I wasn't aware that Commander had sanctioned events anywhere.
It doesn't that's why Wizards of the Coast/Hasbro needs to officially sanction it like they recently did with Pauper. The point I was trying to get at earlier is that EDH/Commander has replaced Standard as their flagship format in Magic with new set releases reinforcing this recent shift in design philosophy.
With too many new cards being printed/reprinted for casual markets it doesn't leave as much incentive for competitive players to play Standard, Modern, and Legacy. Local game stores are still an important venue for casual players just as much as it is for competitive players.
I completely agree with you on their need to support stores and casual players but I have to say Modern is the flagship right now. Hell my LGS had 81 players do Modern at FNM last weekend. Eighty-one.
Standard didn't fire.
Maybe your local players are hard into Commander but it's not quite so popular here. Your LGS should support what people want to play.
I feel like the Commander releases are part of their multi-angle push to get people to buy more product as they've been releasing Commander boxes for several years now predating the spear they hurled into Standard. The only reason standard isn't doing well is because they've messed it up.
To some extent Modern is the flagship right now however it still has the same problems that's currently plaguing Standard right now. EDH/Commander is much easier to break into due to the low barrier of entry and low toxicity depending on your playgroup environment. My LGS hosts EDH/Commander events every Tuesday but that's mainly because they can't book these events during the weekends because of FNM, Standard, and Modern. They're probably worried that they'll end up attracting less players If it was done the other way around.
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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
While I like Profane Procession (just spoiled) it stinks of being careful (but creative) with removal.
Creatively I like it. As another way to get rid of things I can get into it even at each speed. As the only way to get rid of things because they won't give us Doom Blade... poop.
To be honest, they've been more or less knocking it out of the park with their Commander releases, particularly over the last few years. While they are far from perfect, they are largely enjoyable and reasonably well executed products.
Well it's one thing with their Commander releases but what good is that going to do If they sit around and do nothing to officially sanction the format? My guess is that it has a lot to do with a dispute between Wizards of the Coast/Hasbro and the EDH Rules Committee that Sheldon Menery himself founded. With the increasing amount of distrust with the company as of late, the EDH Rules Committee probably doesn't think Wizards of the Coast/Hasbro are responsible enough to properly manage the format as much as they have.
"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
Just to add an additional datapoint:
I was told by the owner of the Game Store that I sometimes go to that Standard has died at his shop. Tournaments are no longer firing.
Modern and Legacy on the other hand, are doing very well and overall attendance has risen.
My two LGSs
Store A- Nothing but Commander, Commander, Commander. Standard is the most popular constructed format, maybe Pauper, but it is millions of miles behind commander, showdowns just about fire, but it is a stretch.
Store B- Legacy thrives (20-30 player FNMs, which is decent for the UK), Modern does well but its FNMs are earlier, Commander is played by the players of Legacy/Modern, Standard seems to lags behind except for National events, obviously. It runs alongside Legacy. Showdowns don't fire, comp players play 2 FNM events the previous evening, they want to play when their friends are playing- Friday.
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People with belligerent signatures are trying to compensate for something....
Showdowns don't fire, comp players play 2 FNM events the previous evening, they want to play when their friends are playing- Friday.
This is part of the problem. People want to play on Friday. They make this idiotic push to make 'engaged' players (their term) play on Sat or Sunday when they barely have anyone to play. Now you're spreading out the last few and nothing fires.
Standard is boring, over designed trash and it lacks the proper answers for the threats they create. It's not so hard to go back and design like RTR or Tarkir. But on top of design they have to stop doing so many small stupid things that spread out and piss off the small standard player base. Yes new players is a nice goal but there are plenty of 'engaged' players who would play if there was a good game to buy cards for and they throw all their weight behind supporting FNM standard.
At least rivals doesn't look too bad. I'm hoping there is enough power in the set to change up standard, but I got a feeling we will see some things like gift go through a resurgence.
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!
Definitely, if standard was more interesting and diverse, I would make time for it.
I really liked Ixalan when it first came out. After playing it I realized that I drafting it was tedious and boring. Furthermore, when WOTC comes out with a set, I think the focus used to be on Standard playability. Now, it seems like they are splitting the focus between EDH and Standard playability, so sets are the same size, but much more is being dedicated to "What cards can we make that will work well in EDH" instead of simply "How can we make standard great again".
I am really interested to see if the next Ixalan set will make some more viable deck options in standard. Will dinosaurs become more competitive in standard? Will vampires become more competitive? Or will the set be dedicated to making cards that are good for EDH?
Hopefully the next set helps standard so I can be excited to play again.
Once I was bored with standard, I started coming up with random Standard home brews. I would win sometimes, with my favorable winds deck being super fun to play, but mostly it was getting roflstomped by the top few decks every time. Actually I had fairly good luck with my vamp deck as well. But usually the luck I had was during the free standard tournament when people like to bring home brews and try out new decks, and that became the most fun night to play for me because it was different. It also brought out people who didn't want to play FNM because they too were tired of playing the same 2 or 3 decks each time. This is how it was for me YMMV.
Goblins that's how many people have felt. That's why events aren't firing.
Could you imagine carving out the time, commuting to get to an FNM, and having it not fire? That's mostly what's going on right now because 3, 2, and 1 deck formats are boring. And lots of times they're expensive because everyone wants just a few cards.
If standard were more interesting you might make some time for it right?
At this point EDH/Commander is more interesting than Standard right now yet Wizards of the Coast/Hasbro does nothing to promote events for it other than the annual product releases that continues to oversaturate the market. How do you expect to run a sanctioned event with enough 4 player pods so that there's no bye? That and it's more time consuming compared to other formats due to the nature of being 100 card singleton.
I think WOTC dedicated a good portion of new sets to EDH, as in they print a lot of cards that are clearly meant for EDH instead of the current standard environment.
Purchased almost nothing from recent sets.
The Greeks set was ugly and the 'enchantment creature' cards somehow continue to confuse me 'til this day.
The Egyptian set was better, but it continued to bother me that they didn't use the actual gods of Egypt (e.g. Seth, Osiris).
The Steampunk set had nice art and nice story. It felt original and the abilities were interesting. But the vehicles aren't my thing either.
Ixalan, I was enthousiastic about 'til they revealed it was a creature tribal set. Which are very boring to draft, since they push you into one of four tribes.
Generally speaking, however, the gameplay quality of cards is so bad and boring it makes purchasing boosters absurd. You get a crap rare and boring commons, so why buy anything!?
For the record: If a card is bad, I might still like it if it has something which makes it interesting, like an amusing ability. But WOTC keeps printing chaff and seems to print more than before (I know this is an illusion because I've played the game for such a long time). Why do they keep printing creatures with an empty text box? This is absurd. It's a waste of paper, really. Why not put some ability in the text box?
"R: This gets flying and you lose 2 life" is a lot more interesting to draft than an empty textbox. I want choices. Even if those choices force me to choose between a rock and a hard place.
Why print a 3/4 flying for 5 mana like Shining Aerosaur? Why print more bears!? Queen's Bay Soldier is both boring and trash! Gilded Sentinel is an insult to anyone who purchases a booster!
The fun thing about EDH is seeing strange interactions on the board. Maybe they should find some inspiration in that.
Conclusion: WOTC is lazy. You can feel it in the railroading towards certain deck archetypes, in their bland chaff, and even the way the art looks.
I think they have always done the whole printing boring cards thing.
You have to have boring cards for limited balance. They take that into account and that's how you fill out packs. But there should be more playbles at uncommon and common than there have been. That being said the density of threats is obnoxious and they're still tippy toe careful to not print too much hate which is silly as control (other than a random win here and there) is crushed out of the meta because of it.
Balance has not been returned.
Energy is boring and painful to play or to play against. That is what Maro is giving us.
This new set looks like spaghetti thrown against a wall to see what will stick. So many 2 and 3 drops and haphazard text boxes. Certainly there are a lot of cards in each tribe but honestly even with the volume spoiled it's a bit meh. Yes big spectacular Dinos... and an exile enchantment that does NOTHING when it enters the battlefield? Really?
the reason standard sucks is because WotC won't print good answers because they are unfun. But honestly a standard with powerful answers would be much more fun than what it is today. A standard with Doom Blade, Lightning Bolt, Path to Exile, Wrath of God, and Counterspell would be the best one in years.
the reason standard sucks is because WotC won't print good answers because they are unfun. But honestly a standard with powerful answers would be much more fun than what it is today. A standard with Doom Blade, Lightning Bolt, Path to Exile, Wrath of God, and Counterspell would be the best one in years.
Seconded.
They should be reprinting those cards in standard and the bloody enemy fetches etc.
the reason standard sucks is because WotC won't print good answers because they are unfun. But honestly a standard with powerful answers would be much more fun than what it is today. A standard with Doom Blade, Lightning Bolt, Path to Exile, Wrath of God, and Counterspell would be the best one in years.
Seconded.
They should be reprinting those cards in standard and the bloody enemy fetches etc.
It's not an answer, but still far from "too broken to be printed in Standard."
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Legacy - Sneak Show, BR Reanimator, Miracles, UW Stoneblade
Premodern - Trix, RecSur, Enchantress, Reanimator, Elves https://www.facebook.com/groups/PremodernUSA/ Modern - Neobrand, Hogaak Vine, Elves
Standard - Mono Red (6-2 and 5-3 in 2 McQ)
Draft - (I wish I had more time for limited...)
Commander - Norin the Wary, Grimgrin, Adun Oakenshield (taking forever to build) (dead format for me)
Standard needs to take a hard turn. We need a "creatures don't matter" standard, maybe even a "permanents are not all they are chalked up to be" standard. I want a standard of REALLY good control, removal, Card draw, I want a standard deck with a consistant turn 4 win combo AND a strong control deck that can hate it out. I am tried of turning creatures sideways, I want enchantments, I want instants, I want game winning sorcery, I want fast mana. We have had the erra of the creature for a LONG time, they had had their power creep its time to break out the spells again. To become the walkers we once were. Every color now has a grizzly bear, even blue and black and the colors that had good creatures just got better. I want the same treatment for spells, I want us to look back at fact or fiction or ancestral vision or vindicate and go "meh its ok I guess but the new stuff is a little better" much like how we can look back now at the creatures of old like Spirit monger, Juzam Djinn or Shivian dragon and none of them would make the cut in a standard deck today.
Have to disagree with you there. Too strong control is part of what got us here... ok Maro listening to data from whiners who don't like their fattys killed or countered got us here but what I find silly is in the current meta Sphinx's Revalation and Supreme Verdict are exactly what we need. According to the new philosophy (which they are backing off of way too slowly) those cards are too powerful. Wrong.
Balanced standard is what we need. Great answers and mediated threats get us the control-agro-midrange we need to be healthy.
I don't ever want to see a turn 4 combo/win in standard again. That's part of what's gutting the player base. That was trash to play against and they should have pre-banned the cat before release instead of being amused by their lack of foresight.
The problem is the whining masses Maro gathered data from are like the guys or girls who vote that when they want events to happen at your LGS and don't turn up more than 10% of the time. Their votes count the same as those who will turn up come hell or high water.
People who hate their fatties killed and love turning monsters sideways are far less likely to be hardcore enfranchised MTGers wishing to play competitive events, because they can play their critters and the like in EDH- it self regulates to boot. They are the "maybe" crowd but there are a lot of them. Look at Legacy- dedicated players spending a fair bit of money to play with little pro structure as an incentive traveling great distances. What is Legacy about? Powerful plays, T1 drops, free spells,counterspells, handkill, landkill. Creatures- sure- but they are fragile as hell or enormous and cheated in- by spells. It is a format defined by FOW, Thoughseize, Wasteland, Fast sol lands, and Delver/DRS. Not dude, dude, dude, walker, dude. It has several combos that just win the game without creatures- Omniscience, RIP or LOTV/Helm, Belcher etc. Now I don't think standard should be like Legacy, but it sure as hell should not have an effective ban on uncounterables, 1cc mana dorks, 1cc discard, 4 cc wraths,2 cc hard counters etc. Banning fast mana rituals- that is one thing. LLanowar Elves? Really? At least Ammonket provided the Bontu's last reckoning, albeit at a steep cost
Enfranchised players in the tournament scene normally want to play the best deck/s regardless or want to play their own brew- often with different cards- they have no specific love of creatures/walkers/creatures/more creatures etc, and no specific love of midrange curves.
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People with belligerent signatures are trying to compensate for something....
The format was healthy when we had 1 CMC mana dorks, thoughtseize, and lots of removal/sweepers.
Bring it all on! I miss Sylvan Caryatid
The *only* problem with RtR-THS standard was Born of the Gods. That said was so incredibly bad that the only thing it really added to the format was three cards; two of which actually made the best deck better (Bile Blight) and Drown in Sorrow), and one of which made the Fourth-ish best deck better. This ensured that the format just went nowhere, and fast. One Journey came into the mix, the format opened considerably and an actual Constellation deck showed up, and a few other interesting inclusions to the format came with M15.
Bad sets don't impact standard, is where I'm going.
It would help if they made cards that work outside of tribal / energy and specific themes they force into a set.
Something as generic as explore would be a fine mechanic , but they underpowered all the cards so drastically.
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In current standard decks are somewhat pre-build and pre-designed as they want decks to look like.
Instead they could just make sure cards have a much more balanced powerlevel across rares and rarity, and simply let players build decks with them.
As of right now, theres specific rares that are just over the line better than others with the same manacost that its downright impossible to not play the superior card in almost any circumstances, that reduces deck building potential enormously.
Instead of catch-all answers they print several cards that solve just parts of the problems and players have to toggle between them depending on the metagame (see Cancel, Essence Shatter, Negate, and the countless reprints that do the same in variations).
I would be cool with this design, but the biggest issue is, that for older formats, this doesnt work at all, as all the variations they balance around "Cancel" arent working in formats that have Counterspell or even Mana Drain).
Thats kinda silly, as the amount of answers increases, but it simply produces a gameplay in which you need specific answers and not finding them simply spells game-over (and putting indestructible/hexproof and similiar mechanics on creatures just makes it worse to find some reasonable answer to them).
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WotC got stuck in a design of patterns.
They pretty much have a big structure of patterns and they design cards to fill these slots, so they reduce risk to do something "really" new, they just keep doing the same over and over again in small variations and doing that while reducing the powerlevel simply gives the impression sets get worse and worse as nothing new (or almost nothing, theres some specific cards they push so hard that it just slips trough like Fatal Push, which is intentional, its forced and its such a gigantic gap in powerlevel to the rest of the cards in these sets that it stands out THAT much, instead of providing several cards with a somewhat similiar powerlevel to provide players with a choice on what to run, instead of pick this, its the best, every time).
Right now the game lacks a lot of things to make it fun to play again, but that's the price players have to pay when a mechanic becomes too dominant and the decks that utilize it run rampant for years. That combined with the asking price on cards in standard right now and it makes it pretty hard to really play the game in a fun and enjoyable way. That's why I branched off into other card games besides MtG: Lower cost of entry, similar deck building fun and potential, and basically drama free.
Personally, I'm in favor of WoTC printing Counterspell and wasteland into standard if that is what it takes to get more interaction into the format.
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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!
Have to disagree with you there. Too strong control is part of what got us here... ok Maro listening to data from whiners who don't like their fattys killed or countered got us here but what I find silly is in the current meta Sphinx's Revalation and Supreme Verdict are exactly what we need.
At the time of RTR, the gaming industry was experiencing unprecedented growth, and the majority of MTG players were fairly new. If a higher percentage of the audience are now more seasoned players, fattys getting killed should be less of an issue (I would go so far as to say "battle cruiser" standard is probably getting very boring for most of the player base).
I don't ever want to see a turn 4 combo/win in standard again. That's part of what's gutting the player base. That was trash to play against and they should have pre-banned the cat before release instead of being amused by their lack of foresight.
Think not so much Cat combo, but more Dragon Storm, Dredge, or Solar Flare back in Rav/TS Standard. The answers available in that format were strong enough that these decks were not miserable to play against.
Personally I believe the wide-open standard was not the issue with sales. Rather I think too many key words and too much overt nostalgia turned newer players off of drafting (and the game in general). This also was a time when Versus and WoW tgcs were getting a lot of attention, while simultaneously for the first time ever a new generation of teens were sticking with Yugiho (prior to this MTG would get a steady stream of young adults "graduating" from Yugiho or Pokemon).
Regardless, I don't think WotC are likely to return Standard to a Rav/TS level of diversity. But a return to INN/RTR would be a good improvement.
Right now the game lacks a lot of things to make it fun to play again, but that's the price players have to pay when a mechanic becomes too dominant and the decks that utilize it run rampant for years. That combined with the asking price on cards in standard right now and it makes it pretty hard to really play the game in a fun and enjoyable way. That's why I branched off into other card games besides MtG: Lower cost of entry, similar deck building fun and potential, and basically drama free.
Personally, I'm in favor of WoTC printing Counterspell and wasteland into standard if that is what it takes to get more interaction into the format.
I don't see how boycotting EDH/Commander is going to get Wizards of the Coast/Hasbro to listen to us when it's the only format in MTG that provides all the aspects of other card games that you just mentioned. Then again nobody wants to play drawn out 4 player pods that takes an hour or more from players casting board wipe spells or by getting an infinite combo online when they've got better things to do in life. If it's 1 vs. 1 then your opponent is most likely going to win on turn 5 If they built their deck properly.
There's a reason why more players are moving away from Standard and Modern to get into EDH/Commander yet at the same time they're probably finding out the hard way that it isn't as much of an escape from those formats as they initially thought. The reason why I got out of Modern was because the format was becoming too stale with turn 4 combo decks becoming too rampant with too much low variance, while the end results are always virtually the same no matter what. Standard is mostly due to cost and how specific card bannings make or break the format similar to Modern.
"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
Right now the game lacks a lot of things to make it fun to play again, but that's the price players have to pay when a mechanic becomes too dominant and the decks that utilize it run rampant for years. That combined with the asking price on cards in standard right now and it makes it pretty hard to really play the game in a fun and enjoyable way. That's why I branched off into other card games besides MtG: Lower cost of entry, similar deck building fun and potential, and basically drama free.
Personally, I'm in favor of WoTC printing Counterspell and wasteland into standard if that is what it takes to get more interaction into the format.
I don't see how boycotting EDH/Commander is going to get Wizards of the Coast/Hasbro to listen to us when it's the only format in MTG that provides all the aspects of other card games that you just mentioned. Then again nobody wants to play drawn out 4 player pods that takes an hour or more from players casting board wipe spells or by getting an infinite combo online when they've got better things to do in life. If it's 1 vs. 1 then your opponent is most likely going to win on turn 5 If they built their deck properly.
There's a reason why more players are moving away from Standard and Modern to get into EDH/Commander yet at the same time they're probably finding out the hard way that it isn't as much of an escape from those formats as they initially thought. The reason why I got out of Modern was because the format was becoming too stale with turn 4 combo decks becoming too rampant with too much low variance, while the end results are always virtually the same no matter what. Standard is mostly due to cost and how specific card bannings make or break the format similar to Modern.
Who is boycotting EDH? Did I miss something? I've moved away from Magic outside of picking up a few pieces here and there because the game is stale across the board. I'm sure tribal decks would have been fun if the set wasn't going overboard and making every single card require creature types to the point that even the new white buff enchantment only buffs a creature type. I'm expecting an engineered plague reprint at this rate since it would basically shut down the entire tribal set come RtD, because "we have to render our incredibly low powered set even more redundant than it already is" with energy running about. I'm also expecting Wizards to ban one or two pieces from energy if things don't shake up as well with Rivals, so we'll be limping into Return to Dominaria with this overbearing tribal set and a crippled Kaladesh -> Amonkhet.
As for peoples comments on Legacy: The reason that format works is because that it is very easy to over-extend into the opponents answers due to all the fast mana. It's actually a lot better than people give it credit for because of that fact and people playing modern are generally scared of fast mana because the format lacks the general purpose one to two mana answer cards to handle that kind of game. The unfortunate truth is that modern is about as healthy as it's going to ever get unless something seriously changes at WoTC.
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 know quite a few people who would play standard if it wasn't so horrid. Quite a few of them moved to modern because of the CoCo farce plus shortening card life period.
A few like me lasted through that and then didn't bother going in to play because of cat combo and that whole chain of oppressive over pushed design choices that made stanadard hard to even want to play.
And now... because so many have left or are getting mixed messages about when to play, we can't play if we want to bother because events don't fire.
Make a good game and people will play.
Why are people playing commander? Because it's still magic and it's fun.
Modern? MTG and fun.
Standard is being made badly and it's awful that the people responsible for it's current failure are still in charge and still making mistakes.
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"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
Creatively I like it. As another way to get rid of things I can get into it even at each speed. As the only way to get rid of things because they won't give us Doom Blade... poop.
Even then the EDH Rules Committee has been just as lazy by not establishing bannings for cards like Iona, Shield of Emeria which shuts down mono colored decks with relative ease. Other cards that should be on their watch list include: Palinchron, Mind's Desire, Gaddock Teeg, and Animar, Soul of Elements. Cyclonic Rift was another card I'd thought they'd ban due to how it provides WAY too much card advantage for seven mana much like with Palinchron once it resolves. Not that Mycosynth Lattice with Vandalblast in Breya, Etherium Shaper isn't broken enough.
"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 was told by the owner of the Game Store that I sometimes go to that Standard has died at his shop. Tournaments are no longer firing.
Modern and Legacy on the other hand, are doing very well and overall attendance has risen.
Store A- Nothing but Commander, Commander, Commander. Standard is the most popular constructed format, maybe Pauper, but it is millions of miles behind commander, showdowns just about fire, but it is a stretch.
Store B- Legacy thrives (20-30 player FNMs, which is decent for the UK), Modern does well but its FNMs are earlier, Commander is played by the players of Legacy/Modern, Standard seems to lags behind except for National events, obviously. It runs alongside Legacy. Showdowns don't fire, comp players play 2 FNM events the previous evening, they want to play when their friends are playing- Friday.
This is part of the problem. People want to play on Friday. They make this idiotic push to make 'engaged' players (their term) play on Sat or Sunday when they barely have anyone to play. Now you're spreading out the last few and nothing fires.
Standard is boring, over designed trash and it lacks the proper answers for the threats they create. It's not so hard to go back and design like RTR or Tarkir. But on top of design they have to stop doing so many small stupid things that spread out and piss off the small standard player base. Yes new players is a nice goal but there are plenty of 'engaged' players who would play if there was a good game to buy cards for and they throw all their weight behind supporting FNM standard.
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 really liked Ixalan when it first came out. After playing it I realized that I drafting it was tedious and boring. Furthermore, when WOTC comes out with a set, I think the focus used to be on Standard playability. Now, it seems like they are splitting the focus between EDH and Standard playability, so sets are the same size, but much more is being dedicated to "What cards can we make that will work well in EDH" instead of simply "How can we make standard great again".
I am really interested to see if the next Ixalan set will make some more viable deck options in standard. Will dinosaurs become more competitive in standard? Will vampires become more competitive? Or will the set be dedicated to making cards that are good for EDH?
Hopefully the next set helps standard so I can be excited to play again.
Once I was bored with standard, I started coming up with random Standard home brews. I would win sometimes, with my favorable winds deck being super fun to play, but mostly it was getting roflstomped by the top few decks every time. Actually I had fairly good luck with my vamp deck as well. But usually the luck I had was during the free standard tournament when people like to bring home brews and try out new decks, and that became the most fun night to play for me because it was different. It also brought out people who didn't want to play FNM because they too were tired of playing the same 2 or 3 decks each time. This is how it was for me YMMV.
I think WOTC dedicated a good portion of new sets to EDH, as in they print a lot of cards that are clearly meant for EDH instead of the current standard environment.
I think they have always done the whole printing boring cards thing.
Balance has not been returned.
Energy is boring and painful to play or to play against. That is what Maro is giving us.
This new set looks like spaghetti thrown against a wall to see what will stick. So many 2 and 3 drops and haphazard text boxes. Certainly there are a lot of cards in each tribe but honestly even with the volume spoiled it's a bit meh. Yes big spectacular Dinos... and an exile enchantment that does NOTHING when it enters the battlefield? Really?
Seconded.
They should be reprinting those cards in standard and the bloody enemy fetches etc.
Don't forget the 1 mana mana dork guys.
It's not an answer, but still far from "too broken to be printed in Standard."
Premodern - Trix, RecSur, Enchantress, Reanimator, Elves https://www.facebook.com/groups/PremodernUSA/
Modern - Neobrand, Hogaak Vine, Elves
Standard - Mono Red (6-2 and 5-3 in 2 McQ)
Draft - (I wish I had more time for limited...)
Commander -
Norin the Wary, Grimgrin, Adun Oakenshield (taking forever to build)(dead format for me)Bring it all on! I miss Sylvan Caryatid
Balanced standard is what we need. Great answers and mediated threats get us the control-agro-midrange we need to be healthy.
I don't ever want to see a turn 4 combo/win in standard again. That's part of what's gutting the player base. That was trash to play against and they should have pre-banned the cat before release instead of being amused by their lack of foresight.
People who hate their fatties killed and love turning monsters sideways are far less likely to be hardcore enfranchised MTGers wishing to play competitive events, because they can play their critters and the like in EDH- it self regulates to boot. They are the "maybe" crowd but there are a lot of them. Look at Legacy- dedicated players spending a fair bit of money to play with little pro structure as an incentive traveling great distances. What is Legacy about? Powerful plays, T1 drops, free spells,counterspells, handkill, landkill. Creatures- sure- but they are fragile as hell or enormous and cheated in- by spells. It is a format defined by FOW, Thoughseize, Wasteland, Fast sol lands, and Delver/DRS. Not dude, dude, dude, walker, dude. It has several combos that just win the game without creatures- Omniscience, RIP or LOTV/Helm, Belcher etc. Now I don't think standard should be like Legacy, but it sure as hell should not have an effective ban on uncounterables, 1cc mana dorks, 1cc discard, 4 cc wraths,2 cc hard counters etc. Banning fast mana rituals- that is one thing. LLanowar Elves? Really? At least Ammonket provided the Bontu's last reckoning, albeit at a steep cost
Enfranchised players in the tournament scene normally want to play the best deck/s regardless or want to play their own brew- often with different cards- they have no specific love of creatures/walkers/creatures/more creatures etc, and no specific love of midrange curves.
The *only* problem with RtR-THS standard was Born of the Gods. That said was so incredibly bad that the only thing it really added to the format was three cards; two of which actually made the best deck better (Bile Blight) and Drown in Sorrow), and one of which made the Fourth-ish best deck better. This ensured that the format just went nowhere, and fast. One Journey came into the mix, the format opened considerably and an actual Constellation deck showed up, and a few other interesting inclusions to the format came with M15.
Bad sets don't impact standard, is where I'm going.
Something as generic as explore would be a fine mechanic , but they underpowered all the cards so drastically.
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In current standard decks are somewhat pre-build and pre-designed as they want decks to look like.
Instead they could just make sure cards have a much more balanced powerlevel across rares and rarity, and simply let players build decks with them.
As of right now, theres specific rares that are just over the line better than others with the same manacost that its downright impossible to not play the superior card in almost any circumstances, that reduces deck building potential enormously.
Instead of catch-all answers they print several cards that solve just parts of the problems and players have to toggle between them depending on the metagame (see Cancel, Essence Shatter, Negate, and the countless reprints that do the same in variations).
I would be cool with this design, but the biggest issue is, that for older formats, this doesnt work at all, as all the variations they balance around "Cancel" arent working in formats that have Counterspell or even Mana Drain).
Thats kinda silly, as the amount of answers increases, but it simply produces a gameplay in which you need specific answers and not finding them simply spells game-over (and putting indestructible/hexproof and similiar mechanics on creatures just makes it worse to find some reasonable answer to them).
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WotC got stuck in a design of patterns.
They pretty much have a big structure of patterns and they design cards to fill these slots, so they reduce risk to do something "really" new, they just keep doing the same over and over again in small variations and doing that while reducing the powerlevel simply gives the impression sets get worse and worse as nothing new (or almost nothing, theres some specific cards they push so hard that it just slips trough like Fatal Push, which is intentional, its forced and its such a gigantic gap in powerlevel to the rest of the cards in these sets that it stands out THAT much, instead of providing several cards with a somewhat similiar powerlevel to provide players with a choice on what to run, instead of pick this, its the best, every time).
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Personally, I'm in favor of WoTC printing Counterspell and wasteland into standard if that is what it takes to get more interaction into the format.
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!
At the time of RTR, the gaming industry was experiencing unprecedented growth, and the majority of MTG players were fairly new. If a higher percentage of the audience are now more seasoned players, fattys getting killed should be less of an issue (I would go so far as to say "battle cruiser" standard is probably getting very boring for most of the player base).
Think not so much Cat combo, but more Dragon Storm, Dredge, or Solar Flare back in Rav/TS Standard. The answers available in that format were strong enough that these decks were not miserable to play against.
Personally I believe the wide-open standard was not the issue with sales. Rather I think too many key words and too much overt nostalgia turned newer players off of drafting (and the game in general). This also was a time when Versus and WoW tgcs were getting a lot of attention, while simultaneously for the first time ever a new generation of teens were sticking with Yugiho (prior to this MTG would get a steady stream of young adults "graduating" from Yugiho or Pokemon).
Regardless, I don't think WotC are likely to return Standard to a Rav/TS level of diversity. But a return to INN/RTR would be a good improvement.
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RUGLegacy Lands.dec
RUGBLegacy Lands.dec
RGLegacy Lands.dec
WUBRG EDH Lands.dec
UBR EDH Artificer Prodigy
B EDH Relentless Rats
There's a reason why more players are moving away from Standard and Modern to get into EDH/Commander yet at the same time they're probably finding out the hard way that it isn't as much of an escape from those formats as they initially thought. The reason why I got out of Modern was because the format was becoming too stale with turn 4 combo decks becoming too rampant with too much low variance, while the end results are always virtually the same no matter what. Standard is mostly due to cost and how specific card bannings make or break the format similar to Modern.
"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
Who is boycotting EDH? Did I miss something? I've moved away from Magic outside of picking up a few pieces here and there because the game is stale across the board. I'm sure tribal decks would have been fun if the set wasn't going overboard and making every single card require creature types to the point that even the new white buff enchantment only buffs a creature type. I'm expecting an engineered plague reprint at this rate since it would basically shut down the entire tribal set come RtD, because "we have to render our incredibly low powered set even more redundant than it already is" with energy running about. I'm also expecting Wizards to ban one or two pieces from energy if things don't shake up as well with Rivals, so we'll be limping into Return to Dominaria with this overbearing tribal set and a crippled Kaladesh -> Amonkhet.
As for peoples comments on Legacy: The reason that format works is because that it is very easy to over-extend into the opponents answers due to all the fast mana. It's actually a lot better than people give it credit for because of that fact and people playing modern are generally scared of fast mana because the format lacks the general purpose one to two mana answer cards to handle that kind of game. The unfortunate truth is that modern is about as healthy as it's going to ever get unless something seriously changes at WoTC.
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!
A few like me lasted through that and then didn't bother going in to play because of cat combo and that whole chain of oppressive over pushed design choices that made stanadard hard to even want to play.
And now... because so many have left or are getting mixed messages about when to play, we can't play if we want to bother because events don't fire.
Make a good game and people will play.
Why are people playing commander? Because it's still magic and it's fun.
Modern? MTG and fun.
Standard is being made badly and it's awful that the people responsible for it's current failure are still in charge and still making mistakes.