#mtgformat

As most of u know by now, Frontier is the new kid on the block when it comes to formats in Magic the Gathering. Originally developed by Hareruya Games, more so formally known as the Star City Games of Japan. They are well known for making interesting decks in Modern and Standard that produce noteworthy results in both GPs and various SCG tourneys. Although this time round Hareruya has came up with something unique, by inventing a new format with their own rules - otherwise known as Frontier. Now in this series of a 2 Part article, I will be focusing on the strengths of Frontier in this article, then on to it's weaknesses in the next. Now before we go in I know you might have a burning inquiry... "WHAT IS FRONTIER?"

First off, Frontier is a solution as a post-Modern eternal format that only allows cards from M15 and onward to be played in this format. Thus, Frontier allows players to play their previous Standard decks in Frontier. Frontier is also still very new, thus it will find itself improving with new decks and archetypes for every new set being released.

In this article, I’ll be going through the strengths of Frontier and why you should be wanting to play Frontier, for the weaknesses of Frontier, I’ll be going through them in the 2nd part of this article. But for the main point of both articles, I will compare Frontier to it’s bigger brother Modern and other eternal formats such as Pauper and Commander.

Frontier is cheap!

Well, it’s no surprise that Frontier is actually quite a cheap format, now this is true for 2 reasons. One would be that the most of the cards that are legal in Frontier have already rotated out of Standard and are very low costed. Another reason is due to the decks that people keep even after they have rotated out of Standard, many popular or powerful archetypes in Frontier are the predecessors of their previous Standard forms, decks such as Abzan, Jeskai, Rally, as well as Atarka Red. Thus, many who wish to build into Frontier can do so at a very low cost. 

Frontier is somehow a good alternative to Modern

Now many would agree that Modern has actually hit it’s peak, and it has somewhat looked “solved” by many players alike. Also, with a handful of decks dominating Modern and it’s high driving cost, most new players would not want to be building into Modern as an eternal format at a time like this. Thus, a new option opens up in the form of Frontier. Frontier might have a small pool of cards which limits the variety of decks in the format, however it is due to grow and expand with the release of every new set. Many would argue now that it is not worth it and it would end up like Modern, but that will happen after a couple of years and the establishment of a ban-list.

Modern isn’t a very friendly place now for new players, from a monetary and power-level standpoint :/

Frontier allows players both new and old to play a “powered” version of their previous Standard decks.

As many players have played certain variants of decks in Standard before, they often look at newer, released sets and many wished they coud fit aew cards into their decks(which by the time, they ave been rotated out of Standard). Thus, Frontier would somehow solve this problem. For example if a player was playing Abzan back in the Khans block era, they would have access to powerful cards in Shadows over Innistrad/Eldritch Moon. Now you might deem the changes to the deck being relatively minor, but do note, cards such as Liliana, the Last Hope, Grim Flayer, Smuggler's Copter, Sorin, Solemn Visitor and many more cards as well. So you can see why Frontier has been getting quite an amount of attention lately, it is a format that breathes creativity and life into many former existing archetypes, and is sure to continue this trend as new sets are being released.

Wizards has somewhat given the green light for Frontier

Now, Wizards doesn’t officially give their full commitment towards formats outside of Standard, Modern and Legacy. Thus, you would find it rather common to see formats such as Pauper and Commander not having official sanctioned events at your local game store. However, Wizards does seem to have been paying particular attention to Frontier. Various Channel Fireball Grand Prix have offered Frontier as a side event. Now side events aren’t that big and all, but not only does Frontier feature in a GP as a form of a side event, many will tend to forget, side events also provide Planeswalker Points to players who participate as well. So, despite Frontier being younger than Pauper and Commander, Wizards does seem to be paying close attention to it and making it feature in side events does mean Frontier does have an edge closer to becoming the next Modern. But during this period of time...

Will Frontier really be a new hope for Modern and the future of eternal formats?

For what we know, nope it’s not going to be the next Star Wars thriller but it definitely raises some amount of attention. Eternal formats such as Modern and Legacy currently are stale in the their meta-game as well as flow of new decks. Both formats are also under immense pressure of god-tier decks, in which a handful of decks are extremely hard to beat and other decks have difficulty beating them. Frontier does give some hope of a fresh new eternal format, what many have described and predicted to be what Modern was when it first came out. A format full of exciting new decks, creativity and room for awesome homebrews. Though it might grow to be like it’s elder brothers, Frontier for now does show some potential. 

Well if so, do stay tuned in the next few days for the 2nd part of this article of Frontier, where I will analyze the few weaknesses of Frontier, as well as come to a conclusion of whether I feel Frontier is a format worth investing into, and how it’s inclusion into the game will affect Magic in the near future.

Hello again fellow readers! I have decided to make a new series of articles for the blog starting from today, as you can see from the title - Far Wanderings would be a new series of articles where I go talking about a certain format/deck/topic about the game. No competition/banning reports in this series, it’ll just be a very specific somewhat narrow view of the selected topic I have chosen to write about.

So as for the very first article of this series, the topic I would like to rumble on today, well the name was already given away in the title, it’s Pauper! Pauper is quite a well-known format in today’s day and age, it’s the format where only commons are allowed as well as some cards that have had their rarity downgraded to common. Pauper is usually more popular on Magic Online, where there are daily regular events/leagues, with a good amount of participants as well.

“Pauper isn’t exciting right? It’s just commons....”

On that note you’re definitely wrong. Pauper isn’t just a format where people play under-powered commons, Pauper has been referred to many older players to be a “lite”  version of Legacy. The fact that it has a large pool of cards to play with, a fair banlist and it’s an eternal format does give it a lot to talk about. 

A small example of signature cards in Magic’s history that are common and see tons of play in Pauper

Due to Pauper having a huge card pool, a lot of iconic/familiar cards see actual play in Pauper. Such examples include:

Ponder

Preordain

Daze

Gush

Hydro/Pyro-blast

All 3 Tron lands

All original Mirrodin artifact lands

Atog

Mulldrifter

Capsize

Chromatic Star/Sphere

Ancient Stirrings

Expedition Map

Mystical Teachings

Rancor

Nettle Sentinel

Quirion Ranger

Vines of Vastwood

Slippery Boggle

Armadillo Cloak

Chainer’s Edict

Gitaxian Probe

Ancestral Mask

Doom Blade

Kiln Fiend

Chain Lightning

Rift Bolt

Lava Spike

Searing Blaze

Fireblast

Priest of Titania 

I mean..that’s a lot of good cards that have seen play in larger eternal formats, I don’t see why Pauper is being labelled as an “underpowered” format by a few. 

“Blue seems powerful in this format -  is the meta solved?”

A very frequently asked but simple question: to start it off, I’ll show a sample Delver list - which is probably Pauper’s oldest and best blue deck.

As you can see, the deck itself is strong, having a slight resemblance to a mono-blue Legacy Delver build. However, despite this being the most popular deck(probably in Pauper’s history), there are many decks which produce solid results, which I’ll show a few below.

Mono-Green Stompy

Murasa/Temur Tron

Affinity

Kiln Fiend Combo

As you can see through the decklists, all of the decks are very well designed. But what if I told you that many decks of different archetypes achieve a 5-0 on Magic Online everyday/week? Now that will probably take a lot of people aback.

As you can see, within 24 hours, 7 different decks end up with a 5-0 on a Magic Online league, with many and much more ending up being not so lucky with a 4-1. However, this clearly proves my point that Pauper is not like Legacy, in which it is not a blue-dominated format and it has a good, balanced spread of archetypes in the metagame.

So what’s Pauper’s biggest selling point?

One problem that runs in many formats of today is money. I mean some formats require a lot of money and commitment, something which I and majority of many other players have very little of. Pauper, running completely on commons is the perfect format to get into around with a small budget, yet being able to play powerful commons and build a top tier deck in a format all without the hassle of money

As you can see from this metagame screenshot, the cost of Pauper’s high tier decks are dirt cheap when compared to Standard’s,Modern’s and Legacy’s.

 When I mean Pauper is cheap, I mean you can build a top tier Affinity deck in Pauper including Atog and original artifact lands - being 15 times cheaper than it’s Modern counterpart. 15 times!! This also encourages many players who have played Modern or Legacy to dive into Pauper, as building a “common” version of their deck in Modern/Legacy is seen as a challenge in Pauper. Pauper is also an excellent format for any new players trying to dive into an eternal format without spending too much money in it, it teaches them the power level of cheap commons and brings them to a metagame where the power levels of most decks are very very close when compared to each other.

“Is Pauper being played actively in Paper?”

If you asked me that a few years ago, I would say no. But the community of the format has grown together with it’s popularity, now there are quite a lot of LGSs hosting Pauper events(not sanctioned of course due to Wizards seeing it as an “online” only format). With the biggest Pauper event being Card Kingdom’s Rags to Riches, combined with it’s large playerbase on Reddit, Pauper is continually being talked about almost everyday! It is definitely a unique take on eternal formats in today’s age, it might look small to a few for now, but it could prove it’s weight in the future with the current potential it shows today.

Conclusion

Pauper is still a growing format, but it is already attracting the attention of many players with it’s unique playstyle, strong metagame and cheap price. I do enjoy playing Pauper, however there aren’t too many stores in Singapore that would agree to host them. The future is looking very bright for Pauper though! All in all, I hope this was a good read and I’ll be looking forward to writing more Far Wanderings preferably one article every 1-2 weeks. Closing it off, follow the blog, check out more if you’ve missed them and flip those Delvers with Brainstorm! See ya!

And we’re back at it again! Welcome to the second article of this 2 part series where I will review Magic’s latest format, Frontier! If you missed the first article. You can check it out here. Moving on, this article will be focusing on what I feel are Frontier’s weaknesses. And how these weaknesses might make Frontier fail like many other formats have over the years. Without further ado, let’s dive right in!

There’s no banlist

Yes..starting it off with a bang and straight to the point. Frontier has been a few months old and yet no banlist has been created by it’s founders or the community. This looks like the format might crash at any given moment. Considering the amount of pressure being mounted to format with every new set. Frontier has to have a banlist ASAP. If not, the consequences would be devastating. The secondary market following this newborn format would crash, collector’s would see their collections plummet and new players would find it difficult to play in a format full of uncertainty - no control over the top decks, and a “solved” meta. That is certainly not what we want to happen for Frontier.

Could you imagine any non-rotating format without a banlist? Yes, Frontier could go down a very nasty route..

Tier 0 decks?

Now for a lot of people, Tier 0 is a very very rare occurrence. So much only a few decks were Tier 0 at one point of time. Such as examples were: 1996 Necropotence, 2004 Affinity, Combo Winter 1998. Though Frontier does not match the power level of any of the decks mentioned above, there are complaints of certain decks/archetypes being somewhat unbeatable. Such examples include Rally and Jeskai Black, both decks have been so powerful that it is already drawing massive amount of hate/counters from sideboards and even more surprisingly mainboard! Some Abzan lists run 4 Anafenza’s mainboard, Jeskai Tempo/Aggro list running full of counters specifically for instants in their side and many decks that could run white have 2-3 Hallowed Moonlights in their side among other threats. All of this is actually causing a sideboard war in the format. Which I feel generally leads to an unhealthy meta in which lower-tier/equal tier decks are meant to run hate for 1-2 specific broken decks in the entire format. This might lead to bannings of a few archetypes but at the very least it ensures some variety and playability for new and experienced players alike.

Flashbacks...literally

Frontier is filled with full of things that people hate to see. Well if you haven’t played Standard in the past..well here’s what I mean.

Yeah...people used to have bad experiences with these specific cards and many others back in Standard. And getting to see them again in Frontier is the last thing they would want. Sadly, with no banlist, these cards/decks are free to fit into any deck that would support their overall strategy and playability. This is often quite serious for many experienced players, even more so worse for new players. As they would see how old decks operated at such a level back then in Standard are somehow legal in Frontier. Don’t get me wrong, but some of these cards should never be in Frontier.

“It’ll never be like Modern”

This is sadly true to some extent. When Modern was created, it allowed cards from 8th Edition onwards to be played in the format, Frontier being newer only allowed cards from M15 and onwards. Though many might argue the format is new and thus has a smaller timeline of decks, Modern actually has a large pool of cards to play with while Frontier doesn’t. Thus, this could lead to players being uninterested in the format as the speed of growth is slow. Players won’t want to play a waiting game in which they wait for every new set, in hopes of watching it’s meta grow. If Frontier were to be a successful and consistent format like it’s bigger brother Modern, Wizards would need to put themselves in the driver’s seat and change the entire policy of the format.

My opinion?

Being someone who played Modern and realizing I couldn’t afford it’s increasing cost and competitiveness, I always look forward to something that could bring me a game of 60 card constructed and wouldn’t cost me a bomb. So far I like to refer to Pauper as my alternative to Modern, but Frontier does give me some hope. Where it would be like Modern’s earlier days where the variety of decks were wide, there was no known top tier deck and there was room for homebrews. However, Frontier does come with it’s own dangers and challenges in the future. Which also makes me nervous to properly invest into a format, such an example would be Tiny Leaders, one of the biggest reasons for it’s failure was due to the secondary market taking advantage of the format. Where there would be buyouts of cards that were only good in Tiny Leaders causing a lot of confusion in the market. Frontier might actually fail due to the same reason, greedy investors buying out a couple of cards that are only good in Frontier. This would cause a lot of players feeling that Frontier is only a cash-grab just like Tiny Leaders, which would eventually make it fall out of popularity and it would slowly die out.

Overall Rating of Frontier:4/10

I believe this is a fair rating for Frontier as it isn’t fully established format. It does has it’s strengths but at the same time, it has some alarming issues that need to be solved immediately to prevent the fall of the format. I would advise players to not yet invest into it yet, but instead watch and observe it’s progression with the release of new sets, until a banlist is enlisted or Wizards making a major change to the format is announced. Other than that, I do hope this has been a good read for the viewers. Do stay tuned for the next article and goodbye!