Im curious for examples, outside of implement of combustion, that have seen play in successful decks that are "warping deck lists because of the combo." This is the most bogus hive-mind excuse I've seen in these recent posts.
You should be running some type of burn if you're in red. Shock has an incredibly high amount of decent value targets in vehicles...inspector, motorist, scrapheap, toolcraft... doesn't sound like a useless card in the 75 if you can target half the threat suite in a deck with a roughly 30% meta share. It just happens to also break up the combo. Sounds like a fine playable to me.
If you're in black the answers are so plentiful it's ridiculous. You have transgress which is great against everything but vehicles. You have a whole bevy of kill spells. I don't find bristling hydra or blossoming defense warping in my meta...I run to the slaughter instead of whining for a ban. Oh wait that's also fantastic against the combo.
Counterspells are good against any threat and dispel will win you stack wars and protect your threats. Also great against the combo.
Walking ballista? Yeah it's a freaking amazing card that, surprise, is great against the combo. Strong enough for vintage play, castable turn 2 in ANY deck...
I haven't seen a single mono green list that would stand a chance against anything right now, so I don't think greens lack of answers is an issue considering the threat suite in the color is off the charts right now.
The cat combo isn't warping. In fact, I would go so far as to say that if you build a deck with no answers to the cat combo and you want it banned then you should also ask them to ban BG and vehicles because you have zero answers for anything in your deck. Being unable to appropriately answer a threat on turn 3 OR turn four, even when on the draw, is evidence of weak mulligan decisions or deck lists. You're 10 cards deep in your library at that point...come on.
They can't jam the combo with dispel protection until T7 (if they hit 7 lands lol) in jeskai, or turn 6 in the green variants with a servant of the conduit out (and those lists don't even run the card).
Get out of here with this ban crap. Leave the format, and consumer confidence, alone and give them both a chance to correct themselves. I already have several people at my LGS (which has struggled to keep decent turnouts for standard events) talking about leaving if they ban anything else.
I still regularly win with home brews and T2 decklists at my LGS and it's not like I'm playing people running only commons and preconstructed decks. I'm freaking playing against the last open/GP/whatever top 8 stock list.
Obviously WotC disagrees with you since they are the ones who started the ban thing and accelerated the ban announce schedule to make sure they can keep correcting.
Did you read the many posts before yours? They address pretty much everything except "just quit I'm right you're wrong".
Guardian will get banned eventually, just not sure if it will be on Monday. The combo will be in standard for 2 years since they are both in the same block. Having it viable for that long is just not going to happen IMO.
I still believe they wait till Amonhket to ban Guardian as banning it this soon will hurt consumer confidence.
That doesn't mean Wizards should try to keep pushing Standard attendance. At this point, in my opinion, they should just focus on damage control and try to prevent more players from dropping Standard rather than getting more players into it. Trying to change the format in any way bears the risk of even further declines in Standard attendance.
From a business perspective, local stores suffer more from declining Standard attendance than Wizards. The money we pay for playing and individual cards goes to the store. Wizards gets its revenue largely from selling sealed products to local stores and retailers. Wizards' sales might be slipping a bit, but unless several gaming stores have recently closed down due to lack of Standard attendance, I doubt Wizards is going to be severely worried about its own profits in the near term.
Lastly, why are people still comparing Heart of Kiran to Smuggler's Copter? Haven't we already established that these two cards are almost completely different?
You know, what happens at the FNM is one thing, and I've seen great brews/ fun and decent decks take down some casuals events in town. Ah by casual I mean 4 rounds, and a few prize packs/store credit. You know what happens at the PPTQ level? We get the grinders (like myself) who realize that the best decks are also some of the most consistent at doing/ executing their game plans. Thus all my hopes for a Tezzerator deck or sweet U/B control deck went right out the window when I saw first hand how effective the big 3 were early on at dispatching those "brews".
At the GP Level? Watch Day 1 of GP Utrechet and you'll see some cool brews! You know what happens when good Magic players play Tier 1 decks? They stomp the brews and we get the established meta game as we know it. 4c Saheeli is the newest innovation that has been constantly tweaked and now it's poised to push G/B right out of the format. This is nothing new, many players have seen this at the PPTQ level and RPTQ level, the G/B decks are built to prey on Mardu (look this match up isn't even that GOOD in their favor) and what winds up happening is this; Somewhere in the swiss they play against Saheeli variations and get eaten up, then as the swiss enters it's last few rounds we see a curiously high percentage of Mardu Vehicles...what happened? Well Mardu Ate the Saheeli decks and boom you see the Top 8's being something liek 4 Mardu and a combo of G/B or 4c saheeli.
Jeskai Saheeli is gone, and has been replaced with a value engine of creatures, and cards that can win by themselves. The combo is just one part that deck, it's capable of beating you without but the moment you disrespect the combo is comes down to flick you off.
You can win FNM with Tier 2 decks, but I promise you that if players are simply playing stock lists then they aren't doing their homework, decks need to customized to meet the meta they are being played in. It just so happens that sometimes those metas are the top 3 decks, or should I say top 2.
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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
There will always be a best deck. There will always be great cards in those decks--Rally, Company, Siege Rhino, Sphinx Rev, Gary, Thassa, Thragtusk, etc. There will always be control mages that complain that their archetype isn't good anymore. These truths are eternal. Wizards banning all those cards might balance the format, but it would certainly kill it.
I don't play control, however I am willing to take a step back and look at the format's overall health regardless of what impact that may or may not have on me. When Copter, Mage, and Emrakul were banned from the format, pretty much every deck I played was killed off at the time; that said, it needed to happen for the health and viability of the format as a whole, which suffered immensely. The player population was dwindling, and these cards were complete jokes that never should have gone to print.
Discussing it as though people are wanting to ban things just because it's the best deck is flawed, because that is not what the argument is. Equally, while there are always power discrepencies, sometimes they just make a complete and utter mistake. The have undoubtedly been increasing the power level of threats over the past few years, and this has led to problems, some of which have been significant. The most dire situation we were in for a great many years was pre-rotation CoCo. By all accounts, including those coming from Wizards, the deck was too good and something should have been banned from it. This wasn't belly-aching about CoCo being strong; it was actively discouraging people from playing the format almost across the board. The deck was leagues ahead of practically everything else that you could have been playing, and it wasn't close.
Standard has honestly been in a bad way for a while, and while it is certainly better now than it was not too long ago, it is also not particularly good. We have a 3-deck format currently: Vehicles, which doesn't give you time to play any sort of long game of any sort due to how effecient their aggressive creatures are; 4-Color Saheeli, which wildly contorts your deck building and play pattern to the point where an entire class of cards which would see play normally are rendered completely unplayable from now until it rotates in a years and a half; and Snek, which preys on the deck building concessions made by the first two.
Now, we run into another problem as stated before: Bannings won't fix the underlying problems the format faces. Wizards went too far with their threat base and have been for some time, particularly in Green and White, and we are seeing the continuing problems with standard because of it. It's not a "best deck is the best deck" situation in the least; rather it's that the past few iterations of standards have had incredibly punishing decks that require you to not miss a beat the entire game, else you lose almost on the spot. That's indicative of poor development and design, and frankly things won't change for quite some time. The problem is these development philosophies have been so ingrained in the current R&D that there's really no getting out of it from bans alone. A shift in their viewpoints towards design and development needs to occur, and it needs to occur two years ago.
There will always be a best deck. There will always be great cards in those decks--Rally, Company, Siege Rhino, Sphinx Rev, Gary, Thassa, Thragtusk, etc. There will always be control mages that complain that their archetype isn't good anymore. These truths are eternal. Wizards banning all those cards might balance the format, but it would certainly kill it.
I don't play control, however I am willing to take a step back and look at the format's overall health regardless of what impact that may or may not have on me. When Copter, Mage, and Emrakul were banned from the format, pretty much every deck I played was killed off at the time; that said, it needed to happen for the health and viability of the format as a whole, which suffered immensely. The player population was dwindling, and these cards were complete jokes that never should have gone to print.
Discussing it as though people are wanting to ban things just because it's the best deck is flawed, because that is not what the argument is. Equally, while there are always power discrepencies, sometimes they just make a complete and utter mistake. The have undoubtedly been increasing the power level of threats over the past few years, and this has led to problems, some of which have been significant. The most dire situation we were in for a great many years was pre-rotation CoCo. By all accounts, including those coming from Wizards, the deck was too good and something should have been banned from it. This wasn't belly-aching about CoCo being strong; it was actively discouraging people from playing the format almost across the board. The deck was leagues ahead of practically everything else that you could have been playing, and it wasn't close.
Standard has honestly been in a bad way for a while, and while it is certainly better now than it was not too long ago, it is also not particularly good. We have a 3-deck format currently: Vehicles, which doesn't give you time to play any sort of long game of any sort due to how effecient their aggressive creatures are; 4-Color Saheeli, which wildly contorts your deck building and play pattern to the point where an entire class of cards which would see play normally are rendered completely unplayable from now until it rotates in a years and a half; and Snek, which preys on the deck building concessions made by the first two.
Now, we run into another problem as stated before: Bannings won't fix the underlying problems the format faces. Wizards went too far with their threat base and have been for some time, particularly in Green and White, and we are seeing the continuing problems with standard because of it. It's not a "best deck is the best deck" situation in the least; rather it's that the past few iterations of standards have had incredibly punishing decks that require you to not miss a beat the entire game, else you lose almost on the spot. That's indicative of poor development and design, and frankly things won't change for quite some time. The problem is these development philosophies have been so ingrained in the current R&D that there's really no getting out of it from bans alone. A shift in their viewpoints towards design and development needs to occur, and it needs to occur two years ago.
Preach! *throws hands to the sky*
This this this this this! Except that I do play control now and then.
You'd better bet that they feel the cash burn otherwise why would they change anything at all? Who is driven to buy product? Standard players. How do stores get people in to buy product? FNM and other events. Attendance down at GPs and big events is the trickle UP from people quitting the format and in lots of cases the game entirely.
The one two punch was CoCo domination for way too long and the idiotic decision to shorten the rotation cycle thus making your investment in cards almost an entire waste. People were stating plainly that they were quitting or investing in Modern and abandoning standard and that's what they did. WotC cannot survive on just the small 'pro' pool of players who think it's fine to rotate more often. They need brick and mortar standard to be successful and popular for all parts of MTG to be profitable. Look at their admission of guilt! They used the words fun or not fun repeatedly throughout the announcement.
We're all here talking because we love the game. Pros before the last release rated Standard 3 out of 10 for fun.
I completely agreed with them. Right now I'd rate Standard a 2/10. If copycat sits as is until regular rotation it'll be 1/10. They cannot allow further dwindling numbers in Standard.
I just wish instead of competing with FNM by launching this 'Saturday' promo with product they'd give that special product out at FNM to solidify new players and more opt ins for everyone to benefit. Saturday competes and if I go on Sat I can't make Friday. Lots of people will fall into that hole as well.
<crosses fingers> R&D needs to read posts like above and get their thumbs out and to work on a better game! Peace.
Banning's are never good, they're a symptom of much deeper problems. I'm not in R & D (and have no desire to ever be a Pro MTG player, I just love using my brain to compete against equally gifted minds; If this gets me to a Pro Tour, great! But it's not my life goal nor do I ever want to find myself in a position where MTG ceases to be a game), so it's hard to know what they are thinking and where they are wanting to take this game. I will attest to facts in the Austin Area:
1) Modern has gained a ton of momentum, players who were once hardcore standard players have decided to buy into modern (Myself Included)
2) Standard fires but the numbers are nothing like they used to be, there's a an unhappiness with the standard format that goes way beyond the banning's themselves.
3) WIn a Boxes fire with 6-8 players only. During Theros/Khans we used to have over 12-16 and some instances 20.
4) It's modern season, so many grinders are aiming to build and jam modern decks, but I can remember not caring about modern because standard used to be really good.
In short, more answers don't solve the problem, they can't. When creatures come with 2/3 bodies + extra etb effects that aren't 1 shot effects we get a snowball effect. Creatures provide "virtual" card advantage now, as do PW's. SPells and reactive cards take a back seat to this kind of magic and we get what we've been getting for a while now.
The one two punch was CoCo domination for way too long and the idiotic decision to shorten the rotation cycle thus making your investment in cards almost an entire waste.
I think there was more than just that; it wasn't just a one two punch. Because before that one two punch was fetchland+battleland Standard where your manabase cost as much as that of a Modern deck's manabase... and possibly even more, as the Standard decks were running more fetchlands than most Modern decks do. They might have figured it would be okay because, hey, it's fine in Modern, but in Modern there's at least some hate for the interaction but Wizards of the Coast opted to not bother with any of that.
We're all here talking because we love the game. Pros before the last release rated Standard 3 out of 10 for fun.
I completely agreed with them. Right now I'd rate Standard a 2/10. If copycat sits as is until regular rotation it'll be 1/10. They cannot allow further dwindling numbers in Standard.
CopyCat could be solved by having some better answers around. Rending Volley, Torpor Orb, Pithing Needle... those are cards that thwart the combo and can be good against other decks. Heck, Pithing Needle may be outright maindeckable right now, as it has considerable power against both CopyCat and Mardu Vehicles (it even stops Scrapheap Scrounger!); it's kind of meh against BG but even there it has its uses. It's actually surprising Pithing Needle isn't legal; it's a useful answer effect to have around, and from Mirrodin Besieged until Battle for Zendikar, either it or Phyrexian Revoker (which has a very similar effect) was always legal.
Of course, right now Wizards of the Coast is in an unenviable situation, though admittedly of their own design as they were the ones that kept pushing threats and weakening answers. If they ban more cards, that'll really hurt the confidence of Standard players and, like the previous round of bannings, might not even do that much to fix the format. But if they don't, they'll still have a format people don't seem to like even after those bans (I actually wonder what the format would be like if not for those bans?). The big issue is that it isn't like Jace and Stoneforge where there were just two really problematic cards and removing them would fix things up, or even Affinity where you just had one particular deck that was way overpowered and had to be stamped out. It's more like the format itself (rather than one particular part of it as was the case with Jace/Stoneforge, Affinity, and Skullclamp for that matter) is messed up and that's not really something you can fix up with bans. Actually a bit reminiscent of the Urza's Saga block, where they had to just hit a ton of different cards in order to get the format into something decent.
You are absolutely right. The pain of a declining Standard environ was much longer than just the 1-2 I referred to. Locally though, it was the two things that really broke a lot of people where I play.
The big issue is that it isn't like Jace and Stoneforge where there were just two really problematic cards and removing them would fix things up, or even Affinity where you just had one particular deck that was way overpowered and had to be stamped out. It's more like the format itself (rather than one particular part of it as was the case with Jace/Stoneforge, Affinity, and Skullclamp for that matter) is messed up and that's not really something you can fix up with bans. Actually a bit reminiscent of the Urza's Saga block, where they had to just hit a ton of different cards in order to get the format into something decent.
Yeah, this is years of bad development decisions culminating into what we're seeing now.
To be honest I really want to see another wave of bannings happen again. Some combination of HoK/Gideon/Cat/Scrounger would be ideal.
R&D and the FFL are rotten to the core, and there needs to be another "get pulled into the president's office and yelled at" moment like there was during Urza's Saga to insure that a massive overhaul to the development of this game happen.
My two cents on the matter: (spoiler: looooong post)
I'm of the opinion, as others have stated, that I'd rather see nothing banned at this time. I wouldn't be surprised to see the Cat go though, so I won't be surprised either way. I highly doubt they'd ban Gideon, but stranger things have happened.
While this thread is focused on Standard bannings, I'm going to sidetrack a little and talk about my opinions on what I think the state of the game itself is on a whole. And as Standard is a big part of the game overall I think it's pertinent.
There are two specific events in the history of the game I think are of special relevance currently. For those newer to the game, Mark Rosewater has written a vast amount of articles on just about every aspect of the game you can think of. The first one that I feel that's led Standard to where it currently is was posted on June 2, 2008 titled "The Year of Living Dangerously". In this article we are introduced, among other things, to a new rarity of card called the "Mythic Rarity". Mark stated a few points which have been referenced increasingly lately:
"How are cards split between rare and mythic rare? Or more to the point, what kind of cards are going to become mythic rares? We want the flavor of mythic rare to be something that feels very special and unique. Generally speaking we expect that to mean cards like Planeswalkers, most legends, and epic-feeling creatures and spells. They will not just be a list of each set's most powerful tournament-level cards."
As well as: "We've also decided that there are certain things we specifically do not want to be mythic rares. The largest category is utility cards, what I'll define as cards that fill a universal function. Some examples of this category would be cycles of dual lands and cards like Mutavault or Char."
I thinks it's quite easy to say that Mythics printed in sets nowadays are the exact opposite of those statements. While not every Mythic is, you'd be hard pressed to find a deck at the top tables that wasn't comprised of a notable number of Mythics; the aforementioned Gideon, for exameple.
The second article, again written by Maro, is titled "New World Order". One of the main points of the article is the decision to reduce the complexity of cards at the common rarity to help alleviate new player confusion. Instead of individually powerful creatures/spells/effects at common, they shifted towards a more "strategic complexity". He provided an example for those who where concerned that this shift would be boring:
"For those that are worried that this is boring, I ask you to simply try the following experiment. Make two decks of just vanilla creatures and common sorceries. (This is very similar to a beginner product we made long ago named Portal.) Find a player of a similar skill level to your own and play the decks against each other. What you will find is that these games are actually quite interesting. It's easy to get caught up in all the complexity of Magic that you forget how much fun the base of the game is—and not just fun, skillful."
What do these have to do with Standard bannings? I feel that these particular decision, more specifically the lack of revisiting them, are 2 of the main reasons why our current Standard has become the way it is. Newer players may not realise, Magic was literally the first trading card game in existence, being first published in 1993. As pointed out in part 1 of a 2 part interview with Richard Garfield on StarCityGames Premium side, the trademark for Trading Card Game is in Richard Garfield's name. Let that sink in for a moment. Everything that Magic did in the early days was completely new ground. As time progressed and other similar games started to pop up it was only a matter of time before Wizards had to re-evaluate certain aspects of the game. When the Mythic Rarity came out and when the New World Order was first implemented both made sense given the direction the game was headed. Wizards needed to get the player base to continue to grow for Magic to prosper further. And both early on certainly accomplished that. I feel that the game is at a point though where those concepts need to be revisited and reviewed to see if they are still in the best interest of the game and helping to increase the player base. The game has been at that point for a good while now actually. Since (and including) the Shards of Alara block (when the Mythic Rarity was introduced) there have been a total of 17 "Standard" blocks and core sets released at present. 2008-now. That's approximately 9 years. That's a long time, in my opinion, to go without re-evaluating if the game is still going in the right direction.
I'm not suggesting that they do away with Mythics, or make cards at common hyper-confusing. But I do feel that both concepts really need to get a good hard look at by Wizards, and they need to ask themselves "are these decisions still correct?".
Now, as for bannings in standard, Sam Stoddard I think pretty much hit the nail on the head when he stated that the creatures have gotten better while the answers have gotten worse (I'm paraphrasing, I don't have a link to his exact tweet). I don't feel that interactions like the copycat combo themselves are the issue, but rather the lack of efficient interaction. CoCo itself wasn't the problem per se; it was the cards that existed in that Standard at the time with it that made it too good. The seeming push to weaken "spell" based Magic while making creatures (mostly at rare and mythic mind you) better and better. The game becoming more and more Midrange: The Gathering as opposed to Magic: The Gathering over the past few Standards. The obvious-even-to-new-players warping almost to the point of ignoring of the color pie and what each color originally had strengths and weaknesses in. The almost comical way Wizards is (in my opinion) trying to covertly get people to be less interested in formats that don't sell packs (Legacy to expensive? Getting Priced out of Modern? There's always Standard! Oh, that's stale you say? You could always draft!). These are what I feel are causing the current Standard, in addition to the more recent ones, to have become the way they are. Personally, I haven't played Standard in well over a year or so, partly due to not finding a deck that I consider challenging yet fun and reasonably affordable. I've been slowly buying into a Legacy deck. I can find "I smash my creature into your creature, ok your turn. You smash your creature into my creature, ok my turn" interesting for only so long. I'm primarily an aggro player, but I have played other deck styles over they years. I'd love to see reasonable counter magic, reasonable removal make a comeback. But Wizards doesn't want newer players to feel bad if their creature gets countered or dies too soon. So I'll wait, patiently, cautiously optomistically, that we see a return of decent answers to the format.
March 13th is the next available day that Wizards is able to make any ban decisions.
Is there any possibility that Standard could receive MORE bans?
Personally, while I don't think it's incredibly likely, I think a Felidar Guardian ban is possible. The deck isn't incredibly oppressive in the sense that it's winning tournaments, however, it's oppressive in that its restricting Tier 2 decks from successfully emerging, unless they have built in Anti-Saheeli. Also, they didn't anticipate the loop, so I feel like them banning it because it's a toxic strategy they didn't foresee isn't impossible.
Thoughts? Think we'll see anything?
Saheeli rai deck hasn't posted enough top 8s to matter. Just because its your FNMs boogie man dosent mean its even being looked at by wizards. The only way anything gets banned from FNM play is if they start monitoring LGS decklists. Which will never happen.
March 13th is the next available day that Wizards is able to make any ban decisions.
Is there any possibility that Standard could receive MORE bans?
Personally, while I don't think it's incredibly likely, I think a Felidar Guardian ban is possible. The deck isn't incredibly oppressive in the sense that it's winning tournaments, however, it's oppressive in that its restricting Tier 2 decks from successfully emerging, unless they have built in Anti-Saheeli. Also, they didn't anticipate the loop, so I feel like them banning it because it's a toxic strategy they didn't foresee isn't impossible.
Thoughts? Think we'll see anything?
Saheeli rai deck hasn't posted enough top 8s to matter. Just because its your FNMs boogie man dosent mean its even being looked at by wizards. The only way anything gets banned from FNM play is if they start monitoring LGS decklists. Which will never happen.
It has a 22% metagame share, seconded only by Vehicles. If that's not putting up "enough" top 8s, I don't know what is.
22% of the meta means nothing when it is the bottom 22%
If this isn't the most disingenuous line I've seen in these forums in my ten (10) years of membership on MTGS then I don't know what the hell is.
Bottom 22%? Rly?
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In my dream, the world had suffered a terrible disaster. A black haze shut out the sun, and the darkness was alive with the moans and screams of wounded people. Suddenly, a small light glowed. A candle flickered into life, symbol of hope for millions. A single tiny candle, shining in the ugly dark. I laughed and blew it out.
Many thanks to HotP Studios. Special thanks to DNC for this great sig.
It has a 22% metagame share, seconded only by Vehicles. If that's not putting up "enough" top 8s, I don't know what is.
You are also aware that a large portion of the games it does win it wins without the combo at all?
I'd say at least half the games it wins are a variation of Whirler Viruoso, Skysovereign and Chandra, Torch of Deviance rather than the straight up combo, because they literary board the combo out.
Fresh 'pro' article on the state of Standard. I completely disagree with keeping the faster rotation, as that raises the cost of standard, which is already too high, and decreases the volume of cards to brew with but he echos what many are saying here about the format's condition.
Fresh 'pro' article on the state of Standard. I completely disagree with keeping the faster rotation, as that raises the cost of standard, which is already too high, and decreases the volume of cards to brew with but he echos what many are saying here about the format's condition.
He makes a good point about formats being solved so quickly.
I am going to disagree with him about Ravnica/Time Spiral standard being solved in today's age though. One thing he forgot about RAV/TSP was the fact that it had such an enormous card pool, and that card pool did not have all the power concentrated in a few rares and mythics. It probably would have been "solved" in the way Legacy is today.
The smaller sets with tournament staples being solely at the rare/mythic spectrum mean formats get solved faster.
March 13th is the next available day that Wizards is able to make any ban decisions.
Is there any possibility that Standard could receive MORE bans?
Personally, while I don't think it's incredibly likely, I think a Felidar Guardian ban is possible. The deck isn't incredibly oppressive in the sense that it's winning tournaments, however, it's oppressive in that its restricting Tier 2 decks from successfully emerging, unless they have built in Anti-Saheeli. Also, they didn't anticipate the loop, so I feel like them banning it because it's a toxic strategy they didn't foresee isn't impossible.
Thoughts? Think we'll see anything?
Saheeli rai deck hasn't posted enough top 8s to matter. Just because its your FNMs boogie man dosent mean its even being looked at by wizards. The only way anything gets banned from FNM play is if they start monitoring LGS decklists. Which will never happen.
It has a 22% metagame share, seconded only by Vehicles. If that's not putting up "enough" top 8s, I don't know what is.
22% of the meta means nothing when it is the bottom 22%
If this isn't the most disingenuous line I've seen in these forums in my ten (10) years of membership on MTGS then I don't know what the hell is.
Bottom 22%? Rly?
He's just pointing out they 22% doesn't necessarily translate to more top 8 placements. 22% just means that appeared 22% of the time at Standard events, not necessarily in the top 8.
Something else I've noticed: it seems that the consensus from this thread on what cards are likely to or want to be banned are
Winding Constrictor, Heart of Kiran, and Felidar Guardian
So essentially, the centerpieces of the only 3 prominent decks in Standard right now. If Wizards bans these cards, that would effectively be a reset button on the entire Standard format. Is that what we're hoping for here???
The big issue is that it isn't like Jace and Stoneforge where there were just two really problematic cards and removing them would fix things up, or even Affinity where you just had one particular deck that was way overpowered and had to be stamped out. It's more like the format itself (rather than one particular part of it as was the case with Jace/Stoneforge, Affinity, and Skullclamp for that matter) is messed up and that's not really something you can fix up with bans. Actually a bit reminiscent of the Urza's Saga block, where they had to just hit a ton of different cards in order to get the format into something decent.
Yeah, this is years of bad development decisions culminating into what we're seeing now.
To be honest I really want to see another wave of bannings happen again. Some combination of HoK/Gideon/Cat/Scrounger would be ideal.
R&D and the FFL are rotten to the core, and there needs to be another "get pulled into the president's office and yelled at" moment like there was during Urza's Saga to insure that a massive overhaul to the development of this game happen.
100% truth. MaRo and his "make White and Green and creatures good at all costs" regime need to be reigned in and/or shaken up yesterday. FFL clearly needs new blood, or expansion. I always thought these groups need a rotational schedule, or some built in mechanism to keep the game from moving in the same direction for too long. It feels like Magic has been dumbed down and over simplified, which is available in other games if that's what you want. It feels less and less like Magic each year.
I don't think constrictor should be on the list.
dirty kitty is unintended and too oppressive, causing limits to deckbuilding all around.
Heart of Kiran is another symptom that vehicles were simply made too powerful. Colorless and screwing all sorcery speed removal in an environ where answers aren't good enough is too far.
You could target scrapheap scrounger instead of Heart of Kiran but there's still way too many 2 drop 3/x ways to make kiran go. The devastating speed and efficiency of Mardu vehicles can't be left unchecked as it also narrows what has the proper percentages to be playable (high win percentages vs the field). It's pretty much a 2 deck format, knocking those two down a peg (not entirely) will open up more decks to compete.
Felidar and Heart don't solve everything, they're going to have to design better and not count on the faster rotation they planned for or bans to fix their carelessness.
Others have listed a bunch of decks that aren't quite good enough. I think many of those get to step up.
If the concept of vehicles flawed, it's ready too late to change that, unless Wizards bans every single Vehicle in Standard.
Also there ARE answers against Heart of Kiran in Fatal Push, Fragmentize, Natural Obsolescence, and more. Similarly, Scrapheap Scrounger can be answered with Declaration in Stone, Flaying Tendrils, Kalitas + Fatal Push, and more. And these aren't janky removals either; they can be used in a plethora of situations. I agree that there should be some changes in Standard but banning cards when there are already answers to is not an effective solution. There's not much that can be done when the players refuse to play readily available answers.
...
22% of the meta means nothing when it is the bottom 22%
A quick look at this page tells me that Copycat is not the bottom 22% of the meta. If Copycat is not the bottom 22%, then is the above comment trolling? spam? borderline? which side of the border?
...
22% of the meta means nothing when it is the bottom 22%
If this isn't the most disingenuous line I've seen in these forums in my ten (10) years of membership on MTGS then I don't know what the hell is.
Bottom 22%? Rly?
As stated above, I can understand this response. Is it stronger than it needs to be?
He's just pointing out they 22% doesn't necessarily translate to more top 8 placements. 22% just means that appeared 22% of the time at Standard events, not necessarily in the top 8.
Maybe? Interpretation? Defense? Copycat having 22% meta share seems like data which, if true, is relevant.
Can we please just walk away from talking about the idea that Copycat is the bottom 22% of the meta along with questioning and defending it? If anyone thinks that Copycat is really the bottom 22% or that further discussion of that idea is helpful, please PM me.
Otherwise, please continue this great discussion. Thanks! - hoser2
Thanks for linking Ali's article. I can't address anything he said about modern but I will wholeheartedly agree with him that Aetherworks Marvel was the culprit and not quite as much Emrakul. I think Emrakul was a good ban though because they pushed it just over the edge with 'Protection from instants'. Especially right now when sorcery removal is just terrible.
Ali said, "Emrakul was banned because she ended games too easily when cast. Games could be won after she was cast but it was extremely difficult to do so. When you played against an Emrakul deck she was always looming over the game and as soon as she was cast, the usually came to an end."
That whole reasoning completely applies to dirty kitty. Words from WotC mouth I'll be shocked and appalled if they don't ban it. There is no game after it hits and instead of rolling the dice (Marvel) you get to plan how you hit it. It is completely oppressive to even brew knowing you MUST answer it.
I agree Gideon is crazy strong, especially since maybe they've realized it and scaled back all the planeswalkers since. The good is maybe they've realized the error and are correcting (thus all the lesser planeswalkers), the bad is... well he's Gideon. Who by the way can power Heart of Kiran and attack at the same time... that's not strong at all...
Honestly reflector mage was a symptom of CoCo being ridiculous. Sure lets give green an instant tempo card that builds their board by 2 creatures... and then give them creatures that make them a permissions deck too. (cough spell queller). The creatures themselves are fine, it was CoCo that made it stupid. (yes I know neither of those are green however they fit into the archetype which was already strong)
Someone earlier hit it on the head the WHITE GREEN SMASH PUNY everyone attitude needs to get slapped hard by someone above R&D's head. Thus Gideon and all the other recent shenanigans.
Thanks for linking Ali's article. I can't address anything he said about modern but I will wholeheartedly agree with him that Aetherworks Marvel was the culprit and not quite as much Emrakul. I think Emrakul was a good ban though because they pushed it just over the edge with 'Protection from instants'. Especially right now when sorcery removal is just terrible.
Ali said, "Emrakul was banned because she ended games too easily when cast. Games could be won after she was cast but it was extremely difficult to do so. When you played against an Emrakul deck she was always looming over the game and as soon as she was cast, the usually came to an end."
That whole reasoning completely applies to dirty kitty. Words from WotC mouth I'll be shocked and appalled if they don't ban it. There is no game after it hits and instead of rolling the dice (Marvel) you get to plan how you hit it. It is completely oppressive to even brew knowing you MUST answer it.
I agree Gideon is crazy strong, especially since maybe they've realized it and scaled back all the planeswalkers since. The good is maybe they've realized the error and are correcting (thus all the lesser planeswalkers), the bad is... well he's Gideon. Who by the way can power Heart of Kiran and attack at the same time... that's not strong at all...
Honestly reflector mage was a symptom of CoCo being ridiculous. Sure lets give green an instant tempo card that builds their board by 2 creatures... and then give them creatures that make them a permissions deck too. (cough spell queller). The creatures themselves are fine, it was CoCo that made it stupid. (yes I know neither of those are green however they fit into the archetype which was already strong)
Someone earlier hit it on the head the WHITE GREEN SMASH PUNY everyone attitude needs to get slapped hard by someone above R&D's head. Thus Gideon and all the other recent shenanigans.
This is exactly what I've been thinking. Everything about Gideon makes him a prime candidate for banning, yet banning him also wouldn't have severe consequences, as Mardu and other decks will still be playable without him. As for Heart or Scrounger, banning either one of these would actually destroy Mardu Vehicles.
But I disagree on applying the logic of Emrakul's ban on kitty: unlike Emmy, kitty doesn't have protection from Instants. While this does force you to keep an instant removal at the ready, you still have a fighting chance. Sure that might be a little oppressive but hardly at the same level as Emrakul.
You should be running some type of burn if you're in red. Shock has an incredibly high amount of decent value targets in vehicles...inspector, motorist, scrapheap, toolcraft... doesn't sound like a useless card in the 75 if you can target half the threat suite in a deck with a roughly 30% meta share. It just happens to also break up the combo. Sounds like a fine playable to me.
If you're in black the answers are so plentiful it's ridiculous. You have transgress which is great against everything but vehicles. You have a whole bevy of kill spells. I don't find bristling hydra or blossoming defense warping in my meta...I run to the slaughter instead of whining for a ban. Oh wait that's also fantastic against the combo.
Counterspells are good against any threat and dispel will win you stack wars and protect your threats. Also great against the combo.
Walking ballista? Yeah it's a freaking amazing card that, surprise, is great against the combo. Strong enough for vintage play, castable turn 2 in ANY deck...
I haven't seen a single mono green list that would stand a chance against anything right now, so I don't think greens lack of answers is an issue considering the threat suite in the color is off the charts right now.
The cat combo isn't warping. In fact, I would go so far as to say that if you build a deck with no answers to the cat combo and you want it banned then you should also ask them to ban BG and vehicles because you have zero answers for anything in your deck. Being unable to appropriately answer a threat on turn 3 OR turn four, even when on the draw, is evidence of weak mulligan decisions or deck lists. You're 10 cards deep in your library at that point...come on.
They can't jam the combo with dispel protection until T7 (if they hit 7 lands lol) in jeskai, or turn 6 in the green variants with a servant of the conduit out (and those lists don't even run the card).
Get out of here with this ban crap. Leave the format, and consumer confidence, alone and give them both a chance to correct themselves. I already have several people at my LGS (which has struggled to keep decent turnouts for standard events) talking about leaving if they ban anything else.
I still regularly win with home brews and T2 decklists at my LGS and it's not like I'm playing people running only commons and preconstructed decks. I'm freaking playing against the last open/GP/whatever top 8 stock list.
Did you read the many posts before yours? They address pretty much everything except "just quit I'm right you're wrong".
I still believe they wait till Amonhket to ban Guardian as banning it this soon will hurt consumer confidence.
From a business perspective, local stores suffer more from declining Standard attendance than Wizards. The money we pay for playing and individual cards goes to the store. Wizards gets its revenue largely from selling sealed products to local stores and retailers. Wizards' sales might be slipping a bit, but unless several gaming stores have recently closed down due to lack of Standard attendance, I doubt Wizards is going to be severely worried about its own profits in the near term.
Lastly, why are people still comparing Heart of Kiran to Smuggler's Copter? Haven't we already established that these two cards are almost completely different?
At the GP Level? Watch Day 1 of GP Utrechet and you'll see some cool brews! You know what happens when good Magic players play Tier 1 decks? They stomp the brews and we get the established meta game as we know it. 4c Saheeli is the newest innovation that has been constantly tweaked and now it's poised to push G/B right out of the format. This is nothing new, many players have seen this at the PPTQ level and RPTQ level, the G/B decks are built to prey on Mardu (look this match up isn't even that GOOD in their favor) and what winds up happening is this; Somewhere in the swiss they play against Saheeli variations and get eaten up, then as the swiss enters it's last few rounds we see a curiously high percentage of Mardu Vehicles...what happened? Well Mardu Ate the Saheeli decks and boom you see the Top 8's being something liek 4 Mardu and a combo of G/B or 4c saheeli.
Jeskai Saheeli is gone, and has been replaced with a value engine of creatures, and cards that can win by themselves. The combo is just one part that deck, it's capable of beating you without but the moment you disrespect the combo is comes down to flick you off.
You can win FNM with Tier 2 decks, but I promise you that if players are simply playing stock lists then they aren't doing their homework, decks need to customized to meet the meta they are being played in. It just so happens that sometimes those metas are the top 3 decks, or should I say top 2.
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
Preach! *throws hands to the sky*
This this this this this! Except that I do play control now and then.
You'd better bet that they feel the cash burn otherwise why would they change anything at all? Who is driven to buy product? Standard players. How do stores get people in to buy product? FNM and other events. Attendance down at GPs and big events is the trickle UP from people quitting the format and in lots of cases the game entirely.
The one two punch was CoCo domination for way too long and the idiotic decision to shorten the rotation cycle thus making your investment in cards almost an entire waste. People were stating plainly that they were quitting or investing in Modern and abandoning standard and that's what they did. WotC cannot survive on just the small 'pro' pool of players who think it's fine to rotate more often. They need brick and mortar standard to be successful and popular for all parts of MTG to be profitable. Look at their admission of guilt! They used the words fun or not fun repeatedly throughout the announcement.
We're all here talking because we love the game. Pros before the last release rated Standard 3 out of 10 for fun.
I completely agreed with them. Right now I'd rate Standard a 2/10. If copycat sits as is until regular rotation it'll be 1/10. They cannot allow further dwindling numbers in Standard.
I just wish instead of competing with FNM by launching this 'Saturday' promo with product they'd give that special product out at FNM to solidify new players and more opt ins for everyone to benefit. Saturday competes and if I go on Sat I can't make Friday. Lots of people will fall into that hole as well.
<crosses fingers> R&D needs to read posts like above and get their thumbs out and to work on a better game! Peace.
1) Modern has gained a ton of momentum, players who were once hardcore standard players have decided to buy into modern (Myself Included)
2) Standard fires but the numbers are nothing like they used to be, there's a an unhappiness with the standard format that goes way beyond the banning's themselves.
3) WIn a Boxes fire with 6-8 players only. During Theros/Khans we used to have over 12-16 and some instances 20.
4) It's modern season, so many grinders are aiming to build and jam modern decks, but I can remember not caring about modern because standard used to be really good.
In short, more answers don't solve the problem, they can't. When creatures come with 2/3 bodies + extra etb effects that aren't 1 shot effects we get a snowball effect. Creatures provide "virtual" card advantage now, as do PW's. SPells and reactive cards take a back seat to this kind of magic and we get what we've been getting for a while 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 think there was more than just that; it wasn't just a one two punch. Because before that one two punch was fetchland+battleland Standard where your manabase cost as much as that of a Modern deck's manabase... and possibly even more, as the Standard decks were running more fetchlands than most Modern decks do. They might have figured it would be okay because, hey, it's fine in Modern, but in Modern there's at least some hate for the interaction but Wizards of the Coast opted to not bother with any of that.
CopyCat could be solved by having some better answers around. Rending Volley, Torpor Orb, Pithing Needle... those are cards that thwart the combo and can be good against other decks. Heck, Pithing Needle may be outright maindeckable right now, as it has considerable power against both CopyCat and Mardu Vehicles (it even stops Scrapheap Scrounger!); it's kind of meh against BG but even there it has its uses. It's actually surprising Pithing Needle isn't legal; it's a useful answer effect to have around, and from Mirrodin Besieged until Battle for Zendikar, either it or Phyrexian Revoker (which has a very similar effect) was always legal.
Of course, right now Wizards of the Coast is in an unenviable situation, though admittedly of their own design as they were the ones that kept pushing threats and weakening answers. If they ban more cards, that'll really hurt the confidence of Standard players and, like the previous round of bannings, might not even do that much to fix the format. But if they don't, they'll still have a format people don't seem to like even after those bans (I actually wonder what the format would be like if not for those bans?). The big issue is that it isn't like Jace and Stoneforge where there were just two really problematic cards and removing them would fix things up, or even Affinity where you just had one particular deck that was way overpowered and had to be stamped out. It's more like the format itself (rather than one particular part of it as was the case with Jace/Stoneforge, Affinity, and Skullclamp for that matter) is messed up and that's not really something you can fix up with bans. Actually a bit reminiscent of the Urza's Saga block, where they had to just hit a ton of different cards in order to get the format into something decent.
You are absolutely right. The pain of a declining Standard environ was much longer than just the 1-2 I referred to. Locally though, it was the two things that really broke a lot of people where I play.
Yeah, this is years of bad development decisions culminating into what we're seeing now.
To be honest I really want to see another wave of bannings happen again. Some combination of HoK/Gideon/Cat/Scrounger would be ideal.
R&D and the FFL are rotten to the core, and there needs to be another "get pulled into the president's office and yelled at" moment like there was during Urza's Saga to insure that a massive overhaul to the development of this game happen.
I'm of the opinion, as others have stated, that I'd rather see nothing banned at this time. I wouldn't be surprised to see the Cat go though, so I won't be surprised either way. I highly doubt they'd ban Gideon, but stranger things have happened.
While this thread is focused on Standard bannings, I'm going to sidetrack a little and talk about my opinions on what I think the state of the game itself is on a whole. And as Standard is a big part of the game overall I think it's pertinent.
There are two specific events in the history of the game I think are of special relevance currently. For those newer to the game, Mark Rosewater has written a vast amount of articles on just about every aspect of the game you can think of. The first one that I feel that's led Standard to where it currently is was posted on June 2, 2008 titled "The Year of Living Dangerously". In this article we are introduced, among other things, to a new rarity of card called the "Mythic Rarity". Mark stated a few points which have been referenced increasingly lately:
"How are cards split between rare and mythic rare? Or more to the point, what kind of cards are going to become mythic rares? We want the flavor of mythic rare to be something that feels very special and unique. Generally speaking we expect that to mean cards like Planeswalkers, most legends, and epic-feeling creatures and spells. They will not just be a list of each set's most powerful tournament-level cards."
As well as:
"We've also decided that there are certain things we specifically do not want to be mythic rares. The largest category is utility cards, what I'll define as cards that fill a universal function. Some examples of this category would be cycles of dual lands and cards like Mutavault or Char."
I thinks it's quite easy to say that Mythics printed in sets nowadays are the exact opposite of those statements. While not every Mythic is, you'd be hard pressed to find a deck at the top tables that wasn't comprised of a notable number of Mythics; the aforementioned Gideon, for exameple.
The second article, again written by Maro, is titled "New World Order". One of the main points of the article is the decision to reduce the complexity of cards at the common rarity to help alleviate new player confusion. Instead of individually powerful creatures/spells/effects at common, they shifted towards a more "strategic complexity". He provided an example for those who where concerned that this shift would be boring:
"For those that are worried that this is boring, I ask you to simply try the following experiment. Make two decks of just vanilla creatures and common sorceries. (This is very similar to a beginner product we made long ago named Portal.) Find a player of a similar skill level to your own and play the decks against each other. What you will find is that these games are actually quite interesting. It's easy to get caught up in all the complexity of Magic that you forget how much fun the base of the game is—and not just fun, skillful."
What do these have to do with Standard bannings? I feel that these particular decision, more specifically the lack of revisiting them, are 2 of the main reasons why our current Standard has become the way it is. Newer players may not realise, Magic was literally the first trading card game in existence, being first published in 1993. As pointed out in part 1 of a 2 part interview with Richard Garfield on StarCityGames Premium side, the trademark for Trading Card Game is in Richard Garfield's name. Let that sink in for a moment. Everything that Magic did in the early days was completely new ground. As time progressed and other similar games started to pop up it was only a matter of time before Wizards had to re-evaluate certain aspects of the game. When the Mythic Rarity came out and when the New World Order was first implemented both made sense given the direction the game was headed. Wizards needed to get the player base to continue to grow for Magic to prosper further. And both early on certainly accomplished that. I feel that the game is at a point though where those concepts need to be revisited and reviewed to see if they are still in the best interest of the game and helping to increase the player base. The game has been at that point for a good while now actually. Since (and including) the Shards of Alara block (when the Mythic Rarity was introduced) there have been a total of 17 "Standard" blocks and core sets released at present. 2008-now. That's approximately 9 years. That's a long time, in my opinion, to go without re-evaluating if the game is still going in the right direction.
I'm not suggesting that they do away with Mythics, or make cards at common hyper-confusing. But I do feel that both concepts really need to get a good hard look at by Wizards, and they need to ask themselves "are these decisions still correct?".
Now, as for bannings in standard, Sam Stoddard I think pretty much hit the nail on the head when he stated that the creatures have gotten better while the answers have gotten worse (I'm paraphrasing, I don't have a link to his exact tweet). I don't feel that interactions like the copycat combo themselves are the issue, but rather the lack of efficient interaction. CoCo itself wasn't the problem per se; it was the cards that existed in that Standard at the time with it that made it too good. The seeming push to weaken "spell" based Magic while making creatures (mostly at rare and mythic mind you) better and better. The game becoming more and more Midrange: The Gathering as opposed to Magic: The Gathering over the past few Standards. The obvious-even-to-new-players warping almost to the point of ignoring of the color pie and what each color originally had strengths and weaknesses in. The almost comical way Wizards is (in my opinion) trying to covertly get people to be less interested in formats that don't sell packs (Legacy to expensive? Getting Priced out of Modern? There's always Standard! Oh, that's stale you say? You could always draft!). These are what I feel are causing the current Standard, in addition to the more recent ones, to have become the way they are. Personally, I haven't played Standard in well over a year or so, partly due to not finding a deck that I consider challenging yet fun and reasonably affordable. I've been slowly buying into a Legacy deck. I can find "I smash my creature into your creature, ok your turn. You smash your creature into my creature, ok my turn" interesting for only so long. I'm primarily an aggro player, but I have played other deck styles over they years. I'd love to see reasonable counter magic, reasonable removal make a comeback. But Wizards doesn't want newer players to feel bad if their creature gets countered or dies too soon. So I'll wait, patiently, cautiously optomistically, that we see a return of decent answers to the format.
Vi Veri Veniversum Vivus Vici.
22% of the meta means nothing when it is the bottom 22%
If this isn't the most disingenuous line I've seen in these forums in my ten (10) years of membership on MTGS then I don't know what the hell is.
Bottom 22%? Rly?
Many thanks to HotP Studios. Special thanks to DNC for this great sig.
You are also aware that a large portion of the games it does win it wins without the combo at all?
I'd say at least half the games it wins are a variation of Whirler Viruoso, Skysovereign and Chandra, Torch of Deviance rather than the straight up combo, because they literary board the combo out.
http://magic.tcgplayer.com/db/article.asp?ID=13846&writer=Brian Braun-Duin&articledate=3-10-2017
He makes a good point about formats being solved so quickly.
I am going to disagree with him about Ravnica/Time Spiral standard being solved in today's age though. One thing he forgot about RAV/TSP was the fact that it had such an enormous card pool, and that card pool did not have all the power concentrated in a few rares and mythics. It probably would have been "solved" in the way Legacy is today.
The smaller sets with tournament staples being solely at the rare/mythic spectrum mean formats get solved faster.
He's just pointing out they 22% doesn't necessarily translate to more top 8 placements. 22% just means that appeared 22% of the time at Standard events, not necessarily in the top 8.
Winding Constrictor, Heart of Kiran, and Felidar Guardian
So essentially, the centerpieces of the only 3 prominent decks in Standard right now. If Wizards bans these cards, that would effectively be a reset button on the entire Standard format. Is that what we're hoping for here???
100% truth. MaRo and his "make White and Green and creatures good at all costs" regime need to be reigned in and/or shaken up yesterday. FFL clearly needs new blood, or expansion. I always thought these groups need a rotational schedule, or some built in mechanism to keep the game from moving in the same direction for too long. It feels like Magic has been dumbed down and over simplified, which is available in other games if that's what you want. It feels less and less like Magic each year.
dirty kitty is unintended and too oppressive, causing limits to deckbuilding all around.
Heart of Kiran is another symptom that vehicles were simply made too powerful. Colorless and screwing all sorcery speed removal in an environ where answers aren't good enough is too far.
You could target scrapheap scrounger instead of Heart of Kiran but there's still way too many 2 drop 3/x ways to make kiran go. The devastating speed and efficiency of Mardu vehicles can't be left unchecked as it also narrows what has the proper percentages to be playable (high win percentages vs the field). It's pretty much a 2 deck format, knocking those two down a peg (not entirely) will open up more decks to compete.
Felidar and Heart don't solve everything, they're going to have to design better and not count on the faster rotation they planned for or bans to fix their carelessness.
Others have listed a bunch of decks that aren't quite good enough. I think many of those get to step up.
Also there ARE answers against Heart of Kiran in Fatal Push, Fragmentize, Natural Obsolescence, and more. Similarly, Scrapheap Scrounger can be answered with Declaration in Stone, Flaying Tendrils, Kalitas + Fatal Push, and more. And these aren't janky removals either; they can be used in a plethora of situations. I agree that there should be some changes in Standard but banning cards when there are already answers to is not an effective solution. There's not much that can be done when the players refuse to play readily available answers.
I am generally delighted with the subject and discussion occurring here. That said ...
A quick look at this page tells me that Copycat is not the bottom 22% of the meta. If Copycat is not the bottom 22%, then is the above comment trolling? spam? borderline? which side of the border?
As stated above, I can understand this response. Is it stronger than it needs to be?
Maybe? Interpretation? Defense? Copycat having 22% meta share seems like data which, if true, is relevant.
Can we please just walk away from talking about the idea that Copycat is the bottom 22% of the meta along with questioning and defending it? If anyone thinks that Copycat is really the bottom 22% or that further discussion of that idea is helpful, please PM me.
Otherwise, please continue this great discussion. Thanks! - hoser2
RNA Standard: Grixis Midrange, Jund Deathwhirler, Sultai Vannifar
GRN Standard: Red Midrange, Mono-Blue Tempo, Wr Aggro, Gruul Experimental Dinosaurs, Sultai Midrange, Jeskai Midrange
Modern: Bant Spirits
Forcing a single archetype in all formats: too many colors, bad mana.
Ali said, "Emrakul was banned because she ended games too easily when cast. Games could be won after she was cast but it was extremely difficult to do so. When you played against an Emrakul deck she was always looming over the game and as soon as she was cast, the usually came to an end."
That whole reasoning completely applies to dirty kitty. Words from WotC mouth I'll be shocked and appalled if they don't ban it. There is no game after it hits and instead of rolling the dice (Marvel) you get to plan how you hit it. It is completely oppressive to even brew knowing you MUST answer it.
I agree Gideon is crazy strong, especially since maybe they've realized it and scaled back all the planeswalkers since. The good is maybe they've realized the error and are correcting (thus all the lesser planeswalkers), the bad is... well he's Gideon. Who by the way can power Heart of Kiran and attack at the same time... that's not strong at all...
Honestly reflector mage was a symptom of CoCo being ridiculous. Sure lets give green an instant tempo card that builds their board by 2 creatures... and then give them creatures that make them a permissions deck too. (cough spell queller). The creatures themselves are fine, it was CoCo that made it stupid. (yes I know neither of those are green however they fit into the archetype which was already strong)
Someone earlier hit it on the head the WHITE GREEN SMASH PUNY everyone attitude needs to get slapped hard by someone above R&D's head. Thus Gideon and all the other recent shenanigans.
This is exactly what I've been thinking. Everything about Gideon makes him a prime candidate for banning, yet banning him also wouldn't have severe consequences, as Mardu and other decks will still be playable without him. As for Heart or Scrounger, banning either one of these would actually destroy Mardu Vehicles.
But I disagree on applying the logic of Emrakul's ban on kitty: unlike Emmy, kitty doesn't have protection from Instants. While this does force you to keep an instant removal at the ready, you still have a fighting chance. Sure that might be a little oppressive but hardly at the same level as Emrakul.