The decision of the Splinterlands team to **Ban Bots in Modern Ranked** has been telegraphed and talked about for a while now.  Both of the bot services that I am currently evaluating [Xbot](https://xbot.app) and [Archmage](https://www.archmage.app) have disabled Modern Ranked as an option so from the market leaders perspective – Yes, the ban has worked and the big bot makers are playing along.  But is that all there is to the story?  When it comes to making money and exploiting systems often it’s a case of *“Where there is a will, there is a way”* so the question for me remains – Are the bots really gone for good?

<center>![](https://images.ecency.com/DQmSFAF3VQGqwiaYQd6KAjGmV7D4wTpYS8CVmbWW6dtpHRA/deadrobot.png)
[*Image Generated by AI*](https://discord.gg/gM4SzSfs)</center>


No doubt there are other bots out there that don’t have the profile of the two I’ve mentioned and maybe they aren’t as scrupulous either.  So today I wanted to have a play in Modern Ranked to see if I could tell whether there are any bots still there, plus I was also very curious about what sort of impact that this bot ban might have on the competitiveness of Modern Ranked if the ban has worked.

It’s only a very small sample, but after configuring my Archmage bot to run on **Wild Ranked** and putting it on pause I powered up some **Energy** with DEC and played 11 games on Modern Ranked as a bit of a Test.  I won 6 out of 11 games and I am genuinely not that great at Modern so I would consider this to be a pretty decent result with my ranking going up slightly from 2636 to 2653.  The first thing I noticed is that there seemed to be a greater variance in the Ratings of my opponents – which would suggest that maybe there is less players to match up against now.  That makes sense if the bots have been removed but overall I did not notice a big difference.

Of course I am also interested to see what the impact of this change will be on Wild Ranked if all the botted accounts are now shifting to play there instead.  I would imagine that playing only Modern cards in Wild would put them at a significant disadvantage so maybe I will go a bit better in Wild Ranked too for a while since my own deck has a lot of older Summoners and Monsters in it.

Have you tried playing Modern Ranked since the bots were banned?  What is your experience and are you doing better?  I’d be keen to hear how others are finding this latest change so please comment below!