With the Modern Pro Tour coming up in February 2016, I wanted to take some time to talk about what I think would be a great way to make Modern a healthier format than it already is—banning Eighth and Ninth Edition from Modern altogether.
I’ll be going over the good, the bad, and the ugly so we can understand the pros and cons of this change to Modern.
The Good.
Blood Moon does not allow interactive games of Magic. One of the things Wizards wants to make sure of is that people have fun when playing Magic, and Blood Moon is the opposite of that. Wizards should want to promote having fun, interactive games and leaving Blood Moon in Modern does not incentivize playing those types of games.
The number one reason people believe that Blood Moon is good and healthy for the Modern format is because it “punishes greedy mana bases”. But let us be clear, that is not true. The decks that play Blood Moon the most are three color decks—Grixis Twin/Control and Temur Twin are the biggest offenders. On top of that, Affinity also plays Blood Moon when they only run one or two basics and some of their best wincons are Blinkmoth Nexus and Inkmoth Nexus. When decks like that are running Blood Moon, then it is not used to “punish greedy mana bases”. It is being used to create non-interactive games of Magic so they can effectively get a free win.
If you think the answer to this is “build a deck that doesn’t lose to Blood Moon” or “play more basic lands, you know Blood Moon is in the format” then you have to realize that Blood Moon is in fact a format-warping card. Wizards has banned format-warping cards in the past for a reason.
Choke is very similar to Blood Moon in the fact that is incentivizes non-interactive game play. Choke is used to punish blue decks and make their opponent not able to cast their spells or interact in the game.
Boil is the third offender from this set when it comes to endorsing non-interactive game play. Mass land destruction is not a mechanic that Wizards prints because it is not fun.
Summer Bloom is the enabler that allows Amulet Bloom to be able to have Primeval Titan swinging for lethal on turn two. There has been a lot of talk about banning a piece from the Amulet Bloom deck, and with the deck being able to breach the turn four kill rule, this would be the most ideal way to neuter the deck.
Ensnaring Bridge is a card that prevents a lot of aggro strategies that want to be played in Modern and Wizards has been known to try to push aggro strategies in constructed formats. Getting rid of this card would help them further that push and would also neuter decks like Lantern Control which tend to go to time and play long games because of the nature of their wincon. A lot of people have compared the Lantern Control deck to Eggs in the fact that it makes the games go very, very long.
The Bad.
The biggest issue with banning Eighth and Ninth Edition is the fact that it would destroy the Tron archetype by getting rid of the three Tron lands, Urza’s Power Plant, Urza’s Mine, and Urza’s Tower. With the new releases of Ugin, the Spirit Dragon, Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger, Void Winnower, and the new releases with the upcoming set, Oath of the Gatewatch, Tron is becoming more and more powerful. It has been gaining popularity with the addition of these cards in the past months, and is now approximately at 5% of the metagame.
The Ugly.
What to do about Mirrodin?
This is one of those issues that have stumped a lot of people. Mirrodin was printed in between 8th and 9th edition, so what do we do about it? Do we get rid of that too? Well, I think the answer is pretty easy. As we talked about before, Wizards made the decision to start at 8th edition for Modern for an arbitrary reason—they effectively closed their eyes and picked it. Now, if we just ban 8th and 9th Edition, we can instead say that Modern includes all “black, modern bordered cards and cards printed onward”. That makes it an easy way to explain what is in the Modern format and gives us a new starting point that also includes the Mirrodin block.
Conclusion.
There are a lot of interesting things to do to improve the quality of the Modern format. I personally believe that banning Eighth and Ninth Edition is the easiest and most streamlined way to change the format.
TLDR;
- Eighth and Ninth Edition have cards that are not conducive to the Modern environment,
- the pros of getting rid of Eighth and Ninth Edition strongly outweigh the cons,
- Wizards of the Coast chose an arbitrary starting point and there is no reason to not change it now.
If you have any questions about the article, or anything else MtG related, you can get a hold of me on Twitter, @kintreespirit.
Thanks for reading!
Lexie Mettler is a Level 2 judge from Fort Wayne, Indiana. By day she is a student, by night she streams MTGO and practices for tournaments all over the Midwest.