Taking a look at the two paper tournaments we've had so far; SCG Open and Classic in Atlanta, the one simple Felidar ban seems to have evolved our Standard from one of the worst in recent history, to one of the most blatantly diverse and interesting I've seen in awhile.
Isn't it just normal that when things change (new set, bannings, etc), that there's a diverse format for a few weeks before the meta naturally settles into a few decks? I thought that traditional logic was that Standard is a brewer's paradise - but only for a few weeks each set.
I think there's too much power in SoI and Kaladesh blocks even with the hate cards in the format and the majority of the mechanics from Amonkhet are too weak to compete with the likes of revolt and energy. The one mechanic that has a glimmer of hope is probably the -1/-1 mechanics if they carry them over to Hour of Devastation.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
1. (Ravnica Allegiance): You can't keep a good esper control deck down... Or Wilderness Reclamation... or Gates...
2. (War of the Spark): Guys, I know what we need! We need a cycle of really idiotic flavor text victory cards! Jace's Triumph...
3. (War of the Spark): Lets make the format with control have even more control!
removing a combo that can win turn 4 in standard is going to open things up for a week...or two. you still have mardu, delirium and torrential gearhulk decks...and if you're brewing you have to ask yourself, "am I able to beat/compete with these decks?"
The PT next weekend also isn't going to help much in terms of seeing whats what in standard.
Turn 4 ulamog takes a lot of set up, and luck, uninterrupted by um...the other player in the game. Yes I had trouble against the marvels decks too before copycat took over, but seriously it was because of their access to life gain, not ulamog. Their are answer for that creature. This format may not have 7-8 tier one decks, but I can pretty much say with certainty that it wont only have 2 again.
So much for diversity. This is almost exactly what happened at the beginning of Aether Revolt: 3 top tier decks. Before it was Mardu, Constrictor, and Copycat; now it's Mardu, Marvel, and Zombies; an aggro deck, a midrange deck, and a deck built around a card that never should've been printed.
Give it a month of so and by then one of those 3 (likely Mardu) will fall off the wagon, and we end up with another 2-deck Standard with Zombies and Marvel, until Wizards finally owns up to their mistake (again) and ban Marvel, but not before pissing off many more players to the point of quitting the game altogether. Seriously what is it going to take for Wizards to stop printing broken cards that lets you cheat creatures for free? We've lived through Collected Company, which Wizards agreed they should've banned, and now Marvel. They also could've changed the text just a little bit to not make it so broken but they couldn't even do that; they had to say "cast" for free instead of just "put" and even then, getting a 10/10 indestructible creature should be considered fair by any means.
hold hold on there. i usually fear monger but this time feels different. control has a decent to good match up ahainst marvel. the u/w flash shell is still there and on line players and paper players are still adjusting.
PT hsppened like 3 days ago, relax! marvel may be too percect (it is not imo) but let's try and beat it first. zombies did it, you cannot tell control cant tune to beat it ? control needs to aim its lasers at zombies and marvel.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
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
Except how would you build a deck that's good against both Marvel AND Zombies? This is just like how it was impossible to build a deck that was good against both Copycat AND Mardu.
For Marvel, you'd of course need a control deck, holding up counterspells against marvel, but a deck like that would easily get overrun by zombies. Against zombies, you'd need a good midrange deck that can board stall against zombies while backed up by good removals, but such a deck would be slow to set up and will instantly lose to a T4 Ulamog.
And just like Copycat, if you're holding your answers in hand to wait against a Marvel or Ulamog, then you're just going to lose to their other threats (i.e. Chandra, Thopters, etc.); it's uncanny how many similar they are.
my friend esrned his rptq invite this weekend by playing turbo tower. Yes it is only at the pptq level but that is a sign that certain decks are not dead.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
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
Are we allowed to be happy yet? Or should we wait another week?
Depends on how happy you feel about the turn four Ulamog dance.
Marvel.dec picking up where Copy Cat left off
Yeah. As the Marvel decks proliferate online I'm getting less and less interested in playing standard. Turn two puzzleknot, turn three crack puzzleknot, turn four Ulamog is basically unbeatable if you don't have counterspells. It doesn't happen every game but when you're matched up against Marvel four times in a five match league you're going to see a bunch of early Ulamogs. The rest of the meta makes sure that any deck with counterspells gets run over by absurdly efficient creatures. Oh, by the way, Marvel runs absurdly efficient creatures too.
my friend esrned his rptq invite this weekend by playing turbo tower. Yes it is only at the pptq level but that is a sign that certain decks are not dead.
Congrats to your friend, but when we say "dead" we obviously don't mean a deck will never ever see competitive play, rather we mean that playing such a deck is statistically not in your favor.
The statistics from the PT and the prior events suggest that it's another 2-deck format. Fundamentally, Marvel is another Copycat, the two decks play very similarly, run the same colors, and largely built around an instant win condition, and I know there are others who agree with me on that.
Tag the might be true, we tournaments this weekend. I'm leaning towards a "marvel should've been banned a while ago " too, but mtgo results are saying otherwise. Let's how it plays out first.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
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
"-a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, I was pretty vocal about the fact that I thought that Aetherworks Marvel was ruining Standard (when it had 4 Ulamog, 4 Emrakul). I didn’t like the feeling when they spun the wheel and my game randomly ended on turn 4. It essentially exists to do unfair things, and that's about it. - Brian DeMars
I'm right there with him. Spin the wheel 'did I win' decks are for Pokemon. Maro and crew pushed Marvel too far and energy CANNOT be interacted with in any way. Marvel will continue on top for sure because it's midrange with control accents main or sideboard depending on your configuration.
It was nice to brew again for a little bit but the OP block will continue to cause problems until it rotates. Bad design is hard to shake.
Still waiting to see how they fail to fix things with HoD. They SAY they've learned then keep making mistakes.
I think what makes Aetherworks Marvel decks so different from Saheeli Copycat is that there is a legitimate chance of Marvel just bricking. Let's assume a god hand from Marvel: Turn 1 Attune with Aether, Turn 2 Woodweaver's Puzzleknot, turn 3 Rogue Refiner, Turn 4 Marvel spin. At this point there's 48 cards in your deck left, 4 of them are ulamog. (7 card opening hand, 3 draws, 1 land pulled out from Attune, 1 card drawn with Refiner = 12 cards not in your deck) The probability of finding none of the ulamogs in the top 6 is about 57.5% (Prob not the top card, times prob it's not the next top card, etc. etc.)
Yes, that does mean that 42.5% of the time, they will hit a turn 4 ulamog, and on the play there's very much not a good way to stop it. But more than half the time they will whiff on it, they have expended a lot of resources with often not much to show for it, and it gives a window to punish them.
Marvel is a lot like dredge where if you don't keep it in check they will just run over you, but if you pack your hate and catch them with it, you'll get there more often than not. Yes sometimes you won't draw the hate and/or they'll win through it, but if everyone packs hate in the board the meta share will go down as it becomes even less of a sure thing.
Is the format saved? Hardly. But there's a lot more options than there were, people just need to be willing to try them instead of just buying the best deck.
Top 16 - 2012 Indiana State Championships Currently Playing: GBStandard - Golgari Safari MidrangeBG RBWModern - Mardu PyromancerWBR RLegacy - Good Old Fashioned BurnR
My point with Marvel type cards is they break WotC's own rules (ok let's call it design tendencies). Ulamog costs 10 because when designing creatures that are big, and have powerful effects, they make them cost more. They haven't printed a 10/10 for (4) (I know Metalwork Colossus is mighty close) because that's not reasonable based on the basics of the game. In Kaladesh they threw all those 'reasonable rules of thumb' into the wind and created combo madness which instead of being fun has made a royal mess. Maybe unchecked Maro's next signature creature will be 10/10 for GG1 but we're talking about keeping the game reasonable and good right?
Breaking all the rules of thumb to 'cheat' in cards as easily as with Marvel leads to not fun. You can't interact with energy and you're certainly not going to counter every Attune, Woodweaver's, and Refiner.
I think what makes Aetherworks Marvel decks so different from Saheeli Copycat is that there is a legitimate chance of Marvel just bricking. Let's assume a god hand from Marvel: Turn 1 Attune with Aether, Turn 2 Woodweaver's Puzzleknot, turn 3 Rogue Refiner, Turn 4 Marvel spin. At this point there's 48 cards in your deck left, 4 of them are ulamog. (7 card opening hand, 3 draws, 1 land pulled out from Attune, 1 card drawn with Refiner = 12 cards not in your deck) The probability of finding none of the ulamogs in the top 6 is about 57.5% (Prob not the top card, times prob it's not the next top card, etc. etc.)
Yes, that does mean that 42.5% of the time, they will hit a turn 4 ulamog, and on the play there's very much not a good way to stop it. But more than half the time they will whiff on it, they have expended a lot of resources with often not much to show for it, and it gives a window to punish them.
Marvel is a lot like dredge where if you don't keep it in check they will just run over you, but if you pack your hate and catch them with it, you'll get there more often than not. Yes sometimes you won't draw the hate and/or they'll win through it, but if everyone packs hate in the board the meta share will go down as it becomes even less of a sure thing.
Is the format saved? Hardly. But there's a lot more options than there were, people just need to be willing to try them instead of just buying the best deck.
That's pretty much the same thing as copycat. With the Copycat, you're constantly questioning "do they have both pieces in hand" and in Marvel it's "is Ulamog/Chandra/whatever in the top 6 of their deck?" This type of mental torture oppresses play styles and deck building, and makes Magic not fun for anyone. Not to mention: the deck is incredibly energy-efficient. You might think 6 energy is a lot for 1 spin, but the deck is built around energy, and if you watch or play against any Marvel decks, you'll see that they almost always get another 6 energy the very next turn, largely thanks to Woodweaver's Puzzleknot, which also gives you life and makes it impossible for any aggro deck to race against Marvel.
Oh and if you think packing enough hate is going to do the trick, then you sound just like everyone who said to "just hold a Shock" against Copycat. Well we held Shock, and Authority of the Consuls, and Grasp of Darkness/Murder/Unlicensed Disintegration, but IT.DOES.NOT.WORK. When are people going to realize that packing hate is not enough to deter people from the playing ANY deck, let alone one that can cheat a instant win condition on Turn 4?
The bottom line is that Marvel is the new Copycat; Standard is going to once again be a 2-deck format consisting of Marvel and Zombies, EXACTLY like in the days of AER Standard. You think you're giving this new Standard the benefit of the doubt but the evidence is all right in front of you. Accept it.
Marvel needs to be banned just like Felidar Guardian. Seriously, did Wizards really not think that a card that lets you cheat any card WITH cast triggers (if any) for free would NOT be completely broken? Standard has already lost so many players from the Copycat debacle, and now they finally come back to the game just to see ANOTHER Copycat-esque Standard?
Come on even with 7 payoff card, they whiff like 60% of the time(verified with hypergeometric distribution because it felt a lot more than that and i know can redo next turn spinning), and it is not game over for everyone
I agree it is not fun and seem to push midrange deck out of the format but it is very swingy.
Stop having a confirmation bias about all the time it happen turn 4.
http://decks.tcgplayer.com/Magic/deck/search?format=Standard&location=scg-open-standard-atlanta-04-30-2017
http://decks.tcgplayer.com/Magic/deck/search?format=Standard&location=scg-classic-standard-atlanta-04-30-2017
The Open was a bit less diverse than Classic, likely because nobody knew what was good yet and thus everyone just stuck with Mardu.
The Classic, however, looks AMAZING. Bant marvel winning? Only two of the same deck in top 8? I'm impressed.
Anyone else hopeful for this format?
I wouldn't complain about Mardu Vehicles or praise WOTC.
Too fast to draw conclusions. But it feels better to have access to midrange sorcery speed cards, because with combo in format they were useless.
1. (Ravnica Allegiance): You can't keep a good esper control deck down... Or Wilderness Reclamation... or Gates...
2. (War of the Spark): Guys, I know what we need! We need a cycle of really idiotic flavor text victory cards! Jace's Triumph...
3. (War of the Spark): Lets make the format with control have even more control!
The PT next weekend also isn't going to help much in terms of seeing whats what in standard.
WBG Karador GBW
R Daretti R
RG Omnath GR
WRG Modern Burn GRW
WB Modern Tokens BW
DCI Rules Advisor as of 5/18/2015
My current trade binder.
"People most likely to cry "troll" are those who can't fathom holding a position for reasons unrelated to how they want to be perceived"
Depends on how happy you feel about the turn four Ulamog dance.
C Long Live Eldrazi C
So much for diversity. This is almost exactly what happened at the beginning of Aether Revolt: 3 top tier decks. Before it was Mardu, Constrictor, and Copycat; now it's Mardu, Marvel, and Zombies; an aggro deck, a midrange deck, and a deck built around a card that never should've been printed.
Give it a month of so and by then one of those 3 (likely Mardu) will fall off the wagon, and we end up with another 2-deck Standard with Zombies and Marvel, until Wizards finally owns up to their mistake (again) and ban Marvel, but not before pissing off many more players to the point of quitting the game altogether. Seriously what is it going to take for Wizards to stop printing broken cards that lets you cheat creatures for free? We've lived through Collected Company, which Wizards agreed they should've banned, and now Marvel. They also could've changed the text just a little bit to not make it so broken but they couldn't even do that; they had to say "cast" for free instead of just "put" and even then, getting a 10/10 indestructible creature should be considered fair by any means.
PT hsppened like 3 days ago, relax! marvel may be too percect (it is not imo) but let's try and beat it first. zombies did it, you cannot tell control cant tune to beat it ? control needs to aim its lasers at zombies and marvel.
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
For Marvel, you'd of course need a control deck, holding up counterspells against marvel, but a deck like that would easily get overrun by zombies. Against zombies, you'd need a good midrange deck that can board stall against zombies while backed up by good removals, but such a deck would be slow to set up and will instantly lose to a T4 Ulamog.
And just like Copycat, if you're holding your answers in hand to wait against a Marvel or Ulamog, then you're just going to lose to their other threats (i.e. Chandra, Thopters, etc.); it's uncanny how many similar they are.
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
Yeah. As the Marvel decks proliferate online I'm getting less and less interested in playing standard. Turn two puzzleknot, turn three crack puzzleknot, turn four Ulamog is basically unbeatable if you don't have counterspells. It doesn't happen every game but when you're matched up against Marvel four times in a five match league you're going to see a bunch of early Ulamogs. The rest of the meta makes sure that any deck with counterspells gets run over by absurdly efficient creatures. Oh, by the way, Marvel runs absurdly efficient creatures too.
Congrats to your friend, but when we say "dead" we obviously don't mean a deck will never ever see competitive play, rather we mean that playing such a deck is statistically not in your favor.
The statistics from the PT and the prior events suggest that it's another 2-deck format. Fundamentally, Marvel is another Copycat, the two decks play very similarly, run the same colors, and largely built around an instant win condition, and I know there are others who agree with me on that.
Even writers on CFB have hinted at it: https://www.channelfireball.com/articles/the-3-mistakes-team-cfb-ice-made-in-testing/
Marvel needs to be banned
Modern: Decks I'm playing right now:
G Mono Green Tron (34-10-3 paper record, only SCG/Regionals/PPTQ record)
C Eldrazi Tron (9-5)
UG Infect
RW Burn
I'm right there with him. Spin the wheel 'did I win' decks are for Pokemon. Maro and crew pushed Marvel too far and energy CANNOT be interacted with in any way. Marvel will continue on top for sure because it's midrange with control accents main or sideboard depending on your configuration.
It was nice to brew again for a little bit but the OP block will continue to cause problems until it rotates. Bad design is hard to shake.
Still waiting to see how they fail to fix things with HoD. They SAY they've learned then keep making mistakes.
Yes, that does mean that 42.5% of the time, they will hit a turn 4 ulamog, and on the play there's very much not a good way to stop it. But more than half the time they will whiff on it, they have expended a lot of resources with often not much to show for it, and it gives a window to punish them.
Marvel is a lot like dredge where if you don't keep it in check they will just run over you, but if you pack your hate and catch them with it, you'll get there more often than not. Yes sometimes you won't draw the hate and/or they'll win through it, but if everyone packs hate in the board the meta share will go down as it becomes even less of a sure thing.
Is the format saved? Hardly. But there's a lot more options than there were, people just need to be willing to try them instead of just buying the best deck.
Currently Playing:
GBStandard - Golgari Safari MidrangeBG
RBWModern - Mardu PyromancerWBR
RLegacy - Good Old Fashioned BurnR
Clan Contest 3 Mafia - Mafia Co-MVP
Breaking all the rules of thumb to 'cheat' in cards as easily as with Marvel leads to not fun. You can't interact with energy and you're certainly not going to counter every Attune, Woodweaver's, and Refiner.
That's pretty much the same thing as copycat. With the Copycat, you're constantly questioning "do they have both pieces in hand" and in Marvel it's "is Ulamog/Chandra/whatever in the top 6 of their deck?" This type of mental torture oppresses play styles and deck building, and makes Magic not fun for anyone. Not to mention: the deck is incredibly energy-efficient. You might think 6 energy is a lot for 1 spin, but the deck is built around energy, and if you watch or play against any Marvel decks, you'll see that they almost always get another 6 energy the very next turn, largely thanks to Woodweaver's Puzzleknot, which also gives you life and makes it impossible for any aggro deck to race against Marvel.
Oh and if you think packing enough hate is going to do the trick, then you sound just like everyone who said to "just hold a Shock" against Copycat. Well we held Shock, and Authority of the Consuls, and Grasp of Darkness/Murder/Unlicensed Disintegration, but IT.DOES.NOT.WORK. When are people going to realize that packing hate is not enough to deter people from the playing ANY deck, let alone one that can cheat a instant win condition on Turn 4?
The bottom line is that Marvel is the new Copycat; Standard is going to once again be a 2-deck format consisting of Marvel and Zombies, EXACTLY like in the days of AER Standard. You think you're giving this new Standard the benefit of the doubt but the evidence is all right in front of you. Accept it.
Marvel needs to be banned just like Felidar Guardian. Seriously, did Wizards really not think that a card that lets you cheat any card WITH cast triggers (if any) for free would NOT be completely broken? Standard has already lost so many players from the Copycat debacle, and now they finally come back to the game just to see ANOTHER Copycat-esque Standard?
...the Rally the Ancestors debacle, the Collected Company debacle, the Copy Cat debacle... trust us, it will be different this time. - wotc
C Long Live Eldrazi C
I agree it is not fun and seem to push midrange deck out of the format but it is very swingy.
Stop having a confirmation bias about all the time it happen turn 4.
(BG energy player here)