Magic Arena: Why Modern should come to the digital platform

For the second consecutive year, Magic: The Gathering makes clear the emphasis of its competitive circuit on the Standard and Modern formats, abandoning Pioneer and keeping it out of the spotlight for so long that the community, at this point, considers the format dead.

There are plausible justifications for these two scenarios being the epicenter of competitive Magic today. Standard historically holds this position in almost all card games, since the nature of the rotation opens more space for new releases—and the primary objective of every Pro Tour is to promote the latest product.

Furthermore, Standard is the pillar that Magic has been rebuilding during the post-pandemic years. First, with the expansion of valid expansions in the format from two to three years, then with the decision to include all Universes Beyond releases in it, increasing the number of sets from four per year to six; not to mention that Standard is also the most played format on the Magic Arena platform, which has its own competitive scene.

The Modern format has a kind of nature of its own. Of course, it's in Wizards of the Coast's interest to keep the format alive and active because of the Modern Horizons expansions, which tend to rotate the Metagame with power creep, boosting sales of the set and the need for players to acquire cards from the latest release—but attributing this as the sole reason for its prominence is to underestimate the format's most important element: community support.

There's a history in Modern that's not easily found in other settings: players go out of their way to keep it alive even if they don't have compelling reasons to play it—a natural trait of Legacy—and this was a decisive factor in the format surviving the pandemic years and the post-pandemic era with a constant flow of players and events, even when Modern Horizons 2 caused a wave of power creep amidst social isolation (and yet it was the best-selling Magic expansion until The Lord of the Rings) that altered the Metagame in a way never seen before.

The format has a passionate community, and it currently holds one of the main spotlights in competitive Magic, even without the release of Modern Horizons IV in 2026. Furthermore, the breadth of responses, adaptations, and potential decks may suffer from occasional polarizations, such as when Nadu, Winged Wisdom was released, but its balance has proven to be much more stable and diverse than other competitive scenarios, even in Standard.

Therefore, WotC's decision to maintain its focus on Modern, even at the expense of other formats, is more than natural. But if this is the second most popular competitive epicenter of the game and one of, if not the most well-received 1v1 formats by the community in the last decade, why isn't Modern already in Magic Arena?

Magic Arena is one of the leading platforms for playing Magic today. While Magic Online is still far more popular on a competitive scale due to its numerous weekly Challenge events, Arena offers an optimized platform and a wide range of games for the Standard format, in addition to its own gimmicks with Alchemy, Historic, and Timeless.

Given its widespread popularity, the absence of Modern as a format seems like a mistake considering Wizards of the Coast's attempts to make it the second flagship format for competitive Magic: MTGArena can be played from anywhere, has more dynamic games, and despite the many economic problems that still plague the platform compared to other games, it offers a great place to play a game or two during the day or for extensive training with more games in less time, which amplifies the sampling of a particular archetype or Metagame.

MTGArena will need another format faithful to tabletop Magic

For practical purposes, Pioneer is struggling to remain alive. It can be argued that this is just a hiatus, but, as mentioned in other articles, it appears that the format has no purpose for WotC's interests and, consequently, no reason to exist.

In recent years, Magic Arena has received several additions and even an expansion dedicated to including Pioneer in Magic Arena, and it should remain there because, in the end, removing it from the platform would generate much more controversy than maintaining a dedicated space for it — however, there are no reasons for people to be interested in playing Pioneer on the digital platform as far as competitive Magic matters.

Therefore, Modern enters the scene, which already has high popularity and whose Horizons expansions are naturally promoted by formats like Timeless and Historic, where many of its staples already make up the main competitive archetypes of these; added to The Lord of the Rings and the various Special Guests and reprint slots, the path seems clear. Wizards just needs to decide that the platform does, in fact, need another "tabletop" format.

Many of the format's main cards already exist on the platform

With reprint after reprint and the rotations caused by the power creep of Modern Horizons and other sets, Magic Arena has many of the staples of the main Modern decks today, which greatly facilitates the integration of existing strategies in the format and its extensive card pool into a constant flow, not unlike what was done with Pioneer.

A series of Anthologies bundles including the cards above would already be a great step in establishing Modern as a format, but it would be necessary to update them periodically according to the demands of the format's Metagame, in case any new archetype, combo, or underutilized card starts to appear. More frequent appearances in the competitive scene.

Just like in Pioneer, it's not necessary to include all Modern cards to make it an MTGArena format. To this day, cards like Reality Smasher are absent from the digital platform because, while famous for their infamy in the 2016 Eldrazi Winter, the archetype has been absent from the Pioneer since 2020 — Modern could also include the equivalent of "99%" of the most played cards in the format and let the rest develop according to the demands of the metagame.

A wider space for training with an improved interface

The inclusion of Modern on a new platform would help both to popularize the format for a new segment of the public — especially Timeless players who would find a more diverse Metagame — and also to improve the gameplay and training experience for those who compete in Modern circuits and/or participate in RCQs and Regional Championships in the format.

One of the main advantages of Magic Arena is that, because matches are less click-intensive and have a faster interface, they tend to take less time than on Magic Online, which expands the sample size and improves matchups. However, this "upgrade" also comes with caveats: Magic Online is a much better platform for learning triggers and details, given that every game command is manual and therefore leaves less room for automated errors.

There is also the risk that having the format on the two platforms could "divide" the audience, with more experienced players and grinders preferring MTGO while more casual players and/or those less focused on farming rewards end up migrating to Magic Arena, which theoretically would reduce the quality of gameplay.

Modern's economic factor benefits from MTGArena

Modern is an expensive format on Magic Online, with decks ranging from 200 to 1000 tix, with the average being around 250 to 500 tix. For comparison, Pioneer has Rakdos Midrange as one of its price ceilings, costing an average of 250 tix, and Standard, although archetypes like Izzet Cauldron and decks with Quantum Riddler exceed 300 tix, has an average price between 50 and 100 tix.

In some cases, Modern is as expensive as, or even more expensive than, Legacy on MTGO, which significantly limits player accessibility and increases card rental costs if the player doesn't have a content creator account, virtually limiting player access.

Although Magic Arena doesn't have trading or dusting systems, and its economy is considered predatory, the cost of building a deck in any format is almost the same, varying according to the number of rares and mythics needed, as well as how many staples the player already owns. In this case, Modern would have a cost similar to formats like Pioneer or Timeless today.

Card availability is unlimited as long as we want to craft or play drafts, and therefore it would also be an opportunity to take advantage of different Draft and Sealed game modes to increase the possibility of players obtaining Fetch Lands and the like — in addition to these being, for example, a great way to promote the next Modern Horizons if it comes again accompanied by the reprint of Fetch Lands and some specific staples in special slots.

That's all for today!

If you have any questions, feel free to leave a comment!

Thank you for reading!