You have started to see the results of changes you've been making in set design. Standard has been suffering. You've had to ban cards and created backlash from that. It hasn't gotten better on it's own like you hoped when you delayed another set of bans. You are stuck between a rock and a hard place, bans are horrible for Standard, but Standard is horrible anyway, and there is no guarantee that new bans will fix the format. You seem to have noticed that the answers in the format just don't match up to the threats.
But I want you to know that isn't the only problem with your Standard design. There are a number of things you really need to work on right now in order to make a varied and relatively balanced Standard format. The Answers vs. Threats equation is just a small part of the equation, and hints at a larger underlying perspective with how you design sets, particularly in regards to marketing cards to the player archetypes, Timmy, Spike, Johnny, and recently Vorthos, and also how you address limited in regards to card rarity and power.
Imagine a skyline with a mountain range, a cityscape or a mix of both. Each point along the skyline, and it's height, represents the rough power level of a card within the context of Standard and the cards it can synergize with and that fight against it which can turn up in the main board (side board has reduced effect compared to the main-board). Historically, this skyline has been a bunch of gradually sloping hills and mountains and mid-tall buildings with the occasional skyscraper, but the recent standard has been closer to a situation where there are tiny spiky hills and a scattering of huge skyscrapers and a handful of taller buildings. Now imagine this in the context of deck archetypes and colors. The recent Standard has had those skyscrapers and tall buildings focused almost entirely into setups that work well with each-other, while older standards tended to spread the skyscrapers out in ways that they never had more than one or two in a single deck, and there was always a number of similar height skyscrapers that fit into other decks and archetypes and colors, and that was on top of more even slopes to the hills and more mid-range height buildings rather than a lack and tiny spiky hills.
If we arranged this like numbers, from 1 to 10, it would be something like this, 10's are those skyscrapers, 1 and 2 cards are limited fodder that are just too bad to play in standard, likely due to having strictly better or close to that options for their archetypes:
Standards that work well:
Deck type/color A:
1 2 1 4 3 5 4 7 3 10 8 2
Deck type/color B:
1 3 2 5 2 8 9 8 2 1 4 7
Deck type/color C:
10 2 4 8 5 2 5 7 6 3 1 1
Deck type/color D:
1 1 3 4 3 6 7 6 8 9 3 9
Recent Standard on the other hand has been more like:
Deck type/color A:
1 2 1 4 3 1 2 1 2 2 9
Deck type/color B:
2 8 9 10 10 10 9 4 6 7 1
Deck type/color C:
1 4 2 10 10 9 9 8 9 4 2
Deck type/color D:
1 2 1 2 1 2 4 8 2 5 6
As you can see, the card pool in this case heavily favors the deck type/color B and C. Of course, some of those numbers are cards that fit within multiple decks, but might have different scores depending on which deck they are in. For instance, a card that is an 8 in deck B might be the 5 in deck D, certainly one of the better cards in that deck type, but it is far more powerful in the context of deck B. This recent Standard also has much more limited fodder as a percentage of the card pool, and not enough non-limited fodder to fill out all the deck archetypes roughly evenly, on top of basically a couple of the archetypes having too many powerful cards focused in them.
This happens as a result of multiple set design policies, the first is the practice of keeping down the power level of common cards, and focusing the most powerful cards into the rare and mythic rarities. Due to the ratios of each type of card in Standard, there simply aren't enough rares and mythics in ANY standard format to support having them as the only card types where a significant percentage of them are the most powerful cards in the format. And you aren't even just doing that, you seem to be jamming more limited fodder into rares and even mythics than before, even while the limited fodder in uncommon and common rarities has pushed out the non-limited fodder cards in those rarities by huge margins.
A healthy standard should have non-limited fodder cards be at least something like:
Mythics 80%
Rares 75%
Uncommons 50%
Commons 20%
Recently though, it's seemed like the limited fodder cards of sets lately have been something like:
Mythics 50%
Rares 65%
Uncommons 80%
Commons 95%
Note, I'm pulling these numbers out of my ass, it's just the overall _feel_ of how cards power levels are distributed in regards to constructed options.
This means, regardless of how big the actual card pool is, the effective _constructed competitive_ card pool is much smaller than it perhaps used to be or should be. A small card pool isn't inherently bad for Standard, it's one of it's benefits, you just need to make sure that the constructive competitive portion of the card pool is balanced in how much of it goes into different colors and deck archetypes, which it has not been, and that there is enough of a constructive competitive card pool to fill in the cards needed for a full set of different archetypes and some other optional lesser budget decks and the like to encourage brewing and the occasional metagame surprise, and not too much of the highest power constructed cards are focused in a stuff that can fit into a single deck.
Now, I'll admit, restricting power of commons and uncommons can actually help limited environments, and there is limited design space for cards that are good in competitive constructed but not so powerful in limited that they aren't forced into mythic or rare rarities.
This, I think, is one of the biggest drawbacks to having small sets. Larger sets let you control the ratios of strong limited cards, while also letting you make sure you have enough competitive constructed cards. If you really want to insist on current power level ratios in the cards for the sake of limited based on rarity, I think the best way to allow you to also save Standard might be to eliminate the use of the current rough sizes of small sets, switching to the current large-set sizes, and introduce a new even bigger set size. This may increase the costs of Standard, but it would help make it easier to fit in a large enough diversity of constructive competitive cards without hurting limited too much.
The other option, the one I'd recommend, is cutting away a lot of the limited fodder at all rarities. The success of cube formats proves that you don't need to have weaker cards all over the place to get a good limited format, it might be a more challenging and swingy one, but it'll still be playable, especially if the limited environment also has strong answers at lower rarities to let players counteract the swinginess.
The next point I'd like to bring up is well illustrated by elements from the Return to Ravnica and Theros block era Standard, and some of the misconceptions you may have developed from it. One of the things I've heard is that you think Thoughtsieze was too strong for Standard, and was a good reason to avoid a needed reprint like Liliana of the Veil. The real problem was too much power was focused overall in mono-black devotion, not that one specific strong tool, and that other colors didn't have comparable tools to help them compete with thoughtseize. For instance, Thoughtseize would have been a lot more fair in a Standard that also, say, had Counterspell for blue, Goblin Guide for red, Vengevine for Green, and Path to Exile for white, and where black didn't have so big a set of cards that would count as above a '7' in Mono-black devotion, on top of powerful ways to hate on some of the otherwise strongest cards in that Standard in the form of Lifebane Zombie, which was devastating against cards that could have been much better like Brimaz, King of Oreskos, giving what was already shaping up to be a powerful deck on it's own strong hate against some of the best cards of the format.
In general, I think you should make sure that strong cards are roughly evenly distributed, and you don't give powerful hate against middle-range power decks to the most powerful decks. Giving Lifebane Zombie to mono-black devotion in that Standard was a problem, but giving something similarly powerful to a theoretically powerful mono-white deck that would hate on mono-black devotion might have been okay, especially since mono-black devotion would still have been about as strong against other decks since it had some other options besides the life-hater in the 3 drop slot that were plenty strong and good at granting devotion. So if you have a deck that looks like it'll be very strong, don't give it powerful hate cards against other decks, but if you have middle-range decks, give them powerful hate cards against the strongest decks.
Next is an issue that revolves around limited and rarity to some degree. The dreaded Pack Rat. Pack Rat is an example of a card that is a complete monster in limited, to the point I'd hesitate to print it at all, and if I did, it would probably only be as a mythic while some degree of hate against it is found in every color at uncommon, and possibly at least once at common in one of the enemy colors, but isn't nearly as powerful in constructed, although still a pretty good card in that. This is a type of card design I strongly suggest you avoid having too much of. It's okay occasionally, just because it's interesting, but there are never enough mythic slots in Standard to justify putting many cards that aren't major powerhouses in constructed competitive into those slots, and mythics don't turn up often enough in limited to justify putting a card in a set that is not good in constructed, but is at mythic because it is too powerful for limited. Pack Rat wasn't that bad, but some cards have been. Just watch out for printing at all cards that are so powerful in limited they have to be mythic, but not powerful enough in constructed to justify use of a mythic slot.
The next problem that leads into is Vorthos. The Vorthos in me has been looking at you funny for a while now. You've been playing favorites a bit too much, granting pet characters powerful cards that you know might be broken just because you want to illustrate how strong they are _in the card game_ when they are powerful in the story, but some other characters who are supposed to be powerful in the story get outright bad cards that are bad in every format just because you don't care much for them, or because you don't care enough and did a last minute nerf that you wouldn't have dared do to one of your precious ones. This causes a lot of story significant cards that have high rarity for their story significance, especially things like planeswalkers and legendary creatures, to have wildly varying power levels compared to each-other even within the same rarity, and creates a lot of the worst and most unplayable cards found in the top rarities, whose only justification for those rarities is that they are story relevant. Don't do this. Seriously, don't, Vorthos is mature enough that the most effective constructed and limited strategies don't also have to use the most powerful in-game cards. Mana costs are there for a reason. You can make something very powerful in effects and abilities, then give it a mana cost appropriate to those. Don't over-do last-minute nerfs to characters you don't care about (such as, say, Emmara Tandris) while also holding holy some other character cards that might deserve nerfs (a more recent example being Gideon, Ally of Zendikar), treat characters equally balance wise, regardless of how much you like them or story wise, if you want to make them more powerful, raise the mana costs as well to appropriate levels for that power.
The next issue is ramping and mana cost reductions... you're doing it wrong, and I feel like I need to bring it up with how much you've done of it lately, what with Emerge, Emrakul, Delve and Improvise. The think I think you need to take to heart with mana cost reductions and ramping is to remember that the more drastic the potential cost reduction, the more of a combo card something becomes. Something that shifts a single mana for lower cost stuff, or a couple mana for higher cost stuff is fine as a thing that encourages synergy, when things start having the potential to basically be free, or bring powerhouses down to 1-2 mana, that is when things start behaving more like combo than synergy cards. Players will find a way, and given the kind of things that can slip through your testing, like copy-cat, it isn't worth the risk. Cards like Elvish Mystic and Stoic Rebuttal are fine, small potential cost adjustments and synergy are the name of the game there. Things like Tasigur, the Golden Fang is the kind of thing I'd be much more wary of, a large potential cost reduction on a card that is already powerful with a much smaller cost reduction, if Tasigur had been without delve, but a similar mechanic that exiled 4 cards from your graveyard (only once) to reduce his cost to 3B he'd still have been a great card. For cost reductions of cards not intended for combo deck (but for synergy focused decks), I'd avoid letting cards reduce their mana cost by more than 1 for cards at 2-3 mana, and by more than 2 for cards that cost 4+ mana. Otherwise, I'd design the card as if it were a combo card. For ramp, 1-2 mana range costing ramp would only ramp you by 1, 3 mana range would ramp you by 2 if it's easy to get rid of or prevent and otherwise tend to be more of a resilient 1 mana ramp, while 4+ mana costing ramp could ramp you by 2, even for stuff hard to get rid of or stop, like Explosive Vegetation, and I'd avoid things that ramp you by 3 or more outside of things clearly intended for combo, for the same reasons as noted above.
Another thing to remember for Standard is that you want flexibility to do minor brewing. Minor brewing should be encouraged most by budget players, this means they need decent tools at common and uncommon to play around with lots of different strategies. Things like uncommon engine cards, full suites of aggro cards in red, white, and black across cmcs that a deck would need, full suites of tempo cards in blue with the right cmc distribution, full suites of midrange or ramp or aggro or something in green. At least one semi-viable control-ish deck that only needs perhaps one rare as a sweeper and only 2 colors but can the rest of the way be made up of commons and uncommons, without missing out on format relevant hate cards like ways to fight different card types that commonly turn up in the format's top decks (which means you need uncommon or common planeswalker hate that is constructed viable if you have a main-deck planeswalker staple like Gideon, Ally of Zendikar). At least one semi-viable combo deck that relies entirely on uncommon and common cards. These decks may use options that are not quite as good overall as the top decks, but they should generally still be using some stuff that is viable enough to sometimes turn up in meta-shifts, that aren't strictly worse than the rare equivalents for the archetypes involved.
The next issue is inflated CMCs you've been sticking on answer cards. Here are some guidelines I'll give you. The turn that a nut-draw aggro deck can win? That cmc has to be the one that your sweeper that hits all the aggro cards comes online. So if a nut-draw aggro or tempo deck can kill you at turn 4, you need a sweeper that kills everything in the deck permanently (the aggro deck that can do this can't have recursive options) at 4 cmc, such as Languish or Day of Judgment. When the midrange starts getting strong recursive creatures or creatures that ignore an aggro-focused sweeper (such as stuff that can tank a Languish) or otherwise strong removal resistant creatures (such as stuff with constant indestructibility or hexproof), 1 higher cmc is where you need the format's 'hard sweeper' so if you have something at 3 cmc like Predator Ooze, Dungrove Elder, Leatherback Baloth or Troll Ascetic, you need your hard sweeper to be 4 cmc like Supreme Verdict or Day of Judgment, with Languish not being good enough. If you restrict that kind of thing to 4 cmc, like having Primal Huntbeast, Cudgel Troll, Ember Swallower, or Phyrexian Obliterator, but don't have any 3 cmc resilient midrange threats, it's fine for your hard sweeper to be 5 cmc like Fumigate and to let yourself have a 4 cmc sweeper for anti-aggro like Languish. This sweeper needs to kill or partially kill at least some of the midrange threats either way, they can't all be 2 for 1 -ing both the sweepers and hard removal when they are the only creature on the board, for a midrange deck, so you need to be careful to vary up the midrange defenses available in Standard.
This is part of the reason why vehicles is such a problem this Standard. It's essentially a midrange deck that has too many threats that all defend from the same sort of single target answers and sweepers, with too low cmcs compared to when the sweepers come online.
Single target answers, of course, need to come even earlier than sweepers. Anti-aggro ones need to come online by turn 2 if aggro on a nut draw can win before turn 6 (basically all the time) and destroy the majority of aggro creatures, and hit at least part of the suite of midrange creatures in the format, at least enough of them that a good aggro deck can't be entirely made up of things it destroys permanently. It also needs to be instant speed and uncommon rarity at the worst, as well as 'main-deck worthy'. These 'single target answers' need to be in _every color_ including something like a counterspell in blue, and a fight spell in green, and permanently kill almost every strong aggro creature at 2 cmc or below. It's fine if these spells don't take out bigger stuff. You _do_ need to be able to start taking out bigger stuff as white, black, or blue by 3 cmc range, and do so at instant speed for black or blue, with cards along the lines of Murder or Cancel, unless something very weird is going on in the format, this is the point where you need much more resilient answers. If 2 cmc is the realm of stuff like Mana Leak, Smother, and Victim of Night, 3 cmc is the realm of stuff like Banishing Light, Cancel and Murder. 3 cmc and some more restrictive 2 cmc stuff might also be the realm where you start getting stronger answers to resilient threats that can counteract 2-for-one or stopping elements, using stuff like sacrifice effects, exile, and the like, while 4 cmc answers will generally just kill it dead for good regardless of it's special defenses somehow (so in a format with Thrun, the Last Troll you need something along the lines of Wrath of God).
For fighting combo 2 card combo, it's important to pay attention to discard and counterspells, so blue and black in particular, unless the combo is entirely creature-centric. If the first part of the combo comes online turn 3, then you need a main-deck counterspell that comes online turn 2, and a main-deck discard spell that comes online turn 1, both of which hit both parts of the combo, both the earlier part (which comes online turn 3) and the latter part (which comes online any time afterwards). If the first part of the combo comes online turn 4, then you are fine with just Cancel or Cancel+ and Distress. For instance, a combo that the first piece comes down turn 3, Saheeli, and the 2nd piece comes down turn 4 like the cat, then you need something like Counterspell or this in the format:
CounterbombUU Instant
Counter target spell with cmc 4 or less.
For the discard, you'd need something like Thoughtseize for CopyCat environment with Saheeli and the cat.
The counters AND discard have to BOTH be main-deck worthy at hit _both_ the combo pieces of _every_ 2 card combo of this type in the game, so things like Duress or Negate, which are sideboard cards, aren't sufficient, even if they hit both pieces of all the combos.
For combo that requires 3+ pieces or the first piece comes down turn 4 or later, you can be a bit more flexible with the cmcs, allowing for stuff like Cancel and Distress to fulfill the needs of the format.
I actually think that only blue and black having the ability to reliably deal with many sorts of spell-based combos might be one of the bigger problems with the way the color pie is set up.
That is all I can think of for now. Hope this helps.
Dear Wizards,
...The next issue is inflated CMCs you've been sticking on answer cards. Here are some guidelines I'll give you. The turn that a nut-draw aggro deck can win? That cmc has to be the one that your sweeper that hits all the aggro cards comes online. So if a nut-draw aggro or tempo deck can kill you at turn 4, you need a sweeper that kills everything in the deck permanently (the aggro deck that can do this can't have recursive options) at 4 cmc, such as Languish or Day of Judgment. ...
I think the OP is contributing some interesting discussion on intriguing and relevant topics. I also found the volume and organization overwhelming. So I will address only the above point, with the understanding that I have been too lazy to really parse the remainder of the OP.
With respect to the above quoted point. No. Just no. If your control deck can beat the the nut draw of an aggro deck with no interactions before running out a sweeper, that's just wrong. I think that standard based on the above guideline would be horribly unpopular and would indicate a massive distortion of standard in favor of control decks. Control decks should need to interact early to beat aggro nut draws.
There are almost certainly problems with standard. Is the idea of conditional sweepers at 4 and unconditional sweepers at 5 fundamentally flawed? I don't know. Arguably, sweepers are still too strong. The success of Company decks, Rally decks, Vehicle decks, Emrakul decks and Combo decks seems to be significantly based on the non-viability of pure creature decks. The apparent fact that the only decks that can succeed are able to dodge sweepers suggests that sweepers may arguably still be too strong.
This is the only standard I remember were Mono Red Aggro - Burn was unplayable, Not to mention White weenie , Suicide Black and Stompy green. Wizards didn't print enough 1 cmc 2 power creatures at common and uncommon rarity and the pump and burn spells are to watered down for aggro to be playable.
I think the OP is contributing some interesting discussion on intriguing and relevant topics. I also found the volume and organization overwhelming. So I will address only the above point, with the understanding that I have been too lazy to really parse the remainder of the OP.
With respect to the above quoted point. No. Just no. If your control deck can beat the the nut draw of an aggro deck with no interactions before running out a sweeper, that's just wrong. I think that standard based on the above guideline would be horribly unpopular and would indicate a massive distortion of standard in favor of control decks. Control decks should need to interact early to beat aggro nut draws.
There are almost certainly problems with standard. Is the idea of conditional sweepers at 4 and unconditional sweepers at 5 fundamentally flawed? I don't know. Arguably, sweepers are still too strong. The success of Company decks, Rally decks, Vehicle decks, Emrakul decks and Combo decks seems to be significantly based on the non-viability of pure creature decks. The apparent fact that the only decks that can succeed are able to dodge sweepers suggests that sweepers may arguably still be too strong.
"Beating" the nut draw wasn't what I intend here. The nut draw should still win, because the control deck typically wants to be on the draw, rather than on the play, and the aggro deck just finished their turn 4 and won while the control deck just had their 3 cmc turn. The idea is more standing a chance when they mis-play or the turn arrangement is backwards, but even if you are on the play as the control deck and hit with the sweeper, the aggro deck may still win, especially if they are getting through the last bits of damage with burn or hasty creatures while you have no mana on their next turn.
The only decks that can dodge sweepers you are describing aren't aggro decks, they're midrange decks. Company, Rally, and Vehicle decks are all midrange. My post even addressed how cmcs should match up compared to midrange decks, in that they should get conditional sweepers a turn after the midrange deck's start putting down their difficult to deal with threats, but that you shouldn't have multiple difficult to deal with threats that are all resisting the same answers (like vehicle decks). It's not so much control decks that are the reason for the current meta to be dominated by difficult to deal with threats, because there aren't enough of such to deal with them. It's that the current difficult to deal with threats are also the fastest and most powerful ways to win that are also semi-reliable, because things like vehicles are bonkers, and they generally are completely off curve for how much p/t they represent, while not being as full of 2-for-1 drawbacks as such things normally are for things like auras and pump spells, and just enough removal survives in the format to kill off the less resilient threats that also have high damage potential often enough to suppress them in the meta even more.
A midrange and a combo deck being too good is actually a sign that control is too weak, although it says little about sweepers for the combo deck side of things, since sweepers usually aren't how you fight combo.
I recall original Ravnica - Time Spiral Standard as being the most balanced and diverse format, with a typical top8 consisting of 8 entirely different deck types! This could be attributed to the "old" design principles the topicstarter outlined above, and to the special "Timeshifted" sub-set that increased the cardpool by a significant amount of old beloved cards, not tied to some set-special mechanics.
I think the OP is contributing some interesting discussion on intriguing and relevant topics. I also found the volume and organization overwhelming. So I will address only the above point, with the understanding that I have been too lazy to really parse the remainder of the OP.
With respect to the above quoted point. No. Just no. If your control deck can beat the the nut draw of an aggro deck with no interactions before running out a sweeper, that's just wrong. I think that standard based on the above guideline would be horribly unpopular and would indicate a massive distortion of standard in favor of control decks. Control decks should need to interact early to beat aggro nut draws.
There are almost certainly problems with standard. Is the idea of conditional sweepers at 4 and unconditional sweepers at 5 fundamentally flawed? I don't know. Arguably, sweepers are still too strong. The success of Company decks, Rally decks, Vehicle decks, Emrakul decks and Combo decks seems to be significantly based on the non-viability of pure creature decks. The apparent fact that the only decks that can succeed are able to dodge sweepers suggests that sweepers may arguably still be too strong.
"Beating" the nut draw wasn't what I intend here. The nut draw should still win, because the control deck typically wants to be on the draw, rather than on the play, and the aggro deck just finished their turn 4 and won while the control deck just had their 3 cmc turn. The idea is more standing a chance when they mis-play or the turn arrangement is backwards, but even if you are on the play as the control deck and hit with the sweeper, the aggro deck may still win, especially if they are getting through the last bits of damage with burn or hasty creatures while you have no mana on their next turn.
The only decks that can dodge sweepers you are describing aren't aggro decks, they're midrange decks. Company, Rally, and Vehicle decks are all midrange. My post even addressed how cmcs should match up compared to midrange decks, in that they should get conditional sweepers a turn after the midrange deck's start putting down their difficult to deal with threats, but that you shouldn't have multiple difficult to deal with threats that are all resisting the same answers (like vehicle decks). It's not so much control decks that are the reason for the current meta to be dominated by difficult to deal with threats, because there aren't enough of such to deal with them. It's that the current difficult to deal with threats are also the fastest and most powerful ways to win that are also semi-reliable, because things like vehicles are bonkers, and they generally are completely off curve for how much p/t they represent, while not being as full of 2-for-1 drawbacks as such things normally are for things like auras and pump spells, and just enough removal survives in the format to kill off the less resilient threats that also have high damage potential often enough to suppress them in the meta even more.
A midrange and a combo deck being too good is actually a sign that control is too weak, although it says little about sweepers for the combo deck side of things, since sweepers usually aren't how you fight combo.
At FNM-level, where I play, I typically play against 1-2 control decks at a 4 match event. These control decks always choose to be on the play when they can and never keep a hand without early interaction. In turns 2 and 3, they are killing and/or countering opposing plays. The aggro nut draws just don't ever play out. An aggro deck that can goldfish a win turn 4 will not be able to kill as quickly when their early plays are killed or countered. This reality, as I see it, defeats your logic for requiring turn 4 sweepers.
At FNM-level, where I play, I typically play against 1-2 control decks at a 4 match event. These control decks always choose to be on the play when they can and never keep a hand without early interaction. In turns 2 and 3, they are killing and/or countering opposing plays. The aggro nut draws just don't ever play out. An aggro deck that can goldfish a win turn 4 will not be able to kill as quickly when their early plays are killed or countered. This reality, as I see it, defeats your logic for requiring turn 4 sweepers.
Sure, things can happen the way you just described, but that doesn't necessarily mean the aggro deck stalls out and loses. The whole advantage of the aggro deck is that they can constantly push aggressive plays more often than the control deck has single-target answers, and the control deck shouldn't have more than 4 sweepers, and won't always draw into them early enough to play them on turn 4. Being on the play, rather than the draw, also means they have _less_ cards to interact with the aggro deck, while the aggro deck, with it's lower mana curve, is spitting out more threats. My experience with similar situations to what you describe at the FNM level have aggro decks able to just keep on chugging away and wittle the control deck down, even while facing one sweeper and individual answers to many of their threats, especially since control finishers typically can't block multiple small creatures. Having the 4 mana sweeper simply means the control deck has a chance, rather than auto-losing against the aggro decks, they instead simply have a bad matchup.
Now, admittedly, this depends on how well the aggro and control decks are balanced overall in other factors. If you don't have enough good aggro creatures, while the control deck has good versions of all the pieces it needs, or wizards gives the control deck a whole bunch of strong 2 for 1's or better on top of the sweepers, the aggro deck is going to be at a disadvantage, and the control deck will be OP. The best way to prevent this is to make sure other threats in the format ignore the 2for1's, particularly the combo and midrange and ramp decks, so the control would have trouble vs. those if it tried to be strong against the aggro decks.
One of the things I've heard is that you think Thoughtsieze was too strong for Standard, and was a good reason to avoid a needed reprint like Liliana of the Veil. The real problem was too much power was focused overall in mono-black devotion, not that one specific strong tool, and that other colors didn't have comparable tools to help them compete with thoughtseize.
Can't agree more on this one. It feels like a troll when they reprint something that is perfectly fine, give it to an already boosted midrange slugfest deck and then go "See guys? This is why we can't reprint Modern cards in Standard. They're too strong :^)". Just right now, people are saying that freaking Fetchlands are too strong for Standard and that they will never see print in Standard again because the 4C goodstuff degeneracy that happened not because fetchands but because they managed to slip fetcheable duals (seriously, what were they thinking when they decided to give Standard an Eternal-like manabase?) and with a block with emphasis on three colors still legal in Standard while they were at it. Fetchlands have been fine in previous standard format, but now they get the "too powerful"™ bull***** treatment.
Meanwhile no one bats an eye at the real culprit: the Battlelands. And of course no one does, since its the most recent design they need to sing it's praises and shill it like it was the best design ever while blaming the incompetence on fetchlands. Because hey, we need to complete the cycle after all, this one is not too powerful for Standard.
Thoughtseize was never overpowered. It was the rest of the format that was underpowered. The answer to Thoughtseize, without resorting to reprinting Leyline of Sanctity (not that reprinting it would have been in any way bad in an Enchantment set) was to have good stuff happening at 1cc in all colours because in a fast format when things play out quickly drawing Thoughtseize after a 3-4 turns is often simply terrible. As it was the format it was in was terribly slow and imbalanced as ever. Standard has in fact been too slow for too long, and will always be solvable when there are so few ways to attack the opponent's game- without a smattering spread over the appropriate colours of hand, land, graveyard, and creature destruction, preferably with some taxing and other prison cards and cheap board wipes, there is no way to really attack the best strategy once it is established, especially when the best strategy is almost invariably turn creatures sideways and play a big threat that must be answered. Thus the two deck format will reign supreme because the ways to control what the opponent is doing are neutered in the name of "what is fun for newbies" .
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I feel like the future future league wasn't compedative enough. They were more interested in seeing if the mechanics worked at a gameplay level than determining the future standard. Basically an arm of development not making a healthy standard.
They build vechicals decks and they built delirium and madness decks and emerge and energy decks. But they never built decks where they were mixing and matching mechanics synergisticly or as the OP was talking about shoving the straight up power cards into every deck.
There basically cannot be control decks if after you wrath your oponents gets back a scrapheap scounger and attacks you for 4 with heart of kiran or slams the difficult to remove but hard hitting Gideon (or other walker).. or both. You cannot be running ruinous path if half your opponents threats are only targetable at instant speed. They make all these answers situational.. which I think is fine.. then they made all the threats too diverse for anyone to possibly control. Make sure the counters are bad and the card draw expensive in life or mana. negate.. best counter in standard.
RB
Dreadshatter
Sorcery
Destory target Artifact or Plainswalker
Played in mardu vehicals for the mirror obviously.
The literial best card in this standard would be... rakdos charm.. it saw little to no play in its native standard but could you imagine this right now in standard. Or of course pithing needle... why isn't that in this standard? because no one would play vechicals?.. of course they would they still have to draw needle, keep it on board and name the right target.. that is interaction that is game play.
What kind of mad man prints a graveyard focused set like shadows over innstrad and then forgets to print any gravehate... not just bad gravehate... but any at all? I played learn from the past in my Esper dragons sideboard it got so bad (it was terrible) and now it is even worse without it. Even cranial archive is enough (and flavorful). You print any gravehate in standard and Emrakul isn't a problem (you'd just have to ban Aetherworks instead) and it wont be a case of people not playing the card but rather they actually have to worry about thier opponent having an answer not just slaming traverse the ulvenwald knowing that no matter what the game is over (although to be fair I have beaten emrakul).
Battle for zendikar was a terrible block, they couldn't make the interesting mechanic of processing actually work (How about you print some grave hate!) then they just started printing stupid cards in the second set. Can you believe we are in a standard where cards as dumb as thought-knot seer and reality smasher see no play?
I personally like shadows over innstrad even eldritch moon, emerge is scary, Emmie is broken (but with some grave hate it wouldn't be). But half the mechanics including Werewolves (what happend to duskwatch recruiter? ) were just overwhelmed by power cards. Like the OP meantions the power cards are too powerful.
Kaladesh is a case of trying to do too many new things all at the same time and not printing the saftey valve hate cards they used to do when trying new things. There is no way to remove energy once you have it... you can't stop your opponent repeatly spinning thier aetherworks once they have it. Vehicals basically reverse equipment they just didn't understand how powerful they were just like in mirridon with equipment. fragmatise as the only good artifact removal, no versitile cards you can main deck, no red artifact destruction, there is some green removal artifact removal, one playable blue card but only for energy decks main deck negate I guess, fatal push for black.
Rock paper scissors formats can look good, three very different decks all balanced against each other but they are actually terrible for non pro players. If you match ups are 70:30 50:50 30:70 and there is no way to improve your bad match ups by changing parts of your deck and your sideboard you are at the mercy of the match ups. You basically have to change your whole deck in response to any meta shifts, that is impossible for any semi casual player.
In a healthy format you could have 70:30 50:50 30:70 one week notice that 30:70 deck is popular.. change your deck to 55:45 47:53 45:55 to try to improve that match up to winnable. You might misjudge the meta and fail but if you can shift parts of your deck again (rather that straight up switching colours and cards into a different deck) inrespose to that meta change and not really be down as much $$$.
They build vechicals decks and they built delirium and madness decks and emerge and energy decks. But they never built decks where they were mixing and matching mechanics synergisticly or as the OP was talking about shoving the straight up power cards into every deck.
Very well put. They have a difficult time identifying the most powerful cards in the set and then getting reps in.
I am not sure what the purpose of the original post was. It says "Dear Wizards" and is written as if addressed to them but wouldn't it make more sense to send it to Wizards of the Coast rather than just posting it somewhere they aren't necessarily going to look? Perhaps it's meant as an "Open Letter" but the sheer volume (nine pages!) all but ensues no one at Wizards of the Coast of them will bother reading it even if you link it to them. I know I didn't bother reading much of the thing due to that absurd length. Brevity is the soul of wit.
(And yes, I know the line "brevity is the soul of wit" was actually meant as a joke because the character who says it, Polonius, doesn't take his own advice, but that doesn't mean this is bad advice)
Thoughtseize was never overpowered. It was the rest of the format that was underpowered.
The funny thing is, there's an easy way to prove the problem wasn't Thoughteize itself: The next Standard! Thoughtseize was still legal in Theros-Khans Standard, but the amount of play it saw dropped off significantly, both in terms of the number of decks playing it as well as the number of copies being played in the decks that did run it.
I feel like the future future league wasn't compedative enough. They were more interested in seeing if the mechanics worked at a gameplay level than determining the future standard. Basically an arm of development not making a healthy standard.
It's hard to tell how much of the problem is the Future Future League because you have to remember that cards get changed after the FFL is done and the cards we end up can be different enough that a previously innocuous card suddenly becomes amazing. The Standard format we play was not the Standard format the FFL tried making decks for.
Also, it's mostly only the recent years of Standard that have been a real problem; the FFL goes back much older and was around even when we had better Standards. They seem too much of a static variable to blame for Standard's recent issues. It is possible some really good members left and they were replaced with not-as-good members, but I think the problem is probably more on the actual development team's end as they're the ones that kept insisting threats needed to be better and answers needed to be worse.
1. Adding more cards to a set isn't that easy. One, that's extra costs in playtesting, card designing, and artwork commissioning. And Two, there are logistical issues with card printing that make it very difficult just to add a little more cards to a set.
2. Making commons/uncommons Cube-levels of strong isn't necessary for good Limited-to-Standard crossover cards. Look at KTK block. No Lightning Bolts. No Doom Blades. Just good clean tricolored and morph gameplay. And even then it provided one of the most well regarded limited settings of Magic's history and one of the more diverse and powerful standard seasons. Treasure Cruise notwithstanding.
3. If one color has a powerful, Modern-staple worthy tool, giving the other colors equally powerful tools is NOT going to balance Standard. That would only push players to mash as many modern staples together in one deck. Path to Exile, for instance, would have been a terrible reprint for RTR-THS standard. Imagine UW control and GW Midrange, decks that were already powerful at the time, running around with Paths. Or Mono-Black Devotion and Green Devotion Ramp jamming a playset of White-producing shocklands for some Paths, or even a playset of Scrylands if they were desperate enough for the full 4 Paths. The strong would have only gotten stronger. Also, the design space for unexplored mechanics and themes that are compatible with hyper-efficient creatures and spells is tight. An innovative card design like the Theros Gods, for instance, would never have seen the light of day with Path to Exile running around.
4. 1-mana dorks result in very, very swingy games. They narrow 3-cmc card design across the entire set significantly while also promoting heavily non-interactive gameplay. Killing the 2-cmc ramp spells was overkill,though. The jump from 2-to-4-to-6 mana is more manageable than going 1-to-3, 1-to-3-to-5, or even 1-to-3-to-6 on a lucky day.
All wizards need to do is bring back timeshifted . They could time shift 5 or 10 cards back in every new set. Time shifting gives them the ability to print deck filers without the need of bringing back core sets.
1. Adding more cards to a set isn't that easy. One, that's extra costs in playtesting, card designing, and artwork commissioning. And Two, there are logistical issues with card printing that make it very difficult just to add a little more cards to a set.
2. Making commons/uncommons Cube-levels of strong isn't necessary for good Limited-to-Standard crossover cards. Look at KTK block. No Lightning Bolts. No Doom Blades. Just good clean tricolored and morph gameplay. And even then it provided one of the most well regarded limited settings of Magic's history and one of the more diverse and powerful standard seasons. Treasure Cruise notwithstanding.
3. If one color has a powerful, Modern-staple worthy tool, giving the other colors equally powerful tools is NOT going to balance Standard. That would only push players to mash as many modern staples together in one deck. Path to Exile, for instance, would have been a terrible reprint for RTR-THS standard. Imagine UW control and GW Midrange, decks that were already powerful at the time, running around with Paths. Or Mono-Black Devotion and Green Devotion Ramp jamming a playset of White-producing shocklands for some Paths, or even a playset of Scrylands if they were desperate enough for the full 4 Paths. The strong would have only gotten stronger. Also, the design space for unexplored mechanics and themes that are compatible with hyper-efficient creatures and spells is tight. An innovative card design like the Theros Gods, for instance, would never have seen the light of day with Path to Exile running around.
4. 1-mana dorks result in very, very swingy games. They narrow 3-cmc card design across the entire set significantly while also promoting heavily non-interactive gameplay. Killing the 2-cmc ramp spells was overkill,though. The jump from 2-to-4-to-6 mana is more manageable than going 1-to-3, 1-to-3-to-5, or even 1-to-3-to-6 on a lucky day.
The stuff you describe goes against stuff I'm asking for, almost like you are deliberately misinterpreting me, or didn't read my post very well.
1. I noted adding more cards to a set as an option, but that I'd prefer them to smooth out card power levels, rather than have them jagged like they are now (with a small number of powerful cards limited to specific decks, and a majority of cards that aren't constructed playable). Extra costs in playtesting or card design are something they should have, given how many problems they've had of late hint at problems in those areas. Eliminating small sets won't have logistical printing issues, that would be silly, but it isn't the solution I'd prefer anyway.
2. There is no such thing as 'cube level'. Cubes can be all sorts of different power levels. The thing that I brought up cube for was to point out that commons and uncommons don't have to be extremely different in power level from rares and mythics for a limited environment to work well. KTK having decent limited I'd agree with (although I personally wasn't fond of it, or of morph and manifest, which were both logistically annoying and put too many over-costed 2/2s into the format, restricting the kind of things that could have interactions properly with creatures of that size), it being good for Standard though I'd consider a joke, given how it was pretty much where things started going downhill with stuff like Siege Rhino, printing fetches and then later printing fetchable duals in the same Standard (after but while KTK was still legal), and all the parasitism of things like delve on your own deck or things that interacted with morph only working with other things that interact with morph or morph cards, partially since morph in general isn't well suited to constructed play, given that a 3 mana 2/2 is bad in almost any constructed environment, and there were too few playable morph creatures or alternate flip-costs for the surprise factor to make itself evident. I'm just asking for more cards to crossover to Standard from limited at all rarities, and using cube as evidence that you don't need to super-nerf everything for limited to work well.
3. And what you talk about here goes directly against what I talked about, which was not including power cards in decks that are already powerful, which was part of why I said TS had issues with the mono-black devotion. Adding Path to Exile is something I'd agree would have caused problems in that format. BECAUSE it would fit into an already powerful deck. And I'm not asking for Modern staple worthy stuff either. I'm asking for equality between colors and/or deck types. That doesn't have to be in the form of Modern staples, it just means that they need to power up the weaker decks in the format, without powering up the already strong ones with cards that also fit into those decks. For example, in that format, there wasn't really mono-white devotion, despite flavor wise, the devotion mechanic made the most sense with white, because they printed so much better devotion cards in black and blue. They could easily have printed better devotion cards in white without powering up other decks that include white, such as control, which doesn't want to flood the board like devotion does, and it wouldn't even have to be something modern playable. Gray Merchant of Asphodel isn't a Modern card after all, but was a major powerhouse in Standard.
4. I never said we needed 1 mana dorks, just that they are fine, although totally eliminating them from all standards seems silly, it is certainly possible to craft some Standards without them that have stronger 3 cmc spells to take advantage of the situation like you mention. When I talked about ramp or other mana cost manipulating things, I seem to recall talking about restricting how much ramp can be done by ramp spells at different CMC ranges, rather than letting too much stuff like delve through that tends to risk cards that wind up getting banned in other formats, like Treasure Cruise. I was more using that as a warning to help prevent future bannings, in the case they come up with a cost reduction or ramping mechanic that does become OP in Standard as much as some forms of delve could be in older formats, because I've seen a lot of use of risky cost reduction mechanics recently and I don't think they are good enough at playtesting to catch everything, given that we even had recent Standard bannnings and how bad Standard has been recently.
I mentioned this in another thread but this discussion is so good that I felt like joining in as well.
Basically in the other thread, the guys mentioned that standard lack efficient answers to pushed mechanics/ cards like heart of Kiran, Gideon , scrap heap scrounger and etc. in the format and sweepers are rendered useless as they simply can't deal with all the different types of threat that aggressive and mid range decks chump out.
For me, I look at the healthier modern format and previous standards for reference.
Generally the current standard lack a lot of 2-for-1 utility cards in ramp or control Colours to buffer against aggro and midrange decks.
It gets funny when people are wishing for lone missionary, maniac vandals and reclamation sages. The best equivalent now before amonket is release the gremlins which cannot be blinked for value by felidar sovereign.
There is also a lack of efficient 4 damage burns to the face at Low cmc, effectively only allowing white and black to deal with planeswalkers 1 for 1. Green are supposed to have cards to deal with non creature permenants but that doesn't exist as well. Even naturalise is either conditional or expensive.
Personally I feel wizards is trying too hard to control the success of certain mechanics and certain cards. Maybe to encourage more buying of boosters in order to acquire those cards.
In the past they always print equivalent 2-1 answers regardless of the mechanics and let the players and meta decide what is good at any given tournament.
Heart of Kiran and smuggler thopter wouldn't be an issue if tin street hooligan was in standard, neither would Gideon matter if exquisite fire craft or warleaders helix was around. Players simply took the risk when they select decks like this and pray the meta isn't against them.
With the new set, mardu and copy cards are generally contained by green based decks but to be honest blue is really really a 3rd class citizen now. Most played blue spell in standard isn't torrential gearhulk or Jace but Negate in SB.
I think wizard should introduce a special set of reprints to add more variance to standard.
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You have started to see the results of changes you've been making in set design. Standard has been suffering. You've had to ban cards and created backlash from that. It hasn't gotten better on it's own like you hoped when you delayed another set of bans. You are stuck between a rock and a hard place, bans are horrible for Standard, but Standard is horrible anyway, and there is no guarantee that new bans will fix the format. You seem to have noticed that the answers in the format just don't match up to the threats.
But I want you to know that isn't the only problem with your Standard design. There are a number of things you really need to work on right now in order to make a varied and relatively balanced Standard format. The Answers vs. Threats equation is just a small part of the equation, and hints at a larger underlying perspective with how you design sets, particularly in regards to marketing cards to the player archetypes, Timmy, Spike, Johnny, and recently Vorthos, and also how you address limited in regards to card rarity and power.
Imagine a skyline with a mountain range, a cityscape or a mix of both. Each point along the skyline, and it's height, represents the rough power level of a card within the context of Standard and the cards it can synergize with and that fight against it which can turn up in the main board (side board has reduced effect compared to the main-board). Historically, this skyline has been a bunch of gradually sloping hills and mountains and mid-tall buildings with the occasional skyscraper, but the recent standard has been closer to a situation where there are tiny spiky hills and a scattering of huge skyscrapers and a handful of taller buildings. Now imagine this in the context of deck archetypes and colors. The recent Standard has had those skyscrapers and tall buildings focused almost entirely into setups that work well with each-other, while older standards tended to spread the skyscrapers out in ways that they never had more than one or two in a single deck, and there was always a number of similar height skyscrapers that fit into other decks and archetypes and colors, and that was on top of more even slopes to the hills and more mid-range height buildings rather than a lack and tiny spiky hills.
If we arranged this like numbers, from 1 to 10, it would be something like this, 10's are those skyscrapers, 1 and 2 cards are limited fodder that are just too bad to play in standard, likely due to having strictly better or close to that options for their archetypes:
Standards that work well:
Deck type/color A:
1 2 1 4 3 5 4 7 3 10 8 2
Deck type/color B:
1 3 2 5 2 8 9 8 2 1 4 7
Deck type/color C:
10 2 4 8 5 2 5 7 6 3 1 1
Deck type/color D:
1 1 3 4 3 6 7 6 8 9 3 9
Recent Standard on the other hand has been more like:
Deck type/color A:
1 2 1 4 3 1 2 1 2 2 9
Deck type/color B:
2 8 9 10 10 10 9 4 6 7 1
Deck type/color C:
1 4 2 10 10 9 9 8 9 4 2
Deck type/color D:
1 2 1 2 1 2 4 8 2 5 6
As you can see, the card pool in this case heavily favors the deck type/color B and C. Of course, some of those numbers are cards that fit within multiple decks, but might have different scores depending on which deck they are in. For instance, a card that is an 8 in deck B might be the 5 in deck D, certainly one of the better cards in that deck type, but it is far more powerful in the context of deck B. This recent Standard also has much more limited fodder as a percentage of the card pool, and not enough non-limited fodder to fill out all the deck archetypes roughly evenly, on top of basically a couple of the archetypes having too many powerful cards focused in them.
This happens as a result of multiple set design policies, the first is the practice of keeping down the power level of common cards, and focusing the most powerful cards into the rare and mythic rarities. Due to the ratios of each type of card in Standard, there simply aren't enough rares and mythics in ANY standard format to support having them as the only card types where a significant percentage of them are the most powerful cards in the format. And you aren't even just doing that, you seem to be jamming more limited fodder into rares and even mythics than before, even while the limited fodder in uncommon and common rarities has pushed out the non-limited fodder cards in those rarities by huge margins.
A healthy standard should have non-limited fodder cards be at least something like:
Mythics 80%
Rares 75%
Uncommons 50%
Commons 20%
Recently though, it's seemed like the limited fodder cards of sets lately have been something like:
Mythics 50%
Rares 65%
Uncommons 80%
Commons 95%
Note, I'm pulling these numbers out of my ass, it's just the overall _feel_ of how cards power levels are distributed in regards to constructed options.
This means, regardless of how big the actual card pool is, the effective _constructed competitive_ card pool is much smaller than it perhaps used to be or should be. A small card pool isn't inherently bad for Standard, it's one of it's benefits, you just need to make sure that the constructive competitive portion of the card pool is balanced in how much of it goes into different colors and deck archetypes, which it has not been, and that there is enough of a constructive competitive card pool to fill in the cards needed for a full set of different archetypes and some other optional lesser budget decks and the like to encourage brewing and the occasional metagame surprise, and not too much of the highest power constructed cards are focused in a stuff that can fit into a single deck.
Now, I'll admit, restricting power of commons and uncommons can actually help limited environments, and there is limited design space for cards that are good in competitive constructed but not so powerful in limited that they aren't forced into mythic or rare rarities.
This, I think, is one of the biggest drawbacks to having small sets. Larger sets let you control the ratios of strong limited cards, while also letting you make sure you have enough competitive constructed cards. If you really want to insist on current power level ratios in the cards for the sake of limited based on rarity, I think the best way to allow you to also save Standard might be to eliminate the use of the current rough sizes of small sets, switching to the current large-set sizes, and introduce a new even bigger set size. This may increase the costs of Standard, but it would help make it easier to fit in a large enough diversity of constructive competitive cards without hurting limited too much.
The other option, the one I'd recommend, is cutting away a lot of the limited fodder at all rarities. The success of cube formats proves that you don't need to have weaker cards all over the place to get a good limited format, it might be a more challenging and swingy one, but it'll still be playable, especially if the limited environment also has strong answers at lower rarities to let players counteract the swinginess.
The next point I'd like to bring up is well illustrated by elements from the Return to Ravnica and Theros block era Standard, and some of the misconceptions you may have developed from it. One of the things I've heard is that you think Thoughtsieze was too strong for Standard, and was a good reason to avoid a needed reprint like Liliana of the Veil. The real problem was too much power was focused overall in mono-black devotion, not that one specific strong tool, and that other colors didn't have comparable tools to help them compete with thoughtseize. For instance, Thoughtseize would have been a lot more fair in a Standard that also, say, had Counterspell for blue, Goblin Guide for red, Vengevine for Green, and Path to Exile for white, and where black didn't have so big a set of cards that would count as above a '7' in Mono-black devotion, on top of powerful ways to hate on some of the otherwise strongest cards in that Standard in the form of Lifebane Zombie, which was devastating against cards that could have been much better like Brimaz, King of Oreskos, giving what was already shaping up to be a powerful deck on it's own strong hate against some of the best cards of the format.
In general, I think you should make sure that strong cards are roughly evenly distributed, and you don't give powerful hate against middle-range power decks to the most powerful decks. Giving Lifebane Zombie to mono-black devotion in that Standard was a problem, but giving something similarly powerful to a theoretically powerful mono-white deck that would hate on mono-black devotion might have been okay, especially since mono-black devotion would still have been about as strong against other decks since it had some other options besides the life-hater in the 3 drop slot that were plenty strong and good at granting devotion. So if you have a deck that looks like it'll be very strong, don't give it powerful hate cards against other decks, but if you have middle-range decks, give them powerful hate cards against the strongest decks.
Next is an issue that revolves around limited and rarity to some degree. The dreaded Pack Rat. Pack Rat is an example of a card that is a complete monster in limited, to the point I'd hesitate to print it at all, and if I did, it would probably only be as a mythic while some degree of hate against it is found in every color at uncommon, and possibly at least once at common in one of the enemy colors, but isn't nearly as powerful in constructed, although still a pretty good card in that. This is a type of card design I strongly suggest you avoid having too much of. It's okay occasionally, just because it's interesting, but there are never enough mythic slots in Standard to justify putting many cards that aren't major powerhouses in constructed competitive into those slots, and mythics don't turn up often enough in limited to justify putting a card in a set that is not good in constructed, but is at mythic because it is too powerful for limited. Pack Rat wasn't that bad, but some cards have been. Just watch out for printing at all cards that are so powerful in limited they have to be mythic, but not powerful enough in constructed to justify use of a mythic slot.
The next problem that leads into is Vorthos. The Vorthos in me has been looking at you funny for a while now. You've been playing favorites a bit too much, granting pet characters powerful cards that you know might be broken just because you want to illustrate how strong they are _in the card game_ when they are powerful in the story, but some other characters who are supposed to be powerful in the story get outright bad cards that are bad in every format just because you don't care much for them, or because you don't care enough and did a last minute nerf that you wouldn't have dared do to one of your precious ones. This causes a lot of story significant cards that have high rarity for their story significance, especially things like planeswalkers and legendary creatures, to have wildly varying power levels compared to each-other even within the same rarity, and creates a lot of the worst and most unplayable cards found in the top rarities, whose only justification for those rarities is that they are story relevant. Don't do this. Seriously, don't, Vorthos is mature enough that the most effective constructed and limited strategies don't also have to use the most powerful in-game cards. Mana costs are there for a reason. You can make something very powerful in effects and abilities, then give it a mana cost appropriate to those. Don't over-do last-minute nerfs to characters you don't care about (such as, say, Emmara Tandris) while also holding holy some other character cards that might deserve nerfs (a more recent example being
Gideon, Ally of Zendikar), treat characters equally balance wise, regardless of how much you like them or story wise, if you want to make them more powerful, raise the mana costs as well to appropriate levels for that power.
The next issue is ramping and mana cost reductions... you're doing it wrong, and I feel like I need to bring it up with how much you've done of it lately, what with Emerge, Emrakul, Delve and Improvise. The think I think you need to take to heart with mana cost reductions and ramping is to remember that the more drastic the potential cost reduction, the more of a combo card something becomes. Something that shifts a single mana for lower cost stuff, or a couple mana for higher cost stuff is fine as a thing that encourages synergy, when things start having the potential to basically be free, or bring powerhouses down to 1-2 mana, that is when things start behaving more like combo than synergy cards. Players will find a way, and given the kind of things that can slip through your testing, like copy-cat, it isn't worth the risk. Cards like Elvish Mystic and Stoic Rebuttal are fine, small potential cost adjustments and synergy are the name of the game there. Things like Tasigur, the Golden Fang is the kind of thing I'd be much more wary of, a large potential cost reduction on a card that is already powerful with a much smaller cost reduction, if Tasigur had been without delve, but a similar mechanic that exiled 4 cards from your graveyard (only once) to reduce his cost to 3B he'd still have been a great card. For cost reductions of cards not intended for combo deck (but for synergy focused decks), I'd avoid letting cards reduce their mana cost by more than 1 for cards at 2-3 mana, and by more than 2 for cards that cost 4+ mana. Otherwise, I'd design the card as if it were a combo card. For ramp, 1-2 mana range costing ramp would only ramp you by 1, 3 mana range would ramp you by 2 if it's easy to get rid of or prevent and otherwise tend to be more of a resilient 1 mana ramp, while 4+ mana costing ramp could ramp you by 2, even for stuff hard to get rid of or stop, like Explosive Vegetation, and I'd avoid things that ramp you by 3 or more outside of things clearly intended for combo, for the same reasons as noted above.
Another thing to remember for Standard is that you want flexibility to do minor brewing. Minor brewing should be encouraged most by budget players, this means they need decent tools at common and uncommon to play around with lots of different strategies. Things like uncommon engine cards, full suites of aggro cards in red, white, and black across cmcs that a deck would need, full suites of tempo cards in blue with the right cmc distribution, full suites of midrange or ramp or aggro or something in green. At least one semi-viable control-ish deck that only needs perhaps one rare as a sweeper and only 2 colors but can the rest of the way be made up of commons and uncommons, without missing out on format relevant hate cards like ways to fight different card types that commonly turn up in the format's top decks (which means you need uncommon or common planeswalker hate that is constructed viable if you have a main-deck planeswalker staple like Gideon, Ally of Zendikar). At least one semi-viable combo deck that relies entirely on uncommon and common cards. These decks may use options that are not quite as good overall as the top decks, but they should generally still be using some stuff that is viable enough to sometimes turn up in meta-shifts, that aren't strictly worse than the rare equivalents for the archetypes involved.
The next issue is inflated CMCs you've been sticking on answer cards. Here are some guidelines I'll give you. The turn that a nut-draw aggro deck can win? That cmc has to be the one that your sweeper that hits all the aggro cards comes online. So if a nut-draw aggro or tempo deck can kill you at turn 4, you need a sweeper that kills everything in the deck permanently (the aggro deck that can do this can't have recursive options) at 4 cmc, such as Languish or Day of Judgment. When the midrange starts getting strong recursive creatures or creatures that ignore an aggro-focused sweeper (such as stuff that can tank a Languish) or otherwise strong removal resistant creatures (such as stuff with constant indestructibility or hexproof), 1 higher cmc is where you need the format's 'hard sweeper' so if you have something at 3 cmc like Predator Ooze,
Dungrove Elder, Leatherback Baloth or Troll Ascetic, you need your hard sweeper to be 4 cmc like Supreme Verdict or Day of Judgment, with Languish not being good enough. If you restrict that kind of thing to 4 cmc, like having Primal Huntbeast, Cudgel Troll, Ember Swallower, or Phyrexian Obliterator, but don't have any 3 cmc resilient midrange threats, it's fine for your hard sweeper to be 5 cmc like Fumigate and to let yourself have a 4 cmc sweeper for anti-aggro like Languish. This sweeper needs to kill or partially kill at least some of the midrange threats either way, they can't all be 2 for 1 -ing both the sweepers and hard removal when they are the only creature on the board, for a midrange deck, so you need to be careful to vary up the midrange defenses available in Standard.
This is part of the reason why vehicles is such a problem this Standard. It's essentially a midrange deck that has too many threats that all defend from the same sort of single target answers and sweepers, with too low cmcs compared to when the sweepers come online.
Single target answers, of course, need to come even earlier than sweepers. Anti-aggro ones need to come online by turn 2 if aggro on a nut draw can win before turn 6 (basically all the time) and destroy the majority of aggro creatures, and hit at least part of the suite of midrange creatures in the format, at least enough of them that a good aggro deck can't be entirely made up of things it destroys permanently. It also needs to be instant speed and uncommon rarity at the worst, as well as 'main-deck worthy'. These 'single target answers' need to be in _every color_ including something like a counterspell in blue, and a fight spell in green, and permanently kill almost every strong aggro creature at 2 cmc or below. It's fine if these spells don't take out bigger stuff. You _do_ need to be able to start taking out bigger stuff as white, black, or blue by 3 cmc range, and do so at instant speed for black or blue, with cards along the lines of Murder or Cancel, unless something very weird is going on in the format, this is the point where you need much more resilient answers. If 2 cmc is the realm of stuff like Mana Leak, Smother, and Victim of Night, 3 cmc is the realm of stuff like Banishing Light, Cancel and Murder. 3 cmc and some more restrictive 2 cmc stuff might also be the realm where you start getting stronger answers to resilient threats that can counteract 2-for-one or stopping elements, using stuff like sacrifice effects, exile, and the like, while 4 cmc answers will generally just kill it dead for good regardless of it's special defenses somehow (so in a format with Thrun, the Last Troll you need something along the lines of Wrath of God).
For fighting combo 2 card combo, it's important to pay attention to discard and counterspells, so blue and black in particular, unless the combo is entirely creature-centric. If the first part of the combo comes online turn 3, then you need a main-deck counterspell that comes online turn 2, and a main-deck discard spell that comes online turn 1, both of which hit both parts of the combo, both the earlier part (which comes online turn 3) and the latter part (which comes online any time afterwards). If the first part of the combo comes online turn 4, then you are fine with just Cancel or Cancel+ and Distress. For instance, a combo that the first piece comes down turn 3, Saheeli, and the 2nd piece comes down turn 4 like the cat, then you need something like Counterspell or this in the format:
Counterbomb UU
Instant
Counter target spell with cmc 4 or less.
For the discard, you'd need something like Thoughtseize for CopyCat environment with Saheeli and the cat.
The counters AND discard have to BOTH be main-deck worthy at hit _both_ the combo pieces of _every_ 2 card combo of this type in the game, so things like Duress or Negate, which are sideboard cards, aren't sufficient, even if they hit both pieces of all the combos.
For combo that requires 3+ pieces or the first piece comes down turn 4 or later, you can be a bit more flexible with the cmcs, allowing for stuff like Cancel and Distress to fulfill the needs of the format.
I actually think that only blue and black having the ability to reliably deal with many sorts of spell-based combos might be one of the bigger problems with the way the color pie is set up.
That is all I can think of for now. Hope this helps.
With respect to the above quoted point. No. Just no. If your control deck can beat the the nut draw of an aggro deck with no interactions before running out a sweeper, that's just wrong. I think that standard based on the above guideline would be horribly unpopular and would indicate a massive distortion of standard in favor of control decks. Control decks should need to interact early to beat aggro nut draws.
There are almost certainly problems with standard. Is the idea of conditional sweepers at 4 and unconditional sweepers at 5 fundamentally flawed? I don't know. Arguably, sweepers are still too strong. The success of Company decks, Rally decks, Vehicle decks, Emrakul decks and Combo decks seems to be significantly based on the non-viability of pure creature decks. The apparent fact that the only decks that can succeed are able to dodge sweepers suggests that sweepers may arguably still be too strong.
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.
"Beating" the nut draw wasn't what I intend here. The nut draw should still win, because the control deck typically wants to be on the draw, rather than on the play, and the aggro deck just finished their turn 4 and won while the control deck just had their 3 cmc turn. The idea is more standing a chance when they mis-play or the turn arrangement is backwards, but even if you are on the play as the control deck and hit with the sweeper, the aggro deck may still win, especially if they are getting through the last bits of damage with burn or hasty creatures while you have no mana on their next turn.
The only decks that can dodge sweepers you are describing aren't aggro decks, they're midrange decks. Company, Rally, and Vehicle decks are all midrange. My post even addressed how cmcs should match up compared to midrange decks, in that they should get conditional sweepers a turn after the midrange deck's start putting down their difficult to deal with threats, but that you shouldn't have multiple difficult to deal with threats that are all resisting the same answers (like vehicle decks). It's not so much control decks that are the reason for the current meta to be dominated by difficult to deal with threats, because there aren't enough of such to deal with them. It's that the current difficult to deal with threats are also the fastest and most powerful ways to win that are also semi-reliable, because things like vehicles are bonkers, and they generally are completely off curve for how much p/t they represent, while not being as full of 2-for-1 drawbacks as such things normally are for things like auras and pump spells, and just enough removal survives in the format to kill off the less resilient threats that also have high damage potential often enough to suppress them in the meta even more.
A midrange and a combo deck being too good is actually a sign that control is too weak, although it says little about sweepers for the combo deck side of things, since sweepers usually aren't how you fight combo.
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.
Sure, things can happen the way you just described, but that doesn't necessarily mean the aggro deck stalls out and loses. The whole advantage of the aggro deck is that they can constantly push aggressive plays more often than the control deck has single-target answers, and the control deck shouldn't have more than 4 sweepers, and won't always draw into them early enough to play them on turn 4. Being on the play, rather than the draw, also means they have _less_ cards to interact with the aggro deck, while the aggro deck, with it's lower mana curve, is spitting out more threats. My experience with similar situations to what you describe at the FNM level have aggro decks able to just keep on chugging away and wittle the control deck down, even while facing one sweeper and individual answers to many of their threats, especially since control finishers typically can't block multiple small creatures. Having the 4 mana sweeper simply means the control deck has a chance, rather than auto-losing against the aggro decks, they instead simply have a bad matchup.
Now, admittedly, this depends on how well the aggro and control decks are balanced overall in other factors. If you don't have enough good aggro creatures, while the control deck has good versions of all the pieces it needs, or wizards gives the control deck a whole bunch of strong 2 for 1's or better on top of the sweepers, the aggro deck is going to be at a disadvantage, and the control deck will be OP. The best way to prevent this is to make sure other threats in the format ignore the 2for1's, particularly the combo and midrange and ramp decks, so the control would have trouble vs. those if it tried to be strong against the aggro decks.
Can't agree more on this one. It feels like a troll when they reprint something that is perfectly fine, give it to an already boosted midrange slugfest deck and then go "See guys? This is why we can't reprint Modern cards in Standard. They're too strong :^)". Just right now, people are saying that freaking Fetchlands are too strong for Standard and that they will never see print in Standard again because the 4C goodstuff degeneracy that happened not because fetchands but because they managed to slip fetcheable duals (seriously, what were they thinking when they decided to give Standard an Eternal-like manabase?) and with a block with emphasis on three colors still legal in Standard while they were at it. Fetchlands have been fine in previous standard format, but now they get the "too powerful"™ bull***** treatment.
Meanwhile no one bats an eye at the real culprit: the Battlelands. And of course no one does, since its the most recent design they need to sing it's praises and shill it like it was the best design ever while blaming the incompetence on fetchlands. Because hey, we need to complete the cycle after all, this one is not too powerful for Standard.
Thanks to DNC from Heroes of the Plane Studios for the sig
Check my Pauper Cube!
They build vechicals decks and they built delirium and madness decks and emerge and energy decks. But they never built decks where they were mixing and matching mechanics synergisticly or as the OP was talking about shoving the straight up power cards into every deck.
There basically cannot be control decks if after you wrath your oponents gets back a scrapheap scounger and attacks you for 4 with heart of kiran or slams the difficult to remove but hard hitting Gideon (or other walker).. or both. You cannot be running ruinous path if half your opponents threats are only targetable at instant speed. They make all these answers situational.. which I think is fine.. then they made all the threats too diverse for anyone to possibly control. Make sure the counters are bad and the card draw expensive in life or mana. negate.. best counter in standard.
RB
Dreadshatter
Sorcery
Destory target Artifact or Plainswalker
Played in mardu vehicals for the mirror obviously.
The literial best card in this standard would be... rakdos charm.. it saw little to no play in its native standard but could you imagine this right now in standard. Or of course pithing needle... why isn't that in this standard? because no one would play vechicals?.. of course they would they still have to draw needle, keep it on board and name the right target.. that is interaction that is game play.
What kind of mad man prints a graveyard focused set like shadows over innstrad and then forgets to print any gravehate... not just bad gravehate... but any at all? I played learn from the past in my Esper dragons sideboard it got so bad (it was terrible) and now it is even worse without it. Even cranial archive is enough (and flavorful). You print any gravehate in standard and Emrakul isn't a problem (you'd just have to ban Aetherworks instead) and it wont be a case of people not playing the card but rather they actually have to worry about thier opponent having an answer not just slaming traverse the ulvenwald knowing that no matter what the game is over (although to be fair I have beaten emrakul).
Battle for zendikar was a terrible block, they couldn't make the interesting mechanic of processing actually work (How about you print some grave hate!) then they just started printing stupid cards in the second set. Can you believe we are in a standard where cards as dumb as thought-knot seer and reality smasher see no play?
I personally like shadows over innstrad even eldritch moon, emerge is scary, Emmie is broken (but with some grave hate it wouldn't be). But half the mechanics including Werewolves (what happend to duskwatch recruiter? ) were just overwhelmed by power cards. Like the OP meantions the power cards are too powerful.
Kaladesh is a case of trying to do too many new things all at the same time and not printing the saftey valve hate cards they used to do when trying new things. There is no way to remove energy once you have it... you can't stop your opponent repeatly spinning thier aetherworks once they have it. Vehicals basically reverse equipment they just didn't understand how powerful they were just like in mirridon with equipment. fragmatise as the only good artifact removal, no versitile cards you can main deck, no red artifact destruction, there is some green removal artifact removal, one playable blue card but only for energy decks main deck negate I guess, fatal push for black.
Rock paper scissors formats can look good, three very different decks all balanced against each other but they are actually terrible for non pro players. If you match ups are 70:30 50:50 30:70 and there is no way to improve your bad match ups by changing parts of your deck and your sideboard you are at the mercy of the match ups. You basically have to change your whole deck in response to any meta shifts, that is impossible for any semi casual player.
In a healthy format you could have 70:30 50:50 30:70 one week notice that 30:70 deck is popular.. change your deck to 55:45 47:53 45:55 to try to improve that match up to winnable. You might misjudge the meta and fail but if you can shift parts of your deck again (rather that straight up switching colours and cards into a different deck) inrespose to that meta change and not really be down as much $$$.
Pioneer:UR Pheonix
Modern:U Mono U Tron
EDH
GB Glissa, the traitor: Army of Cans
UW Dragonlord Ojutai: Dragonlord NOjutai
UWGDerevi, Empyrial Tactician "you cannot fight the storm"
R Zirilan of the claw. The solution to every problem is dragons
UB Etrata, the Silencer Cloning assassination
Peasant cube: Cards I own
Very well put. They have a difficult time identifying the most powerful cards in the set and then getting reps in.
(And yes, I know the line "brevity is the soul of wit" was actually meant as a joke because the character who says it, Polonius, doesn't take his own advice, but that doesn't mean this is bad advice)
The funny thing is, there's an easy way to prove the problem wasn't Thoughteize itself: The next Standard! Thoughtseize was still legal in Theros-Khans Standard, but the amount of play it saw dropped off significantly, both in terms of the number of decks playing it as well as the number of copies being played in the decks that did run it.
It's hard to tell how much of the problem is the Future Future League because you have to remember that cards get changed after the FFL is done and the cards we end up can be different enough that a previously innocuous card suddenly becomes amazing. The Standard format we play was not the Standard format the FFL tried making decks for.
Also, it's mostly only the recent years of Standard that have been a real problem; the FFL goes back much older and was around even when we had better Standards. They seem too much of a static variable to blame for Standard's recent issues. It is possible some really good members left and they were replaced with not-as-good members, but I think the problem is probably more on the actual development team's end as they're the ones that kept insisting threats needed to be better and answers needed to be worse.
2. Making commons/uncommons Cube-levels of strong isn't necessary for good Limited-to-Standard crossover cards. Look at KTK block. No Lightning Bolts. No Doom Blades. Just good clean tricolored and morph gameplay. And even then it provided one of the most well regarded limited settings of Magic's history and one of the more diverse and powerful standard seasons. Treasure Cruise notwithstanding.
3. If one color has a powerful, Modern-staple worthy tool, giving the other colors equally powerful tools is NOT going to balance Standard. That would only push players to mash as many modern staples together in one deck. Path to Exile, for instance, would have been a terrible reprint for RTR-THS standard. Imagine UW control and GW Midrange, decks that were already powerful at the time, running around with Paths. Or Mono-Black Devotion and Green Devotion Ramp jamming a playset of White-producing shocklands for some Paths, or even a playset of Scrylands if they were desperate enough for the full 4 Paths. The strong would have only gotten stronger. Also, the design space for unexplored mechanics and themes that are compatible with hyper-efficient creatures and spells is tight. An innovative card design like the Theros Gods, for instance, would never have seen the light of day with Path to Exile running around.
4. 1-mana dorks result in very, very swingy games. They narrow 3-cmc card design across the entire set significantly while also promoting heavily non-interactive gameplay. Killing the 2-cmc ramp spells was overkill,though. The jump from 2-to-4-to-6 mana is more manageable than going 1-to-3, 1-to-3-to-5, or even 1-to-3-to-6 on a lucky day.
The stuff you describe goes against stuff I'm asking for, almost like you are deliberately misinterpreting me, or didn't read my post very well.
1. I noted adding more cards to a set as an option, but that I'd prefer them to smooth out card power levels, rather than have them jagged like they are now (with a small number of powerful cards limited to specific decks, and a majority of cards that aren't constructed playable). Extra costs in playtesting or card design are something they should have, given how many problems they've had of late hint at problems in those areas. Eliminating small sets won't have logistical printing issues, that would be silly, but it isn't the solution I'd prefer anyway.
2. There is no such thing as 'cube level'. Cubes can be all sorts of different power levels. The thing that I brought up cube for was to point out that commons and uncommons don't have to be extremely different in power level from rares and mythics for a limited environment to work well. KTK having decent limited I'd agree with (although I personally wasn't fond of it, or of morph and manifest, which were both logistically annoying and put too many over-costed 2/2s into the format, restricting the kind of things that could have interactions properly with creatures of that size), it being good for Standard though I'd consider a joke, given how it was pretty much where things started going downhill with stuff like Siege Rhino, printing fetches and then later printing fetchable duals in the same Standard (after but while KTK was still legal), and all the parasitism of things like delve on your own deck or things that interacted with morph only working with other things that interact with morph or morph cards, partially since morph in general isn't well suited to constructed play, given that a 3 mana 2/2 is bad in almost any constructed environment, and there were too few playable morph creatures or alternate flip-costs for the surprise factor to make itself evident. I'm just asking for more cards to crossover to Standard from limited at all rarities, and using cube as evidence that you don't need to super-nerf everything for limited to work well.
3. And what you talk about here goes directly against what I talked about, which was not including power cards in decks that are already powerful, which was part of why I said TS had issues with the mono-black devotion. Adding Path to Exile is something I'd agree would have caused problems in that format. BECAUSE it would fit into an already powerful deck. And I'm not asking for Modern staple worthy stuff either. I'm asking for equality between colors and/or deck types. That doesn't have to be in the form of Modern staples, it just means that they need to power up the weaker decks in the format, without powering up the already strong ones with cards that also fit into those decks. For example, in that format, there wasn't really mono-white devotion, despite flavor wise, the devotion mechanic made the most sense with white, because they printed so much better devotion cards in black and blue. They could easily have printed better devotion cards in white without powering up other decks that include white, such as control, which doesn't want to flood the board like devotion does, and it wouldn't even have to be something modern playable. Gray Merchant of Asphodel isn't a Modern card after all, but was a major powerhouse in Standard.
4. I never said we needed 1 mana dorks, just that they are fine, although totally eliminating them from all standards seems silly, it is certainly possible to craft some Standards without them that have stronger 3 cmc spells to take advantage of the situation like you mention. When I talked about ramp or other mana cost manipulating things, I seem to recall talking about restricting how much ramp can be done by ramp spells at different CMC ranges, rather than letting too much stuff like delve through that tends to risk cards that wind up getting banned in other formats, like Treasure Cruise. I was more using that as a warning to help prevent future bannings, in the case they come up with a cost reduction or ramping mechanic that does become OP in Standard as much as some forms of delve could be in older formats, because I've seen a lot of use of risky cost reduction mechanics recently and I don't think they are good enough at playtesting to catch everything, given that we even had recent Standard bannnings and how bad Standard has been recently.
I mentioned this in another thread but this discussion is so good that I felt like joining in as well.
Basically in the other thread, the guys mentioned that standard lack efficient answers to pushed mechanics/ cards like heart of Kiran, Gideon , scrap heap scrounger and etc. in the format and sweepers are rendered useless as they simply can't deal with all the different types of threat that aggressive and mid range decks chump out.
For me, I look at the healthier modern format and previous standards for reference.
Generally the current standard lack a lot of 2-for-1 utility cards in ramp or control Colours to buffer against aggro and midrange decks.
It gets funny when people are wishing for lone missionary, maniac vandals and reclamation sages. The best equivalent now before amonket is release the gremlins which cannot be blinked for value by felidar sovereign.
There is also a lack of efficient 4 damage burns to the face at Low cmc, effectively only allowing white and black to deal with planeswalkers 1 for 1. Green are supposed to have cards to deal with non creature permenants but that doesn't exist as well. Even naturalise is either conditional or expensive.
Personally I feel wizards is trying too hard to control the success of certain mechanics and certain cards. Maybe to encourage more buying of boosters in order to acquire those cards.
In the past they always print equivalent 2-1 answers regardless of the mechanics and let the players and meta decide what is good at any given tournament.
Heart of Kiran and smuggler thopter wouldn't be an issue if tin street hooligan was in standard, neither would Gideon matter if exquisite fire craft or warleaders helix was around. Players simply took the risk when they select decks like this and pray the meta isn't against them.
With the new set, mardu and copy cards are generally contained by green based decks but to be honest blue is really really a 3rd class citizen now. Most played blue spell in standard isn't torrential gearhulk or Jace but Negate in SB.
I think wizard should introduce a special set of reprints to add more variance to standard.