I’ll just warn anyone who clicks on this that this is pure rant and serves no purpose really.
I used to play magic a lot, mainly standard. I would go to FNM every week and went to plenty of bigger tournaments. But standard has been a disaster to me starting with Shadows block, the amount of over pushed broken stuff has actually made me stop playing the format totally and I don’t think ill ever get back in to it.
I don’t like Modern, its just a disaster of who can do the most broken thing the fastest. I did try it for a bit but the silver bullet nature of it put me off.
Legacy and Vintage are just too pricey to get in to so there are off the table.
Casual Commander is about the only thing I still play, although it was never my favourite format as I prefer the 60 card format to the 100 singleton.
So they announce Pioneer, starting at my favourite block ever (Return to Ravnica) and my interest suddenly returned.
Then they said they didn’t want it to be “modern lite” – even better since I don’t like Modern.
Weekly bans to get rid of all the broken cards – Wow WOTC this is sounding amazing.
Nuked stupid Combo decks from orbit – YES YES YES
And yet with all that I still don’t want to play it and I’ve been trying. Ill come back every so often and have few games only to find myself getting incredibly annoyed every time. I just tried recently and had a 5 game run on MTGO. Every game I played was some stupid Uro deck. Which itself is an absolutely borked card designed by a moron. Each deck contained T3feri, another horrifically designed card. Finally, as the cherry on top, 3 of the decks were Omnath decks as well, which is another card designed by an amoeba. I lost 4 and won 1, 2 of the games were frankly non games, as one player or the other just had land issues out the ass. The final game, I was playing a control deck, kept a nice opener and T3 the guy goes to play T3feri, I counter. Turn 4 he tried again to play T3feri, I countered it again. Turn 5 he played yet another T3feri and it lands and the game is all but over because I’ve lost the ability to interact at instant speed, I try to kill it on my turn only to have my spell countered. I scooped out of frustration. I sat back in my chair, and thought, “ya know, if this is what WOTC want Magic to be then I don’t think Magic is the game for me anymore”.
I just don’t get how, with design like this, magic is still going. I mean what these games basically boiled down to is getting run over by unbelievably pushed cards, which if I can’t answer almost right away will all but guarantee I lose and even when i can answer them they have generated so much advantage im now so far behind i might as well scoop anyway. I just dont get it.
End of Rant.
If you managed to get through this ramble then, I feel like I should say something nice, so let me wish you a good 2021.
i mean, with any constructed format you're going to have the most aggressive consistent cards/archetypes/decks rise to the top. its true of pioneer, modern, legacy, standard, even edh.
its okay to not like formats, but it kind of sounds like its not necessarily the format you dislike so much as the competitive nature of constructed builds within those formats.
thats okay too.
the kitchen table using whatever is laying around is how the vast majority of games play out. over time those become honed too but that hyper competitive nature isn't inherent to it unless someone brings that along.
try to think of it as like... ice cream flavors.
you tried a few flavors and they really don't taste good to you. they taste good to some other people. but you like chocolate and these format are strawberry and vanilla.
thats all okay. there's no wrong way to play really, just formats we don't enjoy.
personally i loathe standard, pioneer, and modern, but love competitive edh, casual edh, limited, legacy, and vintage. all for different reasons.
I feel that being disappointed with pioneer is a common theme I've noticed lately. Partially because the format was so stale for a while with inverter and breach being left to run the format for a while. another thing is that there hasn't been many real pioneer tournaments with any kinds of stakes for a while, so there's no real incentive to play the format
take what I'm saying with a grain of salt though, as I'm what you'd call a spike so I tend to care more about competitive formats so I tend to pay ore attention to people with similar opinions as me
I'm right with you. I've been saying this for quite some time now as well. The format needs more bans. Ban Uro, Omnath, T3feri, Dig through Time, Lotus Field, Wilderness Reclamation, Lurrus, Prized Amalgam and Thoughtseize. Then they can print a fixed Thoughtseize down the line.
If you don't play a top tier deck with these cards you are overrun by these pushed OP cards. Its exactly how you describe it. I guess some people like a stale format that is dictated by 50 or so cards in the format. I don't, its boring to me. It will continue to be this way unless a Pioneer Masters set comes along that introduces new cards that skip Standard or they institute more bans. Until then its just more of the same. I guess a lot of people like to play the same decks over and over with the same results over and over. The format is losing me quickly.
Playing since 1994: Currently MAGS (HomeBrew),Standard & Pauper (Pioneer and Modern are degenerate trash formats)
STOP using "dude/bro" as a pejorative or insult. Grow up.
Margaret Thatcher: “The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money.”
Benjamin Franklin: "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."
Martin Luther King Jr.: "I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character."
I've already dropped out of Pioneer to stick solely to EDH / Commander simply because Red Deck Wins is pretty much dead, GUR Onmnath is still a thing, and there's really not as much interest in the format as there is in Modern right now where you have a much bigger card pool to combo out on turn 4. Also doesn't help that the lack of Organized Play due to the ongoing pandemic hasn't really done the format any favors either but even before then there was more interest in other competitive formats before COVID hit in Spring 2020.
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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
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I used to play magic a lot, mainly standard. I would go to FNM every week and went to plenty of bigger tournaments. But standard has been a disaster to me starting with Shadows block, the amount of over pushed broken stuff has actually made me stop playing the format totally and I don’t think ill ever get back in to it.
I don’t like Modern, its just a disaster of who can do the most broken thing the fastest. I did try it for a bit but the silver bullet nature of it put me off.
Legacy and Vintage are just too pricey to get in to so there are off the table.
Casual Commander is about the only thing I still play, although it was never my favourite format as I prefer the 60 card format to the 100 singleton.
So they announce Pioneer, starting at my favourite block ever (Return to Ravnica) and my interest suddenly returned.
Then they said they didn’t want it to be “modern lite” – even better since I don’t like Modern.
Weekly bans to get rid of all the broken cards – Wow WOTC this is sounding amazing.
Nuked stupid Combo decks from orbit – YES YES YES
And yet with all that I still don’t want to play it and I’ve been trying. Ill come back every so often and have few games only to find myself getting incredibly annoyed every time. I just tried recently and had a 5 game run on MTGO. Every game I played was some stupid Uro deck. Which itself is an absolutely borked card designed by a moron. Each deck contained T3feri, another horrifically designed card. Finally, as the cherry on top, 3 of the decks were Omnath decks as well, which is another card designed by an amoeba. I lost 4 and won 1, 2 of the games were frankly non games, as one player or the other just had land issues out the ass. The final game, I was playing a control deck, kept a nice opener and T3 the guy goes to play T3feri, I counter. Turn 4 he tried again to play T3feri, I countered it again. Turn 5 he played yet another T3feri and it lands and the game is all but over because I’ve lost the ability to interact at instant speed, I try to kill it on my turn only to have my spell countered. I scooped out of frustration. I sat back in my chair, and thought, “ya know, if this is what WOTC want Magic to be then I don’t think Magic is the game for me anymore”.
I just don’t get how, with design like this, magic is still going. I mean what these games basically boiled down to is getting run over by unbelievably pushed cards, which if I can’t answer almost right away will all but guarantee I lose and even when i can answer them they have generated so much advantage im now so far behind i might as well scoop anyway. I just dont get it.
End of Rant.
If you managed to get through this ramble then, I feel like I should say something nice, so let me wish you a good 2021.
its okay to not like formats, but it kind of sounds like its not necessarily the format you dislike so much as the competitive nature of constructed builds within those formats.
thats okay too.
the kitchen table using whatever is laying around is how the vast majority of games play out. over time those become honed too but that hyper competitive nature isn't inherent to it unless someone brings that along.
try to think of it as like... ice cream flavors.
you tried a few flavors and they really don't taste good to you. they taste good to some other people. but you like chocolate and these format are strawberry and vanilla.
thats all okay. there's no wrong way to play really, just formats we don't enjoy.
personally i loathe standard, pioneer, and modern, but love competitive edh, casual edh, limited, legacy, and vintage. all for different reasons.
take what I'm saying with a grain of salt though, as I'm what you'd call a spike so I tend to care more about competitive formats so I tend to pay ore attention to people with similar opinions as me
If you don't play a top tier deck with these cards you are overrun by these pushed OP cards. Its exactly how you describe it. I guess some people like a stale format that is dictated by 50 or so cards in the format. I don't, its boring to me. It will continue to be this way unless a Pioneer Masters set comes along that introduces new cards that skip Standard or they institute more bans. Until then its just more of the same. I guess a lot of people like to play the same decks over and over with the same results over and over. The format is losing me quickly.
STOP using "dude/bro" as a pejorative or insult. Grow up.
Margaret Thatcher: “The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money.”
Benjamin Franklin: "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."
Martin Luther King Jr.: "I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character."
"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