Granted this article isn't about MTG specifically but Cox isn't an MTG guy he's a big picture guy. He's going to keep allowing WotC to run the card game and it's details while he pushes Arena and these new crap products to expand market share. WotC has been assimilated.
The design team still needs to get their heads out because they're still responsible for what we're getting. I just hope the 'pro' team guidance is going to work in the long run.
The source of the set development issue is the lack of properly assessing the top end and bottom end of the sets. Mark is very big on bottom up and treats the higher rarity cards as more open ended, which is why the top of the set always seems to have some very pushed card and the rest are either middling or just unimpressive. As for the pro team, it sounds more like the developers don't have enough time to sit with the set and test it with other available cards. In all honesty the pro team is bad news for players of Modern and Legacy, but for people mainly into standard and block constructed it's probably a good thing.
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1. (Ravnica Allegiance): You can't keep a good esper control deck down... Or Wilderness Reclamation... or Gates...
2. (War of the Spark): Guys, I know what we need! We need a cycle of really idiotic flavor text victory cards! Jace's Triumph...
3. (War of the Spark): Lets make the format with control have even more control!
You don't have to convince me that Maro's methods have problems. He is the reason we've had 2 years of hell. My local store isn't even doing store Championship as Standard, they're doing frikkin Sealed because Standard hasn't fired most of the month on FNM, Tuesday, or Sunday. Weak... Sauce.
The pro team is a good thing because if we get better designed sets eternal formats will get pieces to integrate instead of Eldrazi winters. Their job is to get the over pushed crap under control and see how new cards will relate to standard and the cards already in play.
Bottom up is a focus on limited, but it obviously doesn't work since we constantly get bomb and win limited environments. I agree with you top down is proper planning.
IXA is one of least "bomb and win" formats in years, and a lot of players don't like it judging by pro output on sites like SCG. Personally I quite like the flat power level sets, but it has taken a lot of slagging, although partly that might be to drive IMA and Unstable sales.
Maro's methods are too data driven. Using data to decide what to ban is great. Using data to decide what players, especially new players, like and thus to design sets that way leads to Emrakul, the Promised end. Hell it even leads to Smuggler's Copter- or rather the non existence of punishing hate cards did. Giving people what they say they like is a bad idea. McDonalds make a huge number of burgers and fast food. People like it,it is undeniably popular especially with youngsters, but you can't eat it daily and if you do you would end up pretty fat pretty quickly By and large we have gotten McDonalds food in MTG card form- what they say they like, none of the stuff they don't, but not what they need.
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People with belligerent signatures are trying to compensate for something....
Maro has said they've 'learned' and are fixing things so time will tell if that's smoke or if we'll get back to the proper place or not in the next few sets.
I fear if Dominaria sucks Standard will die in a lot more places than it already has.
We are seeing more answers but control isn't really a player right now so the triangle balance hasn't been restored (control-agro-midrange). Don't get all angry control players (I play control as well) but it's not good enough and the numbers are showing that. Hell I think ramp is another victim of Maro's 'no more one CMC mana dorks' because even with all the fetch spells, it's not good enough. Attune of course is a different deal.
It could be that the top decks 4cEnergy-Energy-Ramred are just too good for a regular speed control to get the right percentage wins. Maybe the new set will be a game changer for that /shrug
Standard needs more relevant things to do turn one for all archetypes.
For years we had 1cc discard, 1cc mana dorks, 1cc draw, 2 and 3 cc ramp, 4 cc sweepers,and often 1cc kill, 3cc land kill and 1 or 2cc grave hate. Messing with those was dangerous.
If you take Combo, Ramp and Prisons out of the format, and then you neutralise UX control you are not left with much.
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People with belligerent signatures are trying to compensate for something....
It could be that the top decks 4cEnergy-Energy-Ramred are just too good for a regular speed control to get the right percentage wins. Maybe the new set will be a game changer for that /shrug
It's not so much that as it is that the tools you need to deal with Ramunap Red are just fundamentally different tools than what you need to deal with Energy. Sweeper in general are bad against a deck that has an Indestructible haster that can fling excess lands for damage, has lands that can fling about a quarter of your lands for damage repeatedly, and a Planeswalker that can deal damage continuously. Energy falls apart prettyy hard to Sweepers in Game 1, however the decks with sweepers available to them have no real way to combat Mono-Red effectively and vice-versa. It's a pretty viscious gate to get through, and that is largely because both decks have things that honestly shouldn't exist. Mono-Red aggro decks having such obscene late game with little investment is fundamentally a mistake, and Temur Energy having difficult too many annoying to answer creatures, and value on value cards (Rogue Refiner, in particular, is too much for too little).
The simple truth is that White has no effective way to deal with Aggro, and Red or Black has no effective way to deal with Energy. Couple that with no good card draw in Black or Red (OR really, any good CA engine), so you can't make B/W work or R/W work, and that going Esper slows you many base down far too much to deal with aggro; Going Jeskai makes your sweepers awkward due to too many fastlands to deal with Energy. This isn't a case of wanting a control that *does* answer everything; rather it's that no matter which way you go, you have no ability to deal with your bad match ups at all by virtue of choosing one color over another.
It could be that the top decks 4cEnergy-Energy-Ramred are just too good for a regular speed control to get the right percentage wins. Maybe the new set will be a game changer for that /shrug
It's not so much that as it is that the tools you need to deal with Ramunap Red are just fundamentally different tools than what you need to deal with Energy. Sweeper in general are bad against a deck that has an Indestructible haster that can fling excess lands for damage, has lands that can fling about a quarter of your lands for damage repeatedly, and a Planeswalker that can deal damage continuously. Energy falls apart prettyy hard to Sweepers in Game 1, however the decks with sweepers available to them have no real way to combat Mono-Red effectively and vice-versa. It's a pretty viscious gate to get through, and that is largely because both decks have things that honestly shouldn't exist. Mono-Red aggro decks having such obscene late game with little investment is fundamentally a mistake, and Temur Energy having difficult too many annoying to answer creatures, and value on value cards (Rogue Refiner, in particular, is too much for too little).
The simple truth is that White has no effective way to deal with Aggro, and Red or Black has no effective way to deal with Energy. Couple that with no good card draw in Black or Red (OR really, any good CA engine), so you can't make B/W work or R/W work, and that going Esper slows you many base down far too much to deal with aggro; Going Jeskai makes your sweepers awkward due to too many fastlands to deal with Energy. This isn't a case of wanting a control that *does* answer everything; rather it's that no matter which way you go, you have no ability to deal with your bad match ups at all by virtue of choosing one color over another.
Agree with all of this. I've build and rebuilt and tried all the combos and pieces are missing that make Control not realistically viable. Even the decks that have won once or twice have the flaws they just got a lucky run.
I don't have a lot of faith in mono colored Dinos to get us past this... days of dual colored dragons past... <sigh> I remember playing decks with every one of those Elder Dragons and they were all fun and at least competitive (ok Kohlagan not so much but the deck was fun and at least .5 at the time).
This! I hope the people who like to say 'there are plenty of answers' read the details of at least the first half of this article. This is why standard is stale and people aren't playing it. It's WotC's design direction and they still haven't let go of proper hate cards.
This! I hope the people who like to say 'there are plenty of answers' read the details of at least the first half of this article. This is why standard is stale and people aren't playing it. It's WotC's design direction and they still haven't let go of proper hate cards.
I will add that to his last point, the reason we need more efficient amswers is because it dramatically opens up the format. Just going with Doom Blade, a big part ofnthe problem right now is that we have one efficient all purpose removal spell in the format in the foem of Harnessed Lightning, and two others tjlhat are alsonred (Abrade/Lightning Strike). This is our only Doom Blade. If a player wants to play a deck that plays Doom Blade, they are by necessity an Energy based deck. If there were 5 or 6 different Doom Blades in the format, you could reasonably play a deck that wants Doom Blade but is not energy. Right now we realistically have three general purpose efficient answer cards on the level of Doom Blade, all of which are red (Abrade, Lightning Strike, HL) and one arguable in Black (Fatal Push, which is more of a scalpel in Standard). Ultimately, Pileofremoval.dec is not a serious archetype anympre, largely because threats are significantly better.
Equally, the reason why answers need to be far more efficient than threats is because answers do not win the game. Threats do. You can have a hand full of threats, and you can win the game. If you have a hand full of answes, there is a good chamce you can lose.
Equally, the reason why answers need to be far more efficient than threats is because answers do not win the game. Threats do. You can have a hand full of threats, and you can win the game. If you have a hand full of answes, there is a good chamce you can lose.
Absolutely. The furthest they've ventured into answers being as robust as threats is Vraska's and CMC 4 isn't good enough.
When 3 CMC threats come with 3/2 body, +energy, +card answers also need to be destroy, +card, +lifegain for 3 CMC. 2 CMC threats should exile and gain life. Sweepers should be 4 CMC without the downside because threats are over efficient!
What's not very funny is they've poo poo'd cards like Sphinx's Revelation and Supreme Verdict but those are exactly the kinds of cards they need to have in standard to bring us back to balance.
Equally, the reason why answers need to be far more efficient than threats is because answers do not win the game. Threats do. You can have a hand full of threats, and you can win the game. If you have a hand full of answes, there is a good chamce you can lose.
Absolutely. The furthest they've ventured into answers being as robust as threats is Vraska's and CMC 4 isn't good enough.
When 3 CMC threats come with 3/2 body, +energy, +card answers also need to be destroy, +card, +lifegain for 3 CMC. 2 CMC threats should exile and gain life. Sweepers should be 4 CMC without the downside because threats are over efficient!
What's not very funny is they've poo poo'd cards like Sphinx's Revelation and Supreme Verdict but those are exactly the kinds of cards they need to have in standard to bring us back to balance.
I will say that answers that deal with almost every threat, and have upside beyond that, are perfectly reasonable to be cost more. Vraskas Contempt is fine, as is Cast Out. The problem is that that is mostly all there is in the format; White has actively nothing to deal with the early game at all, and Black has Push, which is not very good against the premier archetype in the format. Hence why Black is really just a different sort of Attune/Refiner package that runs a Contempt or two, and white just hard loses to aggro.
Answers have to be available attack all the zones, as some cards inevitably hit and give too much value. High value threat cards can happily exist in an environment where cards can be taxed before casting, removed from hand, countered etc. as well as being straight up removed or neautralised on board (e.g. Rune Halo or COP effects). The problem is Wizards simply don't like good hand disruption as their is no answer beyond a few anti hate cards or Leyine of Sanctity. It does not like counters because new players hate them, and it hates tax effects or mana denial for the same reason.
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People with belligerent signatures are trying to compensate for something....
Well, if they reprint Grasp of Darkness that would stop ramunap for the most part. Vindicate would be acceptable even if it does target any permanent, or simply reprinting Maelstrom Pulse would be another one. Heck, this could have been the set to do it in simply because of the play on words. If they are worried about some answers slotting into too many decks they could build a few like Crimson Sanction, which gets stronger if a player has over X number of lands in play and if the player has a specific creature in play it does more damage.
Edit: Well, if someone wasn't already leaving MtG from the original drama, it's gone well beyond the Christine and Hambley thing now. Everyone is basically now talking about WoTC and the precedent they are setting for the future and it's not looking pretty, especially after getting a chance to see the kinds of things they were using to "ban" someone. If there weren't gameplay implications I wouldn't care, but this is just ridiculous.
To put this into context, Jeremy got accused of abusing christine, Christine later admits that she didn't stop Cosplaying because of Jeremy but because she is going back to College, but still basically pushed the story anyway, Jeremy did some "cleaning up" of his public comments and videos behind closed doors, WoTC went out to find evidence of the abuse, found "evidence" of misconduct that to some degree got taken out of context and was then used as fuel to ban him while Jeremy went on a trolling spree. Jeremy goes on a hell march to get his money back out of his now banned MTGO account and has a case for it, but couldn't possibly follow up legally on it because the costs would be greater than what he would get out of the law suite, MTG Lion and a bunch of others start going on an anti-WoTC smearing campaign, and in the meantime WoTC is busy trying to brush everything under the rug by pushing Mark Rosewater out onto the stage for the latest Unset. Now word of the situation has been spreading around and everyone is even angrier because some feel they got manipulated by one or more parties into pushing some questionable decisions. Also people are actively attacking the MTG Lion group now as well by trying to flag their accounts.
As for the gameplay implications:
1) The MTGO license is written loosely right now, but there is going to be a lawsuit against WoTC eventually because Wizards doesn't want to accept the digital cards have value despite the fact they do have real world value thanks to digital trading posts and the like. In fact, they'd be considered a commodity right now just like Bit Coin.
2) WoTC just demonstrated a very liberal and loose cannon approach to DCI Banning. It's one thing to ban someone over cheating, but this was a clear mistake given how the situation looks now vs before. I don't even know if they can actually back out of the banning because it would probably run aground with the same kind of problems admitting to the print quality problems would bring. The combination of the store posters saying how to be a good person plus the bannings is going to alienate a ton of players due to the Orwellian feel of the situation.
1. (Ravnica Allegiance): You can't keep a good esper control deck down... Or Wilderness Reclamation... or Gates...
2. (War of the Spark): Guys, I know what we need! We need a cycle of really idiotic flavor text victory cards! Jace's Triumph...
3. (War of the Spark): Lets make the format with control have even more control!
If anyone is interested in the entire affair and wants an even opinion on it, I found this guy to be about as even tempered on the entire thing as possible.
Lou Colagiovanni's article. I like his article mostly because the guy doesn't play Magic at all and is just looking at the thing from an outsider in. Basically, while we are here worried about Magic the gathering, it's really the entirety of WoTCs product lines that are in jeopardy from this disaster. Dungeons and dragons along with Duel Masters have much smaller communities and an exodus from them would just outright kill the games.
1. (Ravnica Allegiance): You can't keep a good esper control deck down... Or Wilderness Reclamation... or Gates...
2. (War of the Spark): Guys, I know what we need! We need a cycle of really idiotic flavor text victory cards! Jace's Triumph...
3. (War of the Spark): Lets make the format with control have even more control!
This last FNM at my LGS they had 81 people show up for Modern (holiday plus Modern Monday didn't go because of xmas)
Standard had 6 people and didn't fire.
Store Championship today. Same store had a Sealed event with 8 people instead of standard and a different local store I tried out had 4 people show up for standard store championship.
Standard is just about dead to me and my normal store used to have 25+ every FNM and Game day was well attended as well.
I likely won't bother getting any cards from the next set because NO ONE IS PLAYING STANDARD because it sucks.
This! I hope the people who like to say 'there are plenty of answers' read the details of at least the first half of this article. This is why standard is stale and people aren't playing it. It's WotC's design direction and they still haven't let go of proper hate cards.
That all falls under the purview of development, not design.
The problem is more in the distribution of answers. Right now all the strongest removal options, including [/card]Glorybringer[/card], are red. The other colors don't have the ability to match them. That said, I think energy is just too efficient to be stopped by targeted answers - especially since the deck can splash for whatever the best threats are. We could use better answers to The Scarab God, sure, but the fact that a Temur Energy deck can run it in the first place is an even bigger problem.
It remains to be seen how the development shakeups that happened after the bannings will affect standard.
If anyone is interested in the entire affair and wants an even opinion on it, I found this guy to be about as even tempered on the entire thing as possible.
Lou Colagiovanni's article. I like his article mostly because the guy doesn't play Magic at all and is just looking at the thing from an outsider in. Basically, while we are here worried about Magic the gathering, it's really the entirety of WoTCs product lines that are in jeopardy from this disaster. Dungeons and dragons along with Duel Masters have much smaller communities and an exodus from them would just outright kill the games.
It's hardly anywhere near as even as he makes it out to be at all, and it is hardly anywhere near what I would call an intellectually honest piece. Your first major red flag should come from the fact the he allowed Hambly not only to have an advance copy, but also he allowed Hambly to publish portions prior to the article being published. This should cause pause for anyone, at all, who thinks that he is writing anything remotely akin to a neutral stance. The next red flags that come up are that he accepts and present, without any actual source whatsoever, completely rumour and innuendo as fact towards the motivations of the anti-Hambly individuals. While this might be forgivable if he had done proper research, the simple fact of the matter is that he makes it damn well clear that the only person he interviewed is Hambly. So not only are we reading an article that is being intellectually dishonest from the outset by claiming a neutral position while obfuscating his own biases(as it is clear he worked closely with Hambly on this piece to primarily present Hambly's viewpoint), as well through presenting rumor as fact, he also is intellectually lazy because he makes it clear he never even bothered to try and interview the subjects of this piece, at all, aside from Hambly. While he makes some valid points towards Hambly's position, the simple fact is that everything else is damn well lazy and intellectually dishonest to the extreme, as well as near unethical.
Simply put, there is a reason why he hasn't seemed to have written a single article in two month, and his CV page on facebook essentially is just the ame damn story where he is mentioned once as being the friend of someone involved in Anthony Wiener's case. He's a bloody hack, and doesn't know journalistic integrity if it bit him in the ass, and this article damn well shows it. Of course, I shouldn't expect much from a guy who proclaims incessantly he is some sort of major journalist whom personally orchestrated Wiener's downfall. When the only mention that ever exists of him is that he is a friend of the person involved in the whole scandal, and who very occasionally writes minor articles on minor events.
While journalists all have opinions on everything, and all have some varying degree of agenda, they at least put some effort into their investigations aside from "Interview this one guy, and assume everything else". Simply put, this guy is trying to make a career, and that is it. He is a narcissistic nit who sees an opportunity to write complete rags, while presenting complete rumor as actual fact, while dressing it up as being "fair" by admitting that Jeremy is an ass.
This! I hope the people who like to say 'there are plenty of answers' read the details of at least the first half of this article. This is why standard is stale and people aren't playing it. It's WotC's design direction and they still haven't let go of proper hate cards.
That all falls under the purview of development, not design.
The problem is more in the distribution of answers. Right now all the strongest removal options, including [/card]Glorybringer[/card], are red. The other colors don't have the ability to match them. That said, I think energy is just too efficient to be stopped by targeted answers - especially since the deck can splash for whatever the best threats are. We could use better answers to The Scarab God, sure, but the fact that a Temur Energy deck can run it in the first place is an even bigger problem.
It remains to be seen how the development shakeups that happened after the bannings will affect standard.
I'm mostly not a fan of how open ended they are making the "big" cards. There's nothing wrong printing a powerful card if it is tied down to a specific strategy somehow, but things like The Scarab God can go in any deck that runs the two colors. When someone develops a bread and butter card it's meant to help fill out multiple decks in order to provide answers or to help compliment existing strategies. Case in point, if WoTC created a bunch of tribal strategies, they may want to give those strategies all access to some common removal card or fill out a past strategy and a new / current strategy in the same color, so they print a unique creature to work in both. Gifted Aetherborn is a really good example of a bread and butter card along with lightning Strike. The Scarab God was a card that was supposed to be a strategy centric card, but instead became a bread and butter one as it worked in energy, pirates, Gift, etc. Mythics should really showcase a strategy as they are the cards that get the most scrutiny and push the set.
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1. (Ravnica Allegiance): You can't keep a good esper control deck down... Or Wilderness Reclamation... or Gates...
2. (War of the Spark): Guys, I know what we need! We need a cycle of really idiotic flavor text victory cards! Jace's Triumph...
3. (War of the Spark): Lets make the format with control have even more control!
If anyone is interested in the entire affair and wants an even opinion on it, I found this guy to be about as even tempered on the entire thing as possible.
Lou Colagiovanni's article. I like his article mostly because the guy doesn't play Magic at all and is just looking at the thing from an outsider in. Basically, while we are here worried about Magic the gathering, it's really the entirety of WoTCs product lines that are in jeopardy from this disaster. Dungeons and dragons along with Duel Masters have much smaller communities and an exodus from them would just outright kill the games.
It's hardly anywhere near as even as he makes it out to be at all, and it is hardly anywhere near what I would call an intellectually honest piece. Your first major red flag should come from the fact the he allowed Hambly not only to have an advance copy, but also he allowed Hambly to publish portions prior to the article being published. This should cause pause for anyone, at all, who thinks that he is writing anything remotely akin to a neutral stance. The next red flags that come up are that he accepts and present, without any actual source whatsoever, completely rumour and innuendo as fact towards the motivations of the anti-Hambly individuals. While this might be forgivable if he had done proper research, the simple fact of the matter is that he makes it damn well clear that the only person he interviewed is Hambly. So not only are we reading an article that is being intellectually dishonest from the outset by claiming a neutral position while obfuscating his own biases(as it is clear he worked closely with Hambly on this piece to primarily present Hambly's viewpoint), as well through presenting rumor as fact, he also is intellectually lazy because he makes it clear he never even bothered to try and interview the subjects of this piece, at all, aside from Hambly. While he makes some valid points towards Hambly's position, the simple fact is that everything else is damn well lazy and intellectually dishonest to the extreme, as well as near unethical.
Simply put, there is a reason why he hasn't seemed to have written a single article in two month, and his CV page on facebook essentially is just the ame damn story where he is mentioned once as being the friend of someone involved in Anthony Wiener's case. He's a bloody hack, and doesn't know journalistic integrity if it bit him in the ass, and this article damn well shows it. Of course, I shouldn't expect much from a guy who proclaims incessantly he is some sort of major journalist whom personally orchestrated Wiener's downfall. When the only mention that ever exists of him is that he is a friend of the person involved in the whole scandal, and who very occasionally writes minor articles on minor events.
While journalists all have opinions on everything, and all have some varying degree of agenda, they at least put some effort into their investigations aside from "Interview this one guy, and assume everything else". Simply put, this guy is trying to make a career, and that is it. He is a narcissistic nit who sees an opportunity to write complete rags, while presenting complete rumor as actual fact, while dressing it up as being "fair" by admitting that Jeremy is an ass.
The guy's a hack and the piece is a rag.
I'm more interested in the contents than the writer as his points about the legal text have been shared by multiple people at this point. Likewise, if you want to start arguing about the writers own integrity that is a completely different subject. Perhaps you prefer Breitbart or maybe Jon del Araz? At this point does it even matter as the entire situation is just a giant pile of madness?
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1. (Ravnica Allegiance): You can't keep a good esper control deck down... Or Wilderness Reclamation... or Gates...
2. (War of the Spark): Guys, I know what we need! We need a cycle of really idiotic flavor text victory cards! Jace's Triumph...
3. (War of the Spark): Lets make the format with control have even more control!
When someone starts an article with 'I don't play MTG' I automatically don't give a flying **** what they have to say. They don't get anything that we're talking about and why the hell does their opinion rate at all with the community?
We're talking in this thread about standard, why it's failing, how they can fix it, and I at least hope they will but all the evidence right now is pointing to dumpster fire. If 81 people at one location are playing Modern and under 8 want to play standard WotC has a big problem that MARO and CO are not fixing.
The few left who want to play, can't. You need numbers for the game to work and they aren't there because of BAD DESIGN.
It might be time for the guy in charge to get an ultimatum or get fired and try someone willing to go back to the way things were when they worked.
I'm more interested in the contents than the writer as his points about the legal text have been shared by multiple people at this point. Likewise, if you want to start arguing about the writers own integrity that is a completely different subject. Perhaps you prefer Breitbart or maybe Jon del Araz? At this point does it even matter as the entire situation is just a giant pile of madness?
The point I'm making is that this article is an Op-Ed, and not some hard-hitting investigative article coming at it from a neutral stance. Op-Ed's are fine, however presenting as anything more than the writer's personal opinion on the matter is utterly dishonest. A writer's integrity is important, and shattering that integrity brings every single assertion made in one's piece suspect. This is doubly concerning considering that the article presents rumor as fact, and makes a great deal of assertions without any sort of sourcing for them.
To a significant degree, I would vastly prefer Breitbart; at least they straight up tell their agenda from the outset. This article claims it is neutral, when the reality is that it was pretty written in no small part with the help of Hambly himself, and done so to help Hambly more than fairly present the situation. This is a rag piece written in a manner that gives it the false air of neutrality while jut presenting the opinions of the author with very little actual factual basis to anything in it.
The reason I don't touch on the actual content of the article is because I don't really care about his opinion on the manner, and don't feel like debating it. He's allowed his opinion. Rather, I take great annoyance to the notion that an Op-Ed piece is some stalwart of journalistic neutrality on the subject at hand, and has anything to do with anything.
When someone starts an article with 'I don't play MTG' I automatically don't give a flying **** what they have to say. They don't get anything that we're talking about and why the hell does their opinion rate at all with the community?
We're talking in this thread about standard, why it's failing, how they can fix it, and I at least hope they will but all the evidence right now is pointing to dumpster fire. If 81 people at one location are playing Modern and under 8 want to play standard WotC has a big problem that MARO and CO are not fixing.
The few left who want to play, can't. You need numbers for the game to work and they aren't there because of BAD DESIGN.
Not going to lie; I think Rudy hit the nail on its head with his latest video: Rivals of Ixalan is going to be "meh", and Dominaria needs to knock it out of the park. I have a good deal of optimism from Dominaria; it is, after all, involving Garfield in the set design and it will largely be the first full-fledged set where the Play Design team has had enough time to really hash things out and figure out the format. Garfield has a very strong pedigree with Design; he was involved with Innistrad, which is largely regarded as one of the best draft and constructed sets ever created. He was also involved with Odyssey block, which was just straight fantastic almost entirely (With some minor issues with Torment in limited). He was also on the team for the original Ravnica, and according to MTG wiki had a hand in Unstable (Though he is uncredited). All of these sets are considered fantastic with great design and development.
While things don't look great until Rotation and Kaladesh leaves, a great Dominaria might be able to hold things off. That said, I don't see the game itself going anywhere any time soon. We are in rough times, but the game will continue for years to come still. If they fix the R&D issues in the game, which they seem to be working on, and not fall back into their absolute nonsense decisions that contradict the very lessons they discussed just a few short years ago, then the game will come out fine. It's a tall order, and requires people like Stoddard and Rosewater to abandon some of their core philosophies, but it's hardly insurmountable. There have been worse spots in the game's history.
I'm more interested in the contents than the writer as his points about the legal text have been shared by multiple people at this point. Likewise, if you want to start arguing about the writers own integrity that is a completely different subject. Perhaps you prefer Breitbart or maybe Jon del Araz? At this point does it even matter as the entire situation is just a giant pile of madness?
The point I'm making is that this article is an Op-Ed, and not some hard-hitting investigative article coming at it from a neutral stance. Op-Ed's are fine, however presenting as anything more than the writer's personal opinion on the matter is utterly dishonest. A writer's integrity is important, and shattering that integrity brings every single assertion made in one's piece suspect. This is doubly concerning considering that the article presents rumor as fact, and makes a great deal of assertions without any sort of sourcing for them.
To a significant degree, I would vastly prefer Breitbart; at least they straight up tell their agenda from the outset. This article claims it is neutral, when the reality is that it was pretty written in no small part with the help of Hambly himself, and done so to help Hambly more than fairly present the situation. This is a rag piece written in a manner that gives it the false air of neutrality while jut presenting the opinions of the author with very little actual factual basis to anything in it.
The reason I don't touch on the actual content of the article is because I don't really care about his opinion on the manner, and don't feel like debating it. He's allowed his opinion. Rather, I take great annoyance to the notion that an Op-Ed piece is some stalwart of journalistic neutrality on the subject at hand, and has anything to do with anything.
There isn't a neutral argument in this and that's the mistake a lot of people are making when assessing articles. People like to think there are two sides to a conflict when there are sometimes three or even four sides, and sometimes those sides might seem like they have something in common with one another.
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1. (Ravnica Allegiance): You can't keep a good esper control deck down... Or Wilderness Reclamation... or Gates...
2. (War of the Spark): Guys, I know what we need! We need a cycle of really idiotic flavor text victory cards! Jace's Triumph...
3. (War of the Spark): Lets make the format with control have even more control!
While things don't look great until Rotation and Kaladesh leaves, a great Dominaria might be able to hold things off. That said, I don't see the game itself going anywhere any time soon. We are in rough times, but the game will continue for years to come still. If they fix the R&D issues in the game, which they seem to be working on, and not fall back into their absolute nonsense decisions that contradict the very lessons they discussed just a few short years ago, then the game will come out fine. It's a tall order, and requires people like Stoddard and Rosewater to abandon some of their core philosophies, but it's hardly insurmountable. There have been worse spots in the game's history.
Masters 25 and/or Dominaria will determine whether or not If Wizards of the Coast/Hasbro really gives a damn about the actual game instead of looking to make things worse for local game stores like what they've been doing over the past year. Then again I don't think it's entirely the company's fault for neglecting local game stores when the reality is that Trading Card Games / Collectible Card Games aren't as popular as they once were. Most people expect way too much out of a hobby as this one isn't as sustainable as the Video Game Industry was but that too seems to be dying out in favor of other gaming genres that are more "convenient".
Consumers are tired of paying more for the same product as it's getting in the way of their livelihoods, but I've always said to myself that If you do something that you feel like you're going to regret later in life then it's not worth it. Back when I quit Yu-Gi-Oh! in 2004 I had no regrets when I sold off all my cards because I knew the game was only going to continue to get worse as time went on and history proved that I was right. Magic on the other hand I've always had a deep respect for due to how Wizards of the Coast/Hasbro hadn't caved in to the kind of business practices that plagued Konami with Yu-Gi-Oh!. 14 years later and Wizards of the Coast/Hasbro seems to be repeating the same mistakes Konami made with Yu-Gi-Oh!.
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America Bless Christ Jesus
"Restriction breeds creativity." - Sheldon Menery on EDH / Commander in Magic: The Gathering
"Cancel Culture is the real reason why everyone's not allowed to have nice things anymore." - Anonymous
"For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul?" - Mark 8:36
"Most men and women will grow up to love their servitude and will never dream of revolution." - Aldous Huxley, Brave New World
"Every life decision is always a risk / reward proposition." - Sanjay Gupta
What wizards is likely going to do is cut the print run on Masters 25 and possibly short run Dominaria and Rivals. That means fewer boxes and a stronger price point on the boxes, but at the same time that is also playing Nostradamus and trying to predict how people are going to react to the sets when they are released. Right now the products that will hold the strongest long term value are the BFZ/Oath -> HOU since they have the lotto cards. Also, this isn't counting all the forgotten sideline products floating around big box retailers like the duel decks and gift boxes. Those are basically just floating around in a nimbus cloud with barely any demand for them outside of speculative investor types.
I seriously do not understand why Wizards spends so much money flooding the market with products no one really wants. If they want to release an Ixalan board game, include it in the bundle or booster box to give added value to the set. If they want to help people get into the game, make starters that can compete with the main set and have stronger cards in them. On top of which, make the cards that are unique to the starters on par with the main set, not weaker than the main set. It's like they just want to waste paper in some pretend lala land or just make these secondary products the most expensive advertising campaign ever for MtG. Also the card development for this game is just horrific compared to some of the competition. So many obvious mistakes being cloaked as "we're just making the higher rarities more open ended because it makes them valuable" garbage. There's two ways to end up with an expensive standard:
1) Few people are drafting standard so there aren't a lot of copies.
2) A single strategy dominates and only a tiny subset of cards in the entire set is carrying it.
Guess which one of those describes the sorry state the game is in right now. The only reason the prices aren't completely out the window is that attendance for standard is so low that the demand for anything from standard is almost non-existent. The only thing holding card prices is the expected resurgence once they spoil rivals.
Private Mod Note
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Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
1. (Ravnica Allegiance): You can't keep a good esper control deck down... Or Wilderness Reclamation... or Gates...
2. (War of the Spark): Guys, I know what we need! We need a cycle of really idiotic flavor text victory cards! Jace's Triumph...
3. (War of the Spark): Lets make the format with control have even more control!
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The source of the set development issue is the lack of properly assessing the top end and bottom end of the sets. Mark is very big on bottom up and treats the higher rarity cards as more open ended, which is why the top of the set always seems to have some very pushed card and the rest are either middling or just unimpressive. As for the pro team, it sounds more like the developers don't have enough time to sit with the set and test it with other available cards. In all honesty the pro team is bad news for players of Modern and Legacy, but for people mainly into standard and block constructed it's probably a good thing.
1. (Ravnica Allegiance): You can't keep a good esper control deck down... Or Wilderness Reclamation... or Gates...
2. (War of the Spark): Guys, I know what we need! We need a cycle of really idiotic flavor text victory cards! Jace's Triumph...
3. (War of the Spark): Lets make the format with control have even more control!
The pro team is a good thing because if we get better designed sets eternal formats will get pieces to integrate instead of Eldrazi winters. Their job is to get the over pushed crap under control and see how new cards will relate to standard and the cards already in play.
Bottom up is a focus on limited, but it obviously doesn't work since we constantly get bomb and win limited environments. I agree with you top down is proper planning.
Maro's methods are too data driven. Using data to decide what to ban is great. Using data to decide what players, especially new players, like and thus to design sets that way leads to Emrakul, the Promised end. Hell it even leads to Smuggler's Copter- or rather the non existence of punishing hate cards did. Giving people what they say they like is a bad idea. McDonalds make a huge number of burgers and fast food. People like it,it is undeniably popular especially with youngsters, but you can't eat it daily and if you do you would end up pretty fat pretty quickly By and large we have gotten McDonalds food in MTG card form- what they say they like, none of the stuff they don't, but not what they need.
I fear if Dominaria sucks Standard will die in a lot more places than it already has.
We are seeing more answers but control isn't really a player right now so the triangle balance hasn't been restored (control-agro-midrange). Don't get all angry control players (I play control as well) but it's not good enough and the numbers are showing that. Hell I think ramp is another victim of Maro's 'no more one CMC mana dorks' because even with all the fetch spells, it's not good enough. Attune of course is a different deal.
It could be that the top decks 4cEnergy-Energy-Ramred are just too good for a regular speed control to get the right percentage wins. Maybe the new set will be a game changer for that /shrug
For years we had 1cc discard, 1cc mana dorks, 1cc draw, 2 and 3 cc ramp, 4 cc sweepers,and often 1cc kill, 3cc land kill and 1 or 2cc grave hate. Messing with those was dangerous.
If you take Combo, Ramp and Prisons out of the format, and then you neutralise UX control you are not left with much.
It's not so much that as it is that the tools you need to deal with Ramunap Red are just fundamentally different tools than what you need to deal with Energy. Sweeper in general are bad against a deck that has an Indestructible haster that can fling excess lands for damage, has lands that can fling about a quarter of your lands for damage repeatedly, and a Planeswalker that can deal damage continuously. Energy falls apart prettyy hard to Sweepers in Game 1, however the decks with sweepers available to them have no real way to combat Mono-Red effectively and vice-versa. It's a pretty viscious gate to get through, and that is largely because both decks have things that honestly shouldn't exist. Mono-Red aggro decks having such obscene late game with little investment is fundamentally a mistake, and Temur Energy having difficult too many annoying to answer creatures, and value on value cards (Rogue Refiner, in particular, is too much for too little).
The simple truth is that White has no effective way to deal with Aggro, and Red or Black has no effective way to deal with Energy. Couple that with no good card draw in Black or Red (OR really, any good CA engine), so you can't make B/W work or R/W work, and that going Esper slows you many base down far too much to deal with aggro; Going Jeskai makes your sweepers awkward due to too many fastlands to deal with Energy. This isn't a case of wanting a control that *does* answer everything; rather it's that no matter which way you go, you have no ability to deal with your bad match ups at all by virtue of choosing one color over another.
Agree with all of this. I've build and rebuilt and tried all the combos and pieces are missing that make Control not realistically viable. Even the decks that have won once or twice have the flaws they just got a lucky run.
I don't have a lot of faith in mono colored Dinos to get us past this... days of dual colored dragons past... <sigh> I remember playing decks with every one of those Elder Dragons and they were all fun and at least competitive (ok Kohlagan not so much but the deck was fun and at least .5 at the time).
http://magic.tcgplayer.com/db/article.asp?ID=14365&writer=Craig Wescoe&articledate=12-29-2017
The article is pretty much straight on point.
I will add that to his last point, the reason we need more efficient amswers is because it dramatically opens up the format. Just going with Doom Blade, a big part ofnthe problem right now is that we have one efficient all purpose removal spell in the format in the foem of Harnessed Lightning, and two others tjlhat are alsonred (Abrade/Lightning Strike). This is our only Doom Blade. If a player wants to play a deck that plays Doom Blade, they are by necessity an Energy based deck. If there were 5 or 6 different Doom Blades in the format, you could reasonably play a deck that wants Doom Blade but is not energy. Right now we realistically have three general purpose efficient answer cards on the level of Doom Blade, all of which are red (Abrade, Lightning Strike, HL) and one arguable in Black (Fatal Push, which is more of a scalpel in Standard). Ultimately, Pileofremoval.dec is not a serious archetype anympre, largely because threats are significantly better.
Equally, the reason why answers need to be far more efficient than threats is because answers do not win the game. Threats do. You can have a hand full of threats, and you can win the game. If you have a hand full of answes, there is a good chamce you can lose.
Absolutely. The furthest they've ventured into answers being as robust as threats is Vraska's and CMC 4 isn't good enough.
When 3 CMC threats come with 3/2 body, +energy, +card answers also need to be destroy, +card, +lifegain for 3 CMC. 2 CMC threats should exile and gain life. Sweepers should be 4 CMC without the downside because threats are over efficient!
What's not very funny is they've poo poo'd cards like Sphinx's Revelation and Supreme Verdict but those are exactly the kinds of cards they need to have in standard to bring us back to balance.
I will say that answers that deal with almost every threat, and have upside beyond that, are perfectly reasonable to be cost more. Vraskas Contempt is fine, as is Cast Out. The problem is that that is mostly all there is in the format; White has actively nothing to deal with the early game at all, and Black has Push, which is not very good against the premier archetype in the format. Hence why Black is really just a different sort of Attune/Refiner package that runs a Contempt or two, and white just hard loses to aggro.
Edit: Well, if someone wasn't already leaving MtG from the original drama, it's gone well beyond the Christine and Hambley thing now. Everyone is basically now talking about WoTC and the precedent they are setting for the future and it's not looking pretty, especially after getting a chance to see the kinds of things they were using to "ban" someone. If there weren't gameplay implications I wouldn't care, but this is just ridiculous.
To put this into context, Jeremy got accused of abusing christine, Christine later admits that she didn't stop Cosplaying because of Jeremy but because she is going back to College, but still basically pushed the story anyway, Jeremy did some "cleaning up" of his public comments and videos behind closed doors, WoTC went out to find evidence of the abuse, found "evidence" of misconduct that to some degree got taken out of context and was then used as fuel to ban him while Jeremy went on a trolling spree. Jeremy goes on a hell march to get his money back out of his now banned MTGO account and has a case for it, but couldn't possibly follow up legally on it because the costs would be greater than what he would get out of the law suite, MTG Lion and a bunch of others start going on an anti-WoTC smearing campaign, and in the meantime WoTC is busy trying to brush everything under the rug by pushing Mark Rosewater out onto the stage for the latest Unset. Now word of the situation has been spreading around and everyone is even angrier because some feel they got manipulated by one or more parties into pushing some questionable decisions. Also people are actively attacking the MTG Lion group now as well by trying to flag their accounts.
As for the gameplay implications:
1) The MTGO license is written loosely right now, but there is going to be a lawsuit against WoTC eventually because Wizards doesn't want to accept the digital cards have value despite the fact they do have real world value thanks to digital trading posts and the like. In fact, they'd be considered a commodity right now just like Bit Coin.
2) WoTC just demonstrated a very liberal and loose cannon approach to DCI Banning. It's one thing to ban someone over cheating, but this was a clear mistake given how the situation looks now vs before. I don't even know if they can actually back out of the banning because it would probably run aground with the same kind of problems admitting to the print quality problems would bring. The combination of the store posters saying how to be a good person plus the bannings is going to alienate a ton of players due to the Orwellian feel of the situation.
1. (Ravnica Allegiance): You can't keep a good esper control deck down... Or Wilderness Reclamation... or Gates...
2. (War of the Spark): Guys, I know what we need! We need a cycle of really idiotic flavor text victory cards! Jace's Triumph...
3. (War of the Spark): Lets make the format with control have even more control!
Lou Colagiovanni's article. I like his article mostly because the guy doesn't play Magic at all and is just looking at the thing from an outsider in. Basically, while we are here worried about Magic the gathering, it's really the entirety of WoTCs product lines that are in jeopardy from this disaster. Dungeons and dragons along with Duel Masters have much smaller communities and an exodus from them would just outright kill the games.
1. (Ravnica Allegiance): You can't keep a good esper control deck down... Or Wilderness Reclamation... or Gates...
2. (War of the Spark): Guys, I know what we need! We need a cycle of really idiotic flavor text victory cards! Jace's Triumph...
3. (War of the Spark): Lets make the format with control have even more control!
Standard had 6 people and didn't fire.
Store Championship today. Same store had a Sealed event with 8 people instead of standard and a different local store I tried out had 4 people show up for standard store championship.
Standard is just about dead to me and my normal store used to have 25+ every FNM and Game day was well attended as well.
I likely won't bother getting any cards from the next set because NO ONE IS PLAYING STANDARD because it sucks.
That all falls under the purview of development, not design.
The problem is more in the distribution of answers. Right now all the strongest removal options, including [/card]Glorybringer[/card], are red. The other colors don't have the ability to match them. That said, I think energy is just too efficient to be stopped by targeted answers - especially since the deck can splash for whatever the best threats are. We could use better answers to The Scarab God, sure, but the fact that a Temur Energy deck can run it in the first place is an even bigger problem.
It remains to be seen how the development shakeups that happened after the bannings will affect standard.
It's hardly anywhere near as even as he makes it out to be at all, and it is hardly anywhere near what I would call an intellectually honest piece. Your first major red flag should come from the fact the he allowed Hambly not only to have an advance copy, but also he allowed Hambly to publish portions prior to the article being published. This should cause pause for anyone, at all, who thinks that he is writing anything remotely akin to a neutral stance. The next red flags that come up are that he accepts and present, without any actual source whatsoever, completely rumour and innuendo as fact towards the motivations of the anti-Hambly individuals. While this might be forgivable if he had done proper research, the simple fact of the matter is that he makes it damn well clear that the only person he interviewed is Hambly. So not only are we reading an article that is being intellectually dishonest from the outset by claiming a neutral position while obfuscating his own biases(as it is clear he worked closely with Hambly on this piece to primarily present Hambly's viewpoint), as well through presenting rumor as fact, he also is intellectually lazy because he makes it clear he never even bothered to try and interview the subjects of this piece, at all, aside from Hambly. While he makes some valid points towards Hambly's position, the simple fact is that everything else is damn well lazy and intellectually dishonest to the extreme, as well as near unethical.
Simply put, there is a reason why he hasn't seemed to have written a single article in two month, and his CV page on facebook essentially is just the ame damn story where he is mentioned once as being the friend of someone involved in Anthony Wiener's case. He's a bloody hack, and doesn't know journalistic integrity if it bit him in the ass, and this article damn well shows it. Of course, I shouldn't expect much from a guy who proclaims incessantly he is some sort of major journalist whom personally orchestrated Wiener's downfall. When the only mention that ever exists of him is that he is a friend of the person involved in the whole scandal, and who very occasionally writes minor articles on minor events.
While journalists all have opinions on everything, and all have some varying degree of agenda, they at least put some effort into their investigations aside from "Interview this one guy, and assume everything else". Simply put, this guy is trying to make a career, and that is it. He is a narcissistic nit who sees an opportunity to write complete rags, while presenting complete rumor as actual fact, while dressing it up as being "fair" by admitting that Jeremy is an ass.
The guy's a hack and the piece is a rag.
I'm mostly not a fan of how open ended they are making the "big" cards. There's nothing wrong printing a powerful card if it is tied down to a specific strategy somehow, but things like The Scarab God can go in any deck that runs the two colors. When someone develops a bread and butter card it's meant to help fill out multiple decks in order to provide answers or to help compliment existing strategies. Case in point, if WoTC created a bunch of tribal strategies, they may want to give those strategies all access to some common removal card or fill out a past strategy and a new / current strategy in the same color, so they print a unique creature to work in both. Gifted Aetherborn is a really good example of a bread and butter card along with lightning Strike. The Scarab God was a card that was supposed to be a strategy centric card, but instead became a bread and butter one as it worked in energy, pirates, Gift, etc. Mythics should really showcase a strategy as they are the cards that get the most scrutiny and push the set.
1. (Ravnica Allegiance): You can't keep a good esper control deck down... Or Wilderness Reclamation... or Gates...
2. (War of the Spark): Guys, I know what we need! We need a cycle of really idiotic flavor text victory cards! Jace's Triumph...
3. (War of the Spark): Lets make the format with control have even more control!
I'm more interested in the contents than the writer as his points about the legal text have been shared by multiple people at this point. Likewise, if you want to start arguing about the writers own integrity that is a completely different subject. Perhaps you prefer Breitbart or maybe Jon del Araz? At this point does it even matter as the entire situation is just a giant pile of madness?
1. (Ravnica Allegiance): You can't keep a good esper control deck down... Or Wilderness Reclamation... or Gates...
2. (War of the Spark): Guys, I know what we need! We need a cycle of really idiotic flavor text victory cards! Jace's Triumph...
3. (War of the Spark): Lets make the format with control have even more control!
We're talking in this thread about standard, why it's failing, how they can fix it, and I at least hope they will but all the evidence right now is pointing to dumpster fire. If 81 people at one location are playing Modern and under 8 want to play standard WotC has a big problem that MARO and CO are not fixing.
The few left who want to play, can't. You need numbers for the game to work and they aren't there because of BAD DESIGN.
It might be time for the guy in charge to get an ultimatum or get fired and try someone willing to go back to the way things were when they worked.
The point I'm making is that this article is an Op-Ed, and not some hard-hitting investigative article coming at it from a neutral stance. Op-Ed's are fine, however presenting as anything more than the writer's personal opinion on the matter is utterly dishonest. A writer's integrity is important, and shattering that integrity brings every single assertion made in one's piece suspect. This is doubly concerning considering that the article presents rumor as fact, and makes a great deal of assertions without any sort of sourcing for them.
To a significant degree, I would vastly prefer Breitbart; at least they straight up tell their agenda from the outset. This article claims it is neutral, when the reality is that it was pretty written in no small part with the help of Hambly himself, and done so to help Hambly more than fairly present the situation. This is a rag piece written in a manner that gives it the false air of neutrality while jut presenting the opinions of the author with very little actual factual basis to anything in it.
The reason I don't touch on the actual content of the article is because I don't really care about his opinion on the manner, and don't feel like debating it. He's allowed his opinion. Rather, I take great annoyance to the notion that an Op-Ed piece is some stalwart of journalistic neutrality on the subject at hand, and has anything to do with anything.
Not going to lie; I think Rudy hit the nail on its head with his latest video: Rivals of Ixalan is going to be "meh", and Dominaria needs to knock it out of the park. I have a good deal of optimism from Dominaria; it is, after all, involving Garfield in the set design and it will largely be the first full-fledged set where the Play Design team has had enough time to really hash things out and figure out the format. Garfield has a very strong pedigree with Design; he was involved with Innistrad, which is largely regarded as one of the best draft and constructed sets ever created. He was also involved with Odyssey block, which was just straight fantastic almost entirely (With some minor issues with Torment in limited). He was also on the team for the original Ravnica, and according to MTG wiki had a hand in Unstable (Though he is uncredited). All of these sets are considered fantastic with great design and development.
While things don't look great until Rotation and Kaladesh leaves, a great Dominaria might be able to hold things off. That said, I don't see the game itself going anywhere any time soon. We are in rough times, but the game will continue for years to come still. If they fix the R&D issues in the game, which they seem to be working on, and not fall back into their absolute nonsense decisions that contradict the very lessons they discussed just a few short years ago, then the game will come out fine. It's a tall order, and requires people like Stoddard and Rosewater to abandon some of their core philosophies, but it's hardly insurmountable. There have been worse spots in the game's history.
There isn't a neutral argument in this and that's the mistake a lot of people are making when assessing articles. People like to think there are two sides to a conflict when there are sometimes three or even four sides, and sometimes those sides might seem like they have something in common with one another.
1. (Ravnica Allegiance): You can't keep a good esper control deck down... Or Wilderness Reclamation... or Gates...
2. (War of the Spark): Guys, I know what we need! We need a cycle of really idiotic flavor text victory cards! Jace's Triumph...
3. (War of the Spark): Lets make the format with control have even more control!
Consumers are tired of paying more for the same product as it's getting in the way of their livelihoods, but I've always said to myself that If you do something that you feel like you're going to regret later in life then it's not worth it. Back when I quit Yu-Gi-Oh! in 2004 I had no regrets when I sold off all my cards because I knew the game was only going to continue to get worse as time went on and history proved that I was right. Magic on the other hand I've always had a deep respect for due to how Wizards of the Coast/Hasbro hadn't caved in to the kind of business practices that plagued Konami with Yu-Gi-Oh!. 14 years later and Wizards of the Coast/Hasbro seems to be repeating the same mistakes Konami made with Yu-Gi-Oh!.
"Restriction breeds creativity." - Sheldon Menery on EDH / Commander in Magic: The Gathering
"Cancel Culture is the real reason why everyone's not allowed to have nice things anymore." - Anonymous
"For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul?" - Mark 8:36
"Most men and women will grow up to love their servitude and will never dream of revolution." - Aldous Huxley, Brave New World
"Every life decision is always a risk / reward proposition." - Sanjay Gupta
I seriously do not understand why Wizards spends so much money flooding the market with products no one really wants. If they want to release an Ixalan board game, include it in the bundle or booster box to give added value to the set. If they want to help people get into the game, make starters that can compete with the main set and have stronger cards in them. On top of which, make the cards that are unique to the starters on par with the main set, not weaker than the main set. It's like they just want to waste paper in some pretend lala land or just make these secondary products the most expensive advertising campaign ever for MtG. Also the card development for this game is just horrific compared to some of the competition. So many obvious mistakes being cloaked as "we're just making the higher rarities more open ended because it makes them valuable" garbage. There's two ways to end up with an expensive standard:
1) Few people are drafting standard so there aren't a lot of copies.
2) A single strategy dominates and only a tiny subset of cards in the entire set is carrying it.
Guess which one of those describes the sorry state the game is in right now. The only reason the prices aren't completely out the window is that attendance for standard is so low that the demand for anything from standard is almost non-existent. The only thing holding card prices is the expected resurgence once they spoil rivals.
1. (Ravnica Allegiance): You can't keep a good esper control deck down... Or Wilderness Reclamation... or Gates...
2. (War of the Spark): Guys, I know what we need! We need a cycle of really idiotic flavor text victory cards! Jace's Triumph...
3. (War of the Spark): Lets make the format with control have even more control!