Thanks to Modern Horizons, Modern Is More Expensive Than Ever
Back in August 2018, almost exactly three years ago, I published an article about the cost of building top-tier Modern decks. At the time, the news was bad, with deck prices increasing 26% between 2017 and 2018, putting the average cost of buying one of the top 12 most played decks in the format at $984, which was the highest point since 2015, when the average top-12 deck came in at $1,015. Well, I have some even worse news today. The average cost of buying one of the 12 most played decks in the Modern format is currently the highest it has ever been (at least, back to 2015), coming in at a staggering $1,070. And this extremely high average cost is actually a conservative number because there's a four-way tie for 12th most played deck, with Izzet Blitz, Urza's Kitchen, Scapeshift, and Amulet Titan all coming in at 1.8% of the meta. Izzet Blitz snuck into the last spot, and it also happens to be the cheapest deck list in the top 12 by a pretty wide margin. If something like Scapeshift took its place in our sample, the average would rise to $1,131. Regardless, one thing is clear: Modern is more expensive than it has been in years, and it very likely is more expensive than it has ever been.
In the past, when we've discussed the cost of Modern, we've mostly focused on one thing: the need for more reprints. But things are different this time. While older cards could always be cheaper, we've had a ton of cost-reducing reprints lately. Fetch lands are a good example: Wizards just reprinted the enemy fetch lands in Modern Horizons 2, and we got a pseudo-reprinting in Zendikar Rising with the new Expeditions, and they lost more than half of their value as a result (although the ally fetch lands have been on the rise, undoing some of these gains). A Scalding Tarn that was $100 just a few months ago is around $40 today, and some of the less desirable fetches are near $20, which is quite cheap for a fetch land, even if it isn't really cheap in an absolute sense.
We've also gotten a ton of new reprint spots in the past year or two. While some are more effective than others, every little bit of new supply helps. We now get more than 10 Commander precons a year; a bunch of Secret Lair drops; usually multiple non-Standard supplemental sets like Commander Legends, Double Masters, or Modern Horizons; along with things like Mystery Boosters and The List. While some of these products are fairly low supply and shouldn't be counted as a full reprinting, even if we exclude things like The List and the Mystery Booster foil slot, we're getting more reprints today than ever before. Yet, Modern is still more expensive than ever before. This is because the current issue with Modern's prices isn't the lack of reprints (although again, the more reprints, the better)—it's the cost of new cards.
The biggest change to Modern since we last checked in on the price of the format in 2018 was the addition of Modern Horizons sets to the format. While I would argue that these sets have been a huge boon in terms of gameplay, they come with a high cost, literally. Currently, 63 Modern-legal cards cost more than $25 (going by their cheapest printings). Nine of these cards are either from Modern Horizons or Modern Horizons 2. This might not sound like a lot, but when you consider that 74 sets are legal in Modern, having just two sets account for 14% of the most expensive cards in the format is a staggeringly high number. (If valuable cards were evenly distributed throughout all 74 sets, the average set would have less than one card worth $25 or more.) If we expand the sample size out to include cards worth $10 or more, it's even worse. There are 151 of these cards in all, with 26 of them coming from Modern Horizons or Modern Horizons 2—a massive 17.3%. (I should also mention that this doesn't include reprints, so fetch lands are counted as Zendikar cards, not Modern Horizons 2 cards, so they aren't skewing the data.) While Modern Horizons sets add a lot of interesting new cards to the Modern format, at this point, it's clear that they also add a lot of expensive cards into the Modern format, which in turn ends up increasing the cost of playing the format.
When new cards are driving the price of a format, it's really difficult for reprints to be the answer, especially in the short term. Let's take a look at two $80 Modern cards. First up, we have Oboro, Palace in the Clouds from Saviors of Kamigawa. In reality, Wizards doesn't really bear that much responsibility for the land getting so expensive. For most of the past 20 years, the land has been floating at slightly above bulk prices and was not especially playable. But recently, it started seeing heavy play in Modern Mill, and since the supply of Saviors of Kamigawa is tiny compared to the 2021 player base, it shot up in price. While Wizards certainly can and should reprint it to keep the price down and the card accessible, Oboro, Palace in the Clouds being $80 is just one of those things that happens when low-supply old cards become popular.
On the other hand, we have Ragavan, Nimble Pilferer, which is also $80. Unlike Oboro, Palace in the Clouds, Ragavan isn't old and while its supply isn't super low (Modern Horizons 2 is still in print; anyone can pick up a box and hope to crack a Ragavan, Nimble Pilferer or two), whatever supply issues there may be with the Monkey go back to recent decisions Wizards has made. Wizards designed Ragavan, Nimble Pilferer very recently and printed it for the first time. It's a card for which Wizards bears a lot of responsibility for its current price tag. Wizards has made several decisions in designing and printing Ragavan, Nimble Pilferer, and the end result of these choices is a playset of the Monkey costing nearly $400.
First, Wizards chose to push Ragavan, Nimble Pilferer to be a constructed all-star one-drop. The amount of text on the card is pretty staggering. All of its abilities seem designed to make it playable in formats like Modern. It's pretty clear that Wizards' goal was for Ragavan, Nimble Pilferer to be a four-of card in competitive Modern decks, and it seems that it has achieved that goal. Second, Wizards chose to put Ragavan, Nimble Pilferer at mythic, putting it among the lowest-supply cards in Modern Horizons 2. Wizards did this even while intentionally making Ragavan, Nimble Pilferer a card that players would need four copies of to play competitive Modern. This same pattern holds true for many of the other Modern Horizons and Modern Horizons 2 cards that are currently making the Modern format so expensive. Endurance and the rest of the evoke Elementals are mythics and clearly designed for constructed. Murktide Regent, Wrenn and Six, Seasoned Pyromancer, and Hexdrinker—the list goes on and on. While all of these cards were clearly designed to be constructed staples, I think they were just as clearly designed for another reason: to be very expensive.
Initially, the mythic rarity was supposed to be about big, splashy effects rather than utility-style effects that would be heavily played in constructed tournaments. It was, in Wizards' own words, not supposed to just be a list of the best constructed cards in a set. While Standard-legal sets still often (at least mostly) abide by this ideal, Modern Horizons sets clearly do not. Instead, both Modern Horizons and Modern Horizons 2 feature a ton of cheap constructed-focused cards at the mythic rarity that players will need four of to be competitive. Is Ragavan, Nimble Pilferer "epic"? I'd argue no, although it is clearly designed to be a constructed staple. The same is true of most of the expensive mythics from the set.
Printing ultra-staple four-of constructed cards at mythic serves two purposes for Wizards, all while making the game more expensive and less accessible for players. First, over the short term, having $80 Ragavans and $100 Wrenn and Sixes helps Wizards sell lots and lots of Modern Horizons boosters at an unusually high price point. That chance of opening a $100 card helps players to justify spending twice as much on a booster box of Modern Horizons 2 as they would on a normal set, which, in turn, helps Wizards to make a huge pile of money. If Wizards priced booster boxes of Modern Horizons 2 at $100 or even just put cards like Ragavan, Nimble Pilferer at rare (while keeping the box price high), players would be able to enjoy Modern without spending $1,000 or more on a deck. But Wizards wouldn't make as much short-term profit.
The second benefit for Wizards is long-term. Printing cards like Seasoned Pyromancer, Wrenn and Six, Ragavan, Nimble Pilferer, and the like in the way it does currently (at mythic, in sets that aren't limited in supply but have an abnormally high price point of double or more a typical Standard-legal set) all but guarantees they will be incredibly expensive, increasing Wizards' reprint equity. Having a card cost $100 that competitive Modern players need four copies of, like Force of Negation, is incredibly valuable to Wizards since it can use these cards to sell future products over the course of the next several years. We've already seen this happen to some extent, with the old-border reprints of some of the best cards from the original Modern Horizons in Modern Horizons 2. Sticking Force of Negation in Modern Horizons 2 Collector Boosters does little to increase supply or decrease the price of the card, but it does generate a ton of hype and help Wizards to sell even more product. As you can see, cards like Ragavan and Force of Negation are gifts that keep on giving for Wizards, helping its bottom line in both the short- and long-term.
While printing cards so that they end up super expensive and increase reprint equity is a great thing for Wizards' bottom line, it's the opposite for players. As powerful new cards are printed in the least accessible way possible, prices will continue to rise, and more players will be priced out of the decks and formats they want to play. Even worse, it's unlikely that these cards will get cheaper anytime soon, even if Wizards does reprint them. Take Tarmogoyf, for example. There was a time not that long ago when Tarmogoyf exemplified the problem of Modern being too expensive, with a single copy coming in at nearly $200 back in 2015, which in turn drove up the price of building Jund to nearly $2,000. Since then, Tarmogoyf has become less popular in Modern and been reprinted in earnest five times, almost once a year. While the two-drop has gotten cheaper, it's still $30 a copy for the cheapest version. If something like Ragavan, Nimble Pilferer follows the same trajectory, it's going to take many years of constant reprints to drop its price, and even then the card won't be cheap—it just won't be one of the most expensive cards in one of Magic's most popular formats.
And you know what else will happen during those years? We'll get Modern Horizons 3, Modern Horizons 4, and Modern Horizons 5, with more powerful mythics that you will need to play Modern competitively, and those too will end up costing $25, or $50 or $100. So, by the time Ragavan, Nimble Pilferer is cheap enough that you can play with it, it won't really matter because Mega-Ragavan will be the hot new one-drop that you'll need to compete in the Modern format.
All of this isn't an argument against Modern Horizons. I love the Modern Horizons series. The first set was one of my all-time favorites, and Modern Horizons 2 has managed to top it. As a Modern player and brewer, I'd love a new Modern Horizons set every year. This is an argument against Wizards designing Modern Horizons sets to be as expensive as humanly possible. Ragavan, Nimble Pilferer doesn't need to be $80. Wrenn and Six and Force of Negation don't need to be $100. These cards are absurdly expensive because Wizards purposefully designed them to be absurdly expensive, because doing so benefits Wizards' bottom line in both the short- and long-term. All it would take to fix the issue would be dropping cards like Ragavan, Nimble Pilferer and friends from mythic to rare (which, based on the original definition of what a mythic is supposed to be, probably should be anyway). This would go a long way toward solving the current problem of Modern Horizons sets spiraling the costs of playing Modern (the format Modern Horizons sets are supposed to support) out of control.
A little bit ago, we discussed how expensive cards from Modern Horizons sets serve Wizards' long-term goals by creating new reprint equity. While this is true, it's also important for Wizards to realize that this only works if players are willing to play Modern. If prices continue to climb, the end result could be players switching to other formats or even other games. (See: Legacy and Vintage, which are beloved but mostly unplayed because players can't afford the cards they need to build a competitive deck). Ragavan, Nimble Pilferer being $80 is a great way to sell future products and sets, but only if players have the ability and desire to play the Modern format. Pricing players out could end up hurting Wizards' reprint equity by dropping demand for Modern-focused reprints altogether. If Wizards pushes too far and prices continue to climb, the whole house of cards could fall if players leave the format.
Modern is a great format, but no matter how great a format is, how much fun it is to play, or how much depth it offers, it needs to be accessible enough for players to enjoy for it to continue to thrive. Hopefully, Wizards keeps this lesson in mind as we move toward Modern Horizons 3 and perhaps will choose to design the set in a more player-friendly way that will allow more people to enjoy the awesome product that it will make.
Conclusion
Anyway, that's all for today. As always, leave your thoughts, ideas, opinions, and suggestions in the comments, and you can reach me on Twitter @SaffronOlive or at SaffronOlive@MTGGoldfish.com.
