My problem with these re-worded cards is that they do nothing except make things easier for Standard. Since they don't do functionality errata any more, the original card stays the same. In any other format, people are going to prefer the original, abuse-able card. But that card is unlikely to get reprinted over the new "fixed" versions. So it just means they go up in value and become a chase card whereas budget players have to play the "less good" version. I don't see any way around this problem short of banning the original cards, or going back to the days where Oracle text changed how cards work (and thus we don't need the new cards; we just reprint the old ones with new wording).
Just 'seize into Maggot is already backbreaking, let me tell you, as I have already had that played on me. Even if/when you eventually manage to kill the maggot and get your card back the tempo advantage is almost overwhelming. Thank God Liliana of the Veil is no in Standard right now.
I'm calling it right now- worst rare in the set. Even good limited players will find better bombs at common and uncommon no sweat. Worst. Episode. Ever.
I really do predict this to be our worst rare in set award winner. I'd be happier opening a jar of eyeballs, so I think anything worse is highly unlikely. This card wont just have zero constructed potential, but not be significantly better than a mass of ghouls in a draft.
It's probably not as rare as you'd think. I tried a gw deck testing with the new ajani and against a mbcd deck once they sided in the lifebanes it was very difficult to win. And like the previous poster said, even ts into brain maggot is worse enough.
My problem with these re-worded cards is that they do nothing except make things easier for Standard.
No, the main thing they do is make it easier to introduce people to the game. This dodges having to explain one of the most unintuitive interactions in the game when you show it to people.
In a way I can understand them wanting to make magic easier to understand. It is one of the most complicated tcgs out there. However! It is noted that most game winning decks use a card differently then what was intended. I mean look at the vintage deck that can win on turn zero. Pretty sure magic never designed anything to win that quickly. Look at the banlist for modern, wizards trial test every card before releasing a new set. If they don't see a exploitive use on their product than that's their own fault. No one saw the Spanish Inquisition coming and I don't see anything wrong with playing like that in a tournament. Tournaments aren't meant to be casually fun. They are meant to showcase the best winning decks. If you are smart enough to discover a cheeky way to win, then I tip my hat to you sir/mam. Magic isn't the only thing where competitors try to use the rules to win. Look at the F1, do you expect me to believe every car is made equally strong or that they have unmodified parts to not gain an edge over the others?
Back to the card. I don't like it cause I hate maggots and it should be an enchantment rather then a 1/1 creature. I don't see this thing being able to kill a 1/1 soldier. It would have had better flavour as a black version of oblivion ring where it exiles something from your hand than a permanent.
Tournaments aren't made for casual fun. But cards aren't made for tournaments either. Cards are made for casual fun.
Tournaments aren't made for casual fun. But cards aren't made for tournaments either. Cards are made for casual fun.
I have to disagree with you there, there are cards that are pushed to see tournament play. Cards are designed to give you an advantage over an opponent. Only cards that benefit more than one person can be considered truly casual. Yes when magic first started there were not many real tourneys but now these days they are a big share of the market. Especially the standard tournament and modern. They released modern masters to help people get into modern tourneys, a set designed to give you tourney level cards.
A card that is intentionally pushed to see tournament play can still be a card that is made for casual fun. One thing doesn't necessarily eliminates the other. Something like Voice of Resurgence will surely excite both public with ease.
A card we can consider made for tournaments but NOT for casual are cards that are good but promote board states that most would consider boring. I would say those would be stuff like Sinkhole, HyT, Counterspell, Path to Exile and Stasis. Card with highly obscure interactions like Mangara also fits this category. As you can see this kind of card are being avoided by WotC.
If that's a good or bad move by WotC depends on what kind of obscure interactions they want avoid. Surely, a streamlined TCG is a bad game without sustainability (read HS), but a game that have rules so obscured that the majority of players would rather stop playing then bother to learn then is also on the wrong tracks either. It doesn't matter how smart you are or how smart you think MTG players should be. All that matters is how much rules baggage people are willing to carry and that rule baggage is the upper limit for WotC.
You guys who learned/discovered the o-ring 'exploit' can surely comprehend that respecting a upper limit is different then minimizing something, so you should also know that wotc is not streamlining the game, just fixing something they considered above this upper limit.
I'm excited to try this in the Standard Dredge deck. It's a great way to keep your creature count high while disrupting the opponent. The more Thoughtseizes and non-creature spells I can cut from the MD, the better. I'll also be trying this in Mono-Black/Rakdos Aggro. Drawing out a removal spell and delaying a Supreme Verdict even one turn is awesome. And yes, please go ahead and destroy my 1/1 instead of casting Elspeth next turn. I can't see not playing this card during its life in Standard.
Huh. There are many posts on this page between people who believe the old "Oblivion Ring" formatting was bad and those who thought it was good.
The anti-Oblivion Ring people are sounding a bell that used to be rung by the Wizards - original intent. The earliest example of this issue arising in this context (that I know of) was Parallax Wave and Parallax Tide. These permanents, and a few others like them, had one ability that allowed you to remove Fading counters to exile something, and then a leaves-the-battlefield trigger that returned all cards exiled with the Parallax, just like Oblivion Ring. Again, just like O-Ring, if you removed the Parallax from the board with all of it's exile abilities on the stack, you could permanently ice a bunch of things. At the time, I believe the interaction that struck people was Parallax Wave + Opalescence, but you can do much better than that (Auratog, Boomerang, etc).
At the time, Wizards claimed this interaction was not "intended" and errated the cards to prevent the interaction. Since then, Wizards has tacitly acknowledged that original intent is not a coherent way to change card text (whose intent: design? development? flores?) That errata was removed more recently when Wizards went back and tried to undo most of it's "power level errata." (Alliance lands, Lotus Vale, and Scorched Ruins still suffer however. I've asked, and been basically told by Wizards that they're simply too strong to return to original text).
So, this theory that the card is not "working as intended" or that interacting with it is trying to "trick" people has been rejected as a basis to errata cards, if nothing else. It is alive and well in the form of reprints, however, and that's what we're seeing with the new O-ring. Development is incredibly good about templating cards in a way that minimizes the number of potential interactions, in order to keep the card working intuitively and reduce the learning curve for new players. I get why they would do this.
Still, I fall into the camp that prefers the older, more complicated way. That way gave you lots of hooks on your card to which you could attach things. It was like a puzzle piece with more sides that could connect to many other pieces. The new format is a puzzle piece with fewer interactions and specifically designed for only a single hole. Simple, yes, easy, yes, but less interesting.
No, the main thing they do is make it easier to introduce people to the game. This dodges having to explain one of the most unintuitive interactions in the game when you show it to people.[/quote]
So the game is not allowed to have any complexities at all for more advanced players? Everything in the game has to reduced down to the most basic interactions to pander to new players,while more experienced players have to suffer from the game being dumbed down. That kind of thinking is why land destruction, good counters,and combo have been mostly eliminated from standard and partially from modern.
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"I'd say this about guarantees that it won't be up till this Friday, but considering the current track record, the ETA is now probably two weeks after the set has been out."
Quote from Sirius_B
Speak for yourself, if drawing *****-headed wurms makes social justice warriors cry I'll make it my favorite hobby.
I flashed this in (Prophet of Kruphix) to deny my opponent the opportunity to have an answer to my board. Instant speed Distress is really strong.
It is hugely important that they fixed the wording. It would be too powerful in Standard, never mind other formats. Junk Aristocrats would abuse this way too much.
So the game is not allowed to have any complexities at all for more advanced players? Everything in the game has to reduced down to the most basic interactions to pander to new players,while more experienced players have to suffer from the game being dumbed down. That kind of thinking is why land destruction, good counters,and combo have been mostly eliminated from standard and partially from modern.
No, those have been eliminated because they suck and create a game state that is highly undesirable and alienates players.
There are plenty of complexities in the game and it is the best it has ever been. Let's not be a self-entitled, elitist doodoo head here.
So the game is not allowed to have any complexities at all for more advanced players? Everything in the game has to reduced down to the most basic interactions to pander to new players,while more experienced players have to suffer from the game being dumbed down. That kind of thinking is why land destruction, good counters,and combo have been mostly eliminated from standard and partially from modern.
1. The NWO only deals with the complexities of commons and some uncommons. Nyx Weaver, for example, isn't exactly a 'simple' card for new players to wrap their heads around. Rares and Mythic Rares still pack a decent amount of complexity.
2. Land destruction, and other resource denial, has proven over the years to be detrimental to the growth of the game. Wizards still prints it for utility use (Encroaching Wastes), but allowing it to exist for new players in the form of Strip Mine turns new players away from the game.
3. Modern has plenty combo. In fact, the top tier decks are nearly all combo decks. So I'm not sure I follow your line of thinking on that last point.
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Old enough to know better, much too young to care.
So the game is not allowed to have any complexities at all for more advanced players? Everything in the game has to reduced down to the most basic interactions to pander to new players,while more experienced players have to suffer from the game being dumbed down. That kind of thinking is why land destruction, good counters,and combo have been mostly eliminated from standard and partially from modern.
1. The NWO only deals with the complexities of commons and some uncommons. Nyx Weaver, for example, isn't exactly a 'simple' card for new players to wrap their heads around. Rares and Mythic Rares still pack a decent amount of complexity.
2. Land destruction, and other resource denial, has proven over the years to be detrimental to the growth of the game. Wizards still prints it for utility use (Encroaching Wastes), but allowing it to exist for new players in the form of Strip Mine turns new players away from the game.
3. Modern has plenty combo. In fact, the top tier decks are nearly all combo decks. So I'm not sure I follow your line of thinking on that last point.
1. I'm sorry, but I don't see why the rareness of a card would affect it's complexity. Nyx Weaver really does not seem that complex to me after a simple explanation; I guess I just come from a time in magic where new players had to read walls of text and rely on the community to explain cards.
2. I think this is mostly a cop out, resource denial etc. should be a viable strategy. Also, playing with or against aggro or aggro-control is rather dull but that's about all we have(standard). Oh, and Encroaching Wastes is terrible.
3. Notice I said partially, not completely removed from modern and I referenced three individual things, although I can see the confusion from the wording, so i apologize for that.
Truth be told, I can kind of see why they would want to dumb the game down for the new players, and at the same time I wish the new players would stop being cry babies and learn to play around/adapt to all the other strategies that should be available. I guess I'm just a salty old school magic player that wants things to be how they used to be....minus ante lol
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Quote from Wolfman about lack of Conspiracy spoilers-
"I'd say this about guarantees that it won't be up till this Friday, but considering the current track record, the ETA is now probably two weeks after the set has been out."
Quote from Sirius_B
Speak for yourself, if drawing *****-headed wurms makes social justice warriors cry I'll make it my favorite hobby.
2. I think this is mostly a cop out, resource denial etc. should be a viable strategy. Also, playing with or against aggro or aggro-control is rather dull but that's about all we have(standard). Oh, and Encroaching Wastes is terrible.
You know with a statement like this you really show that you dont play much Standard yourself or play in some rogue community and dont watch high-level tournaments. Because if you would, you would know that aggro is terrible. UW/x Control and Mono-Black are at the top and have been since Theros got released and they are both in the control camp although Mono-Black is strides the line between midrange and control.
And the Innistrad-Return to Ravnica season was dominated by Junk Reanimator, Jund Midrange, Aristocrats and some UW/x Control strategies sprinkled in. You know because Thragtusk and Restoration Angel were both legal.
Believe me Im not a fan either of making everything revolve around creatures but saying that aggro/creature-strategies are the only thing in Standard is just wrong. UW/x Control doesnt play any creatures besides Ætherling for example
So the game is not allowed to have any complexities at all for more advanced players? Everything in the game has to reduced down to the most basic interactions to pander to new players,while more experienced players have to suffer from the game being dumbed down. That kind of thinking is why land destruction, good counters,and combo have been mostly eliminated from standard and partially from modern.
1. The NWO only deals with the complexities of commons and some uncommons. Nyx Weaver, for example, isn't exactly a 'simple' card for new players to wrap their heads around. Rares and Mythic Rares still pack a decent amount of complexity.
2. Land destruction, and other resource denial, has proven over the years to be detrimental to the growth of the game. Wizards still prints it for utility use (Encroaching Wastes), but allowing it to exist for new players in the form of Strip Mine turns new players away from the game.
3. Modern has plenty combo. In fact, the top tier decks are nearly all combo decks. So I'm not sure I follow your line of thinking on that last point.
1. I'm sorry, but I don't see why the rareness of a card would affect it's complexity. Nyx Weaver really does not seem that complex to me after a simple explanation; I guess I just come from a time in magic where new players had to read walls of text and rely on the community to explain cards.
2. I think this is mostly a cop out, resource denial etc. should be a viable strategy. Also, playing with or against aggro or aggro-control is rather dull but that's about all we have(standard). Oh, and Encroaching Wastes is terrible.
3. Notice I said partially, not completely removed from modern and I referenced three individual things, although I can see the confusion from the wording, so i apologize for that.
Truth be told, I can kind of see why they would want to dumb the game down for the new players, and at the same time I wish the new players would stop being cry babies and learn to play around/adapt to all the other strategies that should be available. I guess I'm just a salty old school magic player that wants things to be how they used to be....minus ante lol
I think that while it is true that Magic may on the surface seem to be less complex than it has been in the past, there is still a high amount of interactivity and really interesting deck lists to be built. Walls of text can be enjoyable to some especially those with intricate understandings of the rules but not everyone has that and not everyone wants to. Many players of Magic don't just play Magic and furthermore most people don't want to have to spend hours and hours learning just to get through their first couple games. I've played MTGO games with early sets and if I weren't fairly well versed in the rules as a whole I would have been seriously lost.
I understand the wish for more ways to play the game, I personally miss the onboard game states and having lots of activated abilities to be able to set traps, but I am completely willing to have that limited in order to see the game prosper as a whole. Resource denial especially is a extremely frustrating way to lose a game... Have you been mind twisted for 5? have you been stone rained to bits and had a hand full of 2 drops be basically useless ? I have nothing against combo at all but i think standard is a poor place for it as it leads to extremely repetitive gameplay. I watch magic tournaments for fun, I love seeing skilled players expertly steer complex decks to victory. However Watching two decks race to get the same combo pieces and then have the game end in minutes means very little for the audience and heck, I doubt the players really as much fun as playing a deck that involves complex board states and looming life totals.
Finally, I agree that good counter spells are an important part of creating a healthy metagame but as has been mentioned above, there are several high tier control decks in standard and they are running a full compliment of counter spells. Yes we will probably never see another counter spell for UU, but that isn't a bad thing. Control decks that can completely negate an opponents game plan by sitting with open mana, again create pretty dull games. I know it feels good to stop a huge bomb with just a bit of mana, and it feels smart and tricky to be able to stop these combos or huge swings with a single card but creating oppressive game states KILLS THE GAME. Black Summer. The era of caw blade. Mirrodin. These times when cards of intense power were in circulation and created single deck oligarchies. I have to admit that the depowered feel of Theros is a bit of a shock to the system but its in the best interests of the Game of Magic on the whole. I realize that I probably won't sway your opinion and I know that the game is very different from what it was but please try to see that there are still many positive aspects to Magic as it exists in its current state.
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But strange that the maggot's 1/1, and a human token's 1/1... The latter must have a big brain...
UR Melek, Izzet ParagonUR, B Shirei, Shizo's CaretakerB, R Jaya Ballard, Task MageR,RW Tajic, Blade of the LegionRW, UB Lazav, Dimir MastermindUB, UB Circu, Dimir LobotomistUB, RWU Zedruu the GreatheartedRWU, GUBThe MimeoplasmGUB, UGExperiment Kraj UG, WDarien, King of KjeldorW, BMarrow-GnawerB, WBGKarador, Ghost ChieftainWBG, UTeferi, Temporal ArchmageU, GWUDerevi, Empyrial TacticianGWU, RDaretti, Scrap SavantR, UTalrand, Sky SummonerU, GEzuri, Renegade LeaderG, WUBRGReaper KingWUBRG, RGXenagos, God of RevelsRG, CKozilek, Butcher of TruthC, WUBRGGeneral TazriWUBRG, GTitania, Protector of ArgothG
T2 brain maggot
T3 lifebane zombie
T4 desecration demon
How are green and white mages supposed to deal with that lol
No, the main thing they do is make it easier to introduce people to the game. This dodges having to explain one of the most unintuitive interactions in the game when you show it to people.
RIP Blue aggro. Wizards gave you nothing in the last two sets.
/dream
Tournaments aren't made for casual fun. But cards aren't made for tournaments either. Cards are made for casual fun.
BGU Control
R Aggro
Standard - For Fun
BG Auras
A card that is intentionally pushed to see tournament play can still be a card that is made for casual fun. One thing doesn't necessarily eliminates the other. Something like Voice of Resurgence will surely excite both public with ease.
A card we can consider made for tournaments but NOT for casual are cards that are good but promote board states that most would consider boring. I would say those would be stuff like Sinkhole, HyT, Counterspell, Path to Exile and Stasis. Card with highly obscure interactions like Mangara also fits this category. As you can see this kind of card are being avoided by WotC.
If that's a good or bad move by WotC depends on what kind of obscure interactions they want avoid. Surely, a streamlined TCG is a bad game without sustainability (read HS), but a game that have rules so obscured that the majority of players would rather stop playing then bother to learn then is also on the wrong tracks either. It doesn't matter how smart you are or how smart you think MTG players should be. All that matters is how much rules baggage people are willing to carry and that rule baggage is the upper limit for WotC.
You guys who learned/discovered the o-ring 'exploit' can surely comprehend that respecting a upper limit is different then minimizing something, so you should also know that wotc is not streamlining the game, just fixing something they considered above this upper limit.
BGU Control
R Aggro
Standard - For Fun
BG Auras
The anti-Oblivion Ring people are sounding a bell that used to be rung by the Wizards - original intent. The earliest example of this issue arising in this context (that I know of) was Parallax Wave and Parallax Tide. These permanents, and a few others like them, had one ability that allowed you to remove Fading counters to exile something, and then a leaves-the-battlefield trigger that returned all cards exiled with the Parallax, just like Oblivion Ring. Again, just like O-Ring, if you removed the Parallax from the board with all of it's exile abilities on the stack, you could permanently ice a bunch of things. At the time, I believe the interaction that struck people was Parallax Wave + Opalescence, but you can do much better than that (Auratog, Boomerang, etc).
At the time, Wizards claimed this interaction was not "intended" and errated the cards to prevent the interaction. Since then, Wizards has tacitly acknowledged that original intent is not a coherent way to change card text (whose intent: design? development? flores?) That errata was removed more recently when Wizards went back and tried to undo most of it's "power level errata." (Alliance lands, Lotus Vale, and Scorched Ruins still suffer however. I've asked, and been basically told by Wizards that they're simply too strong to return to original text).
So, this theory that the card is not "working as intended" or that interacting with it is trying to "trick" people has been rejected as a basis to errata cards, if nothing else. It is alive and well in the form of reprints, however, and that's what we're seeing with the new O-ring. Development is incredibly good about templating cards in a way that minimizes the number of potential interactions, in order to keep the card working intuitively and reduce the learning curve for new players. I get why they would do this.
Still, I fall into the camp that prefers the older, more complicated way. That way gave you lots of hooks on your card to which you could attach things. It was like a puzzle piece with more sides that could connect to many other pieces. The new format is a puzzle piece with fewer interactions and specifically designed for only a single hole. Simple, yes, easy, yes, but less interesting.
So the game is not allowed to have any complexities at all for more advanced players? Everything in the game has to reduced down to the most basic interactions to pander to new players,while more experienced players have to suffer from the game being dumbed down. That kind of thinking is why land destruction, good counters,and combo have been mostly eliminated from standard and partially from modern.
"I'd say this about guarantees that it won't be up till this Friday, but considering the current track record, the ETA is now probably two weeks after the set has been out."
Quote from Sirius_B
Speak for yourself, if drawing *****-headed wurms makes social justice warriors cry I'll make it my favorite hobby.
It is hugely important that they fixed the wording. It would be too powerful in Standard, never mind other formats. Junk Aristocrats would abuse this way too much.
8.RG Green Devotion Ramp/Combo 9.UR Draw Triggers 10.WUR Group stalling 11.WUR Voltron Spellslinger 12.WB Sacrificial Shenanigans
13.BR Creatureless Panharmonicon 14.BR Pingers and Eldrazi 15.URG Untapped Cascading
16.Reyhan, last of the Abzan's WUBG +1/+1 Counter Craziness 17.WUBRG Dragons aka Why did I make this?
Building: The Gitrog Monster lands, Glissa the Traitor stax, Muldrotha, the Gravetide Planeswalker Combo, Kydele, Chosen of Kruphix + Sidar Kondo of Jamuraa Clues, and Tribal Scarecrow Planeswalkers
No, those have been eliminated because they suck and create a game state that is highly undesirable and alienates players.
There are plenty of complexities in the game and it is the best it has ever been. Let's not be a self-entitled, elitist doodoo head here.
1. The NWO only deals with the complexities of commons and some uncommons. Nyx Weaver, for example, isn't exactly a 'simple' card for new players to wrap their heads around. Rares and Mythic Rares still pack a decent amount of complexity.
2. Land destruction, and other resource denial, has proven over the years to be detrimental to the growth of the game. Wizards still prints it for utility use (Encroaching Wastes), but allowing it to exist for new players in the form of Strip Mine turns new players away from the game.
3. Modern has plenty combo. In fact, the top tier decks are nearly all combo decks. So I'm not sure I follow your line of thinking on that last point.
1. I'm sorry, but I don't see why the rareness of a card would affect it's complexity. Nyx Weaver really does not seem that complex to me after a simple explanation; I guess I just come from a time in magic where new players had to read walls of text and rely on the community to explain cards.
2. I think this is mostly a cop out, resource denial etc. should be a viable strategy. Also, playing with or against aggro or aggro-control is rather dull but that's about all we have(standard). Oh, and Encroaching Wastes is terrible.
3. Notice I said partially, not completely removed from modern and I referenced three individual things, although I can see the confusion from the wording, so i apologize for that.
Truth be told, I can kind of see why they would want to dumb the game down for the new players, and at the same time I wish the new players would stop being cry babies and learn to play around/adapt to all the other strategies that should be available. I guess I'm just a salty old school magic player that wants things to be how they used to be....minus ante lol
"I'd say this about guarantees that it won't be up till this Friday, but considering the current track record, the ETA is now probably two weeks after the set has been out."
Quote from Sirius_B
Speak for yourself, if drawing *****-headed wurms makes social justice warriors cry I'll make it my favorite hobby.
You know with a statement like this you really show that you dont play much Standard yourself or play in some rogue community and dont watch high-level tournaments. Because if you would, you would know that aggro is terrible. UW/x Control and Mono-Black are at the top and have been since Theros got released and they are both in the control camp although Mono-Black is strides the line between midrange and control.
And the Innistrad-Return to Ravnica season was dominated by Junk Reanimator, Jund Midrange, Aristocrats and some UW/x Control strategies sprinkled in. You know because Thragtusk and Restoration Angel were both legal.
Believe me Im not a fan either of making everything revolve around creatures but saying that aggro/creature-strategies are the only thing in Standard is just wrong. UW/x Control doesnt play any creatures besides Ætherling for example
Firstly, it's a gold card. In fact, all the gold cards are uncommon and above.
Secondly, you mill yourself (wtf mill myself!!! That's so feel-bad)
UR Melek, Izzet ParagonUR, B Shirei, Shizo's CaretakerB, R Jaya Ballard, Task MageR,RW Tajic, Blade of the LegionRW, UB Lazav, Dimir MastermindUB, UB Circu, Dimir LobotomistUB, RWU Zedruu the GreatheartedRWU, GUBThe MimeoplasmGUB, UGExperiment Kraj UG, WDarien, King of KjeldorW, BMarrow-GnawerB, WBGKarador, Ghost ChieftainWBG, UTeferi, Temporal ArchmageU, GWUDerevi, Empyrial TacticianGWU, RDaretti, Scrap SavantR, UTalrand, Sky SummonerU, GEzuri, Renegade LeaderG, WUBRGReaper KingWUBRG, RGXenagos, God of RevelsRG, CKozilek, Butcher of TruthC, WUBRGGeneral TazriWUBRG, GTitania, Protector of ArgothG
I think that while it is true that Magic may on the surface seem to be less complex than it has been in the past, there is still a high amount of interactivity and really interesting deck lists to be built. Walls of text can be enjoyable to some especially those with intricate understandings of the rules but not everyone has that and not everyone wants to. Many players of Magic don't just play Magic and furthermore most people don't want to have to spend hours and hours learning just to get through their first couple games. I've played MTGO games with early sets and if I weren't fairly well versed in the rules as a whole I would have been seriously lost.
I understand the wish for more ways to play the game, I personally miss the onboard game states and having lots of activated abilities to be able to set traps, but I am completely willing to have that limited in order to see the game prosper as a whole. Resource denial especially is a extremely frustrating way to lose a game... Have you been mind twisted for 5? have you been stone rained to bits and had a hand full of 2 drops be basically useless ? I have nothing against combo at all but i think standard is a poor place for it as it leads to extremely repetitive gameplay. I watch magic tournaments for fun, I love seeing skilled players expertly steer complex decks to victory. However Watching two decks race to get the same combo pieces and then have the game end in minutes means very little for the audience and heck, I doubt the players really as much fun as playing a deck that involves complex board states and looming life totals.
Finally, I agree that good counter spells are an important part of creating a healthy metagame but as has been mentioned above, there are several high tier control decks in standard and they are running a full compliment of counter spells. Yes we will probably never see another counter spell for UU, but that isn't a bad thing. Control decks that can completely negate an opponents game plan by sitting with open mana, again create pretty dull games. I know it feels good to stop a huge bomb with just a bit of mana, and it feels smart and tricky to be able to stop these combos or huge swings with a single card but creating oppressive game states KILLS THE GAME. Black Summer. The era of caw blade. Mirrodin. These times when cards of intense power were in circulation and created single deck oligarchies. I have to admit that the depowered feel of Theros is a bit of a shock to the system but its in the best interests of the Game of Magic on the whole. I realize that I probably won't sway your opinion and I know that the game is very different from what it was but please try to see that there are still many positive aspects to Magic as it exists in its current state.