after not playing for only 2 years or so. The modern meta was awesome and perfectly paced. Now everything is too quick, powerful, and expensive. Competitive play on MTGO is absolutely saturated with Urza's Sagas, Ragavans, and those ridiculous elementals (Fury, Grief, etc.)

This video format is very good! I really liked.

More videos like this one please!!!!!

I got into Magic via Modern, bought the Modern Event deck, upgraded it and even went to a tournament with it. Now, I won't touch that format, because I don't really want to see, who can stick a Ragavan the earliest.

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 agree and that's why I only play Paper: it's an eternal format with a wide arrange of strategies and card available, but it's super affordable and even if your deck is hit by bans or power-creeped by new cards, the cost of upgrading to the new tier 1s is what? 30-50$?

Great video, I don't want a MH3 at all, but we already know that we're getting one with the LotR set too

Great Channel!

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.

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 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.

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.

Good Video! 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.

Interesting catching this video today. I was thinking wouldn't it be nice to have a format without the sets printed just for modern...

Like that the jund picture is Wrenn and Six for a tournament in 2012. 😅

Regardless of if we, the players, want it or not we *are* getting Modern Horizons 3 with the release of Universes Beyond: Lord of the Rings.

I am thinking about switching to pioneer. But will they print pioneer horizons at some point?

Beautiful video, I wish I had seen it when it came out. The only thing I disagree with is faithless looting. To me it always felt like a long time coming. It felt like red brainstorm to me for a long while.

I miss the old tournaments that would be streamed. I used to watch the Grand Prix after a long day while serving in the military. 😢

_'Do I want a Modern Horizons 3?'_ Yes. Commander can always use more cards!

Sick vid 👏👏

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 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

Uro wasn't quickly banned, it stayed for a whole year if memory serves me right. It was milked for money for as much time as possible before any action was taken. They waited until *after* they released a secret lair version of the card before banning it.

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...

What "song" is playing at 1:38?

God I miss playing Gifts Storm and having it not be a fringe deck

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…

I've had to quit, not because I want to but because I can't afford it, and if I work more to afford it I have no time to play

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 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.

Post Uro + Field of the Dead ban, Pre MH2 was peak Neo-modern. No monkey, no incarnations. Just look at the kinds of decks played between February 16th 2021 and June 17th 2021.

old modern truly was good times. so many viable decks that didn't put you in the poorhouse.

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).

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.

Would be good to revisit this after mh3 and a PT. Maybe even now since lotr did change a lot of the format in terms of staple cards.

I remember seeing Ragavan at MH2 release and thinking, how long till this card gets banned. Guess that day never came 😅

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.

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.

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.

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

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)

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.

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.

What's funny is Harry himself made a video, maybe inadvertedly, showing the way to counteract the modern horizons effect only 33 videos ago...

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 have an idea. Instead of printing the 30th aniv proxy’s for $1K, instead wizards should just print $1K Modern precons .Modern Challenger deck??