Green has been the best (or second best, white is likely best now) color in standard since RTR rotated. I'm god damn sick of it getting the best card advantage engines.
Whereas what? U having all the best card advantages as well? Someone's gotta have it, and I'm tired of it always being U. It's always been U until recently.
Well, Green has the best creatures, black (historically) the best removal, and White historically the best... well, everything, frankly.
Every color is the "best" at some thing or another. If green gets the best CA engines, then I seen no reason why Blue can't get the best creatures.
The crisis with Blue and Red right now is an existential one: They are having tools taken away from them, aspects of their identity given other colors, and giving a very narrow range of spells. Blue was given some of its identity back in the form of tempo-oriented creatures, but Red? Red has stone nothing to go from at this point.
I understand your point, but I wouldn't like colors to be so restrictive. I find it interesting when the lines between colors is blurred. Because the moment I see my opponent drop an Island I'm gonna think: "ugh, control..." or when an opponent drops a Swamp: "ugh, removal..." or when an opponent drops a mountain: "ugh, burn...", etc. and I don't want to be anticipating something simply due to the mana base. I find it too simplistic to simply deny other colors access to certain basic game functions simply because it belongs to other colors. Drawing, damage, etc. shouldn't just be restricted to colors. I want white to have some card advantage as well. White ramps for lands and it isn't green. White has removal and it isn't black. I like variety all throughout the colors. What is restricted to the colors is magic philosophy not so much mechanics. For instance, green was denied flying. Creatures gotta be combined with other colors to fly. I think red has been denied the most evolution (besides card advantage) because I feel like red is the neglected color in magic. It's frowned upon because red is either too simplistic and straightforward or too chaotic and random. It has to basically be combined with other colors to give it more dimensions. Red is a color I wish would get the treatment that green is getting. If all colors are supposed to essentially be equally powerful, you can't boost some and nerf others. Blue had to get nerfed because it has always been too broken. So lowering it started to put all colors at the same level (except green and red). Now that green is getting some limelight treatment, hopefully red gets the same. Hell, just look at the planeswalkers: the worst of them are almost all red.
Also, I'd argue that green has always had the best creatures. That hasn't always been the case.
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The problem with red right now is that it has the tools and its traditional core identity, but they're WAY too weak. A quote from Sam Stoddard's article yesterday, describing Incendiary Flow:
"Ultimately, this may not be the most exciting card in the set, but it is the exact thing that red needed to be competitive."
Over the past several years, red's removal has gotten significantly worse, going from Lightning Bolt to Lightning Strike and finally to Volcanic Hammer (with an irrelevant exile clause). At the same time, creatures have gotten stronger. Three years ago, a deck with three maindeck copies of Centaur Healer made the top 8 of a Pro Tour (Wolf Run Bant in the hands of Melissa DeTora, who was ironically on the development team for EMN). Now Bant Company has so many options that it can't find room for Eldrazi Displacer, Void Grafter, Lambholt Pacifist, or JVP.
My problem with this Standard is how repetitive the games feel. The days when burn, combo, and control were viable strategies were better IMO because although those decks sucked to play against, at least aggro and midrange provided a break. Now it feels like I'm playing the same game, over and over and over again. It's like Wizards is force feeding us cake -- it's good at first, but eventually you start vomiting your guts out.
If that's the case, your problem would be the same even if purple, pink, or yellow decks were dominating Standard. The problem with Standard (and it's been quite the problem for I'd say close to 10 years now) is netdecking. You're playing the same games because people are playing the same decks. But that's a whole other can of worms I'm not gonna open. It's one of the reasons I stopped playing Standard altogether after 2006.
I've noticed the trend of a lot of people complaining about the dominance of GW in Standard. However, it's a breath of fresh air for me to finally see G topping Standard instead of always seeing decks with U and B dominating. U and/or B has always been dominating Standard since the beginning of Standard.
That is simply untrue. Green has been on of the most consistently prominent colors in standard, and you have to go all the way back to Combo Winter to reach a period where green was just plain bad. At various times since then green has gone from being a good color to being the single best color to be in, with only extremely rare periods when it was actively bad. Even in the most recent "bad" period of RtR-Theros, it put up very good numbers and could compete, even in a meta game that was almost built around trying to wreck its day by having mainboard hate.
Standard always has been the format where Green shines. To be frank, I have zero idea where people are getting this idea that it's been forever since green was good. Green has always been good in standard. Blue/red? Eh, it waxes and wanes significantly. SOmetimes they are good, other times they are not. White? Usually either the single best color you can play or the single worst color in the format. Black is usually fairly solid. Green, however, has always been a potent color in standard, and you have to go back to long before the Modern era to find a point where it actually bad.
I'm getting mighty tired of seeing this completely false rhetoric being thrown around to try and discredit people. The idea that it's finally time for green to have its come-uppance is just plain absurdity, and lacks any notion of the historicity of Standard to make this statement.
But, because people like to ignore these things:
1. Urza-Masques standard: 13 Land Stompy was a valid deck at the time, and put up decent numbers.
2. Masques-Invasion standard: Fires of Yavimaya was a base-green deck.
3. Invasion-Odyssey: U/G Madness which was as much green as it was blue. It along with Psychatog were the best decks of this format.
4. Odyssey-Onslaught: Both Elves and Astral Slide were both Tier 1 decks of this time. Slide was often Mono-White, but if it went to a second color, it was often green due to some really sick G/W Threshold creatures like Anurid.
5. Onslaught-Mirrodin: R/G Tooth & Nail gave as much a showing as any non-Affinity deck would, and Elves was one of the only decks to have a somewhat reasonable (Though still poor) Affinity MU. Most top 8s would be 6 Affinity lists and 2 Elves lists. Really, green was the only color that *could* compete at all with Affinity in this standard.
6. Mirrodin-Kamigawa: This was Green, the Format. Practically every single Tier 1 list was green, with Tooth & Nail, Mono-Green aggro, U/G control, Gifts, etc. all being green. Practically no color was doing anything of note if it wasn't paired with green.
7. Kamigawa-Rav: A truly great renaissance of standard, where you could literally pick 2-3 color and likely make a good deck out of it. Chord decks were quite the rage at this time, but frankly it's hard to say what *was* tier 1, as there were so many good things to be doing. Still, green was doing just fine here.
8. Rav-Time Spiral: Both Chord and Dredge were things. Not amazing things, but they did see a good amount of play, with decent finishes.
9. Time Spiral-Lorwyn Era: Elves, Dark Bant, 5-color, and a few others. Green wasn't at its strongest, and Faeries ruled the format, but it *still* wasn't at its lowest.
10. Lorwyn-Alara: Noble Heirarch was a common fixture, and green decks were everywhere. There several G/W based decks, such as G/W Overrun and Doran, however Bloodbraid decks also proved potent here. This was a good time to be playing green.
11. Alara-Zendikar: Jund was *the* deck, and Ramp became a hugely common fixture once RoE came out. This was another format where green played a very prominent role.
12. Zendikar-Scars: While it'd be easy to point to Cawblade and dismiss the entire format, keep in mind that Valakut was an immensely popular deck, and was touted as a deck that could compete in a Caw-Blade meta. Infact, it was really the only other deck in the format of any relevance, and was a base-green deck.
13. Scars-Inn: Both Kessig-Titan and Pod were played, and both put up good numbers. Delver was the deck, but it wasn't the only deck. Green was doing quite well here.
14. Inn-RtR: Thragtusk. Farseek. Arbor Elf. Green was huge in this era. If you weren't playing green, you needed a *very* good reason. And frankly, I'm not sure what that reason was. Green was by far the best color in the format.
15. RtR-THS: While there are tons of Mono-Black Memes about the format, the interesting thing is that Green decks were doing quite well in the format, even though Mono-black was a supposed rough match up for them, and Mono-Blue devotion played main deck hate for green. And yet, green soldiered on, and was a common fixture in most top 8s of any even, particularly placing fairly well at the Grand Prixs. There was only really 1 deck (And a few really fringe decks), but that was the format. Still, green was doing mostly fine.
16. THS-Khans: Green was huge in this format. From Green devotion, Abzan, Sidisi Whip, and G/W megamorph. Green was always being played in the top decks of this format for the entirety of the format.
17. Khans-BFZ: Green had its showing both in Bant CoCo predecessors as well as Rally decks; various flavors of Abzan were also present in the format, such as Abzan Blue and Abzan Aggro. Early Ramp lists were also running around. Post-Oath, we saw the meteoric rise of Bant CoCo and Rally (Due to Reflector Mage and Advocate), and Ramp gained some ground (Due to Kozi's Return and Worldbreaker).
So there you go. 17 years of Magic, and green has practically always been in (Or very near) Tier 1 status. This concept that Green has ever been bad in standard is just nonsense. Even at its worst it is still usually the second or third best color in the format.
Also, keep in mind that green was at various times quite strong before this as well. Ernham Djinn was a powerhouse in the early days. Miracle Gro was a stupidly potent deck. To really get to a point where green is actively a bad choice, you have to go extremely far back. ALmost to beginning of the game, and that is just not a useful era to use for any form of justification.
So, there's some history of Green in standard. I really hope to never see this nonsense about how it was ever bad again.
Before I comment on your brief history of Standard, I need to get out of the way that nowhere in my comment did I bash G in Standard (or at all) nor did I say it was bad or that it wasn't used in competitive Standard. I said I was tired of seeing the dominance of U and B since Standard has existed (which is true).
While I appreciate your brief history on Standard, in some cases G was included in some top tier decks in various points during the format but it was nowhere near at the level of U and/or B until now (this was originally typed as a large paragraph so I broke it down as a list to make it easier to follow instead of having to read a massive block of text).
No one can deny that G had an amazing deck in Gaea's Cradle Elves during Standard#4 (6th Edition, Tempest Block, Urza's Block) but U was still in the top as well with Tolarian Academy decks and so was B with Yawgmoth's Will and Yawgmoth's Bargain. WU also had the very broken Replenish/Opalescence deck. The best chance monoG ever had of being top tier was during this block. Then again, that point is Standard was so ridiculous that Mercadian Masques has to "balance out the format".
Even then, during this time, we had two top tier decks in Standard#5 (6th Edition, Urza's Block, Masques Block) which were Pandeburst and Turn2 Spiritmonger, the latter causing Dark Ritual to never be printed again in Standard. However, again, the dominance of U and/or B was ever prevalent because these decks always lost to control (Counterspell stopped being Standard legal after 7th edition).
The next time G would shine in top tier was during Standard#9 (8th Edition, Odyssey Block, Onslaught Block) with the threshold deck you metioned. However, the top decks at the time didn't run green but had U and/or B in them (UBPsychatog/Upheaval being the oppressive deck of the format).
G wouldn't see top tier status again until the Alara Block thanks to Jund (which still included B) however since it was also when Lorwyn/Shadowmoor was also in standard, UB Faeries was the oppressive deck at the time. Again, UB.
Then, when the Zendikar block was Standard legal along with Alara Block, DrawGo practically destroyed the format and then the next Standard when it evolved into CawBlade almost everyone stopped playing Magic due to it. Again, the prevalence of U. So during the two Standards were Jund could've been the top deck, it wasn't.
During Standard#22 (M13, Innistrad Block, Return to Ravnica Block), in my opinion one of the best Standards since the creation of the format (and I've been playing on/off since Fallen Empires) because all the colors were in viable monocolored, 2-colored, or tri-colored decks. This Standard had Jund, Bant, and Esper topping most tournaments. So G was used in Jund and Bant. However, B and U is also used - and in most of the decks.
The following Standard after that, G was slightly present but the format was dominated by MonoU Devotion and MonoB Devotion. Again, U and/or B.
After that, with the inclusion of the Tarkir Block, where 4-colored goodstuff decks were prevalent, G was used for mana fixing but pretty much nothing more than that because a lot of broken spells and creatures included G but were not entirely G.
Currently, U is not a viable color because control is just horrible compared to the speed of creature-based decks. That being said, WU Spirits is shaping up to be a great deck. Again, the use of U is rising in top tier decks. It's being seen that the best decks in the format don't include U or B whatsoever.
That was my point to begin with: it's a relief to finally see U and B not dominate Standard. So I'm glad to see MonoW decks again and GW decks. WB Control is a great deck that's topping but that's because it aims to be the bane of GW and monoW. So the B is present only as opposing the dominance of G in the format - finally! However, the day MonoR dominates Standard... that'll be the day!
Your breakdown is factually incorrect.
First, and foremost, I completely ignore everything prior to Masques block. It has about as much relevance to Modern Magic as the Soviet Union does with modern relations with the Middle-East. While somewhat related and important to understand the historicity of the situation, it's downright silly to react to what was going on 20 years ago. We are well beyond that point.
Saying that Blue was dominant during the entirety of 7th edition standard is simply and plainly false. Counterspell, while good, was not nearly enough to push the color God-tier. Ignoring Kibler's Fires deck as a tier 1 deck is not only wrong, it is laughable. Fires was simply one of the best decks in the Masques-Invasion format (And Rebels was also a pretty good deck; Blue wasn't even really much of a thing as far as I remember, am aware, or can find). Blue wouldn't become dominant in this period until Psychatog, and that deck was not dominant due to Counterspell. You can thank that dominance due to the ridiculous interaction between Psychatog and Upheaval. While counterspell was certainly a very strong tool, it was Psychatog's ability to push through huge chunks of damage unopposed that was the reason U/B was so hyper-dominant (U/G was not lagging terribly far behind). This is not to say that Blue wasn't pushed; it most certainly was, but this is largely due to some incredibly stupid interactions that snuck by development. Psychatog+Madness+Flashback is just... stupid (Which is also true of Mongrel, mind you). It was also driven forward due in no small part to Deep Analysis being absurdly good at ensuring you never ran out of resources. It wasn't counterspell that broke the deck. It was the incredible value-engine available to the deck, with a card that could win the game in one attack on its own.
To say that Green wouldn't see top-tier status between Odyssey-Onslaught and Alara standards is just plain wrong. Kamigawa-Rav had almost every single Tier 1 deck playing green. Green was everywhere, and there isn't a tier 1 deck from what I can tell that could compete. Green decks were also one of the only decks that could compete in Affinity standard. To say that green wasn't tier 1 during affinity standard is just plain wrong; Affinity was Tier 0, certainly, but Elves was the only actual deck aside from it in the format, and it was not at all uncommmong to see 1-3 Elves lists in a top 8 of any event, including Grand Prix's. It certainly wouldn't *win* these events often, but it had the tools to at least be reasonable competitive (Or at least as reasonably competitive as any deck could be at this time).
Inn-RtR was hardly dominated by U/B. G/W aggro was one of the best decks in the format, Bant was okay to good, Rites was ostensibly one of hte best decks for some time, Naya Humans was doing well, and Jund was a force to be reckoned with. The 4 most successful decks in the format (Rites, G/W aggro, R/G Wolfrun, and Jund) were all quite heavily green decks, and accounted for about ~43% of the entire winning meta game. In fact, green was found within 60% of the winning decks for that standard. Black was found in 43% of the winning decks. Blue was found within only 15% of all winning decks in the format. U/B specifically (Esper Drownyard for the most part) only accounted for 4%. Which is a worse showing than Mono-Red aggro had, which is pretty depressing given that Thragtusk was devastating against Mono-Red (And was everywhere). This format was utterly dominated by Green, and the numbers prove it. It was the single most played color of Inn-RtR standard, and the single best performing one at that (Due to having access to good fixing spells, ramp spells, Thragtusk, and having some of the best two-colors creatures with Smiter's raw efficiency and Huntmaster's value train).
I could go even further in depth, but frankly I find it odd that you would say that Green was a minor player in Inn-RtR with both Blue and Black being more integral to that format. If anything, Blue was barely played at all, and Black was almost always played alongside Green.
I'm honestly sensing that some people are letting their local anecdotes color their perseption on the matter, because frankly the actual format in its entirety is not at all what people seem to have thought it was. Blue and Black being dominant is actually far rarer than people seem to realize, and Pile of Counterspells/Kill Spells is rarely ever a deck, and even when it is it is exceedingly rarely *the best* deck. Blue is only ever hyper-dominant when it has an abundance of tempo cards available to it (As was the case with Faeries and Psychatog, and a far lesser extent Mono-U devotion). It's practically never been dominant when it was a control color.
In fact, Control is almost always one of the worst performing archetypes of any format. People's perception are colored rather falsely towards the past, and they blame the wrong things. Almost every time that these colors are broken (With the exception of Caw-Blade standard), they are broken not because of Control, but because they are capable of out-tempoing the opponent hard. Which is exactly the problem we are looking at with Bant Company. The control cards are not, nor have they every really been much of a problem at all. And people seriously need to see this. The tempo cards, such as Spell Queller, Collected Company, Reflector Mage, and Command, are the types of cards that break formats in half because they allow a certain style deck that just straight-up punishes players with very little recourse outside of those colors.
That is the point people need to realize, and are failing to do so. By making a boogeyman out of Counterspell or Kill spells, they completely miss the fact that these were not the problem, at least not directly. The problem was that the Tempo-shells that existed around these cards were incredibly strong, and having both an efficient means of getting major threats on the board (As Mongrel, Psychatog, and Faeries were), as well as operating at instant speed for much of the proactive gameplan (As Mongrel and Atog could be pump instantly, and Faeries had flash). This has allowed tempo- oriented decks to set up shop early, beat down, *and* continue to beat down while still being able to hold up permission to stop the opponent. Control isn't the issue at all. Control is easy to punish for not droppping anything of note to the board for a long while. It's tempo that's the problem, and it's always been tempo decks that have been the problem. It doesn't particularly matter the flavor, the colors, or the cards. If Tempo-oriented decks are pushed to the extreme, and you allow these decks the tools to easily operate both proactively and defensively at instant speed, Standard as a format suffers significantly. That is the lesson people seem to always miss in these discussion about Counterspell or Doom Blade being too good.
The problem with choosing to ignore anything previous to Mercadian Masques defeats the point of people's exaggeration (then) of using the words "always" or "never" or saying that green is only dominant now. You can't simply ignore all the years where green wasn't dominant simply to make a point. You make many valid points but basically, before a certain point in the game, all the colors save for blue and black weren't worth a damn (although the infamous Channelball deck is RG). Again, I didn't deny the presence of green being dominant in most Standard format - I'm simply singling out all the times black and blue were prevalent in one way shape or another above the other colors.
The problem with tempo is that it won't ever go away. That's basically the best type of deck to make in this TCG. You control the board after you have a good board state. That's basically key to everything. There's really no sound way to support all the possible archetypes in this game during Standard. There are even constant comments from Wizards guys themselves saying that each set is a puzzle where players are supposed to find the best way to use the cards and "solve the puzzle". The problem to me, again, is netdecking. That's what makes some Standard eras so stale. My love for INN/RTR Standard was there were so many different types of decks topping that netdeckers didn't even know what to copy. A lot of times some brews would top that nobody else was running; that Standard was golden for brewers and a pain to netdeckers. I don't care which type of deck or color is dominating as long as there's variety. Pointing fingers at the dominance of colors is a waste of time, in my opinion. It even seems a bit racist to be insulted by the fact that green is now topping. As opposed to what? Blue or black? Again, the color doesn't matter; it's the oversaturation of similar decks because Standard has been, for the longest time now, a format for netdeckers. GW isn't the only deck that's top tier so far, but it's the one that's statistically topping the most so netdeckers are copying it, meaning you're gonna see even more of it during tournaments. Again, that's not green's fault nor is green currently too broken.
I feel that each Standard should try and find balance between all the colors so that any well-constructed deck could be viable (like INN/RTR) and one of the reasons it was that way was due to a stable mana base. All colors had equality when it came to lands (either shock lands or check lands or gates). They all had the same weight as far as what you had to sacrifice for mana (life, speed, etc). In the current Standard, that's not the case. Before and since, Standard hasn't been fair with mana source distribution (except for INN/RTR). It all boils down to balance. That's just my analysis, though.
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The problem with choosing to ignore anything previous to Mercadian Masques defeats the point of people's exaggeration (then) of using the words "always" or "never" or saying that green is only dominant now. You can't simply ignore all the years where green wasn't dominant simply to make a point. You make many valid points but basically, before a certain point in the game, all the colors save for blue and black weren't worth a damn (although the infamous Channelball deck is RG). Again, I didn't deny the presence of green being dominant in most Standard format - I'm simply singling out all the times black and blue were prevalent in one way shape or another above the other colors.
Comparing anything from today to what was going one 17 years ago is just silly, and I will hold to it. That was at an era where modern Development didn't even exist in the slightest. Talking about how Green is "finally" dominant, and your comparison point is a point when Development didn't even exist at all, is a bit nonsensical. Particularly given that green has certainly gone through periods of being the strongest color in the Standard format (Including being dominant, such as during Kamigawa-Rav or Inn-RtR). It has practically never, since the inception of MTG Development with Masques block, but a bad color to play in standard.
Equally, Green and White were not at all devoid from the top lists prior to Masques block. Ernhamgeddon (2nd place at Pro Tour 96) was a very potent deck post-Chronicles; Stompy has more or less existed from the early days. Serra Angel was always good, as was ***, Armageddon, White Knight, Swords, etc. White-Weenie was deck, Ernham was a very good creature early on, etc. The idea that Blue and Black were dominant in the early days, once again, is simply not true. Black wasn't really even particularly playable outside of Ritual into Specters until Necropotence was printed (And then it was truly stupid, admittedly); Blue was honestly rather until Academy and Urza block. Miracle Gro was a green deck that came about in 97. The truth is that U/B was only truly dominant every once in a while. The first six years of magic were not at all defined by Blue and Black; plenty of Green, white, and even red decks were doing well in those first six years. There's really no two ways about it: There was never an extended period of time where Blue and Black were truly dominant, regardless of what people may think on the matter. There were formats, particularly Black summer and Combo Winter, where they were certainly broken, but this has far more to do with Development simply not existing to catch these things.
The problem with tempo is that it won't ever go away. That's basically the best type of deck to make in this TCG. You control the board after you have a good board state. That's basically key to everything. There's really no sound way to support all the possible archetypes in this game during Standard. There are even constant comments from Wizards guys themselves saying that each set is a puzzle where players are supposed to find the best way to use the cards and "solve the puzzle".
The problem with tempo is that when you printed abilities on creatures that normally are spells, you allow people to have their cake and eat it too. That is the exact problem that bit them in the back with Faeries. When you can hold up Spellstutter Sprite and Pestermite, on top of keeping up Agony Warp and Cryptic Command, you simply don't have to make much of a choice in deck building. Having aggressively costed creatures with excess abilities just destroys the concept of deck building restriction. Having abilities that are fundamentally permission abilities has always bit Wizards in the ass in the past. I would have figured that they would have sorted this nonsense out, but they printed both Mage and Spell Queller in the same damn format as one of the strongest tempo plays they have ever printed. Equally, they have also printed aggressively costed creatures which are very strong in the early game as well as huge late game threats(For a measly 2 mana, no less). Tempo isn't always the best deck in the format, and they go long stretches without doing it after they learn their lesson that it is a miserable deck style to play against. The issue is that they seem to forget the broad lessons they learned from Psychatog, Affinity, Faeries, Delver, etc, and come right around and repeat them by tacking on these ridiculous permission-style abililities on efficient creatures. When you blame cards like Counterspell and Mana Leak for the sins of Psychatog, Mongrel, All the Faeries, and Delver with Ponder, you fundamentally miss the problem. The problem isn't those cards. Those cards are annoyingly efficient, certainly. They are only seemingly oppressive, however, when the person playing them drop a card in the first few turns that can single-handedly end the game. And frankly they aren't the truly oppressive cards in those decks in the least.
The problem to me, again, is netdecking. That's what makes some Standard eras so stale. My love for INN/RTR Standard was there were so many different types of decks topping that netdeckers didn't even know what to copy. A lot of times some brews would top that nobody else was running; that Standard was golden for brewers and a pain to netdeckers. I don't care which type of deck or color is dominating as long as there's variety. Pointing fingers at the dominance of colors is a waste of time, in my opinion. It even seems a bit racist to be insulted by the fact that green is now topping. As opposed to what? Blue or black? Again, the color doesn't matter; it's the oversaturation of similar decks because Standard has been, for the longest time now, a format for netdeckers. GW isn't the only deck that's top tier so far, but it's the one that's statistically topping the most so netdeckers are copying it, meaning you're gonna see even more of it during tournaments. Again, that's not green's fault nor is green currently too broken.
Netdecking has been a thing since Serra Angel decks were big, and B/W Ritual based decks were huge; even then, it wasn't huge until the advent of Sligh, which fundamentally changed the way people viewed the game and the competitive cirquit, and was truly the first "real" net-deck. Net-decking has been a thing for over 20 years. It's honestly not the problem, to be honest, and the "problems" you are discussing are symptomatic of other issues. Stale formats arise not due to net-decking, but rather due to all of the power being allocated to a very small subset of cards. This has been the case with almost all "stale" formats, as it is now. Even if net-decking weren't a thing, prior to EMN it was obvious that Green and White were simply the best things to be done. The pure raw power and efficiency of their cards was completely unmatched. Even the best synergy based strategies couldn't stand up to those colors potency. The reason that Inn-RtR was considered one of the best formats was that power was rather evenly distributed between the colors, and that multiple different strategies were supported with potent cards. As of right now, the power is relegated very narrowly. Which leads to fewer viable options, which leads to an incestuous and easily solved format. Frankly, even if net-decking was somehow "banned", I doubt the format would have looked particularly different.
I'm also confused towards the racist remark. That's completely out of left field, and has no baring on anything. Equally, my concern isn't so much that green and white are currently the best colors; it's that they were hyper dominant to the point where Blue, Red, and Black were almost entirely not-viable, and were only ever viable in the context of Green and White. This is not at all healthy, not in the least. There is a far cry from being the best color(s) and being dominant. Having a color, and any color mind you, be dominant is simply unhealthy for the format. It doesn't mattter if it's blue, green, red, white, or black. IF a color or deck becomes dominant, it is fundamentally an unhealthy format. My problem with the format have nothing to do with Green or White specifically; it has to do with the level of dominance they have reached being fundamentally unhealthy.
I feel that each Standard should try and find balance between all the colors so that any well-constructed deck could be viable (like INN/RTR) and one of the reasons it was that way was due to a stable mana base. All colors had equality when it came to lands (either shock lands or check lands or gates). They all had the same weight as far as what you had to sacrifice for mana (life, speed, etc). In the current Standard, that's not the case. Before and since, Standard hasn't been fair with mana source distribution (except for INN/RTR). It all boils down to balance. That's just my analysis, though.
That is a perfectly valid point. I doubt they will ever find perfect balance (Even Inn-RtR was skewed towards green), but they should at least try to ensure that format dominance doesn't exist, and particularly that all colors are at least viable options. Not necessarily equally good options, but viable at the least.
I understand your point, but I wouldn't like colors to be so restrictive. I find it interesting when the lines between colors is blurred. Because the moment I see my opponent drop an Island I'm gonna think: "ugh, control..." or when an opponent drops a Swamp: "ugh, removal..." or when an opponent drops a mountain: "ugh, burn...", etc.
sounds to me like you just hate magic in general
EDIT: I quite liked ISD - RTR standard, but it was the greenest format I can think of. all the control decks relied on Farseek + Thragtusk pillar. Junk Reanimator was the best performing deck for quite a while, and it was the most oppressing control deck I have played against. The deck was impossible to win after it got going, and would gain infinite amount of life with Angel loops. Of course soon after that Reid Duke showed us how to build Jund, and then Jund became the #1 deck of the format. After the core set release the BG deck that didn't get affected by the multi colour land hate became the #1 deck.
after RTR - THS green was the best deck again. Abzan Control was simply dominating, because it had the best everything. I think it is a problem when blue and black decks can't out grind or out control green, because then it means nothing can beat the green decks. blue and black control are traditionally kept in check by the hyper aggressive decks of the format - they have such a tempo advantage. green and white are much better at stalling the board. Before I could Disdainful StrokeSiege Rhino, now there are almost no tools. Right now there is too heavy concentration of powerful cards in GW colours, even if any single card isn't oppressive in itself. if we didn't have collected company or tireless tracker or duskwatch recruiter or spell queller then this format could be awesome.
The problem with choosing to ignore anything previous to Mercadian Masques defeats the point of people's exaggeration (then) of using the words "always" or "never" or saying that green is only dominant now. You can't simply ignore all the years where green wasn't dominant simply to make a point. You make many valid points but basically, before a certain point in the game, all the colors save for blue and black weren't worth a damn (although the infamous Channelball deck is RG). Again, I didn't deny the presence of green being dominant in most Standard format - I'm simply singling out all the times black and blue were prevalent in one way shape or another above the other colors.
Comparing anything from today to what was going one 17 years ago is just silly, and I will hold to it. That was at an era where modern Development didn't even exist in the slightest. Talking about how Green is "finally" dominant, and your comparison point is a point when Development didn't even exist at all, is a bit nonsensical. Particularly given that green has certainly gone through periods of being the strongest color in the Standard format (Including being dominant, such as during Kamigawa-Rav or Inn-RtR). It has practically never, since the inception of MTG Development with Masques block, but a bad color to play in standard.
Equally, Green and White were not at all devoid from the top lists prior to Masques block. Ernhamgeddon (2nd place at Pro Tour 96) was a very potent deck post-Chronicles; Stompy has more or less existed from the early days. Serra Angel was always good, as was ***, Armageddon, White Knight, Swords, etc. White-Weenie was deck, Ernham was a very good creature early on, etc. The idea that Blue and Black were dominant in the early days, once again, is simply not true. Black wasn't really even particularly playable outside of Ritual into Specters until Necropotence was printed (And then it was truly stupid, admittedly); Blue was honestly rather until Academy and Urza block. Miracle Gro was a green deck that came about in 97. The truth is that U/B was only truly dominant every once in a while. The first six years of magic were not at all defined by Blue and Black; plenty of Green, white, and even red decks were doing well in those first six years. There's really no two ways about it: There was never an extended period of time where Blue and Black were truly dominant, regardless of what people may think on the matter. There were formats, particularly Black summer and Combo Winter, where they were certainly broken, but this has far more to do with Development simply not existing to catch these things.
The problem with tempo is that it won't ever go away. That's basically the best type of deck to make in this TCG. You control the board after you have a good board state. That's basically key to everything. There's really no sound way to support all the possible archetypes in this game during Standard. There are even constant comments from Wizards guys themselves saying that each set is a puzzle where players are supposed to find the best way to use the cards and "solve the puzzle".
The problem with tempo is that when you printed abilities on creatures that normally are spells, you allow people to have their cake and eat it too. That is the exact problem that bit them in the back with Faeries. When you can hold up Spellstutter Sprite and Pestermite, on top of keeping up Agony Warp and Cryptic Command, you simply don't have to make much of a choice in deck building. Having aggressively costed creatures with excess abilities just destroys the concept of deck building restriction. Having abilities that are fundamentally permission abilities has always bit Wizards in the ass in the past. I would have figured that they would have sorted this nonsense out, but they printed both Mage and Spell Queller in the same damn format as one of the strongest tempo plays they have ever printed. Equally, they have also printed aggressively costed creatures which are very strong in the early game as well as huge late game threats(For a measly 2 mana, no less). Tempo isn't always the best deck in the format, and they go long stretches without doing it after they learn their lesson that it is a miserable deck style to play against. The issue is that they seem to forget the broad lessons they learned from Psychatog, Affinity, Faeries, Delver, etc, and come right around and repeat them by tacking on these ridiculous permission-style abililities on efficient creatures. When you blame cards like Counterspell and Mana Leak for the sins of Psychatog, Mongrel, All the Faeries, and Delver with Ponder, you fundamentally miss the problem. The problem isn't those cards. Those cards are annoyingly efficient, certainly. They are only seemingly oppressive, however, when the person playing them drop a card in the first few turns that can single-handedly end the game. And frankly they aren't the truly oppressive cards in those decks in the least.
The problem to me, again, is netdecking. That's what makes some Standard eras so stale. My love for INN/RTR Standard was there were so many different types of decks topping that netdeckers didn't even know what to copy. A lot of times some brews would top that nobody else was running; that Standard was golden for brewers and a pain to netdeckers. I don't care which type of deck or color is dominating as long as there's variety. Pointing fingers at the dominance of colors is a waste of time, in my opinion. It even seems a bit racist to be insulted by the fact that green is now topping. As opposed to what? Blue or black? Again, the color doesn't matter; it's the oversaturation of similar decks because Standard has been, for the longest time now, a format for netdeckers. GW isn't the only deck that's top tier so far, but it's the one that's statistically topping the most so netdeckers are copying it, meaning you're gonna see even more of it during tournaments. Again, that's not green's fault nor is green currently too broken.
Netdecking has been a thing since Serra Angel decks were big, and B/W Ritual based decks were huge; even then, it wasn't huge until the advent of Sligh, which fundamentally changed the way people viewed the game and the competitive cirquit, and was truly the first "real" net-deck. Net-decking has been a thing for over 20 years. It's honestly not the problem, to be honest, and the "problems" you are discussing are symptomatic of other issues. Stale formats arise not due to net-decking, but rather due to all of the power being allocated to a very small subset of cards. This has been the case with almost all "stale" formats, as it is now. Even if net-decking weren't a thing, prior to EMN it was obvious that Green and White were simply the best things to be done. The pure raw power and efficiency of their cards was completely unmatched. Even the best synergy based strategies couldn't stand up to those colors potency. The reason that Inn-RtR was considered one of the best formats was that power was rather evenly distributed between the colors, and that multiple different strategies were supported with potent cards. As of right now, the power is relegated very narrowly. Which leads to fewer viable options, which leads to an incestuous and easily solved format. Frankly, even if net-decking was somehow "banned", I doubt the format would have looked particularly different.
I'm also confused towards the racist remark. That's completely out of left field, and has no baring on anything. Equally, my concern isn't so much that green and white are currently the best colors; it's that they were hyper dominant to the point where Blue, Red, and Black were almost entirely not-viable, and were only ever viable in the context of Green and White. This is not at all healthy, not in the least. There is a far cry from being the best color(s) and being dominant. Having a color, and any color mind you, be dominant is simply unhealthy for the format. It doesn't mattter if it's blue, green, red, white, or black. IF a color or deck becomes dominant, it is fundamentally an unhealthy format. My problem with the format have nothing to do with Green or White specifically; it has to do with the level of dominance they have reached being fundamentally unhealthy.
I feel that each Standard should try and find balance between all the colors so that any well-constructed deck could be viable (like INN/RTR) and one of the reasons it was that way was due to a stable mana base. All colors had equality when it came to lands (either shock lands or check lands or gates). They all had the same weight as far as what you had to sacrifice for mana (life, speed, etc). In the current Standard, that's not the case. Before and since, Standard hasn't been fair with mana source distribution (except for INN/RTR). It all boils down to balance. That's just my analysis, though.
That is a perfectly valid point. I doubt they will ever find perfect balance (Even Inn-RtR was skewed towards green), but they should at least try to ensure that format dominance doesn't exist, and particularly that all colors are at least viable options. Not necessarily equally good options, but viable at the least.
Again, all valid points. However, even though I saw a lot of Esper, Junk, Jund, Azorius, Bant, Orzhov, Golgari decks during ISD/RTR because those were some of the decks in the top, the top 8 wasn't entirely dominated by a single or a couple of decks and I also saw a lot of brews (I'm a brewer through and through). I quit Standard definitely (I always played on/off competitively since way back) because when Theros came out, I literally only saw 2 decks played in FNM: MonoU Devotion and RG Xenagos. It was the only two decks being played. No joke. I quit right then and there. It was even easier for me in the sense that I could just outfit my deck and entire sideboard to be the nemesis of these decks but it would be boring to go to a packed FNM and in all 5 rounds play against MonoU Devotion.
Wizards will only learn their lesson when more people stop playing Standard like what happened during the DrawGo and CawBlade. Sometimes it also boils down to bad sets. Zendikar 2 was such an awful block. Innistrad 2 seems promising. Hopefully the next 2 sets will be just as promising, thus making for a great Standard.
I understand your point, but I wouldn't like colors to be so restrictive. I find it interesting when the lines between colors is blurred. Because the moment I see my opponent drop an Island I'm gonna think: "ugh, control..." or when an opponent drops a Swamp: "ugh, removal..." or when an opponent drops a mountain: "ugh, burn...", etc.
sounds to me like you just hate magic in general
EDIT: I quite liked ISD - RTR standard, but it was the greenest format I can think of. all the control decks relied on Farseek + Thragtusk pillar. Junk Reanimator was the best performing deck for quite a while, and it was the most oppressing control deck I have played against. The deck was impossible to win after it got going, and would gain infinite amount of life with Angel loops. Of course soon after that Reid Duke showed us how to build Jund, and then Jund became the #1 deck of the format. After the core set release the BG deck that didn't get affected by the multi colour land hate became the #1 deck.
after RTR - THS green was the best deck again. Abzan Control was simply dominating, because it had the best everything. I think it is a problem when blue and black decks can't out grind or out control green, because then it means nothing can beat the green decks. blue and black control are traditionally kept in check by the hyper aggressive decks of the format - they have such a tempo advantage. green and white are much better at stalling the board. Before I could Disdainful StrokeSiege Rhino, now there are almost no tools. Right now there is too heavy concentration of powerful cards in GW colours, even if any single card isn't oppressive in itself. if we didn't have collected company or tireless tracker or duskwatch recruiter or spell queller then this format could be awesome.
EDIT: forgor about Dromokas Command
Lol, I don't hate Magic, I'm just glad that it evolved to a point were you can't just assume what your opponent will be playing simply by what lands he/she is playing because of the variety of strategies that colors now have.
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At this point, I have to ask if anything posted on this page is to do with Standard Banlist discussion, or if that conversation should be continued in a different thread.
A fair point, however the discussion has more or less naturally evolved to the current discussion so it's not a complete derail It still is on the general subject of banning; discussing the background of the issue is important to generating and understanding the various points.
If anything is going to banned in Standard, it should be the most broken/powerful card in standard - Collected Company. That card should have been dominating even earlier than it did. Though it is also too early to call if anything should be banned until after the Pro Tour
What kept Company in check was a few things: First, Thoughtseize was just a super good card at punishing synergy based strategies. Second, Siege Rhino both punished decks that were built smaller than it, as well as gave incentive not to play it. Finally, it wasn't until Origins that we started to see the glut of incredibly efficient 3 or less drops with major upside. Finally, Oath of the Gatewatch broke Company in half with Advocate and Mage, and the glut of good 2 and 3 drops in SoI just fueled it further. While it required a certain confluence to be busted in the format, that confluence is a lot easier to meet than people may think simply due to how standard development functions. That said, CoCo is one of the most incredibly busted cards that has been printed in the format in recent memory. People like to say how Snapcaster is too good for the format, but at least Snapcaster is fair, if undercosted. You get what you pay for, and exactly what you pay for. CoCo lets you cheat at tempo due to being an instant, mana due to being able to find 6 mana worth of dudes, direct card advantage from getting two dudes out, and indirect card advantage through creatures with spell-like abilities. That is a whole lot of cheating put into one card.
Can we please have our 4 mana Wraths back? Standard just doesn't work without it.
What they need to do is make the five mana wraths have actually relevant upside, and not trinket text. These 5-mana wraths with meaningless extra text are just plain bad.
I think wraths would be quite good, and I think each "block" should have 1 wrath in it (not necessary each time same colour but it should be the colour that is "underperforming" in standard). Last drafts I played were really "who can amass the best board state and hit their curve perfectly with their draws".
Really I ran away from heartstone because it was so much about hitting the curve and gaining a board state without many fun ideas... I ran away from pokemon for that... Why is magic now also turning into this?
Because that's what appeals to new players. MTG is at it's best when different formats are about different things, and standard games of late play almost like limited games.
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That was pretty interesting. But dropping a warship on me is cheating. Take it back!
Just looking at recent sets it seems to me that each set has its own focal point as far as colors go. I'll start with the new zendikar stuff and go forward in sets with my explanation. Oath of the gatewatch and bfz seemed to be focused on white and green with the eldrazi's as the bombs. Soi and emn were focused on white and then g/w. Kaladesh, seeing as it is based on Chandra's home plane should be focused on red and artifacts. The follow on set aether revolt based on playable cards with aether in their name should be focused on blue and counter artifact type stuff. If we go back to tarkir stuff, the focus seemed to be on green and red. To me it looks like there's a rotation of the powerful colors for each set and it looks like they've skipped black. My guess is they don't want another black summer.
MTG is at it's best when different formats are about different things, and standard games of late play almost like limited games.
I find your claim insulting to limited. 3x SOI draft was dramatically more diverse than anything I've seen from standard, possibly ever. I played hyper aggressive human decks, turbo self-mill decks, value madness decks, MadVamps decks, Delirium midrange, Clue Midrange, Werewolf Stompy, and even Oops all Spells. I got to play Oops all Spells in limited, and it was a viable deck, along with all the other decks I personally played.
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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.
- Manite
Here's the problem: They gimped everything except for Green and White creatures.
Here's a list:
Counters have to be 3 or more if they are catch all. Gimped.
Wraths have to be 5 or more if it kills all creatures. That's 1 turn too slow, and thus between these two, control is gimped.
No more 1 mana accelerants like Llanowar elves. Aggro G/W is too fast for that and buries the ramp decks in presssure, so ramp is gimped.
Burn spells have to be sorcery speed to be 2 mana for 3 damage. This is laughably bad when trying to deal with small creatures with instant speed tricks. Thus, burn is gimped.
1 mana discard is now horribly unconditional, to the point that it has to be sideboard but not mainboard. This gimps black in general.
With all of this, there's only room for creature decks, and G/W is the king of creatures. This is why we get a stagnant standard format with nothing but G/W. And, with the current Wizards philosophy, we need to get ready for 5 or so more years of G/W dominance.
Back on topic, no bans won't help, because even with Collected Company banned, there's still far too many overpowered Green and White(especially white) creatues out there to handle thanks to the aggressive nerfs by Wizards.
I never said it was good. I was just saying what it looks like they are doing in my opinion. I agree. They should try to make each set as rounded as possible to allow people to be creative instead of everyone running the same one or two decks. Then it gets kind of annoying and menotinous. I'd like there to be some sort of creativity in deck building. For example in standard, I'd like to see b/g delirium become a thing. I don't think it will because no matter what pieces that deck is given they've just given all the power to humans. They took away all the good burn spells in red, they took out all the good removal in black except languish but that rotates out soon. They got rid of mana dorks in green. And blue just isn't as controlling as it used to be. Now it's all about card draw and scry. The Eldrazi are stupid in that they are way too powerful. There needs to be a core set-esque balance to each expansion. This will allow for creativity and give each color/ color grouping in a deck a fair shot at winning. I like the mono white humans. They're fun but they get boring to play after a while. I personally like my casual u/w spirits deck or my modern izzet burn. Those are my 2 favorite decks to play. They have the potential to be competitive if I reworked them by a couple cards in modern. They are far from a standard build but they're far from the normal deck list you'd see in a similarly themed deck. Why? Creativity. WotC has taken that away from everyone
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I really don't know if Collected Company rotating out will help much. The problem with Green is that its creatures out-value control decks. Sylvan Advocate as a 2cmc 4/5 is just insane value, Tireless Tracker gains value by playing lands, and Duskwatch Recruiter gains value if you're opponent doesn't do anything or just with 3 open mana.
When green decks have more card advantage than Blue/Black, there is a problem.
whoa whoa, I know atarka red was deck and everything, but khans block was about green and red?! yes the main planeswalker in the story was a red walker, but they didn't push the red cards...at.....all! khans was all about abzan, the white clan, that turned into the white green clan. Abzan might have had the most pushed cards in standard in years, besides dig through time and treasure cruise. the red green clan, temur, was the least playable clan by a mile. it had exactly three playable cards, a burn spell, a pump spell, and a burn/pump spell. Standard in general has been a GW fest since the very first pack of khans was cracked. what has changed is that now you absolutely cannot compete in another color scheme.
Collected Company is gonna rotate out with Kaladesh so there's no sense in banning it just before it's leaving Standard anyways.
The last ban in Standard (Jace/SFM) happened right before those cards left Standard, for the same reason (deck was too dominant).
Standard banning can only happen for one reason and one reason only, if tournament attendants start to go down. I don't think Bant Company is at that level at the moment, thus, they won't ban anything.
Collected Company is gonna rotate out with Kaladesh so there's no sense in banning it just before it's leaving Standard anyways.
The last ban in Standard (Jace/SFM) happened right before those cards left Standard, for the same reason (deck was too dominant).
This is true. A lot of players myself include were upset that wizards took to long. It felt like as slap in the face, we will let you suffer for a whole block and fix the problem at the very end. I don't ever see wizards doing this again Honestly. I don't think they will ever ban a card in standard again. There were repercussion on the JTMS ban on both sides players who had $300 dollars worth of Jaces go down the drain and the player who were abused by them way to long.
Collected Company is gonna rotate out with Kaladesh so there's no sense in banning it just before it's leaving Standard anyways.
The last ban in Standard (Jace/SFM) happened right before those cards left Standard, for the same reason (deck was too dominant).
Standard banning can only happen for one reason and one reason only, if tournament attendants start to go down. I don't think Bant Company is at that level at the moment, thus, they won't ban anything.
A lot of people here are already complaining they can't launch fnms when they launched all the time, myself included. In fact, the last fnm I went to was at the most popular place for our area's(San Antonio is my area, pretty big city) standard tournaments, we had average 40+ players before SoI, 30+ during SoI, and now, we barely hit 14 players this last weekend, would have been less since I didn't want to go, but my friend was going and I hadn't seen him in a while, otherwise would have been 13 or less. Funny too, was the first time it was so easy to move around the store, won't lie felt nice, but personal experience and seeing everyone on every forum(here, reddit, 4chan) talk about low attendance has me thinking I'm pretty sure that is happening already.
Ugin is going to get really bad once all the fatties are colourless. I sold all mine. Sell sell sell!
He's going to be absolutely rotten. Hangarback walker has already nerfed him quite significantly. I reckon he'll be $3 junk within 2 months of rotation
Yeah, weak expansions will do that. Zendikar 2 was such a bad block with hardly anything worthwhile. Innistrad 2 block seems promising. But when DTK/ORI rotates out, we're gonna still have the lackluster Zendikar 2 block with Innistrad 2 (which is decent) and whatever Kaladesh is. If Kaladesh is a bas block, expect even less attendance at your local games stores' FNMs.
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Tons of cards from there are archetype staples.
Hell, even that **** reflector mage was printed there.
If anything BFZ was kind of a bad set, but oath had tons of great cards.
Reflector Mage is from Oath of the Gatewatch. Battle for Zendikar is one of the weakest blocks I can remember power-level wise. Aside from Gideon, there are no truly good cards. Ob Nixilis, painful truths, radiant flames are fine cards, but they are very few. Oath is better, but not by much, the biggest thing about Oath were the efficient eldrazi it had and that is pretty much it.
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Well, Green has the best creatures, black (historically) the best removal, and White historically the best... well, everything, frankly.
Every color is the "best" at some thing or another. If green gets the best CA engines, then I seen no reason why Blue can't get the best creatures.
The crisis with Blue and Red right now is an existential one: They are having tools taken away from them, aspects of their identity given other colors, and giving a very narrow range of spells. Blue was given some of its identity back in the form of tempo-oriented creatures, but Red? Red has stone nothing to go from at this point.
Also, I'd argue that green has always had the best creatures. That hasn't always been the case.
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"Ultimately, this may not be the most exciting card in the set, but it is the exact thing that red needed to be competitive."
Over the past several years, red's removal has gotten significantly worse, going from Lightning Bolt to Lightning Strike and finally to Volcanic Hammer (with an irrelevant exile clause). At the same time, creatures have gotten stronger. Three years ago, a deck with three maindeck copies of Centaur Healer made the top 8 of a Pro Tour (Wolf Run Bant in the hands of Melissa DeTora, who was ironically on the development team for EMN). Now Bant Company has so many options that it can't find room for Eldrazi Displacer, Void Grafter, Lambholt Pacifist, or JVP.
Your breakdown is factually incorrect.
First, and foremost, I completely ignore everything prior to Masques block. It has about as much relevance to Modern Magic as the Soviet Union does with modern relations with the Middle-East. While somewhat related and important to understand the historicity of the situation, it's downright silly to react to what was going on 20 years ago. We are well beyond that point.
Saying that Blue was dominant during the entirety of 7th edition standard is simply and plainly false. Counterspell, while good, was not nearly enough to push the color God-tier. Ignoring Kibler's Fires deck as a tier 1 deck is not only wrong, it is laughable. Fires was simply one of the best decks in the Masques-Invasion format (And Rebels was also a pretty good deck; Blue wasn't even really much of a thing as far as I remember, am aware, or can find). Blue wouldn't become dominant in this period until Psychatog, and that deck was not dominant due to Counterspell. You can thank that dominance due to the ridiculous interaction between Psychatog and Upheaval. While counterspell was certainly a very strong tool, it was Psychatog's ability to push through huge chunks of damage unopposed that was the reason U/B was so hyper-dominant (U/G was not lagging terribly far behind). This is not to say that Blue wasn't pushed; it most certainly was, but this is largely due to some incredibly stupid interactions that snuck by development. Psychatog+Madness+Flashback is just... stupid (Which is also true of Mongrel, mind you). It was also driven forward due in no small part to Deep Analysis being absurdly good at ensuring you never ran out of resources. It wasn't counterspell that broke the deck. It was the incredible value-engine available to the deck, with a card that could win the game in one attack on its own.
To say that Green wouldn't see top-tier status between Odyssey-Onslaught and Alara standards is just plain wrong. Kamigawa-Rav had almost every single Tier 1 deck playing green. Green was everywhere, and there isn't a tier 1 deck from what I can tell that could compete. Green decks were also one of the only decks that could compete in Affinity standard. To say that green wasn't tier 1 during affinity standard is just plain wrong; Affinity was Tier 0, certainly, but Elves was the only actual deck aside from it in the format, and it was not at all uncommmong to see 1-3 Elves lists in a top 8 of any event, including Grand Prix's. It certainly wouldn't *win* these events often, but it had the tools to at least be reasonable competitive (Or at least as reasonably competitive as any deck could be at this time).
Inn-RtR was hardly dominated by U/B. G/W aggro was one of the best decks in the format, Bant was okay to good, Rites was ostensibly one of hte best decks for some time, Naya Humans was doing well, and Jund was a force to be reckoned with. The 4 most successful decks in the format (Rites, G/W aggro, R/G Wolfrun, and Jund) were all quite heavily green decks, and accounted for about ~43% of the entire winning meta game. In fact, green was found within 60% of the winning decks for that standard. Black was found in 43% of the winning decks. Blue was found within only 15% of all winning decks in the format. U/B specifically (Esper Drownyard for the most part) only accounted for 4%. Which is a worse showing than Mono-Red aggro had, which is pretty depressing given that Thragtusk was devastating against Mono-Red (And was everywhere). This format was utterly dominated by Green, and the numbers prove it. It was the single most played color of Inn-RtR standard, and the single best performing one at that (Due to having access to good fixing spells, ramp spells, Thragtusk, and having some of the best two-colors creatures with Smiter's raw efficiency and Huntmaster's value train).
I could go even further in depth, but frankly I find it odd that you would say that Green was a minor player in Inn-RtR with both Blue and Black being more integral to that format. If anything, Blue was barely played at all, and Black was almost always played alongside Green.
I'm honestly sensing that some people are letting their local anecdotes color their perseption on the matter, because frankly the actual format in its entirety is not at all what people seem to have thought it was. Blue and Black being dominant is actually far rarer than people seem to realize, and Pile of Counterspells/Kill Spells is rarely ever a deck, and even when it is it is exceedingly rarely *the best* deck. Blue is only ever hyper-dominant when it has an abundance of tempo cards available to it (As was the case with Faeries and Psychatog, and a far lesser extent Mono-U devotion). It's practically never been dominant when it was a control color.
In fact, Control is almost always one of the worst performing archetypes of any format. People's perception are colored rather falsely towards the past, and they blame the wrong things. Almost every time that these colors are broken (With the exception of Caw-Blade standard), they are broken not because of Control, but because they are capable of out-tempoing the opponent hard. Which is exactly the problem we are looking at with Bant Company. The control cards are not, nor have they every really been much of a problem at all. And people seriously need to see this. The tempo cards, such as Spell Queller, Collected Company, Reflector Mage, and Command, are the types of cards that break formats in half because they allow a certain style deck that just straight-up punishes players with very little recourse outside of those colors.
That is the point people need to realize, and are failing to do so. By making a boogeyman out of Counterspell or Kill spells, they completely miss the fact that these were not the problem, at least not directly. The problem was that the Tempo-shells that existed around these cards were incredibly strong, and having both an efficient means of getting major threats on the board (As Mongrel, Psychatog, and Faeries were), as well as operating at instant speed for much of the proactive gameplan (As Mongrel and Atog could be pump instantly, and Faeries had flash). This has allowed tempo- oriented decks to set up shop early, beat down, *and* continue to beat down while still being able to hold up permission to stop the opponent. Control isn't the issue at all. Control is easy to punish for not droppping anything of note to the board for a long while. It's tempo that's the problem, and it's always been tempo decks that have been the problem. It doesn't particularly matter the flavor, the colors, or the cards. If Tempo-oriented decks are pushed to the extreme, and you allow these decks the tools to easily operate both proactively and defensively at instant speed, Standard as a format suffers significantly. That is the lesson people seem to always miss in these discussion about Counterspell or Doom Blade being too good.
The problem with tempo is that it won't ever go away. That's basically the best type of deck to make in this TCG. You control the board after you have a good board state. That's basically key to everything. There's really no sound way to support all the possible archetypes in this game during Standard. There are even constant comments from Wizards guys themselves saying that each set is a puzzle where players are supposed to find the best way to use the cards and "solve the puzzle". The problem to me, again, is netdecking. That's what makes some Standard eras so stale. My love for INN/RTR Standard was there were so many different types of decks topping that netdeckers didn't even know what to copy. A lot of times some brews would top that nobody else was running; that Standard was golden for brewers and a pain to netdeckers. I don't care which type of deck or color is dominating as long as there's variety. Pointing fingers at the dominance of colors is a waste of time, in my opinion. It even seems a bit racist to be insulted by the fact that green is now topping. As opposed to what? Blue or black? Again, the color doesn't matter; it's the oversaturation of similar decks because Standard has been, for the longest time now, a format for netdeckers. GW isn't the only deck that's top tier so far, but it's the one that's statistically topping the most so netdeckers are copying it, meaning you're gonna see even more of it during tournaments. Again, that's not green's fault nor is green currently too broken.
I feel that each Standard should try and find balance between all the colors so that any well-constructed deck could be viable (like INN/RTR) and one of the reasons it was that way was due to a stable mana base. All colors had equality when it came to lands (either shock lands or check lands or gates). They all had the same weight as far as what you had to sacrifice for mana (life, speed, etc). In the current Standard, that's not the case. Before and since, Standard hasn't been fair with mana source distribution (except for INN/RTR). It all boils down to balance. That's just my analysis, though.
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Comparing anything from today to what was going one 17 years ago is just silly, and I will hold to it. That was at an era where modern Development didn't even exist in the slightest. Talking about how Green is "finally" dominant, and your comparison point is a point when Development didn't even exist at all, is a bit nonsensical. Particularly given that green has certainly gone through periods of being the strongest color in the Standard format (Including being dominant, such as during Kamigawa-Rav or Inn-RtR). It has practically never, since the inception of MTG Development with Masques block, but a bad color to play in standard.
Equally, Green and White were not at all devoid from the top lists prior to Masques block. Ernhamgeddon (2nd place at Pro Tour 96) was a very potent deck post-Chronicles; Stompy has more or less existed from the early days. Serra Angel was always good, as was ***, Armageddon, White Knight, Swords, etc. White-Weenie was deck, Ernham was a very good creature early on, etc. The idea that Blue and Black were dominant in the early days, once again, is simply not true. Black wasn't really even particularly playable outside of Ritual into Specters until Necropotence was printed (And then it was truly stupid, admittedly); Blue was honestly rather until Academy and Urza block. Miracle Gro was a green deck that came about in 97. The truth is that U/B was only truly dominant every once in a while. The first six years of magic were not at all defined by Blue and Black; plenty of Green, white, and even red decks were doing well in those first six years. There's really no two ways about it: There was never an extended period of time where Blue and Black were truly dominant, regardless of what people may think on the matter. There were formats, particularly Black summer and Combo Winter, where they were certainly broken, but this has far more to do with Development simply not existing to catch these things.
The problem with tempo is that when you printed abilities on creatures that normally are spells, you allow people to have their cake and eat it too. That is the exact problem that bit them in the back with Faeries. When you can hold up Spellstutter Sprite and Pestermite, on top of keeping up Agony Warp and Cryptic Command, you simply don't have to make much of a choice in deck building. Having aggressively costed creatures with excess abilities just destroys the concept of deck building restriction. Having abilities that are fundamentally permission abilities has always bit Wizards in the ass in the past. I would have figured that they would have sorted this nonsense out, but they printed both Mage and Spell Queller in the same damn format as one of the strongest tempo plays they have ever printed. Equally, they have also printed aggressively costed creatures which are very strong in the early game as well as huge late game threats(For a measly 2 mana, no less). Tempo isn't always the best deck in the format, and they go long stretches without doing it after they learn their lesson that it is a miserable deck style to play against. The issue is that they seem to forget the broad lessons they learned from Psychatog, Affinity, Faeries, Delver, etc, and come right around and repeat them by tacking on these ridiculous permission-style abililities on efficient creatures. When you blame cards like Counterspell and Mana Leak for the sins of Psychatog, Mongrel, All the Faeries, and Delver with Ponder, you fundamentally miss the problem. The problem isn't those cards. Those cards are annoyingly efficient, certainly. They are only seemingly oppressive, however, when the person playing them drop a card in the first few turns that can single-handedly end the game. And frankly they aren't the truly oppressive cards in those decks in the least.
Netdecking has been a thing since Serra Angel decks were big, and B/W Ritual based decks were huge; even then, it wasn't huge until the advent of Sligh, which fundamentally changed the way people viewed the game and the competitive cirquit, and was truly the first "real" net-deck. Net-decking has been a thing for over 20 years. It's honestly not the problem, to be honest, and the "problems" you are discussing are symptomatic of other issues. Stale formats arise not due to net-decking, but rather due to all of the power being allocated to a very small subset of cards. This has been the case with almost all "stale" formats, as it is now. Even if net-decking weren't a thing, prior to EMN it was obvious that Green and White were simply the best things to be done. The pure raw power and efficiency of their cards was completely unmatched. Even the best synergy based strategies couldn't stand up to those colors potency. The reason that Inn-RtR was considered one of the best formats was that power was rather evenly distributed between the colors, and that multiple different strategies were supported with potent cards. As of right now, the power is relegated very narrowly. Which leads to fewer viable options, which leads to an incestuous and easily solved format. Frankly, even if net-decking was somehow "banned", I doubt the format would have looked particularly different.
I'm also confused towards the racist remark. That's completely out of left field, and has no baring on anything. Equally, my concern isn't so much that green and white are currently the best colors; it's that they were hyper dominant to the point where Blue, Red, and Black were almost entirely not-viable, and were only ever viable in the context of Green and White. This is not at all healthy, not in the least. There is a far cry from being the best color(s) and being dominant. Having a color, and any color mind you, be dominant is simply unhealthy for the format. It doesn't mattter if it's blue, green, red, white, or black. IF a color or deck becomes dominant, it is fundamentally an unhealthy format. My problem with the format have nothing to do with Green or White specifically; it has to do with the level of dominance they have reached being fundamentally unhealthy.
That is a perfectly valid point. I doubt they will ever find perfect balance (Even Inn-RtR was skewed towards green), but they should at least try to ensure that format dominance doesn't exist, and particularly that all colors are at least viable options. Not necessarily equally good options, but viable at the least.
sounds to me like you just hate magic in general
EDIT: I quite liked ISD - RTR standard, but it was the greenest format I can think of. all the control decks relied on Farseek + Thragtusk pillar. Junk Reanimator was the best performing deck for quite a while, and it was the most oppressing control deck I have played against. The deck was impossible to win after it got going, and would gain infinite amount of life with Angel loops. Of course soon after that Reid Duke showed us how to build Jund, and then Jund became the #1 deck of the format. After the core set release the BG deck that didn't get affected by the multi colour land hate became the #1 deck.
after RTR - THS green was the best deck again. Abzan Control was simply dominating, because it had the best everything. I think it is a problem when blue and black decks can't out grind or out control green, because then it means nothing can beat the green decks. blue and black control are traditionally kept in check by the hyper aggressive decks of the format - they have such a tempo advantage. green and white are much better at stalling the board. Before I could Disdainful Stroke Siege Rhino, now there are almost no tools. Right now there is too heavy concentration of powerful cards in GW colours, even if any single card isn't oppressive in itself. if we didn't have collected company or tireless tracker or duskwatch recruiter or spell queller then this format could be awesome.
EDIT: forgot about Dromokas Command
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Again, all valid points. However, even though I saw a lot of Esper, Junk, Jund, Azorius, Bant, Orzhov, Golgari decks during ISD/RTR because those were some of the decks in the top, the top 8 wasn't entirely dominated by a single or a couple of decks and I also saw a lot of brews (I'm a brewer through and through). I quit Standard definitely (I always played on/off competitively since way back) because when Theros came out, I literally only saw 2 decks played in FNM: MonoU Devotion and RG Xenagos. It was the only two decks being played. No joke. I quit right then and there. It was even easier for me in the sense that I could just outfit my deck and entire sideboard to be the nemesis of these decks but it would be boring to go to a packed FNM and in all 5 rounds play against MonoU Devotion.
Wizards will only learn their lesson when more people stop playing Standard like what happened during the DrawGo and CawBlade. Sometimes it also boils down to bad sets. Zendikar 2 was such an awful block. Innistrad 2 seems promising. Hopefully the next 2 sets will be just as promising, thus making for a great Standard.
Lol, I don't hate Magic, I'm just glad that it evolved to a point were you can't just assume what your opponent will be playing simply by what lands he/she is playing because of the variety of strategies that colors now have.
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A fair point, however the discussion has more or less naturally evolved to the current discussion so it's not a complete derail It still is on the general subject of banning; discussing the background of the issue is important to generating and understanding the various points.
What kept Company in check was a few things: First, Thoughtseize was just a super good card at punishing synergy based strategies. Second, Siege Rhino both punished decks that were built smaller than it, as well as gave incentive not to play it. Finally, it wasn't until Origins that we started to see the glut of incredibly efficient 3 or less drops with major upside. Finally, Oath of the Gatewatch broke Company in half with Advocate and Mage, and the glut of good 2 and 3 drops in SoI just fueled it further. While it required a certain confluence to be busted in the format, that confluence is a lot easier to meet than people may think simply due to how standard development functions. That said, CoCo is one of the most incredibly busted cards that has been printed in the format in recent memory. People like to say how Snapcaster is too good for the format, but at least Snapcaster is fair, if undercosted. You get what you pay for, and exactly what you pay for. CoCo lets you cheat at tempo due to being an instant, mana due to being able to find 6 mana worth of dudes, direct card advantage from getting two dudes out, and indirect card advantage through creatures with spell-like abilities. That is a whole lot of cheating put into one card.
What they need to do is make the five mana wraths have actually relevant upside, and not trinket text. These 5-mana wraths with meaningless extra text are just plain bad.
I find your claim insulting to limited. 3x SOI draft was dramatically more diverse than anything I've seen from standard, possibly ever. I played hyper aggressive human decks, turbo self-mill decks, value madness decks, MadVamps decks, Delirium midrange, Clue Midrange, Werewolf Stompy, and even Oops all Spells. I got to play Oops all Spells in limited, and it was a viable deck, along with all the other decks I personally played.
- Manite
Here's a list:
Counters have to be 3 or more if they are catch all. Gimped.
Wraths have to be 5 or more if it kills all creatures. That's 1 turn too slow, and thus between these two, control is gimped.
No more 1 mana accelerants like Llanowar elves. Aggro G/W is too fast for that and buries the ramp decks in presssure, so ramp is gimped.
Burn spells have to be sorcery speed to be 2 mana for 3 damage. This is laughably bad when trying to deal with small creatures with instant speed tricks. Thus, burn is gimped.
1 mana discard is now horribly unconditional, to the point that it has to be sideboard but not mainboard. This gimps black in general.
With all of this, there's only room for creature decks, and G/W is the king of creatures. This is why we get a stagnant standard format with nothing but G/W. And, with the current Wizards philosophy, we need to get ready for 5 or so more years of G/W dominance.
Back on topic, no bans won't help, because even with Collected Company banned, there's still far too many overpowered Green and White(especially white) creatues out there to handle thanks to the aggressive nerfs by Wizards.
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When green decks have more card advantage than Blue/Black, there is a problem.
The last ban in Standard (Jace/SFM) happened right before those cards left Standard, for the same reason (deck was too dominant).
A lot of people here are already complaining they can't launch fnms when they launched all the time, myself included. In fact, the last fnm I went to was at the most popular place for our area's(San Antonio is my area, pretty big city) standard tournaments, we had average 40+ players before SoI, 30+ during SoI, and now, we barely hit 14 players this last weekend, would have been less since I didn't want to go, but my friend was going and I hadn't seen him in a while, otherwise would have been 13 or less. Funny too, was the first time it was so easy to move around the store, won't lie felt nice, but personal experience and seeing everyone on every forum(here, reddit, 4chan) talk about low attendance has me thinking I'm pretty sure that is happening already.
BGU [Primer] Sidisi, Brood Tyrant BGU | BG [Primer] Mazirek, Kraul Death Priest BG | G [Primer] Polukranos, World Eater G
My YouTube Channel:
The Commander Tavern - a channel I just started where I'll post deck techs and gameplays. Please support by checking it out. Maybe you'll like its content and subscribe! Thanks!
Read my other stories as well (some ongoing):
Reaper King (a horror story), Kaalia of the Vast (an origin story), Sequels for Innistrad (Alternative sequels for Inn), Grey Areas (Odric's fanfic), Royal Succession (goblins),The Tracker's Message (eldrazi on Innistrad) and Ugin and his Eye (the end of OGW).