Mat Bimonte: Maligning Modern
Lightning Bolt (and Lightning Bolt and Lightning Bolt) you! Cast Restoration Angel, target Kiki-Jiki! Equip Cranial Plating to Etched Champion, attack!
I know, I know, you love Modern. That’s cool, and I can respect that. However, I’m here 
to tell you why your favorite format is miserable to play at a competitive level, and why I hate the format in general.
First of all, I’ve had some success in Modern with Splinter Twin, Burn, and Grixis Delver. I love casting old cards that I never got the chance to play while they were in Standard. Lightning Bolt, Path to Exile and Mana Leak are all cards I’ll probably never get to cast in a Standard. Lots of fun? Sure. But I basically don’t do anything within Magic for “fun,” so that thought is irrelevant to me, especially at the competitive level.
Why do I think this format sucks? Let me count the ways:
Phyrexian Mana
Why are these cards even legal in the format? If you’ve never cast a Gitaxian Probe I implore you to try it. Paying two life to know what you’re playing around the entire game is just one of the worst mechanics ever created. I’m not entirely sure what Wizards was thinking when they decided to print these cards, but the Phyrexian cost mechanic is game breaking, and the fact that you can “splash” these cards in any deck is truly infuriating. They enable some of the most busted things in the format to happen at a very low cost.
Fast Mana
“Mat, the Phyrexian cards aren’t so bad, there is a real cost — life — associated with playing them.”
Fine, you got me, but how do you explain this?
Do you know what happens when new sets are released? The very first thing I do is try and see if there is a card I can accelerate into and abuse with the little mana monkey pictured above. The problem with cards like Simian Spirit Guide and Mox Opal is that they prompt you to play the game in an unfair way. Now I’m not saying everyone should be sleeving up Jund vs. Abzan so we can sit through midrange mirrors all weekend long, but someone should be taking a long hard look at these cards existing in a competitive environment.
Please don’t get me started on Urzatron lands. These things produce all kinds of problems. Yeah, I understand the Timmys of the world want to be casting giant Eldrazi a la kitchen table Magic, but I’m confident that is where these lands need to be relegated to. Want to know why?
Another card I’ve felt compelled to register because of just how much Valakut, Tron, and Amulet Bloom were in the format at one time. This card is the definition of zero fun, and creates all kinds of miserable situations throughout tournaments.
With all of that said, I believe Magic was a much simpler time during New Phyrexia and when some of these other cards were printed, so I’m willing to give Research and Development (if it existed then) a pass on these cards being printed. But for competitive balance, we need to be taking a look at whether they should still be in the format.
Delve Cards
Now I just said Magic was a simpler time back then, and WotC might not have thought that tournament Magic would explode as much as it has in the past few years. But surely they knew this was a problem by the time Khans of Tarkir block rolled around, right?
I’m leaving off a few of the Modern-playable Delve cards such as Logic Knot and Murderous Cut, because nobody is abusing their deck solely to play those two cards. But I’m sure many of you, including yours truly, have been mauled by Become Immense more than a handful of times.
“Eh, what’s the worst that could happen, there’s no way people can find room to play all of these cards together…” Famous. Last. Words. Remember above when we talked about Phyrexian cards being too busted for the format? Well Delve and Phyrexian mana go together like peas and carrots as Forrest Gump would say. It’s no surprise that when we pair two of the most game breaking mechanics together we find ourselves with two of the best decks in the format being Infect and Death’s Shadow Aggro.
The Pairings Lottery
I’ve already discussed a minimum of five decks that are fairly well positioned on any given weekend in Modern. People always like to use the “Tier” measurement when it comes to formats, and while I have no definitive tier list because I think that accomplishes zero in a format as wide open as Modern, I can tell you off the top of my head I can think of these decks: Burn, Tron, Affinity, Death’s Shadow Aggro, Infect, Jund, Abzan, Merfolk, Kiki Chord (or whatever Jeff is calling it this week), Bogles, Jeskai Nahiri, Dredge, Bant Eldrazi, R/G Valakut and Ad Nauseam.
I’m sure I’ve missed plenty of outliers, but I just listed 15 decks. Currently in every constructed format we are granted — you guessed it — 15 sideboard slots. Now if I was a true miser I would have one sideboard card for every deck in the format and be invincible, right?
Here’s what actually happens in Modern. I’ll use the invitational from a couple weeks ago as a perfect example. Like most people I go into a tournament expecting a specific metagame. What I decided was that there was going to be a lot of Tron to counter Jund, a lot of Dredge because that was the flavor of the week and looked pretty busted, and a lot of R/G Valakut because it looked like a foil to all of the decks listed above. While my speculation might’ve been correct (we don’t receive Day 1 metagame numbers for many reasons) my pairings went a little something like this: Burn, Burn, Abzan Company, Jund. Not exactly what I wanted to see when I was running Infect.
I want to use those same pairings and assume I was playing Kiki Chord. I could have likely went 3-1 or better as I would’ve found more favorable pairings for the deck I decided to register for the tournament.
This is what Modern has become in a nutshell, and why the pairings lottery is so important. Having a small amount of sideboard slots for such a wildly diverse metagame makes deck selection and sideboard selection very difficult as you could go all day without bringing in those three Grafdigger’s Cages you packed.
Questions vs. Answers
A lot of Magic deck building theory is based on who is asking the questions (threats) vs. who has the answers (removal/counterspells). If you’ve read even a single line of this article you can tell the decks asking the questions are at a huge advantage right now. Jund has a pretty decent mix of questions and answers, which is why it is one of the better things you can be doing if you like 50/50 Magic, but where are the control decks to keep combo decks in check?
The closest thing we have to a control deck currently is Jeskai Nahiri, which barring a few results looks pretty lackluster. While Mana Leak and Remand do a decent job of keeping things in check, with no clock (minus the Nahiri/Emrakul combo) or hard counters, you’re just trying to keep your head above water until you’re finally dragged under. Is Counterspell too powerful for the format? Possibly, but Ancestral Vision was unbanned and I always joke that the card would be better as a basic Wastes most of the time in the decks I’ve registered it in. I’m not sure what the answer is to the problem, but I feel like the format in general would benefit from a solid hard control deck.
The Future of Modern
I’m not entirely sure what I want out of Modern anymore. All I know is that the format seems very flawed to me, and that happens given the vast card pool we are allowed to register. It’s one of the many reasons I have a disdain for playing Legacy as well, but Legacy at least has Force of Will to keep the degenerate stuff somewhat in check.
All I know is that I’m far less pleased to be playing Modern than I am to be sitting down at a Standard tournament nowadays, and I hope a broad change to the format will happen soon. But with Modern at a peak in popularity, I don’t see that happening anytime soon. So in the meantime enjoy your 3 turns … if you get them.
Mat Bimonte first picked up the game during Theros block, but already has a Modern 5K championship under his belt, as well as a number of smaller Standard tournament wins. Based out of Bloomington, Ill., Mat is a regular on the SCG Tour, with future aspirations of qualifying for the Pro Tour.
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