With the new block structure this does not shock me. I suspect we will see alternating set of two color centric lands in the first set of each block with the occasional inclusion of some sort of tri-land to mix things up.
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“Your body is not a temple, it's an amusement park. Enjoy the ride.”
― Anthony Bourdain, Kitchen Confidential
I will always firmly stand by the belief that Magic is a game first and a collectable second.
Hearing stuff like this makes me not want to play standard anymore and as most people have mentioned, maybe I should just divest into Modern/Legacy decks.
Tribal themes, gone...
Powerful cards, gone...
Alternative win-cons, gone...
Sets with large price variance, gone...
What else is there to do in standard apart from wasting money?
There's still tribal. Khans block had lots of dragon tribal. Theron had minotaur and centaurs. Powerful card still exist. Treasure cruise & dig through time for example. I do agree that there are to few alternative win-cons.
Khans also had warrior tribal as well. It seems like we will seem some tribal sub-theme every block unless its a major theme like it was in Innistrad.
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“There are no weak Jews. I am descended from those who wrestle angels and kill giants. We were chosen by God. You were chosen by a pathetic little man who can't seem to grow a full mustache"
"You can tell how dumb someone is by how they use Mary Sue"
Hearing stuff like this makes me not want to play standard anymore and as most people have mentioned, maybe I should just divest into Modern/Legacy decks.
Tribal themes, gone...
Powerful cards, gone...
Alternative win-cons, gone...
Sets with large price variance, gone...
What else is there to do in standard apart from wasting money?
There's still tribal. Khans block had lots of dragon tribal. Theron had minotaur and centaurs. Powerful card still exist. Treasure cruise & dig through time for example. I do agree that there are to few alternative win-cons.
Treasure cruise/Dig through time was a wholly accident. I will bet you they never play test their cards outside of limited.
And don't get me started on tribal, they have been failing at it since innistrad. Very underpowered, non-synergistic tribes with no real theme.
Heck, if they were to reprint all the old lords and the smallest drops then it would still be balanced and ok.
Um, they definetly test standard, it's where we get the FNM promos from. The fantasy future league where they test standard decks. It just happens that the FNM promos usually end up being uncommons which dominated the league, even if they don't always make it as actual standard bombs
So does that mean no enemy fetchlands in Return to Zendikar?
To both of these: The article I linked said that they weren't saying they'd "never" do full cycles of 10, just that they were going to explore other options as well, so full cycles of 10 wouldn't be guaranteed. They might well decide that a cycle of 10 manlands is what they need, or they mght decide to do 5, or none.
June, last year: http://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/making-mana-2014-06-27
"I mentioned last year that we were moving more toward printing full cycles of lands in a block to make the mana work for Constructed and for Block Constructed. That isn't changing." Sam Stoddard
And that's the only quote I can find on it. I know that I once quoted the original source, but that seems to be gone from my posting history (to be fair, it was several months ago.) But at least we have an acknowledgement that he did say it, and then again last year confirmed it. I'm not sure how that isn't a statement of intent, but to be honest, I'm done with actually believing what they say: they always leave a loophole. For example, last year, he KNEW that Khans would have a cycle of 10 common duals, AND that it would have a partial (not "full") cycle of fetchlands. He knew at that point what Origins would look like, AND what the BFZ block would look like, and still "confirmed" they were moving towards full cycles of lands in a block.
But it wasn't a promise, right? That makes it entirely defensible to some people.
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Cards are game pieces, and should be treated as such, easily replaceable.
Cards are not money, investments, or a retirement fund, and should never have been treated as such.
Wizards made a mistake caving to speculators once, and we still pay for that mistake 2 decades later.
"Entitled:" the entire ad hominem fallacy condensed into a single word. It doesn't strengthen your argument to attack motivations, it just makes you look like you don't understand the argument.
I am so worried about the future of Standard. I really do think that need to just take this opportunity to bow out and start focusing on my halfway-done legacy deck.
Agreed 100%.
I have personally found myself playing less and less Magic ever since Innistrad block rotated, and it's because Standard sucks. This steady decrease in power sucks.
Power level was at its zenith during Innistrad, the real problem was that the power drop we felt with the RTR block along with the expectations was like a blisteringly cold shower. A lot of people bought RTR for the shock lands, despite the power level drop.
Makes me kinda hope that we see a good rise in power with origins and BFZ to make up for this choice.
I am so worried about the future of Standard. I really do think that need to just take this opportunity to bow out and start focusing on my halfway-done legacy deck.
Why are you worried because of this?
This doesn't mean anything has actually changed, the last time we got all the 10 colour pairs in Rare Lands was Return to Ravnica and everything has been fine: Theros was fine and Khans of Tarkir has been excellent
I am so worried about the future of Standard. I really do think that need to just take this opportunity to bow out and start focusing on my halfway-done legacy deck.
Agreed 100%.
I have personally found myself playing less and less Magic ever since Innistrad block rotated, and it's because Standard sucks. This steady decrease in power sucks.
Power level was at its zenith during Innistrad, the real problem was that the power drop we felt with the RTR block along with the expectations was like a blisteringly cold shower. A lot of people bought RTR for the shock lands, despite the power level drop.
Makes me kinda hope that we see a good rise in power with origins and BFZ to make up for this choice.
Yeah because everyone running 4 Geist of St Traft was soooooo much fun
Most likely a byproduct of the two 2-set blocks per year change. Expect either allied or enemy land cycles in the first block of the year and the other in the second. That's still a full cycle per year. The only thing missing will be the current core sets cycle reprints.
Hearing stuff like this makes me not want to play standard anymore and as most people have mentioned, maybe I should just divest into Modern/Legacy decks.
Tribal themes, gone...
Innistrad wasn't that long ago, you know. Not every block can be that heavy in tribal but they have still incorporated some since: Minotaurs in Theros, Warriors and Dragons in Tarkir.
Powerful cards, gone...
This is so easy to disprove that I'm not even going to bother.
Alternative win-cons, gone...
This one is true, they have been absent for a few blocks now but Rosewater said in his tumblr that they are coming back, they're not gone for good.
Sets with large price variance, gone...
Wait, isn't that a bad thing that people used to complain about a lot? And you want it back?
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.
Innistrad wasn't that long ago, you know. Not every block can be that heavy in tribal but they have still incorporated some since: Minotaurs in Theros, Warriors and Dragons in Tarkir.
Minotaurs never happened. Centaurs never happened. The synergy just sucked and there wasn't any theme to it.
Warriors almost made it but it's a singular tribe in a set rich in lore.
When I say tribal, I mean similar types, synergy and theme. The last few blocks that tribal was done right were Lorwyn, Onslaught and Kamigawa. To this day, I still herald Onslaught as the exemplary set where you had a lot of tribal synergy.
This is so easy to disprove that I'm not even going to bother.
I didn't mean singular strong cards. Every set has those, that's not the issue. The issue is that they have been trying to slow down standard and in doing so have significantly reduced the power of cards. The last time I opened a booster pack and was excited for all the cards was during the zendikar block. Now, it's pretty much crack, look at rare/uncommons and bin the rest.
This one is true, they have been absent for a few blocks now but Rosewater said in his tumblr that they are coming back, they're not gone for good.
Wait, isn't that a bad thing that people used to complain about a lot? And you want it back?
Oops, meant low price variance. I loved Gatecrash, it was very well spread in terms of value as opposed to Dragon's Maze. I always cringe when I see MaRo on the development team, I can always guess the set will have expensive bombs and the rest will be trash.
Innistrad wasn't that long ago, you know. Not every block can be that heavy in tribal but they have still incorporated some since: Minotaurs in Theros, Warriors and Dragons in Tarkir.
Minotaurs never happened. Centaurs never happened. The synergy just sucked and there wasn't any theme to it.
Warriors almost made it but it's a singular tribe in a set rich in lore.
When I say tribal, I mean similar types, synergy and theme. The last few blocks that tribal was done right were Lorwyn, Onslaught and Kamigawa. To this day, I still herald Onslaught as the exemplary set where you had a lot of tribal synergy.
Thanks for clarifying your points. I'll respond to this one in particular because it's the one I have concrete info and I'm afraid it is bad for you. They have gone on record to say that they are not going to ever go as hard in tribal as they did in Onslaught or Lorwyn any more. Innistrad is basically their new standard for tribal-heavy blocks.
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.
When I say tribal, I mean similar types, synergy and theme. The last few blocks that tribal was done right were Lorwyn, Onslaught and Kamigawa. To this day, I still herald Onslaught as the exemplary set where you had a lot of tribal synergy.
Well, obviously, those sets (particularly Onslaught and Lorwyn) were specifically designed as tribal sets... They don't make tribal the main focus of every block, or else it would get really stale. It would be like if every block was a wedge block, or if every block was artifact block.
[quote from="Zulzanet »" url="http://www.mtgsalvation.com/forums/magic-fundamentals/the-rumor-mill/609445-less-likely-to-do-full-land-cycles-in-a-block?comment=47"]
Thanks for clarifying your points. I'll respond to this one in particular because it's the one I have concrete info and I'm afraid it is bad for you. They have gone on record to say that they are not going to ever go as hard in tribal as they did in Onslaught or Lorwyn any more. Innistrad is basically their new standard for tribal-heavy blocks.
I know, hence why I said gone.
Innistrad imho was horribly presented as a tribal set. I mained zombies back then and without vampires, it couldn't compete.
The RTR block was somewhat "tribal" as in each guild had a theme and was very fun to play with. I feel that they tried to reproduce this with the KTK block but apart from dragons, none of the "tribal" defining mechanics were good within the context of "tribes". You don't see heavy delve, raid, ferocious decks. And generally no thematic exists.
Well, obviously, those sets (particularly Onslaught and Lorwyn) were specifically designed as tribal sets... They don't make tribal the main focus of every block, or else it would get really stale. It would be like if every block was a wedge block, or if every block was artifact block.
As i mentioned, I didn't mean exclusively tribal as opposed to good tribal. The last tribal heavy set I remember is Innistrad and that was poorly implemented.
Sure Minotaurs happened. We have Kragma Warcaller, Rageblood Shaman, and Ragemonger. And Centaurs got Pheres-Band Warchief. And that's all they needed. Onslaught and Lorwyn's takes on tribal were flawed; Onslaught's tribes were too monocolor and Lorwyn had way too much complexity and tribal matters effects.
And that's not counting all the Warrior token makers and other Warrior creature cards in the set.
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MTGS Wikia Article about "New World Order"
Every time I read a comment about "Well if this card had card draw/trample/haste/indestructible/hexproof/life gain...", I think "You're missing the point." They're armchair developer comments that fail to take into account the card's role in the greater Limited and Standard environment. No, it may not be as good as whatever card you're comparing it to. There's a reason for that. Not every burn spell is Lightning Bolt, nor does it need to be or should be.
PSA to everyone who keeps forgetting about the Reserved List:
You're on a website dedicated to talking about MtG. You're only a few keystrokes away from finding out what cards are on the Reserved List. You're also only a few keystrokes away from finding out why some cards on the Reserved List got foil printings in FtV, as Judge promos, or whatnot, as well as why that won't happen again. Stop doing this.
Sure Minotaurs happened. We have Kragma Warcaller, Rageblood Shaman, and Ragemonger. And Centaurs got Pheres-Band Warchief. And that's all they needed. Onslaught and Lorwyn's takes on tribal were flawed; Onslaught's tribes were too monocolor and Lorwyn had way too much complexity and tribal matters effects.
And that's not counting all the Warrior token makers and other Warrior creature cards in the set.
You gotta be kidding me if you are going to give that Minotaur and Centaur thing credit. There is only one centaur that saw standard play was Courser of kruphix. Fringe play was Fanatic of Xenagos and Centaur Healer. But they were not even played for being centaurs, just for being decent cards (amazeballs when it comes to Courser). No one was expecting Centaur tribal to be a thing so when Pheres-Band Warchief came out... it was like huh? Same goes for the other minotaurs. None of them saw standard play except for Boros Reckoner during their time in Standard.
Warrior Tribal is pretty boring. "Just go there and hit stuff" isn't really a theme. Goblins had shennigans Siege-Gang Commander, Soldiers have token strategies Precinct Captain, Merfolk had 2-3 mana Lords for beats with minor abilities attached Merrow Reejerey, Faeries had flash annoying crap Spellstutter Sprie etc. Hell even Clerics had life prevention theme going with them. Game winning? No. Interesting mechanic theme? Yup.
Innistrad had very weak tribal mechanic themes. The only one that really saw play was Gravecrawler with Geralf's Messenger (probably Dreg Mangler depnding on the deck and Loleth Troll depending on the deck), but it sorta... tried. Zendikar was on the right track with Allies but messed it up with some random as heck "Defender matters" towards Eldrazi. That should have made the Ally theme STRONGER as they are trying to fight those guys!
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To the people that say that a card needs to be a higher rarity because of Limited... I hate you guys so much. I present to you with this.
I wouldn't call Centaur Healer "fringe". At some point it was the second most played card in standard (Thragtusk being the first). It was later relegated to the sidelines, though.
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― Anthony Bourdain, Kitchen Confidential
I will always firmly stand by the belief that Magic is a game first and a collectable second.
Khans also had warrior tribal as well. It seems like we will seem some tribal sub-theme every block unless its a major theme like it was in Innistrad.
"You can tell how dumb someone is by how they use Mary Sue"
Probably means fetchlands or manlands but not both. I think they want to have the full land cycle in standard, just not in one block.
very striking typo for me to randomly read, as Theron is my first name. X)
Um, they definetly test standard, it's where we get the FNM promos from. The fantasy future league where they test standard decks. It just happens that the FNM promos usually end up being uncommons which dominated the league, even if they don't always make it as actual standard bombs
To both of these: The article I linked said that they weren't saying they'd "never" do full cycles of 10, just that they were going to explore other options as well, so full cycles of 10 wouldn't be guaranteed. They might well decide that a cycle of 10 manlands is what they need, or they mght decide to do 5, or none.
June, last year: http://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/making-mana-2014-06-27
"I mentioned last year that we were moving more toward printing full cycles of lands in a block to make the mana work for Constructed and for Block Constructed. That isn't changing." Sam Stoddard
And that's the only quote I can find on it. I know that I once quoted the original source, but that seems to be gone from my posting history (to be fair, it was several months ago.) But at least we have an acknowledgement that he did say it, and then again last year confirmed it. I'm not sure how that isn't a statement of intent, but to be honest, I'm done with actually believing what they say: they always leave a loophole. For example, last year, he KNEW that Khans would have a cycle of 10 common duals, AND that it would have a partial (not "full") cycle of fetchlands. He knew at that point what Origins would look like, AND what the BFZ block would look like, and still "confirmed" they were moving towards full cycles of lands in a block.
But it wasn't a promise, right? That makes it entirely defensible to some people.
Cards are not money, investments, or a retirement fund, and should never have been treated as such.
Wizards made a mistake caving to speculators once, and we still pay for that mistake 2 decades later.
"Entitled:" the entire ad hominem fallacy condensed into a single word. It doesn't strengthen your argument to attack motivations, it just makes you look like you don't understand the argument.
Power level was at its zenith during Innistrad, the real problem was that the power drop we felt with the RTR block along with the expectations was like a blisteringly cold shower. A lot of people bought RTR for the shock lands, despite the power level drop.
Makes me kinda hope that we see a good rise in power with origins and BFZ to make up for this choice.
Why are you worried because of this?
This doesn't mean anything has actually changed, the last time we got all the 10 colour pairs in Rare Lands was Return to Ravnica and everything has been fine: Theros was fine and Khans of Tarkir has been excellent
Yeah because everyone running 4 Geist of St Traft was soooooo much fun
Innistrad wasn't that long ago, you know. Not every block can be that heavy in tribal but they have still incorporated some since: Minotaurs in Theros, Warriors and Dragons in Tarkir.
This is so easy to disprove that I'm not even going to bother.
This one is true, they have been absent for a few blocks now but Rosewater said in his tumblr that they are coming back, they're not gone for good.
Wait, isn't that a bad thing that people used to complain about a lot? And you want it back?
Minotaurs never happened. Centaurs never happened. The synergy just sucked and there wasn't any theme to it.
Warriors almost made it but it's a singular tribe in a set rich in lore.
When I say tribal, I mean similar types, synergy and theme. The last few blocks that tribal was done right were Lorwyn, Onslaught and Kamigawa. To this day, I still herald Onslaught as the exemplary set where you had a lot of tribal synergy.
I didn't mean singular strong cards. Every set has those, that's not the issue. The issue is that they have been trying to slow down standard and in doing so have significantly reduced the power of cards. The last time I opened a booster pack and was excited for all the cards was during the zendikar block. Now, it's pretty much crack, look at rare/uncommons and bin the rest.
Oops, meant low price variance. I loved Gatecrash, it was very well spread in terms of value as opposed to Dragon's Maze. I always cringe when I see MaRo on the development team, I can always guess the set will have expensive bombs and the rest will be trash.
RETIRED - GAME SUCKS
Modern:
UUUMerfolksUUU
RGoblinsR
Ad Nauseam
BR 8 Racks RB
WUB Mill BUW
Legacy:
XOps! All splels! X
What I think of MaRo
Thanks for clarifying your points. I'll respond to this one in particular because it's the one I have concrete info and I'm afraid it is bad for you. They have gone on record to say that they are not going to ever go as hard in tribal as they did in Onslaught or Lorwyn any more. Innistrad is basically their new standard for tribal-heavy blocks.
Well, obviously, those sets (particularly Onslaught and Lorwyn) were specifically designed as tribal sets... They don't make tribal the main focus of every block, or else it would get really stale. It would be like if every block was a wedge block, or if every block was artifact block.
I know, hence why I said gone.
Innistrad imho was horribly presented as a tribal set. I mained zombies back then and without vampires, it couldn't compete.
The RTR block was somewhat "tribal" as in each guild had a theme and was very fun to play with. I feel that they tried to reproduce this with the KTK block but apart from dragons, none of the "tribal" defining mechanics were good within the context of "tribes". You don't see heavy delve, raid, ferocious decks. And generally no thematic exists.
As i mentioned, I didn't mean exclusively tribal as opposed to good tribal. The last tribal heavy set I remember is Innistrad and that was poorly implemented.
RETIRED - GAME SUCKS
Modern:
UUUMerfolksUUU
RGoblinsR
Ad Nauseam
BR 8 Racks RB
WUB Mill BUW
Legacy:
XOps! All splels! X
What I think of MaRo
And Warriors got even more support:
And that's not counting all the Warrior token makers and other Warrior creature cards in the set.
Every time I read a comment about "Well if this card had card draw/trample/haste/indestructible/hexproof/life gain...", I think "You're missing the point." They're armchair developer comments that fail to take into account the card's role in the greater Limited and Standard environment. No, it may not be as good as whatever card you're comparing it to. There's a reason for that. Not every burn spell is Lightning Bolt, nor does it need to be or should be.
You gotta be kidding me if you are going to give that Minotaur and Centaur thing credit. There is only one centaur that saw standard play was Courser of kruphix. Fringe play was Fanatic of Xenagos and Centaur Healer. But they were not even played for being centaurs, just for being decent cards (amazeballs when it comes to Courser). No one was expecting Centaur tribal to be a thing so when Pheres-Band Warchief came out... it was like huh? Same goes for the other minotaurs. None of them saw standard play except for Boros Reckoner during their time in Standard.
Warrior Tribal is pretty boring. "Just go there and hit stuff" isn't really a theme. Goblins had shennigans Siege-Gang Commander, Soldiers have token strategies Precinct Captain, Merfolk had 2-3 mana Lords for beats with minor abilities attached Merrow Reejerey, Faeries had flash annoying crap Spellstutter Sprie etc. Hell even Clerics had life prevention theme going with them. Game winning? No. Interesting mechanic theme? Yup.
Innistrad had very weak tribal mechanic themes. The only one that really saw play was Gravecrawler with Geralf's Messenger (probably Dreg Mangler depnding on the deck and Loleth Troll depending on the deck), but it sorta... tried. Zendikar was on the right track with Allies but messed it up with some random as heck "Defender matters" towards Eldrazi. That should have made the Ally theme STRONGER as they are trying to fight those guys!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SY8h2vp5Xis
I wouldn't call Centaur Healer "fringe". At some point it was the second most played card in standard (Thragtusk being the first). It was later relegated to the sidelines, though.