A critical review of the Frontier format Part:1
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.