This is false and fails to explain the popularity of different formats. First because the playerbase is growing, which means it is actually a positive-sum game.

Second, I believe that the main reason for having different formats is that each of those occupy a different market space and appeal to different kinds of players. If you make the hypothesis that player preference are asymetrical, a new format doesnt necessarily imply a loss for other formats. It can also help grow the playerbase if it appeals to player types that were satisfied by neither format beforehand.

If Wizards officially embraces Frontier who will define what will or could be banned? Will be Wizards, the community or Hareruya store?

Besides all the price, brew paradise and everything else if Frontier becomes a official format I don’t believe that Wizards will keep an eternal format without any ban list. And even before things get real who could determine a ban list? Hareruya? Players from USA, from Japan, from somewhere?

Even inside Frontier some players say that frontier should have a ban list with fetch lands. Hareruya says that frontier will not have a ban list but if players do not agree what could be done? Because there is no serious format where a LGS says “we will not play with ban list here” but other LGS says ” we will play Frontier but with a ban list”.

I’m not against Frontier just want to know how far will it go. I’m worried because some people are just selling it as a cheaper format and how wonderful it is. Any casual format is cheap before It becomes official and metagame gets solved. See how cheap was Liliana of the Veil before Modern official release.

No matter what format you play staples will always be expensive (most of them) even in Pauper. Magic is a game that could be as much expensive as you want. You don’t need to play a tier 1 to succeed and play with expensive cards to “have fun”. No matter what format you play you could have fun at any cost and sometimes be competitive with a good budget brew. You just need to know your priorities and how much you want to spent is this hobby.

People should not sell Frontier for it’s prices but for It’s card pool.

Magic can’t handle too many formats. I think it’s very understandable that people will continue to try to make new ones. But enough already. If you divide the community too much it will eventually fall. Anyone who plays MtG at their LGS is motivated to go there because there’s others there playing. If you thin out the crowd there will be a decline because with less people at the event it isn’t as fun to attend. Then it’ll decline even further.

This will eventually cause the heat death of MtG. I don’t think people understand this or they don’t care. Standard stale? What do you think Frontier would be? Rally, CC, Rhino, Jace. Don’t make me laugh.

🙁

Totally agree with the article here. Risk of fragmenting player base is real – im sure most people have seen an fnm where the draft players try to get the standard players to switch over to fire the event. Granted most stores run different formats on different nights, but most players have a limited number of events theyll attend regardless.

Biggest fear for frontier though is that “brewers paradise” lasts three more weeks and we find out that if you arent playing company rally or dig you’re actually not competitive at all. With no banlist a solved broken metagame stays solved and broken. No big deal for the twenty dollar brew decks – but if you bought those jvps you might have some buyers remorse.

Modern is still my favorite format and I don’t like supporting standard because its “$$$ deck = win” design. I will continue to brew fun janky stuff for my local modern fnm and fall back to Burn for PPTQs and GPTs. But I’m excited to play some Ensoul Artifact (or as i call it “izzet scissors”) aggro in Frontier because the deck cost me 20$ bucks to build. If Frontier takes off then sweet, I bought into the format for only 20$… if not then I will part the deck out and make 80% of my money back.