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I feel pretty good, because I think the most ironic thing I said in preparation of the Modern event deck was "I will be surprised if there isn't at least 1 Marsh Flats in there." If I had gotten a little cockier, I'd feel silly right now.
And make no mistake, there was some cocky talk on the interwebs. I saw one exasperated reddit poster essentially lose it and unload a "Why are you people so convinced there won't be any fetches in the Modern Event Deck?!?" and I saw speculation the ranged from 1 Marsh Flats to 3 and even included people saying the deck might include a Misty Rainforest or Scalding Tarn for splashed off-colors. You couldn't make this up.
Even I was convinced that the unbanning of Bitterblossom coincided too conveniently with the announcement of the deck and that the 2-sided token was a 1/1 human for Elspeth on one side and a 1/1 Faerie for Bitterblossom on the other. Bitterblossom's price went way up for no reason, and a reprint would bring it back down. The list was announced tonight on the Mothership.
4 Caves of Koilos
2 City of Brass
4 Isolated Chapel
5 Plains
4 Swamp
1 Vault of the Archangel
4 Windbrisk Heights
2 Soul Warden
3 Tidehollow Sculler
3 Honor of the Pure
2 Inquisition of Kozilek
4 Intangible Virtue
4 Lingering Souls
3 Path to Exile
4 Raise the Alarm
2 Shrine of Loyal Legions
4 Spectral Procession
1 Sword of Feast and Famine
3 Zealous Persecution
1 Elspeth, Knight-Errant
Sideboard
2 Burrenton Forge-Tender
2 Dismember
3 Duress
2 Ghost Quarter
3 Kataki, War's Wage
3 Relic of Progenitus
WOW. If I worked at WoTC and saw the tweets where people were arguing about how many copies of Marsh Flats and Fetid Heath would be in the deck, I would work on lynch mob-proofing my house in preparation for the announcement.
This deck has some value, but no one is going to pay $75 to play with this, are they? If your FNM is Modern, you still don't stand a chance with this deck. If you play this you can probably beat reasonably loose Standard decks, but this isn't cutting it. I don't see these selling well and, luckily, I don't see these upsetting too many prices. Caves of Koilos may take a beating, but I'll file that under "Who cares?"
All in all, the hype that built up around this product was bound to lead to disappointment. Those who went to bed with visions of a playset of Elspeth, Knight-Errant and Marsh Flats were going to be let down by anything less. Might I submit that someone who literally could not have cared less about this product for anything but a "how will this impact prices?" perspective still managed to be disappointed?
Real talk, this totals far above $75 and while a lot of the value is in small stuff, that may actually help the prices stay up. This isn't flooding the market with Elspeth nor is it flooding the market with Path to Exile. The sword, the Elspeth and the sideboard goodies may help take the sting out of the feeling of "we were promised jetpacks" that people feel right now even though that was pure invention on their part. We'll see what this does to prices.
“[at FNM] you still don’t stand a chance with this deck. If you play this you can probably beat reasonably loose … decks, but this isn’t cutting it.”
Have these people never seen an event deck before? This is perfectly in line with every other event deck ever. I’m glad at least SOMEONE else realized that the people expecting fetches, thoughtseizes, or (lol) fully-formed 75s straight from the latest gp top eight had their heads completely ensconced in one or more rectums.
This is pretty close to a reasonable BW token deck, but needs a lot of work. I don\’t think Path to Exile and Kataki were holding people back from breaking into Modern, it\’s the mana base and Thoughtseizes and shit this deck needs to start to resemble a real list that are an issue.
It\’s not that people wanted this deck to be insane, it\’s that people wanted this deck to remove a barrier to modern. People are claiming this does that, but does it really? I think people saw a $75 price tag and expected a lot more \”commander\’s aresenal\” and a lot less \”FNM deck\”. This is technically a deck, true. It\’s just that it solves the easy half of the barrier to entry problem and doesn\’t solve any of the other problems that a deck with fetches in it would solve.
From the perspective of a very casual player who wouldn’t mind getting to tinker with Modern, there is no way I would buy this product as a gateway into Modern. I did not share the ridiculous expectations of many people- event decks have always been little more than passable FNM fare and I didn’t expect anything different this time- but I did figure there would be one ‘bomb’ in the deck, be it one copy of Bitterblossom, a single fetch land, or something else. One sword doesn’t cut it IMO. As stated above, people wanted this product to help begin removing the barrier into Modern, even if it only provided 1-2 of the ‘big’ pieces of the puzzle. Paths, Lingering Souls, Dismembers, etc… we casuals can access those without them being reprinted in an event deck. But I’m not gonna spend $75 on a deck that contains only some of the ‘small’ pieces of the puzzle and probably can’t even hold its own at my kitchen table.
On the bright side, that’s $75 I’ll save this month 🙂
As value goes, it isn’t bad. There are some welcome reprints here (Inquisition of Kozilek being the main one), and Standard players who weren’t around for ROE or NPH will find a lot to like. Really though, it’s only useful as a catch up tool for players who started with Theros. Anyone who has been playing since RTR has either made the decision to jump to Modern or chosen to stick with drafting or Standard. The former will already have the low hanging fruit that this deck contains, whereas the latter have no use for it.
It will control prices on some otherwise runaway uncommons, but probably won’t budge any rares. Mostly though, the largest sin it commits is being boring.
Most of the cards in there have been reprinted lately or were not needed for a modern collection.
My bigest problem with this deck for new players is that they will pay $75, go to a modern tournament, loose to everything and end up with a bunch of untradable/useless cards. Seriuously who will trade Elsphet 3rd reprint or this bad sword?
Additionnaly, you can’t build another modern deck with those cards (except soul sisters but you need to add a lot) so you are stuck with the weak token strategy. This deck will never be good, even if you add $250 of cards in it.
All in all, the value is in cards that nobody needs or cards that were already widely aviable. I don’t understand the choices that were made by wizards.
For those complaining about how much money they would need to plow into the deck to bring it up to a serviceable level, it’s actually less than you think! Mind you, I don’t know how to actually play the deck (not that it’s an overly complex deck; I just have a hard time not sleeving up any Islands), but I know how to look up winning lists and how to look up prices.
http://www.hipstersofthecoast.com/2014/05/hope-eternal-march-budget-modern-decks/
I’m considering buying around 10, not only for profit from the cards, but for the special edition box and sleeves. These should sell $15-20 don’t you think?