Khans BFZ was pretty bad since it was crazy expensive(good job wizards having fetch-able duals in standard) and nothing but 3-4 color good stuff but Theros-Khans was pretty sweet with everything from r/b//mardu dragons, abzan, heroic, devotion, rally variants, elves, jeskai, RDW, blue artifacts etc. Can't really speak on before that since I only started August 2015.
RTR-THS gets a much worse rap than it deserves. While the decks didn't change nearly much at all from week 1 to week 52, there was a decent amount of diversity towards how many decks were relevant. Even moreso, the decks were wildly divergent from one another, and the format was quite fun to play overall and required you to formulate very different game plans based on what your opponent was doing. Those who say MBC was worse, and that the format was all about Turn 1 Thoughtseize into turn 2 Pack Rat honestly are incredibly wrong. While monoblack was the most consistently strong deck, it was also incredibly beatable by practically every strategy in the format.
Wait, what? Yeah, the decks had diversity in terms of what cards they played, splashes, etc. But the fact remains that for most of the format (up until near rotation), there were only four viable archetypes: U/x Devotion, B/x Devotion, RG/x Monsters, and UW/x control. Everything else was tier 3 at best. Some people might have enjoyed it but it definitely wasn't diverse.
You're right though that MBD wasn't even close to as bad as GW/x is now, people just hated it because it was uninteractive as hell.
Most of the other decks outside the Big Four were solidly Tier 2, and performed better or worse depending on the currently meta game (Burn tended to have a fairly strong Mono-Black and U/W control match-up, but could falter against Green, Blue, and Esper or B/W midrange, for instance). There was also some nuance to the various flavors of devotion; if you anticipated that B/W was going to be stronger (Due to heavier U/W and B/W presence), you would be heavily punished if people showed up with Mono-Blue and the Green based decks; at various times Jund was actually the strongest version of G/R/x, but was at others stone unplayable. There was a lot of nuance to the format, and it actively fun to play. It was just poor from a stagnation stand point.
It'll still be strong, but not necessarily oppressive like it is now. Most other decks aren't losing much either, and hopefully Wizards will print something for blue or red.
The biggest offenders I see going into post rotation (Knowing nothing else) is Gideon and Sylvan Advocate; Gideon is just plain idiotic for Planeswalkers, and only didn't see much play pre-SOI due to how skewed the format was post-BFZ towards 4 color mana bases. Sylvan Advocate is just hilariously efficient beyond comprehension. Unless they print something in line with those two cards (Which would be problematic in its own right), I honestly feel uneasy about the upcoming format.
Vampires aren't likely to be viable at a competitive level. A deck that uses discard outlets for small amounts of value isn't going to beat Sylvan Advocate or Reflector Mage. As for Delirium, Gnarlwood Dryad and Grim Flayer are good but it seems hard to find a viable 75 with the cards available. They should be fine decks, but they won't fare better than any of the tier 2 decks now against GW.
sad truth? Standard has been stagnant in my area (It's been like this for months now). The Win a Box that used to fire consistently last season hasn't fire in over a month. Even at other LGS standard is 6-8 players now. Very rarely do we get to a full 4 rounds and players who were once avid standard players have lost interest. It's the first time I've seen that hard of drop, and it is due to the G/W color combination being overtly oppressive. Even the players that run bant are tired of the mirrors and G/W Tokens gets stale. Humans is humans and that is it. Some players try Ramp and other deck but the truth is wizards is putting a ton of emphasis on G/W.
If standard stays the same I'll stick to drafting and sealed. I'll even make the jump back to modern which I'm not always keen on. I like change and rotation, and the constant influx of new cards. Call me ADD but I prefer standard because of this. However I dunno, it's a great pass time but if they don't fix it meh, there's plenty of other things to do. I'm not the only player who's on the fence now, while some players have gone to play other formats in my area others have stopped playing in favor of more rewarding activities. That sounds fine, maybe players taking breaks will send wizards a message.
IT'S BORING right now.
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Standard Arena: Eh? Gruul or Die
Modern: Decks I'm playing right now: G Mono Green Tron (34-10-3 paper record, only SCG/Regionals/PPTQ record) C Eldrazi Tron (9-5) UG Infect RW Burn
Khans BFZ was pretty bad since it was crazy expensive(good job wizards having fetch-able duals in standard) and nothing but 3-4 color good stuff but Theros-Khans was pretty sweet with everything from r/b//mardu dragons, abzan, heroic, devotion, rally variants, elves, jeskai, RDW, blue artifacts etc. Can't really speak on before that since I only started August 2015.
RTR-THS gets a much worse rap than it deserves. While the decks didn't change nearly much at all from week 1 to week 52, there was a decent amount of diversity towards how many decks were relevant. Even moreso, the decks were wildly divergent from one another, and the format was quite fun to play overall and required you to formulate very different game plans based on what your opponent was doing. Those who say MBC was worse, and that the format was all about Turn 1 Thoughtseize into turn 2 Pack Rat honestly are incredibly wrong. While monoblack was the most consistently strong deck, it was also incredibly beatable by practically every strategy in the format.
Wait, what? Yeah, the decks had diversity in terms of what cards they played, splashes, etc. But the fact remains that for most of the format (up until near rotation), there were only four viable archetypes: U/x Devotion, B/x Devotion, RG/x Monsters, and UW/x control. Everything else was tier 3 at best. Some people might have enjoyed it but it definitely wasn't diverse.
You're right though that MBD wasn't even close to as bad as GW/x is now, people just hated it because it was uninteractive as hell.
Good thing is Kaladesh will be a huge shake up but yeah, having multiple rotations a year makes standard way too expensive. With modern being taken off the pro tour, i dont think we'll see the yearly bannings as much (unless a deck is tier 0 like eldrazi or specifically inhibits card design(like birthing pod).
G/W loses Dromoka' COmmand, Secure the Wastes, and CoCo. It keeps Advocate, Gideon, Gisela, all the relevant humans, Declaration in Stone, Nissa, and plenty of other objectively hyper-efficient cards. Even if G/W gets stone nothing in Kaladesh, it will still be one of the strongest color combinations simply due to how absurdly efficient they are.
It'll still be strong, but not necessarily oppressive like it is now. Most other decks aren't losing much either, and hopefully Wizards will print something for blue or red.
I feel that losing Dromaka's Command, secure the wastes and coco will make GW decks far less oppressive, although they'll still be really good. I feel that the steampunk nature of Kaladesh will provide some sweet UR cards though, not sure how black will fit in yet
I feel that losing Dromaka's Command, secure the wastes and coco will make GW decks far less oppressive, although they'll still be really good. I feel that the steampunk nature of Kaladesh will provide some sweet UR cards though, not sure how black will fit in yet
I'm confident the colours will balance out
Agreed. Dromoka's Command has four modes that all do something this deck wants, for 2 mana, at instant speed. No Drom Command,and virulent plague is the hate card that prevents g/w tokens from being oppressive. Sure there are enchantment destruction spells in green and white, but they are dedicated kill spells, not like drom command which can adapt to pretty much any weakness outside of hard sweepers/languish.
Note Drom Command is not a broken card. Very efficient but highly dependent on the meta game. If virulent plague were an artifact, g/w tokens becomes very beatable.
Coco rotating in general will be very good for the format. Not longer will the obligatory splash for green be necessary.
I also agree that Kaledesh, which should be a strong artifact based theme(read also good for modern cards are much more likely), should also bring love for izzet, or at the very least red since it's Chandra's home plane, but the focus should be U/R, maybe some black, but not much for w/g hopefully. I also hope we get a new pia and kira card just for flavor reasons.
Vampires aren't likely to be viable at a competitive level. A deck that uses discard outlets for small amounts of value isn't going to beat Sylvan Advocate or Reflector Mage. As for Delirium, Gnarlwood Dryad and Grim Flayer are good but it seems hard to find a viable 75 with the cards available. They should be fine decks, but they won't fare better than any of the tier 2 decks now against GW.
Are you joking?
Every single vampire atleast trades with advocate or just dodges him in the air.
And reflector mage is of course good against vampires, but weaker than against any other deck.
The reason is simple, they can cast their stuff again on your turn through madness, it's like having flash on everything.
They also can discard the bounced creature to another discard outlet simply for tempo reasons.
Stuff like Spirits will give reflector mage a hard time too.
No, I'm not joking.
Advocate brickwalls Vampires HARD in the late game. Reflector Mage might not be the best example, but CoCo into Reflector Mage in response to a madness trigger is the kind of play that ends games, and I could see it coming up reasonably frequently. Vampires also match up poorly against Languish decks, DCommand, etc. If DCommand gets banned though Vampires could be viable at a competitive level since every mode is relevant against them and it's almost an automatic 2-for-1.
A lot of the Spirits you want to play (for example Bygone Bishop and Mausoleum Wanderer) don't have flash, so Reflector Mage will still be a problem against them. Rattlechains helps, but I don't think you want to be wasting it on a bounce trigger unless doing so will end the game. That being said, Spirits are already a pretty solid deck, and the addition of Mausoleum Wanderer and Spell Queller makes them look much, much better.
I don't like things based on how many people like them.
I like things that I like.
Making a judgement based on prediction is taking investing in magic one step further, frankly, I'd rather spend the money and save time thinking about it.
When I play a standard format, if I don't like it, I stop playing for awhile.
Somebody discussing how bad a game is or will be deserves this response, "Adapt or quit."
That's all there is to it.
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The red mage lives by the variance and dies by the variance. May the variance be with you, always.
I don't like things based on how many people like them.
I like things that I like.
Making a judgement based on prediction is taking investing in magic one step further, frankly, I'd rather spend the money and save time thinking about it.
When I play a standard format, if I don't like it, I stop playing for awhile.
Somebody discussing how bad a game is or will be deserves this response, "Adapt or quit."
That's all there is to it.
Problem is when more players lean to yhe quit side. There has been a decline in players since last year. There are a lot more games on the market to play.
I'm mostly a limited player. SOI is complete garbage for limited. Even during bad sets I could find something in limited I like. SOI I found nothing. The standard format is a reflection of that. Even more so that we have moved to a smaller card pool. Standard is more like Block+ format now.
Yeah that's what I meant, thanks for the correction. They did get a lot better with SoI, but they haven't been truly weak since RTR-THS.
White was quite strong before KTK was released; it was an integral part of the U/W control lists (Beyond just Sphinx's Rev), as well as B/W midrange lists. Green equally was doing just fine during this period with G/R monsters and Devotion being quite present at the highest level of play (And often there were *more* G/R monsters lists than Mono-Black lists). There was also a lightly played Selesnya aggro list that was... not very good. Still, both Green and White were doing fine in RtR-Theros Standard and had carved out their own portion of the metagame.
Inn-RtR equally saw both Green and White being played extensively; Mana Dorks, Farseek, and Thragtusk was the core of several extremely potent decks (And green was *crushing* the Grand Prix circuits). White was present in Junk Rites, Humans, American Flash, Bant, and Esper Drownyard. Selesnya Aggro was also one of the strongest aggro decks at the time.
In Mirroding Besieged - RTR, White was more of a support color admittedly for the Blue decks, however there was a white weenie deck running around. Green was doing just fine with Infect, G/R aggro, and Pod doing quite well, as well as being present in numerous other decks.
This idea that Green or White have been actively bad in standard recently is just plain false. THey have always been perfectly playable, even if at times not the strongest colors or at their strongest. Green in particular has always had a place at the top table, even during the time period when it had no right to (RtR-Theros standard; it was consistantly showing up in multiples at Grand Prix top 8s despite both Mono-Black and Mono-blue often having maindeck hate for the decks).
So yeah. THe colors have never been actively bad in standard in recent history, and certainly not to the degree that Blue, Red, and to some extent Black are. We have to go all the way back to Delver-era standard to get a similar skewing, and that certainly not something a format should ever want to live up to.
I was talking about RTR-THS standard specifically. Inn-RTR was one of the most diverse Standards ever, and the ones before that were pretty good (SOM-ISD was easily the worst of the bunch, and that wasn't nearly as bad as this one). I'm not saying green and white were actively bad like blue or red are now, in fact I agree that they haven't been for a long time. I'm just saying they were below average in RTR-THS, particularly white. White was played only as a secondary color or a splash (aside from the brief period where WB Humans were a thing). Green had one good deck, but it also had one deck period, one that didn't really start top 8'ing stuff until well after BNG dropped. It did make the top 4 of PT Theros, but that was in the hands of a hall of famer and it was otherwise mostly unsuccessful until around March. That said, every color has weak Standards, so it was nothing out of the ordinary like blue and red now.
I started playing Standard regularly during RtR-Theros standard. And that was probably the most fun standard I have played in. I played U/W and esper control a lot. But I also messed around with (and had some success) with a G/B enchantment deck that filled the graveyard with grisly salvage and Satyr wayfinder and abused Strength from the fallen to swing with ridiculous numbers and I also had a lot of fun playing Junk Reanimator with Whip of erebos and Obzedat's aid to recur fatties with ETB effects. Plus Obzedat, Ghost Council + the whip was great cause you could use the creatures ability to exile before the whip exile trigger and keep your ghosts.
Since then however standard has taken a huge nose dive in my opinion. I stopped playing standard after Fate reforged cause I was getting interested in Modern and the cards and mechanics werent doing it for me. BFZ standard looked expensive and unfun. SOI got me interested for a minute but i JUST played my first standard FNM in over a year last night. The store I went to was the store I used to go to regularly during RtR-theros. They would have 15-20 man TNM standards and then 30-35 people standard FNM. Their FNM is now free, it was the night of the prerelease and we had 11 people including 2 people who worked at the store and were bored. This was a highly competitive store with decent turnout and now its a lot more casual.. I was surprised and a little disappointed.
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Decks
Modern BGR Jund RGB BW Eldrazi and Taxes WB BWGAbzan CompanyGWB
Welp, it had to happen some time. My LGS didn't fire Standard FNM for the first time in over ten years (The last time this occurred was during Mirrodin). From 30 or so people this time last year to 7 this last friday. Over ten years of uninterupted Standard FNMs has come to an end locally.
Yeah RTR-THS was a fun Standard, but in terms of color diversity it was pretty similar to this one. Then again, the tier 1 decks each had a vastly different style of play so it felt pretty diverse.
That Standard did get a lot more diverse after M15, but core sets tended to do that (granted, the jump in the number of decks was bigger than usual). It didn't really change much except for splashes during the first 9 months.
I miss stuff like Sidisi Whip. This current standard seems very Timmy and Spike, with little to offer Johnny. BG delirium is too slow as a midrange deck (ramp outpaces it as the de facto midrange archetype).
I miss stuff like Sidisi Whip. This current standard seems very Timmy and Spike, with little to offer Johnny. BG delirium is too slow as a midrange deck (ramp outpaces it as the de facto midrange archetype).
Not sure what is boring about the coming standard with EMN. This is the first time in a while that i've actually gone out and bought cards to make a constructed spirit deck on preorder and even got Full arts from BFZ and original Zen to pimp it. The pre-release footage I watched while at the hospital was pretty entertaining as well.
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1. (Ravnica Allegiance): You can't keep a good esper control deck down... Or Wilderness Reclamation... or Gates...
2. (War of the Spark): Guys, I know what we need! We need a cycle of really idiotic flavor text victory cards! Jace's Triumph...
3. (War of the Spark): Lets make the format with control have even more control!
Not sure what is boring about the coming standard with EMN. This is the first time in a while that i've actually gone out and bought cards to make a constructed spirit deck on preorder and even got Full arts from BFZ and original Zen to pimp it. The pre-release footage I watched while at the hospital was pretty entertaining as well.
I think EMN might shake things up. Human decks will want to incorporate red for Hanweir Garrison, spirit decks got HUGE boosts, especially Spell Queller. I'm thinking a BG deck that combines Zombies and Delirium might even be viable. There is also some insanly quick aggro stuff in red vampires that I think might be viable - Furyblade Vampire + Incorrigible Youths = attack for 8 on turn 3.
I expect tokens and CoCo based decks to still be Tier 1 - but I think they'll have more competition than they used to. I don't think Gideon + Nissa are going anywhere until BFZ rotates out.
People are complaining about this standard being bad? Shadowmoor is hands-down my favourite set, but it was in the same rotation as Lorwyn. There was no deck that could beat Faeries. It was either Faeries or lose. For those that haven't played during that period - think today's Spirit decks but in Blue/Black and more hard counters - plus an army of 1/1 flying tokens that were created each and every round. Also Cryptic Command There is no way any standard format is worse than there being only 1 truly viable deck, with no decks even coming marginally in 2nd. The top 8 in every tourney was pretty much all faeries with maybe a rogue deck somewhere in 6th - 8th place.
The only way to beat the deck was to ban Bitterblossom Then the deck was no longer dominating the format.
Not sure what is boring about the coming standard with EMN. This is the first time in a while that i've actually gone out and bought cards to make a constructed spirit deck on preorder and even got Full arts from BFZ and original Zen to pimp it. The pre-release footage I watched while at the hospital was pretty entertaining as well.
I think EMN might shake things up. Human decks will want to incorporate red for Hanweir Garrison, spirit decks got HUGE boosts, especially Spell Queller. I'm thinking a BG deck that combines Zombies and Delirium might even be viable. There is also some insanly quick aggro stuff in red vampires that I think might be viable - Furyblade Vampire + Incorrigible Youths = attack for 8 on turn 3.
I expect tokens and CoCo based decks to still be Tier 1 - but I think they'll have more competition than they used to. I don't think Gideon + Nissa are going anywhere until BFZ rotates out.
People are complaining about this standard being bad? Shadowmoor is hands-down my favourite set, but it was in the same rotation as Lorwyn. There was no deck that could beat Faeries. It was either Faeries or lose. For those that haven't played during that period - think today's Spirit decks but in Blue/Black and more hard counters - plus an army of 1/1 flying tokens that were created each and every round. Also Cryptic Command There is no way any standard format is worse than there being only 1 truly viable deck, with no decks even coming marginally in 2nd. The top 8 in every tourney was pretty much all faeries with maybe a rogue deck somewhere in 6th - 8th place.
The only way to beat the deck was to ban Bitterblossom Then the deck was no longer dominating the format.
I still think they might have gotten a little bit of cold feet with spirits in the latest block because of the prior history with fairies. They made a lot of very clunky spirits and spirit generators, along with a well over-costed and probably never constructed playable top end with Drogskol Cavalry. We really need something like Brago, King Eternal to act as a good top end or something along the lines of that level of utility.
1. (Ravnica Allegiance): You can't keep a good esper control deck down... Or Wilderness Reclamation... or Gates...
2. (War of the Spark): Guys, I know what we need! We need a cycle of really idiotic flavor text victory cards! Jace's Triumph...
3. (War of the Spark): Lets make the format with control have even more control!
Not sure what is boring about the coming standard with EMN. This is the first time in a while that i've actually gone out and bought cards to make a constructed spirit deck on preorder and even got Full arts from BFZ and original Zen to pimp it. The pre-release footage I watched while at the hospital was pretty entertaining as well.
I think EMN might shake things up. Human decks will want to incorporate red for Hanweir Garrison, spirit decks got HUGE boosts, especially Spell Queller. I'm thinking a BG deck that combines Zombies and Delirium might even be viable. There is also some insanly quick aggro stuff in red vampires that I think might be viable - Furyblade Vampire + Incorrigible Youths = attack for 8 on turn 3.
I expect tokens and CoCo based decks to still be Tier 1 - but I think they'll have more competition than they used to. I don't think Gideon + Nissa are going anywhere until BFZ rotates out.
People are complaining about this standard being bad? Shadowmoor is hands-down my favourite set, but it was in the same rotation as Lorwyn. There was no deck that could beat Faeries. It was either Faeries or lose. For those that haven't played during that period - think today's Spirit decks but in Blue/Black and more hard counters - plus an army of 1/1 flying tokens that were created each and every round. Also Cryptic Command There is no way any standard format is worse than there being only 1 truly viable deck, with no decks even coming marginally in 2nd. The top 8 in every tourney was pretty much all faeries with maybe a rogue deck somewhere in 6th - 8th place.
The only way to beat the deck was to ban Bitterblossom Then the deck was no longer dominating the format.
Just because there were worse formats does not mean that this is a good format. Comparing this format to one of the worst formats, and then saying that because it's not *quite* that bad thus it is fine is just nonsense.
And it's quite obvious that the format is exceedingly poor right now. The format currently is summed up by three decks, and *only* three decks with a large amount of overlap between them and are centerred around two colors, and *Ony* those two colors. Every other color simply cannot compete, and playing anything but those three decks is like beating your head against a wall. It's not a good idea, it's going to hurt, but you will eventually break a hole in it every once in a while.
This is not a sign of a healthy format.
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Most of the other decks outside the Big Four were solidly Tier 2, and performed better or worse depending on the currently meta game (Burn tended to have a fairly strong Mono-Black and U/W control match-up, but could falter against Green, Blue, and Esper or B/W midrange, for instance). There was also some nuance to the various flavors of devotion; if you anticipated that B/W was going to be stronger (Due to heavier U/W and B/W presence), you would be heavily punished if people showed up with Mono-Blue and the Green based decks; at various times Jund was actually the strongest version of G/R/x, but was at others stone unplayable. There was a lot of nuance to the format, and it actively fun to play. It was just poor from a stagnation stand point.
The biggest offenders I see going into post rotation (Knowing nothing else) is Gideon and Sylvan Advocate; Gideon is just plain idiotic for Planeswalkers, and only didn't see much play pre-SOI due to how skewed the format was post-BFZ towards 4 color mana bases. Sylvan Advocate is just hilariously efficient beyond comprehension. Unless they print something in line with those two cards (Which would be problematic in its own right), I honestly feel uneasy about the upcoming format.
If standard stays the same I'll stick to drafting and sealed. I'll even make the jump back to modern which I'm not always keen on. I like change and rotation, and the constant influx of new cards. Call me ADD but I prefer standard because of this. However I dunno, it's a great pass time but if they don't fix it meh, there's plenty of other things to do. I'm not the only player who's on the fence now, while some players have gone to play other formats in my area others have stopped playing in favor of more rewarding activities. That sounds fine, maybe players taking breaks will send wizards a message.
IT'S BORING right now.
Modern: Decks I'm playing right now:
G Mono Green Tron (34-10-3 paper record, only SCG/Regionals/PPTQ record)
C Eldrazi Tron (9-5)
UG Infect
RW Burn
I feel that losing Dromaka's Command, secure the wastes and coco will make GW decks far less oppressive, although they'll still be really good. I feel that the steampunk nature of Kaladesh will provide some sweet UR cards though, not sure how black will fit in yet
I'm confident the colours will balance out
Agreed. Dromoka's Command has four modes that all do something this deck wants, for 2 mana, at instant speed. No Drom Command,and virulent plague is the hate card that prevents g/w tokens from being oppressive. Sure there are enchantment destruction spells in green and white, but they are dedicated kill spells, not like drom command which can adapt to pretty much any weakness outside of hard sweepers/languish.
Note Drom Command is not a broken card. Very efficient but highly dependent on the meta game. If virulent plague were an artifact, g/w tokens becomes very beatable.
Coco rotating in general will be very good for the format. Not longer will the obligatory splash for green be necessary.
I also agree that Kaledesh, which should be a strong artifact based theme(read also good for modern cards are much more likely), should also bring love for izzet, or at the very least red since it's Chandra's home plane, but the focus should be U/R, maybe some black, but not much for w/g hopefully. I also hope we get a new pia and kira card just for flavor reasons.
No, I'm not joking.
Advocate brickwalls Vampires HARD in the late game. Reflector Mage might not be the best example, but CoCo into Reflector Mage in response to a madness trigger is the kind of play that ends games, and I could see it coming up reasonably frequently. Vampires also match up poorly against Languish decks, DCommand, etc. If DCommand gets banned though Vampires could be viable at a competitive level since every mode is relevant against them and it's almost an automatic 2-for-1.
A lot of the Spirits you want to play (for example Bygone Bishop and Mausoleum Wanderer) don't have flash, so Reflector Mage will still be a problem against them. Rattlechains helps, but I don't think you want to be wasting it on a bounce trigger unless doing so will end the game. That being said, Spirits are already a pretty solid deck, and the addition of Mausoleum Wanderer and Spell Queller makes them look much, much better.
I like things that I like.
Making a judgement based on prediction is taking investing in magic one step further, frankly, I'd rather spend the money and save time thinking about it.
When I play a standard format, if I don't like it, I stop playing for awhile.
Somebody discussing how bad a game is or will be deserves this response, "Adapt or quit."
That's all there is to it.
It was not too long ago people were commenting on how weak Wwhite and greenG were.
C Long Live Eldrazi C
Problem is when more players lean to yhe quit side. There has been a decline in players since last year. There are a lot more games on the market to play.
I'm mostly a limited player. SOI is complete garbage for limited. Even during bad sets I could find something in limited I like. SOI I found nothing. The standard format is a reflection of that. Even more so that we have moved to a smaller card pool. Standard is more like Block+ format now.
That's because they were pretty weak before SoI dropped. Since then they've been OP, especially white.
Do you mean before Tarkir dropped? Because Abzan by far and away jump started how good G/W are.
White was quite strong before KTK was released; it was an integral part of the U/W control lists (Beyond just Sphinx's Rev), as well as B/W midrange lists. Green equally was doing just fine during this period with G/R monsters and Devotion being quite present at the highest level of play (And often there were *more* G/R monsters lists than Mono-Black lists). There was also a lightly played Selesnya aggro list that was... not very good. Still, both Green and White were doing fine in RtR-Theros Standard and had carved out their own portion of the metagame.
Inn-RtR equally saw both Green and White being played extensively; Mana Dorks, Farseek, and Thragtusk was the core of several extremely potent decks (And green was *crushing* the Grand Prix circuits). White was present in Junk Rites, Humans, American Flash, Bant, and Esper Drownyard. Selesnya Aggro was also one of the strongest aggro decks at the time.
In Mirroding Besieged - RTR, White was more of a support color admittedly for the Blue decks, however there was a white weenie deck running around. Green was doing just fine with Infect, G/R aggro, and Pod doing quite well, as well as being present in numerous other decks.
This idea that Green or White have been actively bad in standard recently is just plain false. THey have always been perfectly playable, even if at times not the strongest colors or at their strongest. Green in particular has always had a place at the top table, even during the time period when it had no right to (RtR-Theros standard; it was consistantly showing up in multiples at Grand Prix top 8s despite both Mono-Black and Mono-blue often having maindeck hate for the decks).
So yeah. THe colors have never been actively bad in standard in recent history, and certainly not to the degree that Blue, Red, and to some extent Black are. We have to go all the way back to Delver-era standard to get a similar skewing, and that certainly not something a format should ever want to live up to.
Since then however standard has taken a huge nose dive in my opinion. I stopped playing standard after Fate reforged cause I was getting interested in Modern and the cards and mechanics werent doing it for me. BFZ standard looked expensive and unfun. SOI got me interested for a minute but i JUST played my first standard FNM in over a year last night. The store I went to was the store I used to go to regularly during RtR-theros. They would have 15-20 man TNM standards and then 30-35 people standard FNM. Their FNM is now free, it was the night of the prerelease and we had 11 people including 2 people who worked at the store and were bored. This was a highly competitive store with decent turnout and now its a lot more casual.. I was surprised and a little disappointed.
Decks
Modern
BGR Jund RGB
BW Eldrazi and Taxes WB
BWGAbzan Company GWB
Mtgo Modern
G Company Elves G
8 Forest
8 Plains
4 Mana Confluence
4 Temple Garden
Creature (23)
4 Experiment One
2 Sunblade Elf
3 Soldier of the Pantheon
4 Voice of Resurgence
4 Fleecemane Lion
3 Loxodon Smiter
3 Boon Satyr
3 Ajani, Caller of the Pride
Instant (7)
3 Selesnya Charm
4 Advent of the Wurm
Enchantment (3)
3 Banishing Light
4 Setessan Tactics
4 Unflinching Courage
4 Skylasher
1 Ajani Steadfast
2 Ajani's Presence
UR Blue-Red Control
Modern:
UBR Grixis Control
UWR Jeskai Control
That Standard did get a lot more diverse after M15, but core sets tended to do that (granted, the jump in the number of decks was bigger than usual). It didn't really change much except for splashes during the first 9 months.
I remember those decks. They were pretty solid. That was a pretty sweet standard. Although this standard isn't terrible
Standard is *the* spike format
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1. (Ravnica Allegiance): You can't keep a good esper control deck down... Or Wilderness Reclamation... or Gates...
2. (War of the Spark): Guys, I know what we need! We need a cycle of really idiotic flavor text victory cards! Jace's Triumph...
3. (War of the Spark): Lets make the format with control have even more control!
I think EMN might shake things up. Human decks will want to incorporate red for Hanweir Garrison, spirit decks got HUGE boosts, especially Spell Queller. I'm thinking a BG deck that combines Zombies and Delirium might even be viable. There is also some insanly quick aggro stuff in red vampires that I think might be viable - Furyblade Vampire + Incorrigible Youths = attack for 8 on turn 3.
I expect tokens and CoCo based decks to still be Tier 1 - but I think they'll have more competition than they used to. I don't think Gideon + Nissa are going anywhere until BFZ rotates out.
People are complaining about this standard being bad? Shadowmoor is hands-down my favourite set, but it was in the same rotation as Lorwyn. There was no deck that could beat Faeries. It was either Faeries or lose. For those that haven't played during that period - think today's Spirit decks but in Blue/Black and more hard counters - plus an army of 1/1 flying tokens that were created each and every round. Also Cryptic Command There is no way any standard format is worse than there being only 1 truly viable deck, with no decks even coming marginally in 2nd. The top 8 in every tourney was pretty much all faeries with maybe a rogue deck somewhere in 6th - 8th place.
The only way to beat the deck was to ban Bitterblossom Then the deck was no longer dominating the format.
I still think they might have gotten a little bit of cold feet with spirits in the latest block because of the prior history with fairies. They made a lot of very clunky spirits and spirit generators, along with a well over-costed and probably never constructed playable top end with Drogskol Cavalry. We really need something like Brago, King Eternal to act as a good top end or something along the lines of that level of utility.
1. (Ravnica Allegiance): You can't keep a good esper control deck down... Or Wilderness Reclamation... or Gates...
2. (War of the Spark): Guys, I know what we need! We need a cycle of really idiotic flavor text victory cards! Jace's Triumph...
3. (War of the Spark): Lets make the format with control have even more control!
Just because there were worse formats does not mean that this is a good format. Comparing this format to one of the worst formats, and then saying that because it's not *quite* that bad thus it is fine is just nonsense.
And it's quite obvious that the format is exceedingly poor right now. The format currently is summed up by three decks, and *only* three decks with a large amount of overlap between them and are centerred around two colors, and *Ony* those two colors. Every other color simply cannot compete, and playing anything but those three decks is like beating your head against a wall. It's not a good idea, it's going to hurt, but you will eventually break a hole in it every once in a while.
This is not a sign of a healthy format.