For any magic the gathering players here, you have probably all played standard, commander, modern, and possibly played a little legacy, vintage or tiny leaders. And also lets not forget sealed events(which are the most balanced, but I'll write on that in a different article)
Modern is the closest thing we have to being the most equal and diverse format we have.
I'll start with standard. We all have played, some people, it's how the first got into magic then began to broaden their knowledge of the game and begin to join other formats. I rejoined in magic, and learned about standard and commander. I was spending tons of money buying, trading, opening packs, etc. to try and find that perfect standard deck that nobody ever thought was possible. Sometimes, I made a good deck, went 3-1 or 4-0 at my local gaming store for FNM or other standard nights. Other times, not so successful and I ended up dropping 100$ to 200$ to make this deck that was garbage. Mind you it did help me build a nice collection, but at an outstanding financial hit to my bank. Standard is a format that(especially now) you have 4 main decks(2 of which are making close to 45% of the meta) and that's how it usually is. You have 2-3 powerhouse decks that everyone plays(especially net deckers). Not to say net decking is a bad thing(it's how I started to get my feet wet again). With this, if you play one of those 4 decks you will almost always have a mirror match when going to tournaments, and it becomes a boring format since all you will see close to 50% of the time is the same decks over and over and over again at tournaments. Not to mention a year later those decks are more then likely non-existent and you now how to rebuild and buy another deck.
It comes to an age old questions, which is more taxing, modern or standard. In my opinion, standard is. Average standard deck cost 204$(took average price of top 8 most played decks from MTG goldfish)Now chances are a lot of those cards will carry over to a new deck in the format, but eventually they will rotate out. So lets say every rotation you need to purchase another 100$ of cards that you are missing. So now(with the new format) every year you will spend 100$ for cards that you will have for a little, will be valuable for the time they are legal in standard and then once rotation, they or more often then not, no longer valuable since they are not played in any other format.
So with these reasons, I no longer play standard. I find it just eats up money with no longer term gain.
Commander is an entirely different beast. It is the other most common way for people to get into magic. You go buy 100 card pre-contructed deck, find a group of friends and go at it. Now if you are just playing friendly commander, then it is not a very expensive format(depends on you friends) some have the original dual lands, with time warp, and the preators etc. going against someone who just bought the pre-constructed deck from online. More often then not its an unfair match, but from my personal experience you can do this and over time you can be competitive with that pre-constructed deck. Or even put 20$ into it and make it that much better and have a more direct line of attack. We all this being said, I believe commander is simple meant for new people to learn a bunch of cards and be a friendly night of magic with friends and beers(or pop). I do not believe that it is competitive format in the grand scheme. Yes there is commander tournaments, but the people that go there I find are a completely different breed of magic players. As in a lot of them are very argumentative about rulings, judges are called all over the place(more then a standard or modern event) and just turns into an argument rather then a fun game(I wasn't in at the time, but I have heard of the "dark" times in magic). But if you goal is to just play with some friends an be slightly competitive and you have no plans to be going into big tournaments, then commander is that format for you.
I have not played legacy or vintage very much but the only thing that stands out in those format is $$$ and a lot of it. You can make a legacy deck out of the shock lands instead of the dual lands for money reasons, but they are the only expensive part of the deck. If you extra cash saved up with nothing to do with it and enjoy magic, legacy or vintage has the most wide range of decks that are competitive and the only decks you may face more then once at the tournament are the grixis delver decks.
Now for the reason I started this post, MODERN!
In my opinion and a lot of other people (going with 75-80%) I have talked with, game shop owners, standard all the way to vintage players that play modern as well, they agree modern is the most well balance format out there. I going to explain this too you.
Price. It is a hard it I will admit that, average modern decks cost 780$(using same method as i did for standard). But its not as painful to our banks as legacy or vintage. And the cards will not lose value year to year. Yes they will go up and down, but unless the reprint it again, mox opal or karn are changing price anytime soon. So you now have cards that you can keep for life that will not change price, or at least drop.
Diverse. According to MTG goldfish, the most popular deck is affinity sitting at only 6.78% of the meta and according to mtgtop8.com death shadow is only at 8%. Compare that too standard with temur going 23% on goldfish and 33% on top8. You have more decks, less chance of running into the same deck twice in a tournament. Well this makes it difficult because you have to prepare a sideboard for almost anything, it makes it more interesting and less of an "oh another one of you guys" decks. I just add that delver makes up 17% of vintage on goldfish and 12% on top8.
Larger Tournaments. Well this one can be argued, I say there are more competitive modern players in the world than any other format. Standard has the most casual players. When you go to FNM at your local store, depending on town size, there is usually 2-3times as many players as on modern nights. But if you ask them how many play competitive magic and will go to an SCG tournament or a Grand Prix, maybe 1/3 will say yes or that they would like to. When you go to modern night, all of them will go to the closest tournament when it comes around.
Equal Chances. I find that any deck in modern an beat any other deck. You can take bogles(makes up 1.5% of format) and put it against affinity or death shadow and each deck has equal chances of winning. Where as you take temur energy and put it against B/U control, temur has high percentage of winning. You can build a deck specifically to beat mono red aggro and temur energy, but then if you match against another deck, you are on the short end of the stick.
Well there you have it, my little rant on why I believe modern if the best overall format. Remember these are all my own personal opinion. Everyone has their own reasons why one format is better then another, these are mine.
Comment on if you believe that I am right or not, or which format you believe to be the funniest and best overall, would love to hear other peoples points of view on this.
Thanks for read and until next time, may you always have a nut turn in game 1 ;)
