So, before the ban of Smuggler's Copter , emrakul, the promised end and Reflector mage we had a healthy 5-8 deck standard, after ban we had a 2 Deck standard. With this ban we may have a new 1 Deck standard, It would make meta gaming easier for new players.. I predict more bans coming.
1 deck standard? Which 1 deck do you think is going to dominate?
Vehicles, obviously? Now I think he is wrong, but that is pretty obvious as to what he was referencing.
I actually have hope for this standard format, just not for the long term potential of Magic because Wizards has gotten amazing at shooting themselves in the foot.
I'm looking for Temur tower, Jeskai control, Esper/Grixis cycle, Mardu Vehicles, Jund/GB Energy/counters, and some token/aristocrats deck to all be big players moving forward.
So, before the ban of Smuggler's Copter , emrakul, the promised end and Reflector mage we had a healthy 5-8 deck standard, after ban we had a 2 Deck standard. With this ban we may have a new 1 Deck standard, It would make meta gaming easier for new players.. I predict more bans coming.
1 deck standard? Which 1 deck do you think is going to dominate?
Vehicles, obviously? Now I think he is wrong, but that is pretty obvious as to what he was referencing.
I actually have hope for this standard format, just not for the long term potential of Magic because Wizards has gotten amazing at shooting themselves in the foot.
I'm looking for Temur tower, Jeskai control, Esper/Grixis cycle, Mardu Vehicles, Jund/GB Energy/counters, and some token/aristocrats deck to all be big players moving forward.
I kinda got that. Just wanted to point out it didn't actually add anything to the discussion.
WHY do you think he is wrong? Vehicles was the best deck even with copycat in standard, it's a perfectly reasonable concern.
Again, I see other decks coming out of this and I actually think we may have a pretty good standard, but my main reason for optimism is that if the format is 40% mardu vehicles it'll be extremely easy to build my jeskai control deck to crush it.
So, before the ban of Smuggler's Copter , emrakul, the promised end and Reflector mage we had a healthy 5-8 deck standard, after ban we had a 2 Deck standard. With this ban we may have a new 1 Deck standard, It would make meta gaming easier for new players.. I predict more bans coming.
1 deck standard? Which 1 deck do you think is going to dominate?
Vehicles, obviously? Now I think he is wrong, but that is pretty obvious as to what he was referencing.
I actually have hope for this standard format, just not for the long term potential of Magic because Wizards has gotten amazing at shooting themselves in the foot.
I'm looking for Temur tower, Jeskai control, Esper/Grixis cycle, Mardu Vehicles, Jund/GB Energy/counters, and some token/aristocrats deck to all be big players moving forward.
Metalwork Colossus decks got some extra added spice with Fling, that's a deck to watch out for imo
Views along the lines of "This is bad because they didn't do it 3 days ago" are jaded and pointless. If you disagree with the ban in general, fine, but if that's your reasoning then you don't have a real opinion, you just like complaining about wizards.
Now, onto opinions that can actually be discussed. Banning Cat is IMO the best thing they could have done for the format. No, this isn't going to result in the format being only Mardu Vehicles and maybe BG. The only reason that other decks didn't exist is because Saheeli is so oppressive when pitted against anything that isn't Mardu Vehicles. Other decks were able to beat Mardu fine, it's literally just that Mardu was the only one who could consistently beat Saheeli.
Now that Saheeli is gone, things like Temur Marvel, Temur Tower, Energy, actual control decks, and the plethora of possiblity from Amonkhet will top. Is Mardu still the best deck in the format? Probably. But you can side against it properly, and it doesn't prevent tier 2 decks from existing.
For all the talk of control being dead I am VERY excited for my jeskai control deck and esper cycle control deck.
Jeskai had problems with resolved planeswalkers and mana flood/screw. We now have glorybringer and cast out to answer planeswalkers and cast out and censor along with a few other cyclers will go a long way toward smoothing out my draws.
Views along the lines of "This is bad because they didn't do it 3 days ago" are jaded and pointless. If you disagree with the ban in general, fine, but if that's your reasoning then you don't have a real opinion, you just like complaining about wizards.
The way they handled it was awful and has absolutely hurt consumer confidence in their product. To think anything else is extremely narrow sighted.
I don't just like complaining about wizards, but I will absolutely point out when a company that gets the majority of my hobby income is imploding from their own awful decisions. This standard will be better than the last and attendance will pick up and people will use it to justify the ban, which agreed should've happened, but that doesn't change the fact they just set a new presidence that is going to follow them for a long time.
So, before the ban of Smuggler's Copter , emrakul, the promised end and Reflector mage we had a healthy 5-8 deck standard, after ban we had a 2 Deck standard. With this ban we may have a new 1 Deck standard, It would make meta gaming easier for new players.. I predict more bans coming.
1 deck standard? Which 1 deck do you think is going to dominate?
Mardu is going to open a can of whoop a$$ on the format. The real point I was trying to make though is banning cards leads to less Diversity. I do think RG Aggro has a chance of competing in the format, and, GW Tokens has picked up a lot of cards wouldn't be surprise if that deck has a resurgence. A lot of people believe BG is going to be the next big deck but I don't see it happening. Yes BG gains by losing a bad matchup but It doesn't change the fact that there are a lot of cards in amonket that are really good against them.
I kinda got that. Just wanted to point out it didn't actually add anything to the discussion.
Sure it does. Saying standard will be a Vehicles only meta is wrong and should be corrected. I mean they ban a piece of the cat combo and people are still worrying about the top decks. That's not concern of an unhealthy format...that's complaining that there is a good deck in standard.
WHY do you think he is wrong? Vehicles was the best deck even with copycat in standard, it's a perfectly reasonable concern.
You answered the question yourself.
"Again, I see other decks coming out of this and I actually think we may have a pretty good standard, but my main reason for optimism is that if the format is 40% mardu vehicles it'll be extremely easy to build my jeskai control deck to crush it.[/quote]"
So, before the ban of Smuggler's Copter , emrakul, the promised end and Reflector mage we had a healthy 5-8 deck standard, after ban we had a 2 Deck standard. With this ban we may have a new 1 Deck standard, It would make meta gaming easier for new players.. I predict more bans coming.
1 deck standard? Which 1 deck do you think is going to dominate?
Mardu is going to open a can of whoop a$$ on the format. The real point I was trying to make though is banning cards leads to less Diversity. I do think RG Aggro has a chance of competing in the format, and, GW Tokens has picked up a lot of cards wouldn't be surprise if that deck has a resurgence. A lot of people believe BG is going to be the next big deck but I don't see it happening. Yes BG gains by losing a bad matchup but It doesn't change the fact that there are a lot of cards in amonket that are really good against them.
Mardu isn't going to be that oppressive. Mardu Vehicles wasn't successful because it beats every other deck in the format, it was successful because it beats the deck which beats every other deck in the format. It's not that Mardu was some slaughterhouse that nobody could beat, it's just that you're so likely to play against Saheeli that Mardu had a pretty huge advantage in terms of pure winrate.
Mardu has access to all of the good removal spells that alone puts them light years ahead of the other decks in the format. I don't play Mardu though, I stop playing standard when wizards banned UW Flash from the format.
I want reparations in the form of free singles of my choice, free events, or other. I played Emrakul in Dec / Jan, and Saheeli too. That's 2x bannings for a very pay to play format and I'm sick of buying new decks without a rotation happening.
I owned these decks both online and paper. It's RIDICULOUS, especially after the false feeling of safety until June given by WotC on Saheeli cat.
I want reparations in the form of free singles of my choice, free events, or other. I played Emrakul in Dec / Jan, and Saheeli too. That's 2x bannings for a very pay to play format and I'm sick of buying new decks without a rotation happening.
I owned these decks both online and paper. It's RIDICULOUS, especially after the false feeling of safety until June given by WotC on Saheeli cat.
It was a brutal act they pulled on Saheeli cat players, Monday your good, 2 days later gotcha. I feel you though, I stop playing when Flash got ban and sadly, flash was a fair deck destroyed be collateral damage. I do wonder if game stores knew this was coming a lot of people bought into the deck Monday.
I kinda got that. Just wanted to point out it didn't actually add anything to the discussion.
Sure it does. Saying standard will be a Vehicles only meta is wrong and should be corrected. I mean they ban a piece of the cat combo and people are still worrying about the top decks. That's not concern of an unhealthy format...that's complaining that there is a good deck in standard.
WHY do you think he is wrong? Vehicles was the best deck even with copycat in standard, it's a perfectly reasonable concern.
You answered the question yourself.
"Again, I see other decks coming out of this and I actually think we may have a pretty good standard, but my main reason for optimism is that if the format is 40% mardu vehicles it'll be extremely easy to build my jeskai control deck to crush it.
Again, I get your point, but only barely because you aren't really making it. You didn't correct him, you just made a vague statement. And I know why I disagree with him, I was asking why you think so?
There isn't really any point in posting if you are just going to say "I agree" or "I disagree".
My Emrakul deck was even super foiled with SDCC promo lilianas and everything. UGH! Recent frustrating really coming back
Ouch! The bright side is Emrakul and Lilana see play in modern so the prices of those cards should stay stable if decide to sell or trade them. It has gotten really risky to play in standard lately.
All of these problems come from their pants *****ting fear of regularly printing good removal. Every once in awhile we get graced with something like Fatal Push, a good but situational spell. Discard has sucked since thought seize scared them off. Most removal sucks and we're forced to look mostly to 3 mana rares. Burn generally sucks as can be seen by them crowing about the awesome power of shock. Counter magic is either too narrow or too expensive. Remove Soul and Negate should be what gets added to your deck after side boarding, not cards we are excited to be running.
Weaker answers, stronger threats that are harder to interact with, it's a recipe for disaster. And we've seen that repeatedly over several standards. It isn't even like limited has gotten better by needing removal either.
Does Development need to step up its game? No, these things will get by and stamping out copy cat level combos is basically an admission that you don't want any combo in the format. The problem is Design, and the philosophy they've been employing over the past decade. It was fine early on, but they've pushed it way too far. Especially over the last few years.
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Whether its blue players countering your spells, red players burning you out, or combo, if you have a problem with an aspect of Magic's gameplay, you can fix it!
Step 1: Identify the problem. What aspect of Magic don't you like? Step 2: Find out how others deal with the problem. How do players deal with this aspect of the game when they run into it? Step 3: Do what those players do. Step 4: No more problem. Bonus: You are now better at Magic. Enjoy those extra wins!
I kinda got that. Just wanted to point out it didn't actually add anything to the discussion.
Sure it does. Saying standard will be a Vehicles only meta is wrong and should be corrected. I mean they ban a piece of the cat combo and people are still worrying about the top decks. That's not concern of an unhealthy format...that's complaining that there is a good deck in standard.
WHY do you think he is wrong? Vehicles was the best deck even with copycat in standard, it's a perfectly reasonable concern.
You answered the question yourself.
"Again, I see other decks coming out of this and I actually think we may have a pretty good standard, but my main reason for optimism is that if the format is 40% mardu vehicles it'll be extremely easy to build my jeskai control deck to crush it.
Again, I get your point, but only barely because you aren't really making it. You didn't correct him, you just made a vague statement. And I know why I disagree with him, I was asking why you think so?
There isn't really any point in posting if you are just going to say "I agree" or "I disagree".
Oh I'm making a great point. Vehicles isn't going to be the only good deck in the format. You asked a question, then answered it yourself. I used your answer as an example. Otherwise I'm really just wasting time for someone who knows the answer, agrees with it, then asks me to go in to detail about it. That is ridiculous and I refuse to do it.
Also..I'll decide if there's a point in ME posting or not. Thanks for trying to police things though.
Does Development need to step up its game? No, these things will get by and stamping out copy cat level combos is basically an admission that you don't want any combo in the format. The problem is Design, and the philosophy they've been employing over the past decade. It was fine early on, but they've pushed it way too far. Especially over the last few years.
If R&D misses a combo in the same block (a combo similar to the combo seen in Zendikar block -- so they know that these are possible with blink effects or untap effects) and it completely dominates the format, I'd say that R&D needs to step their game up.
The combo was found in a matter of minutes of the entire spoiler going up.
This could have been averted if R&D had a policy of cntrl-F effects that are known to be powerful. You don't even have to test that much -- just have someone look for known powerful effects, press cntrl-F, and see what comes up. R&D never had a cntrl-F policy in place, and given wotc's revenue, that's embarrassing.
Again, I get your point, but only barely because you aren't really making it. You didn't correct him, you just made a vague statement. And I know why I disagree with him, I was asking why you think so?
There isn't really any point in posting if you are just going to say "I agree" or "I disagree".
Oh I'm making a great point. Vehicles isn't going to be the only good deck in the format. You asked a question, then answered it yourself. I used your answer as an example. Otherwise I'm really just wasting time for someone who knows the answer, agrees with it, then asks me to go in to detail about it. That is ridiculous and I refuse to do it.
Also..I'll decide if there's a point in ME posting or not. Thanks for trying to police things though.
Technically, there are spam rules and people are supposed to report things rather than complain about behavior in-thread. There are also borderline situations and ... Please just let it go. Lots of good discussion and the back and forth is the second least interesting part of it, IMO. Me having to adjudicate would be the least interesting part. Let's keep going with discussing the best parts of each others' posts. Thanks!
The combo was found in a matter of minutes of the entire spoiler going up.
This could have been averted if R&D had a policy of cntrl-F effects that are known to be powerful. You don't even have to test that much -- just have someone look for known powerful effects, press cntrl-F, and see what comes up. R&D never had a cntrl-F policy in place, and given wotc's revenue, that's embarrassing.
I was making the same point in a different thread; they have NO excuse for letting that slip through. I understand things like lantern and grishoalbrand can come out of nowhere when you add a critical mass of cards to a format but something as obvious as copy-cat was a monumental mistake on the part of R&D. There should be some checklist for every type of effect. An ETB effect that can blink any permanent CLEARLY should be checked immediately against any planeswalker abilities, lands, haste creatures, and other ETB effects. I'm prone to occasional hyperbole so take this how you will, but the entire R&D team should be fired along with AF.
I know mistakes happen but recently it has been colossal mistake after colossal mistake; first of which is not including safety valves like shatter and pithing needle to help catch things you otherwise would've missed. The atmosphere they have created is ripe for mistakes to compound and create ban mania which has completely overtaken standard and modern.
Similarly, there have been some colossal failures in other aspects of the game such as the unban/ban of GGT, eldrazi winter, and cruise/pod era in modern that could've been avoided with a tighter ship and communication between departments. Even if they don't consider standard cards impact on modern it would still be beneficial to get started as quickly as possible and it has other benefits as well; does anyone think if they had people testing modern someone wouldn't have let them know copycat was possible? I've lost a ton of faith in wizards lately and I'm not even sure what they could do to get it back.
The combo was found in a matter of minutes of the entire spoiler going up.
This could have been averted if R&D had a policy of cntrl-F effects that are known to be powerful. You don't even have to test that much -- just have someone look for known powerful effects, press cntrl-F, and see what comes up. R&D never had a cntrl-F policy in place, and given wotc's revenue, that's embarrassing.
I was making the same point in a different thread; they have NO excuse for letting that slip through. I understand things like lantern and grishoalbrand can come out of nowhere when you add a critical mass of cards to a format but something as obvious as copy-cat was a monumental mistake on the part of R&D. There should be some checklist for every type of effect. An ETB effect that can blink any permanent CLEARLY should be checked immediately against any planeswalker abilities, lands, haste creatures, and other ETB effects. I'm prone to occasional hyperbole so take this how you will, but the entire R&D team should be fired along with AF.
I know mistakes happen but recently it has been colossal mistake after colossal mistake; first of which is not including safety valves like shatter and pithing needle to help catch things you otherwise would've missed. The atmosphere they have created is ripe for mistakes to compound and create ban mania which has completely overtaken standard and modern.
Similarly, there have been some colossal failures in other aspects of the game such as the unban/ban of GGT, eldrazi winter, and cruise/pod era in modern that could've been avoided with a tighter ship and communication between departments. Even if they don't consider standard cards impact on modern it would still be beneficial to get started as quickly as possible and it has other benefits as well; does anyone think if they had people testing modern someone wouldn't have let them know copycat was possible? I've lost a ton of faith in wizards lately and I'm not even sure what they could do to get it back.
They should have caught it, yes, but if a format lacks answers that's the bigger problem. They've moved too far from hate cards, and too far from having enough good removal, good counters, and playable discard, while pushing threats.
It's clearly not just Copy Cat, they banned 3 other cards in Standard earlier, two of them because they were too powerful as threats and there weren't answers capable of dealing with them. Fatal Push, one of the few good removal spells printed, was designed solely to kill Copter, by their own admission. That sort of removal spell should exist normally, not only as a safety valve for one OP threat. The safety valves should things like Pithing Needle (Which should honestly be a staple card that never leaves Standard, because of its ability to answer so many problems).
Copy Cat is a combo. There was a time when we could have combos like that which could be stopped dead by removal and they wouldn't be a problem. Its not particularly broken, its weaker than Exarch Twin because neither piece has flash, it requires 3 colors instead of 2, and its more difficult to protect. This is the sort of combo that should be able to exist in Standard safely. It would always be a top tier deck of course, but it shouldn't be able to run away with the format like it did. People should have had access to the tools that could fight it and give them good match up vs it, and those should have been available to more than just one deck. This situation reminded me most of Affinity Standard, where you either played Affinity or the one deck that had enough hate to kill it. Affinity, however, was a deck just filled to the brim with cards that were broken in half, and if it had existed in today's standard I doubt there would have been enough hate to support even that one deck and it would have been straight mirror matches.
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Onering's 4 simple steps that let you solve any problem with Magic's gameplay
Whether its blue players countering your spells, red players burning you out, or combo, if you have a problem with an aspect of Magic's gameplay, you can fix it!
Step 1: Identify the problem. What aspect of Magic don't you like? Step 2: Find out how others deal with the problem. How do players deal with this aspect of the game when they run into it? Step 3: Do what those players do. Step 4: No more problem. Bonus: You are now better at Magic. Enjoy those extra wins!
Do you know where they said they made push to deal with copter? I'd be interested to see it.
For the record, I agree with you. Copycat isn't some ridiculously busted combo, it is only as strong as the context it is in. I'm fine if they don't want that power level in standard but that isn't an excuse to not print answer cards in case, because as we've seen things slip through.
Even if I give them a pass on missing it (I'm really trying) it is still unacceptable how they have gone about handling their business.
It truly seems like they have zero foresight. Every decision looks like it was made it two days (get it?) Companies need to be fluid for sure but I expect a little more projection on their part. This answer problem is not new. The copycat effects were not new.
A little off topic, but I think this is an important part of the discussion that I never hear any opinion on. Why does Wotc not cross test modern and cross communicate more? Bans and broken formats are terrible for their brand and the ggt, eldrazi winter, and cruise incidents could've easily been avoided with a little more communication and kept a lot of the faith they have lost recently.
Does Development need to step up its game? No, these things will get by and stamping out copy cat level combos is basically an admission that you don't want any combo in the format. The problem is Design, and the philosophy they've been employing over the past decade. It was fine early on, but they've pushed it way too far. Especially over the last few years.
If R&D misses a combo in the same block (a combo similar to the combo seen in Zendikar block -- so they know that these are possible with blink effects or untap effects) and it completely dominates the format, I'd say that R&D needs to step their game up.
The combo was found in a matter of minutes of the entire spoiler going up.
This could have been averted if R&D had a policy of cntrl-F effects that are known to be powerful. You don't even have to test that much -- just have someone look for known powerful effects, press cntrl-F, and see what comes up. R&D never had a cntrl-F policy in place, and given wotc's revenue, that's embarrassing.
What they need to do is look at every card in the format and ask themselves "What breaks this card". And then they look through every damn set in standard and try to find out if a 2-card combination breaks that card. It's not even that damn hard. It's just tedious, and boring. I could likely go through an entire set over the course of a work week, giving at least a cursory look. It's certainly not pleasant work, but it should be done for everything that is not a very basic effect.
The problem I've been seeing coming out of R&D is that a lot of what they are trying to do is determine what's fun, and build fun decks, and play fun decks, for fun. While it's great to enjoy your job, that doesn't mean you ignore the more tedious and unpleasant aspects of it. And that's what they have been doing, it seems. They've gotten so caught up in enjoying doing what they are doing that they ignore the parts of their job that are unpleasant.
They also need to completely abandon what they think they know about hate, removal, counterspells, etc that they feel are "too strong". Opining that Lightning Bolt and counterspell is too strong isn't good enough anymore. They should actually test these damn cards and see what the format might look like. Perhaps they still don't want them, but just dismissing them out of hand is ridiculous and has led to an ever decreasing power level in removal and the like.
They also aren't taking good risks. The "risks" they have taken in design and development have not been risks at all - they have been blatantly stupid. They intentionally pushed Smuggler's Copter and Emrakul into absurdity, and then hoped they weren't too strong. Hell, they seemingly actively ignored Emrakul's potency during development, and just assumed nobody would build a deck that would consistently play Emrakul on the cheap. That's an absurdity honestly. They aren't taking risks with card design, they are taking risks with power level and hoping nobody notices that some cards are just too plain good. Meanwhile, Madness was utter crap because they *****-footed around it out of fear of making it too good, half the mechanics of most sets are half-hearted attempts that are barely fleshed out, and they actively avoid pushing a mechanic to its limit to hold something in the tank for the future. The honest truth was that introducing Vehicle's wasn't nearly as big a risk as they make it out to be, and the misery that has come from the card type has nothing to do with them being a new card type. It instead has everything to do with them intentionally - and knowingly - pushing the cards more and more in order to ensure that they see competitive play.
Simply put, they need a monumental shift in philosophy. Not tweaks, not bullocks about the pendulum swinging back (Because the Pendulum shouldn't be swinging intentionally in the first place), and not trying to cast blame aside from their own mistakes that a good many people were telling them would lead to disaster. They need to take their damn job seriously again, and frankly every last one of them has a lot of explaining to do about what led to this point, what they did (and didn't do) to get here, how they plan to fix it, and honestly why they should keep their job. It's not like the recent bannings are just blips they missed; Standard has suffered immensely for a year or so now. SoI standard left a lot to be desired, with three of the five colors rendered nearly unplayable because of their decisions. EMN Standard was hot garbage, with a true Tier 0 deck that was somehow more dominant than Saheel-Cat, and was perhaps the worst I've personally seen standard since Affinity was around (Many tops 8s with 7 or 8 Bant CoCos was jarring). Kaladesh was ruled by absurdly and intentionally broken cards (As both Emrakul and Copter were intentionally overpowered, however they chose not to believe they were). And now we have Aether Revolt, which was just a mess.
If I screwed up that hard and that consistently for a year straight, to the point of driving customers away, I would very likely be looking for a new job. I see no reason why R&D should be treated with kid gloves anymore. They failed, miserably, at their job and their philosophies are downright terrible for the game. If they don't lose their job, then a major shake-up needs to happen where those in positions of authority lose it and others take their place. The philosophies of R&D are just plain rotten to the core at this point.
Do you know where they said they made push to deal with copter? I'd be interested to see it.
For the record, I agree with you. Copycat isn't some ridiculously busted combo, it is only as strong as the context it is in. I'm fine if they don't want that power level in standard but that isn't an excuse to not print answer cards in case, because as we've seen things slip through.
Even if I give them a pass on missing it (I'm really trying) it is still unacceptable how they have gone about handling their business.
It truly seems like they have zero foresight. Every decision looks like it was made it two days (get it?) Companies need to be fluid for sure but I expect a little more projection on their part. This answer problem is not new. The copycat effects were not new.
A little off topic, but I think this is an important part of the discussion that I never hear any opinion on. Why does Wotc not cross test modern and cross communicate more? Bans and broken formats are terrible for their brand and the ggt, eldrazi winter, and cruise incidents could've easily been avoided with a little more communication and kept a lot of the faith they have lost recently.
Modern testing is way too resource intensive. I don't blame them for that. It's impossible to determine the impact of cards on the format, and to figure out metagames and the like. The format is just too damn large. Equally, due to being non-rotating the format is also somewhat more innoculated to broken formats than Standard. If you skip out on Standard for six month, you very likely will have to rebuild a hell of a lot to make a competitive deck. If you skip out on Modern for 6 months, most of what you had is still going to be competitive after a ban happens. Simply put due to Standard requiring constantly acquiring new cards to stay relevant it is a lot less robust at defending against broken formats.
That said, I like PVDR's take. Have the ban announcement at the midway point between Pre-release weekend and the Pro Tour. That way you can give some amount of time for people to adapt to a banning before the Pro Tour, but it also gives you enough data to determine if a ban is necessary. As it stands, the B&R announcement is at the most awkward time imaginable: after a set is known, but before anybody has played with it. Meaning that in the case of Saheeli, you just don't even have a chance to see what happens with something like Amonkhet.
Terrific post above this by the way, it sums up my feelings more consicely than I have been able to.
I'm just saying they've admitted bans are costly in a real way and I'm seriously questioning if it isn't more costly than having someone solely to consider these kind of things. It doesn't take a team of 8 people working 40 hours a week to see that reunion and amalgam we're going to help dredge and the ggt could wait. I think taking a step back from the standard environment and judging the cards in a larger context can give you some valuable information into them and allow them to be seen in a different light. If you had a modern person with the set list a few months ahead of time I can't imagine they don't find that saheeli cat combo and at least allow them to preemptive ban. The cat just screams extra planeswalker abilities.
They clearly need to get their act together somehow and I think having more checks would be a good step for them. As mostly a modern player I am getting so tired of hearing that they don't have time to think about it because standard is such a wreck.
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Vehicles, obviously? Now I think he is wrong, but that is pretty obvious as to what he was referencing.
I actually have hope for this standard format, just not for the long term potential of Magic because Wizards has gotten amazing at shooting themselves in the foot.
I'm looking for Temur tower, Jeskai control, Esper/Grixis cycle, Mardu Vehicles, Jund/GB Energy/counters, and some token/aristocrats deck to all be big players moving forward.
Of course he's wrong...that's why I asked.
WHY do you think he is wrong? Vehicles was the best deck even with copycat in standard, it's a perfectly reasonable concern.
Again, I see other decks coming out of this and I actually think we may have a pretty good standard, but my main reason for optimism is that if the format is 40% mardu vehicles it'll be extremely easy to build my jeskai control deck to crush it.
Metalwork Colossus decks got some extra added spice with Fling, that's a deck to watch out for imo
Now, onto opinions that can actually be discussed. Banning Cat is IMO the best thing they could have done for the format. No, this isn't going to result in the format being only Mardu Vehicles and maybe BG. The only reason that other decks didn't exist is because Saheeli is so oppressive when pitted against anything that isn't Mardu Vehicles. Other decks were able to beat Mardu fine, it's literally just that Mardu was the only one who could consistently beat Saheeli.
Now that Saheeli is gone, things like Temur Marvel, Temur Tower, Energy, actual control decks, and the plethora of possiblity from Amonkhet will top. Is Mardu still the best deck in the format? Probably. But you can side against it properly, and it doesn't prevent tier 2 decks from existing.
For all the talk of control being dead I am VERY excited for my jeskai control deck and esper cycle control deck.
Jeskai had problems with resolved planeswalkers and mana flood/screw. We now have glorybringer and cast out to answer planeswalkers and cast out and censor along with a few other cyclers will go a long way toward smoothing out my draws.
A singleton Hieroglyphic Illumination to compliment a few glimmer of genius, a single pull from tomorrow, maybe even a single kefnet the mindful. Lots of little changes that I am extremely excited for. Plus magma spray for the ever annoying scrapheap scrounger.
Sorry, went on a tangent. I know this isn't a place to discuss that specific deck, just wanted to get the point across that control is not dead.
EDIT: Wanted to respond to this without a new post
The way they handled it was awful and has absolutely hurt consumer confidence in their product. To think anything else is extremely narrow sighted.
I don't just like complaining about wizards, but I will absolutely point out when a company that gets the majority of my hobby income is imploding from their own awful decisions. This standard will be better than the last and attendance will pick up and people will use it to justify the ban, which agreed should've happened, but that doesn't change the fact they just set a new presidence that is going to follow them for a long time.
Sure it does. Saying standard will be a Vehicles only meta is wrong and should be corrected. I mean they ban a piece of the cat combo and people are still worrying about the top decks. That's not concern of an unhealthy format...that's complaining that there is a good deck in standard.
You answered the question yourself.
"Again, I see other decks coming out of this and I actually think we may have a pretty good standard, but my main reason for optimism is that if the format is 40% mardu vehicles it'll be extremely easy to build my jeskai control deck to crush it.[/quote]"
Mardu isn't going to be that oppressive. Mardu Vehicles wasn't successful because it beats every other deck in the format, it was successful because it beats the deck which beats every other deck in the format. It's not that Mardu was some slaughterhouse that nobody could beat, it's just that you're so likely to play against Saheeli that Mardu had a pretty huge advantage in terms of pure winrate.
I owned these decks both online and paper. It's RIDICULOUS, especially after the false feeling of safety until June given by WotC on Saheeli cat.
Again, I get your point, but only barely because you aren't really making it. You didn't correct him, you just made a vague statement. And I know why I disagree with him, I was asking why you think so?
There isn't really any point in posting if you are just going to say "I agree" or "I disagree".
Weaker answers, stronger threats that are harder to interact with, it's a recipe for disaster. And we've seen that repeatedly over several standards. It isn't even like limited has gotten better by needing removal either.
Does Development need to step up its game? No, these things will get by and stamping out copy cat level combos is basically an admission that you don't want any combo in the format. The problem is Design, and the philosophy they've been employing over the past decade. It was fine early on, but they've pushed it way too far. Especially over the last few years.
Onering's 4 simple steps that let you solve any problem with Magic's gameplay
Step 1: Identify the problem. What aspect of Magic don't you like? Step 2: Find out how others deal with the problem. How do players deal with this aspect of the game when they run into it? Step 3: Do what those players do. Step 4: No more problem. Bonus: You are now better at Magic. Enjoy those extra wins!
Oh I'm making a great point. Vehicles isn't going to be the only good deck in the format. You asked a question, then answered it yourself. I used your answer as an example. Otherwise I'm really just wasting time for someone who knows the answer, agrees with it, then asks me to go in to detail about it. That is ridiculous and I refuse to do it.
Also..I'll decide if there's a point in ME posting or not. Thanks for trying to police things though.
If R&D misses a combo in the same block (a combo similar to the combo seen in Zendikar block -- so they know that these are possible with blink effects or untap effects) and it completely dominates the format, I'd say that R&D needs to step their game up.
The combo was found in a matter of minutes of the entire spoiler going up.
This could have been averted if R&D had a policy of cntrl-F effects that are known to be powerful. You don't even have to test that much -- just have someone look for known powerful effects, press cntrl-F, and see what comes up. R&D never had a cntrl-F policy in place, and given wotc's revenue, that's embarrassing.
Technically, there are spam rules and people are supposed to report things rather than complain about behavior in-thread. There are also borderline situations and ...Please just let it go. Lots of good discussion and the back and forth is the second least interesting part of it, IMO. Me having to adjudicate would be the least interesting part. Let's keep going with discussing the best parts of each others' posts. Thanks!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.
I was making the same point in a different thread; they have NO excuse for letting that slip through. I understand things like lantern and grishoalbrand can come out of nowhere when you add a critical mass of cards to a format but something as obvious as copy-cat was a monumental mistake on the part of R&D. There should be some checklist for every type of effect. An ETB effect that can blink any permanent CLEARLY should be checked immediately against any planeswalker abilities, lands, haste creatures, and other ETB effects. I'm prone to occasional hyperbole so take this how you will, but the entire R&D team should be fired along with AF.
I know mistakes happen but recently it has been colossal mistake after colossal mistake; first of which is not including safety valves like shatter and pithing needle to help catch things you otherwise would've missed. The atmosphere they have created is ripe for mistakes to compound and create ban mania which has completely overtaken standard and modern.
Similarly, there have been some colossal failures in other aspects of the game such as the unban/ban of GGT, eldrazi winter, and cruise/pod era in modern that could've been avoided with a tighter ship and communication between departments. Even if they don't consider standard cards impact on modern it would still be beneficial to get started as quickly as possible and it has other benefits as well; does anyone think if they had people testing modern someone wouldn't have let them know copycat was possible? I've lost a ton of faith in wizards lately and I'm not even sure what they could do to get it back.
They should have caught it, yes, but if a format lacks answers that's the bigger problem. They've moved too far from hate cards, and too far from having enough good removal, good counters, and playable discard, while pushing threats.
It's clearly not just Copy Cat, they banned 3 other cards in Standard earlier, two of them because they were too powerful as threats and there weren't answers capable of dealing with them. Fatal Push, one of the few good removal spells printed, was designed solely to kill Copter, by their own admission. That sort of removal spell should exist normally, not only as a safety valve for one OP threat. The safety valves should things like Pithing Needle (Which should honestly be a staple card that never leaves Standard, because of its ability to answer so many problems).
Copy Cat is a combo. There was a time when we could have combos like that which could be stopped dead by removal and they wouldn't be a problem. Its not particularly broken, its weaker than Exarch Twin because neither piece has flash, it requires 3 colors instead of 2, and its more difficult to protect. This is the sort of combo that should be able to exist in Standard safely. It would always be a top tier deck of course, but it shouldn't be able to run away with the format like it did. People should have had access to the tools that could fight it and give them good match up vs it, and those should have been available to more than just one deck. This situation reminded me most of Affinity Standard, where you either played Affinity or the one deck that had enough hate to kill it. Affinity, however, was a deck just filled to the brim with cards that were broken in half, and if it had existed in today's standard I doubt there would have been enough hate to support even that one deck and it would have been straight mirror matches.
Onering's 4 simple steps that let you solve any problem with Magic's gameplay
Step 1: Identify the problem. What aspect of Magic don't you like? Step 2: Find out how others deal with the problem. How do players deal with this aspect of the game when they run into it? Step 3: Do what those players do. Step 4: No more problem. Bonus: You are now better at Magic. Enjoy those extra wins!
For the record, I agree with you. Copycat isn't some ridiculously busted combo, it is only as strong as the context it is in. I'm fine if they don't want that power level in standard but that isn't an excuse to not print answer cards in case, because as we've seen things slip through.
Even if I give them a pass on missing it (I'm really trying) it is still unacceptable how they have gone about handling their business.
It truly seems like they have zero foresight. Every decision looks like it was made it two days (get it?) Companies need to be fluid for sure but I expect a little more projection on their part. This answer problem is not new. The copycat effects were not new.
A little off topic, but I think this is an important part of the discussion that I never hear any opinion on. Why does Wotc not cross test modern and cross communicate more? Bans and broken formats are terrible for their brand and the ggt, eldrazi winter, and cruise incidents could've easily been avoided with a little more communication and kept a lot of the faith they have lost recently.
What they need to do is look at every card in the format and ask themselves "What breaks this card". And then they look through every damn set in standard and try to find out if a 2-card combination breaks that card. It's not even that damn hard. It's just tedious, and boring. I could likely go through an entire set over the course of a work week, giving at least a cursory look. It's certainly not pleasant work, but it should be done for everything that is not a very basic effect.
The problem I've been seeing coming out of R&D is that a lot of what they are trying to do is determine what's fun, and build fun decks, and play fun decks, for fun. While it's great to enjoy your job, that doesn't mean you ignore the more tedious and unpleasant aspects of it. And that's what they have been doing, it seems. They've gotten so caught up in enjoying doing what they are doing that they ignore the parts of their job that are unpleasant.
They also need to completely abandon what they think they know about hate, removal, counterspells, etc that they feel are "too strong". Opining that Lightning Bolt and counterspell is too strong isn't good enough anymore. They should actually test these damn cards and see what the format might look like. Perhaps they still don't want them, but just dismissing them out of hand is ridiculous and has led to an ever decreasing power level in removal and the like.
They also aren't taking good risks. The "risks" they have taken in design and development have not been risks at all - they have been blatantly stupid. They intentionally pushed Smuggler's Copter and Emrakul into absurdity, and then hoped they weren't too strong. Hell, they seemingly actively ignored Emrakul's potency during development, and just assumed nobody would build a deck that would consistently play Emrakul on the cheap. That's an absurdity honestly. They aren't taking risks with card design, they are taking risks with power level and hoping nobody notices that some cards are just too plain good. Meanwhile, Madness was utter crap because they *****-footed around it out of fear of making it too good, half the mechanics of most sets are half-hearted attempts that are barely fleshed out, and they actively avoid pushing a mechanic to its limit to hold something in the tank for the future. The honest truth was that introducing Vehicle's wasn't nearly as big a risk as they make it out to be, and the misery that has come from the card type has nothing to do with them being a new card type. It instead has everything to do with them intentionally - and knowingly - pushing the cards more and more in order to ensure that they see competitive play.
Simply put, they need a monumental shift in philosophy. Not tweaks, not bullocks about the pendulum swinging back (Because the Pendulum shouldn't be swinging intentionally in the first place), and not trying to cast blame aside from their own mistakes that a good many people were telling them would lead to disaster. They need to take their damn job seriously again, and frankly every last one of them has a lot of explaining to do about what led to this point, what they did (and didn't do) to get here, how they plan to fix it, and honestly why they should keep their job. It's not like the recent bannings are just blips they missed; Standard has suffered immensely for a year or so now. SoI standard left a lot to be desired, with three of the five colors rendered nearly unplayable because of their decisions. EMN Standard was hot garbage, with a true Tier 0 deck that was somehow more dominant than Saheel-Cat, and was perhaps the worst I've personally seen standard since Affinity was around (Many tops 8s with 7 or 8 Bant CoCos was jarring). Kaladesh was ruled by absurdly and intentionally broken cards (As both Emrakul and Copter were intentionally overpowered, however they chose not to believe they were). And now we have Aether Revolt, which was just a mess.
If I screwed up that hard and that consistently for a year straight, to the point of driving customers away, I would very likely be looking for a new job. I see no reason why R&D should be treated with kid gloves anymore. They failed, miserably, at their job and their philosophies are downright terrible for the game. If they don't lose their job, then a major shake-up needs to happen where those in positions of authority lose it and others take their place. The philosophies of R&D are just plain rotten to the core at this point.
Modern testing is way too resource intensive. I don't blame them for that. It's impossible to determine the impact of cards on the format, and to figure out metagames and the like. The format is just too damn large. Equally, due to being non-rotating the format is also somewhat more innoculated to broken formats than Standard. If you skip out on Standard for six month, you very likely will have to rebuild a hell of a lot to make a competitive deck. If you skip out on Modern for 6 months, most of what you had is still going to be competitive after a ban happens. Simply put due to Standard requiring constantly acquiring new cards to stay relevant it is a lot less robust at defending against broken formats.
That said, I like PVDR's take. Have the ban announcement at the midway point between Pre-release weekend and the Pro Tour. That way you can give some amount of time for people to adapt to a banning before the Pro Tour, but it also gives you enough data to determine if a ban is necessary. As it stands, the B&R announcement is at the most awkward time imaginable: after a set is known, but before anybody has played with it. Meaning that in the case of Saheeli, you just don't even have a chance to see what happens with something like Amonkhet.
I'm just saying they've admitted bans are costly in a real way and I'm seriously questioning if it isn't more costly than having someone solely to consider these kind of things. It doesn't take a team of 8 people working 40 hours a week to see that reunion and amalgam we're going to help dredge and the ggt could wait. I think taking a step back from the standard environment and judging the cards in a larger context can give you some valuable information into them and allow them to be seen in a different light. If you had a modern person with the set list a few months ahead of time I can't imagine they don't find that saheeli cat combo and at least allow them to preemptive ban. The cat just screams extra planeswalker abilities.
They clearly need to get their act together somehow and I think having more checks would be a good step for them. As mostly a modern player I am getting so tired of hearing that they don't have time to think about it because standard is such a wreck.