Power Creep and The One Ring
Today’s article is quite an interesting one with lessons that apply to the Modern format and beyond. Of course, what we’re discussing today is the prospect of
The Nature of Power Creep
At the heart of TOR’s scourge upon the Modern format since its release is a deeper-seated issue related to power creep. “How do we define power creep?” you might ask.
A phenomenon wherein the longer a game exists in the marketplace, the more incrementally powerful its individual pieces become, rendering older pieces obsolete, while simultaneously risking the balance of play.
If it wasn’t obvious, that is my personal definition of power creep. The difficulty with power creep is that it's nearly impossible to avoid in larger games like Magic: The Gathering as they continue to grow in popularity. As games evolve, new mechanics are introduced, and concepts iterated upon to make the state of the game more dynamic, more enriched, and, ideally, more diverse. Oftentimes, however, innovation follows a pattern of power escalation, wherein innovating on the extensive margin of the design space leads to progressively more powerful game pieces being introduced in the competitive meta replacing the obsolete cardstock faster and faster each successive set.
This pattern is actually quite dangerous - both financially, and from a “health of the format” standpoint. From the standpoint of format health, power creep creates volatility in competitive metas, wherein the newest, most powerful game pieces force themselves to the format’s forefront until they become ubiquitous with the format itself. As single cards in formats become more and more powerful, format diversity tends to suffer, and the demand in the market becomes concentrated in a handful of game pieces that necessarily skew secondary market prices.
The One Ring
This brings us to our card of the day: The One Ring. According to MTGGoldfish, TOR is the single most-played card in the Modern format. While pervasiveness of a single card isn’t problematic, it goes without saying that the data is quite alarming with 56% of tournament-entered decks in the meta playing usually four copies of TOR. At the height of its influence on the format, its price peaked at almost $100 back in July (just prior to
Now, here we are just a few months after Nadu’s demise for its format-warping, and unforgivable play patterns, and The One Ring seems poised to sit next to Nadu on the same banned list - at least that’s what the market predicts. At roughly half of its peak price, and trending downwards, the Modern community and secondary market at large fully anticipates that TOR’s days are numbered, and growing fewer as December’s B&R announcement swiftly approaches.
Pessimism surrounding TOR’s future in Modern is leading to a slowing of demand, which will inevitably bottom out if it in fact is banned in the format. So, will expectations become reality? At this point, it feels inevitable. The Modern format (as discussed in one of my previous articles) is more congested and stale now than it was during Nadu’s heyday with the vast majority of the top decks leaning into The One Ring as their primary value engine creating games that, in the long run, come down to whoever can jam a TOR first.
My expectation is that, come December, the flagship card from
What Happens Next?
While Modern players will likely rejoice at the banning of TOR, it raises the question: what next? This seems to be the unfortunate space that Modern has found itself in. Power creep noticeably increased in the format as soon as direct-to-Modern sets became a normalized product line in
With any luck, this will be the one ban to rule them all and ideally force the meta to diversify away from games of who resolves their TOR first, and encourage alternative play patterns that can lean on a more diverse array of potential value engines. The absence of TOR should also lead to more ambitious and intentional deckbuilding. No longer will you jam four copies of TOR just because you can. Freeing up four slots in 50% of the meta creates ample opportunities for existing decks to retool and adapt, and opportunities for lower-tier decks to find room to compete against a wider meta, and less against The One Ring itself.
Financial Implications
Financially, the price patterns and trends of TOR are a symptom of a greater problem in the secondary market for Modern playables: the concentration of value in a handful of powerful cards that are both necessary for playing competitively, but carry the very real possibility of being banned at a later point in time. While TOR will likely be gone, it’s not impossible to imagine a world where cards like
Given the downward trend in Phlage’s price in tandem with The One Ring, I look at it as a prime opportunity for speculation. My guess is that Phlage will likely become the next-best Modern staple, which while being less ubiquitous than TOR, will still see an uptick in popularity in its absence.
Beyond Phlage, it’s actually tough to predict where Modern will land or how much it will diversify in the absence of its poster child. Modern has been a format of rigid archetypes by comparison to other competitive formats where innovation is fairly stagnant. While I want to believe that a TOR ban will encourage format diversity, I can also easily see a world where the meta remains precisely the same, just without The One Ring. If this becomes reality, then, financially speaking, doubling down on existing format staples like
Ultimately, the path one takes when approaching the current Modern secondary market needs to be tempted heavily with expectations of what cards from a sheer power standpoint the format’s competitive landscape. With cards like The One Ring clogging up the diversity of the card pool, and commanding one of the highest asking prices on the secondary market simultaneously, it feels like the market in general becomes rather bear-ish. Ideally, in a world with TOR, the market can start to become less pessimistic as the format experience improves in quality, but that’s difficult to predict until the ban hammer formally drops (or doesn’t).
Concluding Thoughts
By comparison to many of my articles, this one is on the shorter end in length and steeper in pessimism, but covers a fair amount of dense content: power creep, market expectations, and format health. Fundamentally, Modern is not, and has not been a particularly healthy and stable format for some time, and the downward trends in the prices among the format’s staple cards reflect a fall in their demand altogether in spite of their vast supply.
While reigning in power creep is no easy feat, the power meter needs formal reassessment particularly with the announcement that Universes Beyond sets going forward will be Standard (and therefore Modern) legal. The design space for Modern-playable cards is becoming increasingly narrow as power level rises leading to a seemingly persistent risk of format homogeneity and congestion making for lower quality play experiences and uninteresting competitive landscapes.
On a positive note, the power of the format is now back in the hands of players who will hopefully look at a prospective TOR ban as an opportunity to innovate, and bring Modern back to a state of creative deckbuilding and meta stability.
Further Reading:
Corey Williams is an Assistant Professor of Economics at Shippensburg University in Shippensburg, Pennsylvania. He considers himself a macroeconometrician with his research body reflecting work in applied macroeconomics and econometrics. Corey is an L1 Judge who started playing Magic around Eighth Edition. He enjoys Modern, Commander, cEDH, and cube drafting. Outside of Magic, he loves running, teaching, and the occasional cult movie.
