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Sep 6, 2011 -- 6:03PM, makochman wrote:

Sep 6, 2011 -- 8:06AM, S1AL wrote:

This is false. Modern is SIGNIFICANTLY less expensive than Legacy

That much is true... but not very relevant. Modern is already affecting the prices of Mirrodin-onwards staples much more than Legacy, and there's little to suggest it won't catch up with Legacy... in maybe 6-12 months I would say. It's enough that 'Goyf won't be banned, Jace will likely get unbanned, neither will be reprinted of course, so many decks will cost at least $800 owing to these two alone. Legacy used to be significantly cheaper as well, until around 6 months ago.

Aside from the fact that you just listed the two MOST expensive cards (potentially) in the format, which are about normal price for Legacy staples, there's always the fact that either one may, in fact, be reprinted in some form. MaRo has already said that 'Goyf is a potential Standard reprint.

Truth is, I'm giving it better-than-even odds that 'Goyf is reprinted in Dark Ascension or Set 3 of the block.

Here's the reality: The mose expensive competitive Modern decks are still about the same price as the cheapest tier-2 Legacy deck (Merfolk, which is $600+ for a proper list). 

Sep 6, 2011 -- 6:38PM, S1AL wrote:

Truth is, I'm giving it better-than-even odds that 'Goyf is reprinted in Dark Ascension or Set 3 of the block.

Here's the reality: The mose expensive competitive Modern decks are still about the same price as the cheapest tier-2 Legacy deck (Merfolk, which is $600+ for a proper list). 

I agree, Goyf will probably be reprinted.  It's really the only card in Modern that is going for the price of Legacy staples, but that's because it IS a Legacy staple.

I just looked at a price site.  The top 4 Modern decks at Philly had an average cost of about $760 using the HIGH prices.

Looking at the top 4 decks of the last Legacy event posted on the same site, the average cost of the decks was about $1450 using the LOW prices.

That's a pretty wide gap in prices.  Combine that with probable reprints for any staples that get out of hand, and Modern should remain vastly cheaper than Legacy.  And there is no way they un-ban Jace, TMS.  They do not WANT to reprint Jace.  The whole point of the new Modern format was to have a non-rotational set where all of the cards could be reprinted if they wished. 

Sep 6, 2011 -- 8:02PM, supa_tim wrote:

Sep 6, 2011 -- 7:02PM, S1AL wrote:

In other words, a bunch of 8-16 person groups who didn't have a single idea of what was going on can't compare to 400 pro or semi-pro players working to break a format.

This is exactly it.

When Legacy split from Vintage we had the Source....and that's it. Vintage, honestly had already been extremely streamlined, and remains so today (thanks to things going as far back as the Dojo and continuing today on The Mana Drain). There isn't a whole lot of innovation there because there just isn't room for it. It had reached that state (or just about reached it) by 2004. Legacy was a breath of fresh air from Vintage because of that. There wasn't a lot of dicussion about it besides here and the Source, and for a long time the metagame was up in the air. The format was wide open and it felt wide open.

Modern was supposed to do the same thing. Except it never actually felt wide open. It was never given a chance to be when you make the pros play it. They aren't going to bring their jank pet deck to the pro tour because they have some sort of nostalgic attachment to it and there is finally a format they can play it in.

So, yeah. Modern is successful, I guess, insofar as it does provide an alternative to the other eternal formats. And it has the people who can't afford duals and FoW, etc. excited. But there is no mystery behind it, which is what made Legacy so much fun when it started. It felt like the old days of Magic, when things weren't about statistics and the next chase mythic. Modern feels like a format specifically about those sorts of things.

Meh, I'm just droning on like some disenfranchised geezer pining for the simpler times.

This is simply the effect of of the internet on all competitve games, be they card games or video games. The internet accelerates discovery and sharing of information, and things like Magic Online, and adding net play to fighting games gives you access to a competitve playground at any time to test things.  I see the same types of comments on Shoryuken.com regarding fighting games that took the better part of a decade to completely figure out in the past, are now craked in a ocuple of months.  There will never be slow development of the meta in any competive game ever again.