So many complaints on here will be from people not reading the article and the reasoning for each ban. That is the internet though, read the headline and instantly form opinion with no real backing. We humans are creatures of emotion.
Banwise all of these make sense based off their reasoning and I would like see to where the format evolves. Does RG Pummler rise to take over the Energy mantle? Does UW Cycling or UB Control lock opponents out of their game for dominance? Does UW GPG and Scarab God force graveyard hate into every deck? Do any of the Ixalan tribes actually stand a chance against the evil remnants of Kaladesh and Ahmonket?
So many complaints on here will be from people not reading the article and the reasoning for each ban. That is the internet though, read the headline and instantly form opinion with no real backing. We humans are creatures of emotion.
Banwise all of these make sense based off their reasoning and I would like see to where the format evolves. Does RG Pummler rise to take over the Energy mantle? Does UW Cycling or UB Control lock opponents out of their game for dominance? Does UW GPG and Scarab God force graveyard hate into every deck? Do any of the Ixalan tribes actually stand a chance against the evil remnants of Kaladesh and Ahmonket?
There's an interesting throw away comment in the article, where they imply there's at least one deck with a <2% share of the metagame with better matchups across the board than Ramunap Red.
So many complaints on here will be from people not reading the article and the reasoning for each ban. That is the internet though, read the headline and instantly form opinion with no real backing. We humans are creatures of emotion.
Banwise all of these make sense based off their reasoning and I would like see to where the format evolves. Does RG Pummler rise to take over the Energy mantle? Does UW Cycling or UB Control lock opponents out of their game for dominance? Does UW GPG and Scarab God force graveyard hate into every deck? Do any of the Ixalan tribes actually stand a chance against the evil remnants of Kaladesh and Ahmonket?
There's an interesting throw away comment in the article, where they imply there's at least one deck with a <2% share of the metagame with better matchups across the board than Ramunap Red.
Right, but who cares? It has a better match win percentage because no one is playing it which means no one is losing with it. If I show up to a tournament and go 4-0 with a 60 Island deck and then never play it again, it has a 100% match win percentage. That doesn't mean anything. There is a cutoff for relevancy for determining if a deck is overpowered. Wizards has chosen 2% to be that cutoff. Anything below that means it isn't worth looking at. After all, if it was really that great, more people would play it.
The comment also could just be giving us what their cutoff is. Maybe there is nothing with less than 2% of the Meta with a match win % better than Ramunap Red. They just decided to be transparent with what their line in the sand is.
The way I see it they chickened out. They should have had the stones to see how the new cards will influence the format first before they decided to go on a banning spree, and this is the SECOND time they did so. What's the point of hyping new sets if you're just going to ban cards the new set was supposed to outshine? What's done is done however, and we better pray to Finkel-All-Mighty they did this right, because if they didn't and then end up having to ban cards AGAIN they might as well put a fork in Standard as a format.
If they didn't do this standard would have been dead... make that it is dead and requires resuscitation.
Events aren't firing at high percentage at LGSs because of stale Energy/RR environment and the new cards were not going to pierce that. You can brew all you want, because they chose to Modern Masters the enemy lands instead of printing them in RIX or IX has made the manabase in standard crap. Energy was completely mana efficient and smooth making it far more consistent than anything else could possibly compete with.
I notice people defending answers pointing out bad cards. Playing bad cards to beat good ones is the worst kind of plan. The few 'good' removals are too expensive... that whole discussion is elsewhere.
Design... the head guy... needs to realize his plan is complete crap and do sets like they used to. Good efficient removal, good counters, 1 cmc mana dorks, and stop over pushing creatures. His plan to make more money backfired and standard is a pit of nothingness no one is playing. This move might get people interested in trying new things this block.
Design... the head guy... needs to realize his plan is complete crap and do sets like they used to. Good efficient removal, good counters, 1 cmc mana dorks, and stop over pushing creatures. His plan to make more money backfired and standard is a pit of nothingness no one is playing. This move might get people interested in trying new things this block.
I don't know why people are shocked or upset. Energy has been the dominant strategy since inception. First it was the energy package + copycat engine as the best deck, then it was energy package + marvel into eldrazi as the best deck, then it was energy package + glorybringer and scarab god as the best deck. For the past year and a half, rogue refiner.dek has been the oppressive overwhelming force to everything BUT ramunap red. Going off of data, the temur energy deck was 1/4 to 1/3 of the meta, That's not even counting the different energy decks that use the same 20 something card base and built from there. If you do count those variants, you're closer to forty to fifty percent.
Half of the meta game was different flavors of energy.
Amonkhet and Ixalan aren't week sets. They've been labeled as such because of the parasitic monster that is the energy mechanic. God-pharaoh's gift decks, approach decks, dinosaur midrange, tokens, and vampires all tried and failed to push through energy. Mefolk would have joined the list of decks that are good but worse then energy.
The mono-red hits are slightly suspect though. I would have liked to see how the meta shaped up with a weakened energy deck before doing anything else. In all honesty though, Hazoret.dek is probably still completely fine. Rather then go for the power cards they went for the cards that stopped you from interacting with mono red in an effective way.
This move might get people interested in trying new things this block.
Anecdotal evidence is anecdotal, but last Friday night there were 26 people at my LGS playing Standard. Do you know how many people were playing decks which were *not* Temur Energy, Ramunap Red, GPG, or some list they most likely found online? Two. I had the first iteration of a Jund deck featuring -1/-1 counters and Nest of Scarabs--it went 2-2 but it was its first night out and I have to admit that Soul-Scar Mage + 2x Nest of Scarabs + Sweltering Suns was funny--and another guy I know resurrected his Metalwork Colossus deck--casting a 10/10 for what is essentially free on turn 4 took some people by surprise.
Long story short: most Magic players *don't* try new things. Ever. Except when a set rotates out or their favorite card of the moment gets banned.
The hits to red were necessary. Traditional red decks had at least 1 weakness. Ripping lands off the top.
Not only did they take that away but they stopped up every hole that could stop red.
Lifegain, check
lands off the top, check
blockers, check
sweepers, check
card draw, check
Now they've taken the reach from lands and utterly screwing life gain off the table. There are cards that can compete with that now.
The only thing worse than the current meta would be a meta of 1 RR deck which is what testing probably told them they were going to get.
The mana base really pisses me off. They totally sacked proper mana so they could sell enemy fetches etc in Modern Masters.
Long story short: most Magic players *don't* try new things. Ever. Except when a set rotates out or their favorite card of the moment gets banned.
The problem with brewing is that you need the cards to play at an FNM and you really dont go out brewing and buying cards for a deck just to find out its not really good and has no chance against the actual decks people bring.
An LGS and especially WotC could combat this by pushing brews.
My LGS did so by providing every week with a random selection of cards from the new set in a Bingo form (with 1-4 as numbers for how many of them you need) and if you had these cards in your deck, you get a lottery ticket (and you can get all cards in your deck to fully black out the Bingo form).
Just winning with the "best" deck nets you almost no prices, winning with the Bingo black out deck, thats a major achievement.
Its big prices for brewer and as it changes each week, you have an evolving metagame right out of the bottle, which makes the game way way more interesting (and the brew decks are most of the time even pretty cheap, as they use so many cards).
Our LGS even sold a lot of full sets, 4 of each card, as people wanted to be prepared for the Bingo format and ready to brew up lots of decks.
----
Problem is, WotC does not benefit brew decks in any way.
They intentionally push specific cards to be "mandatory" for constructed and very specific answers to these specific problems, so they over-engineer a format that is pretty much how they want it to play out, unless they oversee something , which easily turns into a snowball of problems, as suddenly the answers they made up do not combat that "surprise" problem.
----
Its a terrible way to shape a constructed format , and it doesnt seem like they do anything against it, other than making the format even more engineered and pushing specific cards even harder, while banning cards left and right that do not fit in that engineered world they made up.
I wonder how many players here played in Necro Winter and Combo Winter. Banning cards to end monopoly of deck styles give others an opportunity to shine in a more diverse environment. No point playing a game if there's only one or two deck types to make/prepare against.
The mana base really pisses me off. They totally sacked proper mana so they could sell enemy fetches etc in Modern Masters.
We have the cycling duals from Amonkhet... We weren't going to get fetches as well. Standard isn't supposed to get near-perfect Mana. Otherwise you get monstrous best-cards decks. *Cough*.
While I want to distance myself from your tone a little bit, you're right in that the current issue is how horrid answers are.
How are answers horrid? Unlicensed Disintegration destroys any creature except Hazoret or the random Rhonas that someone might be playing while Vraska's Contempt deals with anything that isn't hexproof--we might see some more Jade Guardians being played because of extra Merfolk support but there aren't many Carnage Tyrants running around. Some decks even have answers before the cards are even played--do you know how difficult it is for a God-Pharaoh's Gift deck to win after a turn 3 Dispossess has exiled all copies of the artifact? They might as well scoop.
Anyway...back to the ban announcement...Standard will become Pummeler and RDW, both of which can attain victory on turn 4 without answers in hand.
You're talking about 3 and 4 mana removal when the best threats are either 3 mana and below, or force you to play 4 mana removal to remove them on the the first place. I'm not sure you really understand the "standard has bad answers" argument since you are arguing against it when Wizards themselves have admitted the answers in standard were weak. Nobody runs dispossess in the main and in games 2-3 it's not like their curve goes above 5 mana anyway. They have no real reason to scoop.
It's weird you argue against bad answers in standard but then present two decks that you lose to if you don't have answers until turn 4
Maybe I'm out of touch. I don't play standard. What's with banning that Dino?
Seems like a totally mundane, "normal" card to me and I'm really surprised to see it on this list. I can't even picture a scenario where this is given the same treatment as Jace the mindsculptor. What gives?
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I seem to recall the recent standard, with allied fetches, that was quite diverse and fun.
It allows you to mix and match.
When mana bases suck you don't get variety.
Modern has an incredible mana base and is full of variety.
Now they give us tribes without good mana support. Sorry but into play tap lands are crap, especially against any kind of fast decks.
You're talking about 3 and 4 mana removal when the best threats are either 3 mana and below, or force you to play 4 mana removal to remove them on the the first place. I'm not sure you really understand the "standard has bad answers" argument since you are arguing against it when Wizards themselves have admitted the answers in standard were weak. Nobody runs dispossess in the main and in games 2-3 it's not like their curve goes above 5 mana anyway. They have no real reason to scoop.
It's weird you argue against bad answers in standard but then present two decks that you lose to if you don't have answers until turn 4
Those are not the only answers, though, only ones which immediately present themselves as being good. Standard is not Modern so people need to quit thinking that the only good cards are cmc 3 or less. The initial comment to which I responded was "removal is horrid" but that view is simply inaccurate. The people who think removal is not good are not looking at what is available. We do have some good options which are low-cost, though, like the upcoming Mutiny or Reckless Rage...but I suspect people won't try Rage because *gasp* it deals 2 damage to one of your own creatures.
Anyway...we can continue the whole "removal is bad"/"no it isn't" discussion elsewhere. These current bans really aren't going to change decks all that much, except for Temur Energy. Perhaps people should consider Commune with Dinosaurs in place of Attune since it finds a land. With only 21 lands in the deck if you cast Commune on turn 1 you are about 90% likely to find another land....but I suspect no one will try that, either.
1) Banning Attune seems like it'd be enough to make energy "just another deck," given that their own data shows mainly 52-48 or worse matchups. They wanted to mostly get rid of a deck that people are pretty sick of.
2) Ferocidon is the most random ban in history. A 3-mana 3/3 that offers no value does not scream "BAN THIS RIGHT NOW!" Banning Ruins might have been enough, but I can understand those win percentages scaring them.
3) Control will be very, very good.
I think the hit to rogue refiner is justified, energy was able to get off the ground without attune in the majority of it's matches. 4 attunes in a 60 card deck translates to roughly a 40% chance in an opening 7. Attune did, however, let the deck mulligan fairly aggressively. Refiner changes the deck in that it can't just dig, set up resources, and drop a relevant blocker for other midrange decks beginning to ramp up now. Refiner was deceptively good, because there really wasn't a stage in the game you didn't want to cast it unless you were heavily pushing board presence into your favor (chandra/glorybringer).
Ferocidon was more than likely banned to give token decks a chance to thrive. That card invalidated much of the BW vampires or BW stockpile list's efforts because they really can't get traction until you dig into your non fatal push answer. Those decks don't have much dig until red already has them against the ropes. Ferocidon is one of those cards that is just very VERY good at hosing one particular strategy. I think trespasser's curse may show up in mono Bx midrange and control lists to compensate for the effect against those decks. Ramunap ruins had to go, especially with R or Rx pirates which can have alot of issues closing out a game. Even sideboard cards and sweepers aren't great against the deck because if you splash blue you're packing counters (spell pierce/negate) or if black discard (duress). So they beat with the 2/x's until you're in burn range then just hold up counter magic, hurl fire/lightning at you and then pop the land when the shields finally go down.
While I agree that control is good, I think you'll see a okay resurgence of UW approach and probably a UB or Grixis control list. Approach can still be hated pretty easily if you can slip in a strip (lost legacy / Dispossess) while applying pressure. I think just straight GB snek is going to be very solid now (I'm only losing attune from my 4 color list, and I didn't even have a basic in for the 4th color...it's not that big of an issue). I think scarab god is going to be incredibly hard to remove because against control you can just never attack with him and only with the tokens. Draining every turn, scrying to more gas, and keeping him relatively safe from settle. TBH I'll try rocking an evolving wilds and just see how that shapes up against the field.
For the record I don't think merfolk are going to be that impressive. I just can't see them having enough threats/answers to deal with things like GB snek, approach, UB control, pirate aggro/tempo, or BW tokens of varying degrees. It feels like merfolk just straight lose to token strats actually, as the unblockable threats are punching in for 2-5 damage on average while the token strats can easily gain that much or more per round while backing it up with sweepers.
I'm not the most vested in Standard, so maybe I'm missing something: Why was Rampaging Ferocidon banned? That seems so random.
It basically kills token builds and nerfs go-wide strategies.
Not a lot to say otherwise, except my LGS had a ton of energy decks floating around, then the energy mirrors and so on. Everything was very streamlined as well so maybe ditching Attune helps make decks a bit more inconsistent, which leads to better gameplay for all involved.
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Currently focusing on Pre-Modern (Mono-Black Discard Control) and Modern (Azorious Control, Temur Rhinos).
Find me at the Wizard's Tower in Ottawa every second Saturday afternoons.
Maro already addressed thisissue and promised that it'll start getting better as we get to the sets where they could put those changes intoo effect so probably I. The next block or two the issue should balancing out
Maybe I'm out of touch. I don't play standard. What's with banning that Dino?
Seems like a totally mundane, "normal" card to me and I'm really surprised to see it on this list. I can't even picture a scenario where this is given the same treatment as Jace the mindsculptor. What gives?
Ensures that Ramunap Red doesn't just become the next dominant deck, and they were using it to pretty good effect IIRC.
Wow, the last time we had this many bans at a time in one year, the game was considered to be in a catastrophic nose-dive, a death-spiral of poor design and play choices threatening its survival. And now, I guess we're treating it as just a normal thing that happens?
Wow, the last time we had this many bans at a time in one year, the game was considered to be in a catastrophic nose-dive, a death-spiral of poor design and play choices threatening its survival. And now, I guess we're treating it as just a normal thing that happens?
No, have you not been reading things? Standard IS in a death spiral of poor design and play choices.
This is what happens when you remove efficient answers.
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Banwise all of these make sense based off their reasoning and I would like see to where the format evolves. Does RG Pummler rise to take over the Energy mantle? Does UW Cycling or UB Control lock opponents out of their game for dominance? Does UW GPG and Scarab God force graveyard hate into every deck? Do any of the Ixalan tribes actually stand a chance against the evil remnants of Kaladesh and Ahmonket?
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There's an interesting throw away comment in the article, where they imply there's at least one deck with a <2% share of the metagame with better matchups across the board than Ramunap Red.
The comment also could just be giving us what their cutoff is. Maybe there is nothing with less than 2% of the Meta with a match win % better than Ramunap Red. They just decided to be transparent with what their line in the sand is.
If they didn't do this standard would have been dead... make that it is dead and requires resuscitation.
Events aren't firing at high percentage at LGSs because of stale Energy/RR environment and the new cards were not going to pierce that. You can brew all you want, because they chose to Modern Masters the enemy lands instead of printing them in RIX or IX has made the manabase in standard crap. Energy was completely mana efficient and smooth making it far more consistent than anything else could possibly compete with.
I notice people defending answers pointing out bad cards. Playing bad cards to beat good ones is the worst kind of plan. The few 'good' removals are too expensive... that whole discussion is elsewhere.
Design... the head guy... needs to realize his plan is complete crap and do sets like they used to. Good efficient removal, good counters, 1 cmc mana dorks, and stop over pushing creatures. His plan to make more money backfired and standard is a pit of nothingness no one is playing. This move might get people interested in trying new things this block.
Preach.
Spirits
Half of the meta game was different flavors of energy.
Amonkhet and Ixalan aren't week sets. They've been labeled as such because of the parasitic monster that is the energy mechanic. God-pharaoh's gift decks, approach decks, dinosaur midrange, tokens, and vampires all tried and failed to push through energy. Mefolk would have joined the list of decks that are good but worse then energy.
The mono-red hits are slightly suspect though. I would have liked to see how the meta shaped up with a weakened energy deck before doing anything else. In all honesty though, Hazoret.dek is probably still completely fine. Rather then go for the power cards they went for the cards that stopped you from interacting with mono red in an effective way.
Anecdotal evidence is anecdotal, but last Friday night there were 26 people at my LGS playing Standard. Do you know how many people were playing decks which were *not* Temur Energy, Ramunap Red, GPG, or some list they most likely found online? Two. I had the first iteration of a Jund deck featuring -1/-1 counters and Nest of Scarabs--it went 2-2 but it was its first night out and I have to admit that Soul-Scar Mage + 2x Nest of Scarabs + Sweltering Suns was funny--and another guy I know resurrected his Metalwork Colossus deck--casting a 10/10 for what is essentially free on turn 4 took some people by surprise.
Long story short: most Magic players *don't* try new things. Ever. Except when a set rotates out or their favorite card of the moment gets banned.
Not only did they take that away but they stopped up every hole that could stop red.
Lifegain, check
lands off the top, check
blockers, check
sweepers, check
card draw, check
Now they've taken the reach from lands and utterly screwing life gain off the table. There are cards that can compete with that now.
The only thing worse than the current meta would be a meta of 1 RR deck which is what testing probably told them they were going to get.
The mana base really pisses me off. They totally sacked proper mana so they could sell enemy fetches etc in Modern Masters.
They over-engineer a format , push some mechanics and than need to ban key cards to let the new set shine.
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Its terrible, sad, and gives me incredible bad wipes for the foreseeable future of the game ...
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I wouldnt even be surprised if they declared Unstable legal in standard ...
That would be kinda hilarious.
The problem with brewing is that you need the cards to play at an FNM and you really dont go out brewing and buying cards for a deck just to find out its not really good and has no chance against the actual decks people bring.
An LGS and especially WotC could combat this by pushing brews.
My LGS did so by providing every week with a random selection of cards from the new set in a Bingo form (with 1-4 as numbers for how many of them you need) and if you had these cards in your deck, you get a lottery ticket (and you can get all cards in your deck to fully black out the Bingo form).
Just winning with the "best" deck nets you almost no prices, winning with the Bingo black out deck, thats a major achievement.
Its big prices for brewer and as it changes each week, you have an evolving metagame right out of the bottle, which makes the game way way more interesting (and the brew decks are most of the time even pretty cheap, as they use so many cards).
Our LGS even sold a lot of full sets, 4 of each card, as people wanted to be prepared for the Bingo format and ready to brew up lots of decks.
----
Problem is, WotC does not benefit brew decks in any way.
They intentionally push specific cards to be "mandatory" for constructed and very specific answers to these specific problems, so they over-engineer a format that is pretty much how they want it to play out, unless they oversee something , which easily turns into a snowball of problems, as suddenly the answers they made up do not combat that "surprise" problem.
----
Its a terrible way to shape a constructed format , and it doesnt seem like they do anything against it, other than making the format even more engineered and pushing specific cards even harder, while banning cards left and right that do not fit in that engineered world they made up.
Pretty crap.
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We have the cycling duals from Amonkhet... We weren't going to get fetches as well. Standard isn't supposed to get near-perfect Mana. Otherwise you get monstrous best-cards decks. *Cough*.
You're talking about 3 and 4 mana removal when the best threats are either 3 mana and below, or force you to play 4 mana removal to remove them on the the first place. I'm not sure you really understand the "standard has bad answers" argument since you are arguing against it when Wizards themselves have admitted the answers in standard were weak. Nobody runs dispossess in the main and in games 2-3 it's not like their curve goes above 5 mana anyway. They have no real reason to scoop.
It's weird you argue against bad answers in standard but then present two decks that you lose to if you don't have answers until turn 4
Seems like a totally mundane, "normal" card to me and I'm really surprised to see it on this list. I can't even picture a scenario where this is given the same treatment as Jace the mindsculptor. What gives?
It allows you to mix and match.
When mana bases suck you don't get variety.
Modern has an incredible mana base and is full of variety.
Now they give us tribes without good mana support. Sorry but into play tap lands are crap, especially against any kind of fast decks.
Those are not the only answers, though, only ones which immediately present themselves as being good. Standard is not Modern so people need to quit thinking that the only good cards are cmc 3 or less. The initial comment to which I responded was "removal is horrid" but that view is simply inaccurate. The people who think removal is not good are not looking at what is available. We do have some good options which are low-cost, though, like the upcoming Mutiny or Reckless Rage...but I suspect people won't try Rage because *gasp* it deals 2 damage to one of your own creatures.
Anyway...we can continue the whole "removal is bad"/"no it isn't" discussion elsewhere. These current bans really aren't going to change decks all that much, except for Temur Energy. Perhaps people should consider Commune with Dinosaurs in place of Attune since it finds a land. With only 21 lands in the deck if you cast Commune on turn 1 you are about 90% likely to find another land....but I suspect no one will try that, either.
I think the hit to rogue refiner is justified, energy was able to get off the ground without attune in the majority of it's matches. 4 attunes in a 60 card deck translates to roughly a 40% chance in an opening 7. Attune did, however, let the deck mulligan fairly aggressively. Refiner changes the deck in that it can't just dig, set up resources, and drop a relevant blocker for other midrange decks beginning to ramp up now. Refiner was deceptively good, because there really wasn't a stage in the game you didn't want to cast it unless you were heavily pushing board presence into your favor (chandra/glorybringer).
Ferocidon was more than likely banned to give token decks a chance to thrive. That card invalidated much of the BW vampires or BW stockpile list's efforts because they really can't get traction until you dig into your non fatal push answer. Those decks don't have much dig until red already has them against the ropes. Ferocidon is one of those cards that is just very VERY good at hosing one particular strategy. I think trespasser's curse may show up in mono Bx midrange and control lists to compensate for the effect against those decks. Ramunap ruins had to go, especially with R or Rx pirates which can have alot of issues closing out a game. Even sideboard cards and sweepers aren't great against the deck because if you splash blue you're packing counters (spell pierce/negate) or if black discard (duress). So they beat with the 2/x's until you're in burn range then just hold up counter magic, hurl fire/lightning at you and then pop the land when the shields finally go down.
While I agree that control is good, I think you'll see a okay resurgence of UW approach and probably a UB or Grixis control list. Approach can still be hated pretty easily if you can slip in a strip (lost legacy / Dispossess) while applying pressure. I think just straight GB snek is going to be very solid now (I'm only losing attune from my 4 color list, and I didn't even have a basic in for the 4th color...it's not that big of an issue). I think scarab god is going to be incredibly hard to remove because against control you can just never attack with him and only with the tokens. Draining every turn, scrying to more gas, and keeping him relatively safe from settle. TBH I'll try rocking an evolving wilds and just see how that shapes up against the field.
For the record I don't think merfolk are going to be that impressive. I just can't see them having enough threats/answers to deal with things like GB snek, approach, UB control, pirate aggro/tempo, or BW tokens of varying degrees. It feels like merfolk just straight lose to token strats actually, as the unblockable threats are punching in for 2-5 damage on average while the token strats can easily gain that much or more per round while backing it up with sweepers.
Hahahah told you guys that one was underrated
It basically kills token builds and nerfs go-wide strategies.
Not a lot to say otherwise, except my LGS had a ton of energy decks floating around, then the energy mirrors and so on. Everything was very streamlined as well so maybe ditching Attune helps make decks a bit more inconsistent, which leads to better gameplay for all involved.
Currently focusing on Pre-Modern (Mono-Black Discard Control) and Modern (Azorious Control, Temur Rhinos).
Find me at the Wizard's Tower in Ottawa every second Saturday afternoons.
Apparently, I dont play Standard.
Spirits
Ensures that Ramunap Red doesn't just become the next dominant deck, and they were using it to pretty good effect IIRC.
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No, have you not been reading things? Standard IS in a death spiral of poor design and play choices.
This is what happens when you remove efficient answers.
Spirits