The banning of Saheeli Combo is a very good thing for standard and MTG in general. The consensus among my own testing group was that if Felidar remained in standard then it would become a defacto 1 deck format. Consider this, the pros on our team immediately discarded all brews during the 1st phase of testing. We basically knew from monday onward that it was 4c Saheeli and whatever else players thought would be able to beat it. The fact that we just dropped everything and went to come up with the best version of the deck was quite jarring. Why brew when this deck was pretty much tier 0.
Some of us are grinders, but we don't make up the bigger picture right? Sure, okay, here's a true story:
I go to my LGS late, had to finish up some work and strolled in to check out modern. I switched over from standard a while back so, I've been immersed in modern ever since the combo/ Mardu became the 2 best decks. So, anyhow, standard doesn't fire anymore in Austin (Although I think it finally did tonight!), so this guy who I haven't seen in a while is sitting alone at a tabl and I go over to him say "Yo!", and he responds "hey there". We talk about how we've been and I ask him if how his modern match went, and he replies "I came to try and play standard, but I guess no luck, maybe we can just play? I mean I can't play standard ever anymore". So I sat and played Bant Eldrazi vs Mardu Vehicles with him for about an hour. We smiled and had fun, he had fun just getting a chance to play. He's not a grinder, he's trying to be a spike, he's trying to play a format that had at that point let everyone down.
For those of you who aren't in agreement with the bannings, PFFT! get over it, sure it was done with some drama but it HAD to happen. As a guy who runs his own business and is self employed, appearance is important but so is flexibility. WHen you really screw up, you need to address the problem fix and not let it fester. WOTC sure took their time, and almost lost more than than would stand to gain back if they'd let this go longer. It's not a rock in a hard place, it's that this just had to have been done already.
it is about standard, my post is about how the lone standard player showed up a few nights ago, and was pretty screwed out of playing. So I sat down and jammed standard VS modern with him so he could just enjoy playing cards.
The relevance to standard? Half of the players playing modern that night are all planning on buying into standard now. The kinds of players we have at our LGS and community are grinders and casuals who had been turned off the format for a while. The post is very relevant to standard, and this is a direct link to the Austin based community of players.
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Standard Arena: Eh? Gruul or Die
Modern: Decks I'm playing right now: G Mono Green Tron (34-10-3 paper record, only SCG/Regionals/PPTQ record) C Eldrazi Tron (9-5) UG Infect RW Burn
it is about standard, my post is about how the lone standard player showed up a few nights ago, and was pretty screwed out of playing. So I sat down and jammed standard VS modern with him so he could just enjoy playing cards.
The relevance to standard? Half of the players playing modern that night are all planning on buying into standard now. The kinds of players we have at our LGS and community are grinders and casuals who had been turned off the format for a while. The post is very relevant to standard, and this is a direct link to the Austin based community of players.
I wish they'd banned Saheeli instead of Guardian. Guardian was an interesting card that had interesting interactions outside of the combo. Saheeli on the other hand is ONLY playable because of the combo. She's boring and won't see play. Definitely banned the wrong side of the combo.
I haven't seen people complaining about the ban or saying the combo wasn't a problem. I see people complaining about the amateur hour handling of the ban and the fact that it would have never have been necessary had they A) noticed the obvious combo and changed a card or B) not nerfed hate and answer cards so horribly that the combo became a problem.
The ban is good. The way they did it was bad. Letting such an obvious combo by when the format can't handle even the most basic combos is worse. Letting the format become so deprived of answers is worse yet.
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The Meaning of Life: "M-hmm. Well, it's nothing very special. Uh, try and be nice to people, avoid eating fat, read a good book every now and then, get some walking in, and try and live together in peace and harmony with people of all creeds and nations"
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!
I love the way WotC handles this. I honestly think it was the perfect way to handle it. They told us right from the start to try brewing other decks, and to give the new cards an honest try. Then they waited to see if people would even attempt to brew, or just buy up even more copies of the copycat cards. WE FAILED people, not them. They did make a mistake, and admitted the card should have never been printed, but they put faith in us as players to not be little net deckers and think for ourselves. And we shouted as loud as possible," NO!!", and then went on to continue to drool on ourselves. This was like huge slap to the face of every net decker out there and I think its perfect. You know who wasn't effected at all by this 2 day late ban? every casual player, other format player, fnm player who already had the deck, or fnm player who likes to brew.
I love the way WotC handles this. I honestly think it was the perfect way to handle it. They told us right from the start to try brewing other decks, and to give the new cards an honest try. Then they waited to see if people would even attempt to brew, or just buy up even more copies of the copycat cards. WE FAILED people, not them. They did make a mistake, and admitted the card should have never been printed, but they put faith in us as players to not be little net deckers and think for ourselves. And we shouted as loud as possible," NO!!", and then went on to continue to drool on ourselves. This was like huge slap to the face of every net decker out there and I think its perfect. You know who wasn't effected at all by this 2 day late ban? every casual player, other format player, fnm player who already had the deck, or fnm player who likes to brew.
I hope this is sarcasm. I play mostly online, and the availability of AMK cards wasn't to the point where it's easy to find playsets of rares by the time they updated the ban. They could not have reasonably expected the online meta to change in a few days when cards were not widely available.
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The Meaning of Life: "M-hmm. Well, it's nothing very special. Uh, try and be nice to people, avoid eating fat, read a good book every now and then, get some walking in, and try and live together in peace and harmony with people of all creeds and nations"
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!
I love the way WotC handles this. I honestly think it was the perfect way to handle it. They told us right from the start to try brewing other decks, and to give the new cards an honest try. Then they waited to see if people would even attempt to brew, or just buy up even more copies of the copycat cards. WE FAILED people, not them. They did make a mistake, and admitted the card should have never been printed, but they put faith in us as players to not be little net deckers and think for ourselves. And we shouted as loud as possible," NO!!", and then went on to continue to drool on ourselves. This was like huge slap to the face of every net decker out there and I think its perfect. You know who wasn't effected at all by this 2 day late ban? every casual player, other format player, fnm player who already had the deck, or fnm player who likes to brew.
I hope this is sarcasm. I play mostly online, and the availability of AMK cards wasn't to the point where it's easy to find playsets of rares by the time they updated the ban. They could not have reasonably expected the online meta to change in a few days when cards were not widely available.
no it isn't sarcasm, but to the point of online availability, I don't play online and have no reason not to believe you. I think wizards used that as the scapegoat, or convenient excuse maybe, but really were watching the secondary market. I don't think they cared about online data as much as secondary market data showing people still buying up saheeli's in droves the day of the no banning announcement instead of buying up the best cards from amonkhet. If people aren't buying the singles, then people also wont be buying the packs. This is a money move, and they know spikes indirectly make them a lot of money, but not if they are buying the same cards they bought last standard. They wanted pros to try something different, they showed immediately that they wont, so in comes the emergency ban. If more people made their own decks this ban would have never been needed, but that's not the world we live in, so now wizards is forcing it; and essentially punishing people who netdeck by giving the ban late
I love the way WotC handles this. I honestly think it was the perfect way to handle it. They told us right from the start to try brewing other decks, and to give the new cards an honest try. Then they waited to see if people would even attempt to brew, or just buy up even more copies of the copycat cards. WE FAILED people, not them. They did make a mistake, and admitted the card should have never been printed, but they put faith in us as players to not be little net deckers and think for ourselves. And we shouted as loud as possible," NO!!", and then went on to continue to drool on ourselves. This was like huge slap to the face of every net decker out there and I think its perfect. You know who wasn't effected at all by this 2 day late ban? every casual player, other format player, fnm player who already had the deck, or fnm player who likes to brew.
I hope this is sarcasm. I play mostly online, and the availability of AMK cards wasn't to the point where it's easy to find playsets of rares by the time they updated the ban. They could not have reasonably expected the online meta to change in a few days when cards were not widely available.
no it isn't sarcasm, but to the point of online availability, I don't play online and have no reason not to believe you. I think wizards used that as the scapegoat, or convenient excuse maybe, but really were watching the secondary market. I don't think they cared about online data as much as secondary market data showing people still buying up saheeli's in droves the day of the no banning announcement instead of buying up the best cards from amonkhet. If people aren't buying the singles, then people also wont be buying the packs. This is a money move, and they know spikes indirectly make them a lot of money, but not if they are buying the same cards they bought last standard. They wanted pros to try something different, they showed immediately that they wont, so in comes the emergency ban. If more people made their own decks this ban would have never been needed, but that's not the world we live in, so now wizards is forcing it; and essentially punishing people who netdeck by giving the ban late
But don't they keep printing standard legal sets until they are no longer standard legal, IE they don't care as long as its standard they make money. It does not matter which mythic they are buying as long as they ARE buying in print mythics.
You know, there's an interesting observation I saw someone else make about the recent Standard bannings. I'm going to list all the previous cards that were banned or restricted in Standard after the format's creation (I'm not counting ones that were on the list originally), in order:
Zuran Orb, Channel, Mind Twist, Black Vise, Land Tax, Hymn to Tourach, Strip Mine, Tolarian Academy, Windfall, Dream Halls, Earthcraft, Fluctuator, Lotus Petal, Recurring Nightmare, Time Spiral, Memory Jar, Mind Over Matter, Skullclamp, Arcbound Ravager, Disciple of the Vault, Darksteel Citadel/Ancient Den/Great Furnace/Seat of the Synod/Tree of Tales/Vault of Whispers, Stoneforge Mystic, and Jace, the Mind Sculptor.
Take a look at those cards. You may notice something that's true about essentially all of them: These cards were so good that at the time they were--and in some cases, still are--seeing strong levels of play in larger formats like Extended/Modern, Legacy, or Vintage. A lot of them even got outright banned in those formats.
Now look at the recent batch of bannings: Emrakul the Promised End, Smuggler's Copter, Reflector Mage, and Felidar Guardian. Can you imagine these cards being banned in any non-Standard format? Of course not. That's a key difference: Previous bannings in Standard almost entirely comprised of cards that were so good that they made a big splash even in the larger formats, and Standard's lower power level was just unable to deal with them. Unlike before, nowadays cards are banned in Standard that aren't even a blip on those other formats. It's really an indication to me that their design/development philosophy towards Standard is so out of whack that they're having to ban cards that are barely even playable in the larger formats.
If everyone is buying the same mythics, or just cards in general, that only make up one deck they are bound to make less money than if people are buying up cards to make many different decks. This also mean people are buying from more sets to get the chase cards. More variety means more money.
If everyone is buying the same mythics, or just cards in general, that only make up one deck they are bound to make less money than if people are buying up cards to make many different decks. This also mean people are buying from more sets to get the chase cards. More variety means more money.
But is it? Lets take 100 as our example. Lets say everyone of the format needs one Mythic rare the same one in a play set for their deck. That mythic is pulled on average once per booster box. This means they need to sell 400 booster boxes for each player to get their playset. However more variety means you have 25 people in four different groups who need a given mythic, Each mythic averages to one per box, in this case you only sell 100 boxes (each mythic averages 1 per box ) because your given box you have people looking for different rares from the set. If you draw from the same card repeatadly in a set you will have more dead cards that fill up more packs hense more sales.
One of the biggest things is that 4c Saheeli still works just fine.It no longer has access to that particular infinite combo but does it really need it to win? No.... Especially since the deck can go into a grindy midrange 4c walker deck with so much value it can stomp a lot of other decks.....
One of the biggest things is that 4c Saheeli still works just fine.It no longer has access to that particular infinite combo but does it really need it to win? No.... Especially since the deck can go into a grindy midrange 4c walker deck with so much value it can stomp a lot of other decks.....
The deck has no reason to be four colors, or to run Saheeli. Therefore it would pretty much just be Temur Midrange, which would need a new win condition. It doesn't really 'work just fine', it's a different deck.
One of the biggest things is that 4c Saheeli still works just fine.It no longer has access to that particular infinite combo but does it really need it to win? No.... Especially since the deck can go into a grindy midrange 4c walker deck with so much value it can stomp a lot of other decks.....
The deck has no reason to be four colors, or to run Saheeli. Therefore it would pretty much just be Temur Midrange, which would need a new win condition. It doesn't really 'work just fine', it's a different deck.
As long as Gideon is in the format, there is no reason not to run him.
The way the deck changes is it looks for more pure value, be it displacer to blink spell quellers or whirlers... Saheeli for the constant CA and burn every turn with the occasional, which may be game ending (in the case of copying a green hulk), the deck goes for the long game in mind. Heck, it might even decide to run Panharmonicon in place of the felidar guardians. The deck's still viable, just in a different way.
You know, there's an interesting observation I saw someone else make about the recent Standard bannings. I'm going to list all the previous cards that were banned or restricted in Standard after the format's creation (I'm not counting ones that were on the list originally), in order:
Zuran Orb, Channel, Mind Twist, Black Vise, Land Tax, Hymn to Tourach, Strip Mine, Tolarian Academy, Windfall, Dream Halls, Earthcraft, Fluctuator, Lotus Petal, Recurring Nightmare, Time Spiral, Memory Jar, Mind Over Matter, Skullclamp, Arcbound Ravager, Disciple of the Vault, Darksteel Citadel/Ancient Den/Great Furnace/Seat of the Synod/Tree of Tales/Vault of Whispers, Stoneforge Mystic, and Jace, the Mind Sculptor.
Take a look at those cards. You may notice something that's true about essentially all of them: These cards were so good that at the time they were--and in some cases, still are--seeing strong levels of play in larger formats like Extended/Modern, Legacy, or Vintage. A lot of them even got outright banned in those formats.
Now look at the recent batch of bannings: Emrakul the Promised End, Smuggler's Copter, Reflector Mage, and Felidar Guardian. Can you imagine these cards being banned in any non-Standard format? Of course not. That's a key difference: Previous bannings in Standard almost entirely comprised of cards that were so good that they made a big splash even in the larger formats, and Standard's lower power level was just unable to deal with them. Unlike before, nowadays cards are banned in Standard that aren't even a blip on those other formats. It's really an indication to me that their design/development philosophy towards Standard is so out of whack that they're having to ban cards that are barely even playable in the larger formats.
Yup. Better removal/counter magic/discard would have handled copter and cat at minimum. Emrakul was probably harder because of the on cast ability and marvel combo, since answering marvel 1 left the energy counters for marvel 2 to use, but that's a function of a card meant to cheat out expensive spells meeting up with the absurdity that is an Eldrazi Titan. Reflector mage was more of a product if it's environment being so favorable to UWx etb blink and just wanting to weaken that deck. They could have accomplished the same by banning spell queller, but mage had worn out its welcome after featuring so prominently in the previous standards best deck CoCo. Still, they probably should have held off to see if banning copter was enough to weaken it before banning mage.
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The Meaning of Life: "M-hmm. Well, it's nothing very special. Uh, try and be nice to people, avoid eating fat, read a good book every now and then, get some walking in, and try and live together in peace and harmony with people of all creeds and nations"
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!
One of the biggest things is that 4c Saheeli still works just fine.It no longer has access to that particular infinite combo but does it really need it to win? No.... Especially since the deck can go into a grindy midrange 4c walker deck with so much value it can stomp a lot of other decks.....
The deck has no reason to be four colors, or to run Saheeli. Therefore it would pretty much just be Temur Midrange, which would need a new win condition. It doesn't really 'work just fine', it's a different deck.
Over 50% of the times I've seen the 4c deck pull out a win it's been because of Virtuoso/Skysovereign/Chandra and not the combo. They still have that as a beatdown wincon.
I love the way WotC handles this. I honestly think it was the perfect way to handle it. They told us right from the start to try brewing other decks, and to give the new cards an honest try. Then they waited to see if people would even attempt to brew, or just buy up even more copies of the copycat cards. WE FAILED people, not them. They did make a mistake, and admitted the card should have never been printed, but they put faith in us as players to not be little net deckers and think for ourselves. And we shouted as loud as possible," NO!!", and then went on to continue to drool on ourselves. This was like huge slap to the face of every net decker out there and I think its perfect. You know who wasn't effected at all by this 2 day late ban? every casual player, other format player, fnm player who already had the deck, or fnm player who likes to brew.
The fact is that pros testing found that any brew they came up with was completely inferior to copycat while at the same time being bent to make sure it could deal with copycat. I'm definately not included in your failed comment as I sold my saheeli's right away and spent my time brewing trying to make something come out that was able to deal with copy, mardu and a couple tier 2s that were close. The pros spend so much more time than any of the rest of us that a little respect to their efforts should be given.
The fact is the deck was too oppressive for standard. Whole strategies were no factor because they had no way to interact with the combo or lost to it too quickly.
WotC failed by printing dirty kitty and their general design philosophy needs to be majorly adjusted if they expect to heal standard.
I love the way WotC handles this. I honestly think it was the perfect way to handle it. They told us right from the start to try brewing other decks, and to give the new cards an honest try. Then they waited to see if people would even attempt to brew, or just buy up even more copies of the copycat cards. WE FAILED people, not them. They did make a mistake, and admitted the card should have never been printed, but they put faith in us as players to not be little net deckers and think for ourselves. And we shouted as loud as possible," NO!!", and then went on to continue to drool on ourselves. This was like huge slap to the face of every net decker out there and I think its perfect. You know who wasn't effected at all by this 2 day late ban? every casual player, other format player, fnm player who already had the deck, or fnm player who likes to brew.
The fact is that pros testing found that any brew they came up with was completely inferior to copycat while at the same time being bent to make sure it could deal with copycat. I'm definately not included in your failed comment as I sold my saheeli's right away and spent my time brewing trying to make something come out that was able to deal with copy, mardu and a couple tier 2s that were close. The pros spend so much more time than any of the rest of us that a little respect to their efforts should be given.
The fact is the deck was too oppressive for standard. Whole strategies were no factor because they had no way to interact with the combo or lost to it too quickly.
WotC failed by printing dirty kitty and their general design philosophy needs to be majorly adjusted if they expect to heal standard.
You know what, I can agree with everything you have said in this reply. But I do believe that one of the reasons they banned the card late was because WotC did give respect to the pros effort. I wont take anything way from the pros, because they are brewers. They brew in think tanks, which is a really good plan. More minds working in a collective effort should bring better results. I also agree that wizards screwed up big time with felidar guardian, and they do need to reevaluate the design philosophy. They think that everyone likes to play mid range beat down decks first and foremost, and strategies like aggro or control should only be fringe, amongst others. They need to understand that the draw of this game to many players, and probably the majority of players, is that there is many playing styles. No one way to win. But unfortunately they have only catered to the type of player who would normally run a green deck; big fatties and very few instants and sorceries. That strategy should always exist, but it shouldn't be allowed to dominate season after season. So they tried to have a standard with combo. They may or may not have missed the kitty; I'm in the camp of thinking they are full of it when they say they missed it, I think since everything else in kaladesh block is built around combos that this may have been intentional until they saw it was too good. But anyone who got caught buying up the copycat deck on the ban day should have known better. The deck was gonna see a ban soon whether in 2 days or at the next normal ban time, so why invest? But like I said in a previous comment, the pros didn't want to brew something other than copycat, because they don't like taking chances. and any deck that cant win on turn 4 was a 'chance' with copycat around. Since standard is supposed to be a 'turn 5' format, why would they try? But at the end of the day, we only ended up in this situation because we don't like our opponents having powerful answer to our decks, but want to have powerful answers ourselves. so we whine when get cards like thoughtseize but only when it gets cast on us. WotC sees our complaints, but they also see us using the cards we complain about in our decks too. What are they supposed to do? they print good cards and we whine; they start nerfing cards and we whine. Then we go on to talk about how much smarter we are and that they need to get their act together. They can never win, because no matter what they do we tell them they are wrong and ruining the game. what they really need to do is make as many strategies powerful as possible at the same time. or nerf every strategy equally at the same time. But instead they do the pendulum thing of "this standard we will make aggro good. then next one will be control, then combo, but wait; lets make midrange beaters good every time, and better than everything else"
I think we're on the same page. Where I find the most fault with Maro and co is that they listen to the complaining. The game has been pretty well off for a very long time with control, aggro, or midrange floating in and out of the top as the meta changes. There are plenty of people who will complain because the strat they are playing that week gets eaten alive either because of that week's meta, or that block's trend of dominance.
They should stop listening and build the game like they have for a long time. Give us all the tools in all the strategies and let us play it out.
Stop trying to force us to play the new thing they're proud of and making changes to a winning formula that has jacked everything up.
This of course will only work if they go back to old school design and dump this Magic: the Creaturing and making 'cards people want to buy'. Maro is so off base. So all the control and aggro players want to buy midrange beats cards??? Wrong. Dead wrong.
Yup. Better removal/counter magic/discard would have handled copter and cat at minimum.
For fun, I tested out an Esper Control deck from Innistrad-RTR against CopyCat (it was a version from before the release of Gatewatch, to better approximate it having the same number of sets be legal). Esper Control seemed favored. I also tested it against Mardu Vehicles (to make sure it wasn't one of those "beats one of the top decks but is kept down by the other") and it had game against that also. And the funny thing is, Esper Control, while a good deck, didn't dominate its Standard format or anything. It seems to really speak to how better answers could've solved a lot of problems in Standard.
Emrakul was probably harder because of the on cast ability and marvel combo, since answering marvel 1 left the energy counters for marvel 2 to use, but that's a function of a card meant to cheat out expensive spells meeting up with the absurdity that is an Eldrazi Titan.
I don't think Emrakul would have been an issue had it just been part of the Marvel combo. Ulamog was the better card to cast off the combo anyway. The real issue was all the play Emrakul was seeing outside of the combo. And that would have been fixed via having decent graveyard hate. It's just plain incomprehensible to me that they didn't put any decent graveyard hate when they had a graveyard block. I can even understand not wanting to put it in the SOI block itself (don't want to go against the themes in the sets you're currently pushing) but then the cards should have gone into Kaladesh. One can't even say it's a flavor problem, i.e. you can't reprint Tormod's Crypt in a plane without Tormod. The problem is that cards like Scrabbling Claws and Rest In Peace can go into literally any set. Speaking of graveyard hate, if they had reprinted Grafidgger's Cage (a graveyard hate card put in the original Innistrad block) in SOI or Eldritch Moon, then Collected Company wouldn't have been such a force.
Reflector mage was more of a product if it's environment being so favorable to UWx etb blink and just wanting to weaken that deck. They could have accomplished the same by banning spell queller, but mage had worn out its welcome after featuring so prominently in the previous standards best deck CoCo. Still, they probably should have held off to see if banning copter was enough to weaken it before banning mage.
I suspect banning Reflector Mage may have been partially motivated as a way to weaken CopyCat without resorting to a pre-emptive banning.
One is left wondering, looking back, if banning Felidar Guardian pre-emptively would have been better. It's certainly pretty bad PR to ban a card before it's even been released. The only pre-emptive ban they've ever done was when they banned Imperial Seal in Legacy in preparation for making the Portal sets legal in it, which was a pretty different situation. On the other hand, it's also bad PR to have people suffer through the 2-deck metagame that they did. On the other hand, for all we know the metagame might have just been completely dominated by Mardu Vehicles if not for CopyCat.
I realized I did goof up a little in my list of Standard bannings, though. I started it with Zuran Orb, but there were two cards restricted before it: Balance and Fork. Whoops! The point still stands, though. Fork does seem a goofy restriction, but it's worth noting it was restricted in Vintage at the same time, so it still fits the pattern of how pretty much all the previous bannings/restrictions in Standard were cards that were, if not banned/restricted in the larger formats, at least had a big impact on them, in contrast to the current Standard bannings which are cards that have made basically no splash in Modern, Legacy, or Vintage. I'm not sure exactly what Fork did to warrant restriction (maybe it was one of those goofy early bannings/restrictions, like how Juggernaut and Kird Ape were on the banned list in Extended at the start of that format), but whatever supposed issues it had in Standard seemed to extend into Vintage.
No one invests in anything, it's only an uncommon, and you wouldn't have had months of brew bending to warp around it.
What can you complain about if it was pre-banned that passes a sniff test?
"It would have been better to ban Felidar Guardian right away on the Monday after Aether Revolt was fully revealed, before it even became legal." -Frank Karsten
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Some of us are grinders, but we don't make up the bigger picture right? Sure, okay, here's a true story:
I go to my LGS late, had to finish up some work and strolled in to check out modern. I switched over from standard a while back so, I've been immersed in modern ever since the combo/ Mardu became the 2 best decks. So, anyhow, standard doesn't fire anymore in Austin (Although I think it finally did tonight!), so this guy who I haven't seen in a while is sitting alone at a tabl and I go over to him say "Yo!", and he responds "hey there". We talk about how we've been and I ask him if how his modern match went, and he replies "I came to try and play standard, but I guess no luck, maybe we can just play? I mean I can't play standard ever anymore". So I sat and played Bant Eldrazi vs Mardu Vehicles with him for about an hour. We smiled and had fun, he had fun just getting a chance to play. He's not a grinder, he's trying to be a spike, he's trying to play a format that had at that point let everyone down.
For those of you who aren't in agreement with the bannings, PFFT! get over it, sure it was done with some drama but it HAD to happen. As a guy who runs his own business and is self employed, appearance is important but so is flexibility. WHen you really screw up, you need to address the problem fix and not let it fester. WOTC sure took their time, and almost lost more than than would stand to gain back if they'd let this go longer. It's not a rock in a hard place, it's that this just had to have been done already.
Nuff Said.
Modern: Decks I'm playing right now:
G Mono Green Tron (34-10-3 paper record, only SCG/Regionals/PPTQ record)
C Eldrazi Tron (9-5)
UG Infect
RW Burn
This is the standard forum and discussion needs to be about standard.
The relevance to standard? Half of the players playing modern that night are all planning on buying into standard now. The kinds of players we have at our LGS and community are grinders and casuals who had been turned off the format for a while. The post is very relevant to standard, and this is a direct link to the Austin based community of players.
Modern: Decks I'm playing right now:
G Mono Green Tron (34-10-3 paper record, only SCG/Regionals/PPTQ record)
C Eldrazi Tron (9-5)
UG Infect
RW Burn
My post wasn't directed towards your post.
NOT EVERYTHING IS ABOUT YOU MAN!
; P
The ban is good. The way they did it was bad. Letting such an obvious combo by when the format can't handle even the most basic combos is worse. Letting the format become so deprived of answers is worse yet.
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!
I hope this is sarcasm. I play mostly online, and the availability of AMK cards wasn't to the point where it's easy to find playsets of rares by the time they updated the ban. They could not have reasonably expected the online meta to change in a few days when cards were not widely available.
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!
no it isn't sarcasm, but to the point of online availability, I don't play online and have no reason not to believe you. I think wizards used that as the scapegoat, or convenient excuse maybe, but really were watching the secondary market. I don't think they cared about online data as much as secondary market data showing people still buying up saheeli's in droves the day of the no banning announcement instead of buying up the best cards from amonkhet. If people aren't buying the singles, then people also wont be buying the packs. This is a money move, and they know spikes indirectly make them a lot of money, but not if they are buying the same cards they bought last standard. They wanted pros to try something different, they showed immediately that they wont, so in comes the emergency ban. If more people made their own decks this ban would have never been needed, but that's not the world we live in, so now wizards is forcing it; and essentially punishing people who netdeck by giving the ban late
But don't they keep printing standard legal sets until they are no longer standard legal, IE they don't care as long as its standard they make money. It does not matter which mythic they are buying as long as they ARE buying in print mythics.
Zuran Orb, Channel, Mind Twist, Black Vise, Land Tax, Hymn to Tourach, Strip Mine, Tolarian Academy, Windfall, Dream Halls, Earthcraft, Fluctuator, Lotus Petal, Recurring Nightmare, Time Spiral, Memory Jar, Mind Over Matter, Skullclamp, Arcbound Ravager, Disciple of the Vault, Darksteel Citadel/Ancient Den/Great Furnace/Seat of the Synod/Tree of Tales/Vault of Whispers, Stoneforge Mystic, and Jace, the Mind Sculptor.
Take a look at those cards. You may notice something that's true about essentially all of them: These cards were so good that at the time they were--and in some cases, still are--seeing strong levels of play in larger formats like Extended/Modern, Legacy, or Vintage. A lot of them even got outright banned in those formats.
Now look at the recent batch of bannings: Emrakul the Promised End, Smuggler's Copter, Reflector Mage, and Felidar Guardian. Can you imagine these cards being banned in any non-Standard format? Of course not. That's a key difference: Previous bannings in Standard almost entirely comprised of cards that were so good that they made a big splash even in the larger formats, and Standard's lower power level was just unable to deal with them. Unlike before, nowadays cards are banned in Standard that aren't even a blip on those other formats. It's really an indication to me that their design/development philosophy towards Standard is so out of whack that they're having to ban cards that are barely even playable in the larger formats.
But is it? Lets take 100 as our example. Lets say everyone of the format needs one Mythic rare the same one in a play set for their deck. That mythic is pulled on average once per booster box. This means they need to sell 400 booster boxes for each player to get their playset. However more variety means you have 25 people in four different groups who need a given mythic, Each mythic averages to one per box, in this case you only sell 100 boxes (each mythic averages 1 per box ) because your given box you have people looking for different rares from the set. If you draw from the same card repeatadly in a set you will have more dead cards that fill up more packs hense more sales.
Please remain topical.
Bless.
-- Lugger
The deck has no reason to be four colors, or to run Saheeli. Therefore it would pretty much just be Temur Midrange, which would need a new win condition. It doesn't really 'work just fine', it's a different deck.
As long as Gideon is in the format, there is no reason not to run him.
The way the deck changes is it looks for more pure value, be it displacer to blink spell quellers or whirlers... Saheeli for the constant CA and burn every turn with the occasional, which may be game ending (in the case of copying a green hulk), the deck goes for the long game in mind. Heck, it might even decide to run Panharmonicon in place of the felidar guardians. The deck's still viable, just in a different way.
Yup. Better removal/counter magic/discard would have handled copter and cat at minimum. Emrakul was probably harder because of the on cast ability and marvel combo, since answering marvel 1 left the energy counters for marvel 2 to use, but that's a function of a card meant to cheat out expensive spells meeting up with the absurdity that is an Eldrazi Titan. Reflector mage was more of a product if it's environment being so favorable to UWx etb blink and just wanting to weaken that deck. They could have accomplished the same by banning spell queller, but mage had worn out its welcome after featuring so prominently in the previous standards best deck CoCo. Still, they probably should have held off to see if banning copter was enough to weaken it before banning mage.
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!
Over 50% of the times I've seen the 4c deck pull out a win it's been because of Virtuoso/Skysovereign/Chandra and not the combo. They still have that as a beatdown wincon.
The fact is that pros testing found that any brew they came up with was completely inferior to copycat while at the same time being bent to make sure it could deal with copycat. I'm definately not included in your failed comment as I sold my saheeli's right away and spent my time brewing trying to make something come out that was able to deal with copy, mardu and a couple tier 2s that were close. The pros spend so much more time than any of the rest of us that a little respect to their efforts should be given.
The fact is the deck was too oppressive for standard. Whole strategies were no factor because they had no way to interact with the combo or lost to it too quickly.
WotC failed by printing dirty kitty and their general design philosophy needs to be majorly adjusted if they expect to heal standard.
You know what, I can agree with everything you have said in this reply. But I do believe that one of the reasons they banned the card late was because WotC did give respect to the pros effort. I wont take anything way from the pros, because they are brewers. They brew in think tanks, which is a really good plan. More minds working in a collective effort should bring better results. I also agree that wizards screwed up big time with felidar guardian, and they do need to reevaluate the design philosophy. They think that everyone likes to play mid range beat down decks first and foremost, and strategies like aggro or control should only be fringe, amongst others. They need to understand that the draw of this game to many players, and probably the majority of players, is that there is many playing styles. No one way to win. But unfortunately they have only catered to the type of player who would normally run a green deck; big fatties and very few instants and sorceries. That strategy should always exist, but it shouldn't be allowed to dominate season after season. So they tried to have a standard with combo. They may or may not have missed the kitty; I'm in the camp of thinking they are full of it when they say they missed it, I think since everything else in kaladesh block is built around combos that this may have been intentional until they saw it was too good. But anyone who got caught buying up the copycat deck on the ban day should have known better. The deck was gonna see a ban soon whether in 2 days or at the next normal ban time, so why invest? But like I said in a previous comment, the pros didn't want to brew something other than copycat, because they don't like taking chances. and any deck that cant win on turn 4 was a 'chance' with copycat around. Since standard is supposed to be a 'turn 5' format, why would they try? But at the end of the day, we only ended up in this situation because we don't like our opponents having powerful answer to our decks, but want to have powerful answers ourselves. so we whine when get cards like thoughtseize but only when it gets cast on us. WotC sees our complaints, but they also see us using the cards we complain about in our decks too. What are they supposed to do? they print good cards and we whine; they start nerfing cards and we whine. Then we go on to talk about how much smarter we are and that they need to get their act together. They can never win, because no matter what they do we tell them they are wrong and ruining the game. what they really need to do is make as many strategies powerful as possible at the same time. or nerf every strategy equally at the same time. But instead they do the pendulum thing of "this standard we will make aggro good. then next one will be control, then combo, but wait; lets make midrange beaters good every time, and better than everything else"
I think we're on the same page. Where I find the most fault with Maro and co is that they listen to the complaining. The game has been pretty well off for a very long time with control, aggro, or midrange floating in and out of the top as the meta changes. There are plenty of people who will complain because the strat they are playing that week gets eaten alive either because of that week's meta, or that block's trend of dominance.
They should stop listening and build the game like they have for a long time. Give us all the tools in all the strategies and let us play it out.
Stop trying to force us to play the new thing they're proud of and making changes to a winning formula that has jacked everything up.
This of course will only work if they go back to old school design and dump this Magic: the Creaturing and making 'cards people want to buy'. Maro is so off base. So all the control and aggro players want to buy midrange beats cards??? Wrong. Dead wrong.
I don't think Emrakul would have been an issue had it just been part of the Marvel combo. Ulamog was the better card to cast off the combo anyway. The real issue was all the play Emrakul was seeing outside of the combo. And that would have been fixed via having decent graveyard hate. It's just plain incomprehensible to me that they didn't put any decent graveyard hate when they had a graveyard block. I can even understand not wanting to put it in the SOI block itself (don't want to go against the themes in the sets you're currently pushing) but then the cards should have gone into Kaladesh. One can't even say it's a flavor problem, i.e. you can't reprint Tormod's Crypt in a plane without Tormod. The problem is that cards like Scrabbling Claws and Rest In Peace can go into literally any set. Speaking of graveyard hate, if they had reprinted Grafidgger's Cage (a graveyard hate card put in the original Innistrad block) in SOI or Eldritch Moon, then Collected Company wouldn't have been such a force.
I suspect banning Reflector Mage may have been partially motivated as a way to weaken CopyCat without resorting to a pre-emptive banning.
One is left wondering, looking back, if banning Felidar Guardian pre-emptively would have been better. It's certainly pretty bad PR to ban a card before it's even been released. The only pre-emptive ban they've ever done was when they banned Imperial Seal in Legacy in preparation for making the Portal sets legal in it, which was a pretty different situation. On the other hand, it's also bad PR to have people suffer through the 2-deck metagame that they did. On the other hand, for all we know the metagame might have just been completely dominated by Mardu Vehicles if not for CopyCat.
I realized I did goof up a little in my list of Standard bannings, though. I started it with Zuran Orb, but there were two cards restricted before it: Balance and Fork. Whoops! The point still stands, though. Fork does seem a goofy restriction, but it's worth noting it was restricted in Vintage at the same time, so it still fits the pattern of how pretty much all the previous bannings/restrictions in Standard were cards that were, if not banned/restricted in the larger formats, at least had a big impact on them, in contrast to the current Standard bannings which are cards that have made basically no splash in Modern, Legacy, or Vintage. I'm not sure exactly what Fork did to warrant restriction (maybe it was one of those goofy early bannings/restrictions, like how Juggernaut and Kird Ape were on the banned list in Extended at the start of that format), but whatever supposed issues it had in Standard seemed to extend into Vintage.
No one invests in anything, it's only an uncommon, and you wouldn't have had months of brew bending to warp around it.
What can you complain about if it was pre-banned that passes a sniff test?
"It would have been better to ban Felidar Guardian right away on the Monday after Aether Revolt was fully revealed, before it even became legal." -Frank Karsten