Thanks for linking Ali's article. I can't address anything he said about modern but I will wholeheartedly agree with him that Aetherworks Marvel was the culprit and not quite as much Emrakul. I think Emrakul was a good ban though because they pushed it just over the edge with 'Protection from instants'. Especially right now when sorcery removal is just terrible.
Ali said, "Emrakul was banned because she ended games too easily when cast. Games could be won after she was cast but it was extremely difficult to do so. When you played against an Emrakul deck she was always looming over the game and as soon as she was cast, the usually came to an end."
That whole reasoning completely applies to dirty kitty. Words from WotC mouth I'll be shocked and appalled if they don't ban it. There is no game after it hits and instead of rolling the dice (Marvel) you get to plan how you hit it. It is completely oppressive to even brew knowing you MUST answer it.
I agree Gideon is crazy strong, especially since maybe they've realized it and scaled back all the planeswalkers since. The good is maybe they've realized the error and are correcting (thus all the lesser planeswalkers), the bad is... well he's Gideon. Who by the way can power Heart of Kiran and attack at the same time... that's not strong at all...
Honestly reflector mage was a symptom of CoCo being ridiculous. Sure lets give green an instant tempo card that builds their board by 2 creatures... and then give them creatures that make them a permissions deck too. (cough spell queller). The creatures themselves are fine, it was CoCo that made it stupid. (yes I know neither of those are green however they fit into the archetype which was already strong)
Someone earlier hit it on the head the WHITE GREEN SMASH PUNY everyone attitude needs to get slapped hard by someone above R&D's head. Thus Gideon and all the other recent shenanigans.
This is exactly what I've been thinking. Everything about Gideon makes him a prime candidate for banning, yet banning him also wouldn't have severe consequences, as Mardu and other decks will still be playable without him. As for Heart or Scrounger, banning either one of these would actually destroy Mardu Vehicles.
But I disagree on applying the logic of Emrakul's ban on kitty: unlike Emmy, kitty doesn't have protection from Instants. While this does force you to keep an instant removal at the ready, you still have a fighting chance. Sure that might be a little oppressive but hardly at the same level as Emrakul.
I wholeheartedly disagree. Especially about Scrounger. There are several 3 power creatures in Mardu colors to replace it with. Just not at 2 mana, and don't reanimate themselves ad nauseum. Hell, Depala was made for this deck!
It has a 22% metagame share, seconded only by Vehicles. If that's not putting up "enough" top 8s, I don't know what is.
You are also aware that a large portion of the games it does win it wins without the combo at all?
I'd say at least half the games it wins are a variation of Whirler Viruoso, Skysovereign and Chandra, Torch of Deviance rather than the straight up combo, because they literary board the combo out.
While true, the big reason they can leverage those spells so well is due to how sub-optimally people need to build their deck and play the game in order to just not lose to the combo in game 1. I said it earlier in the thread, and I'll say it again here: I don't find infinite 2-card combos to be healthy for any format, particularly in standard which due to the low card pool does not have a lot of strong options to deal with it. Post board there are cards which can hose it, but pre-board it is an unreasonable effect to ask people to deal with and overall has a negative impact on the format. It it does exist, however, there needs to be a ton of ways to disrupt it in almost every color. As of right now, most of the "answers" to it are rather clunky and inefficient, or just plain ineffective.
Emrakul was banned because she ended games too easily when cast.
Kitty combo ends the game if uninterrupted. Done. No next turn.
Emrakul could be countered (they still get to take your turn), so can saheeli and kitty.
Resolved emmy for me is equivalent to an uninterrupted combo. Just like emmy, ok you countered the first one. Here's the next one... and the next one... and by the way here are some thopters, etc. While you have to hold mana up every turn AND have a good supply of counters they can tap out and keep playing threats.
There's also the fun sniff test.
"-having access to an immediate two-card, game-ending combo forces people to play sub-optimally." -Brian Braun-Duin
That's a pro's take on it, and he's not the only one.
"It's also a high-stress format, which certainly lowers the fun factor for a lot of players, including myself. You have to constantly make plays and just hope they don't have a certain card that you're just stone dead to if they do. Usually that's the Copy Cat combo or Unlicensed Disintegration or Gideon from Mardu. Compare that to previous formats where the power level of various cards is more evenly distributed, and gameplay is more about maneuvering for an advantage and less about how the game centers around the hyper-powerful cards." -Brian Braun-Duin
At the core this is why I fall into the ban category. It's not fun. I don't want to do that to someone else, and I don't want the stress of playing against it. I actually love MTG, I want it to be a GOOD format that is successful and fun for everyone... with more than 2 decks to play.
of course there are others, but for 2 mana though?
While it's not entirely replaceable, it's not as though the deck can't exist outside of Scounger. The deck would likely just go back to its pre-Mardu roots and be straight R/W vehicles, which was a deck that saw good results. It doesn't *need* scrounger to function in the least, and one could argue that having access to a 3/2 attacker on turn 2, a 3/1 that scrys 2 and pumps vehicles for 2, and a 3/2 recursive creature for 2 might be a tad much particularly when a significant portion of the deck dodges sorcery speed sweepers like Tendrils and Radiant Flames.
To say it kills the deck because they can't easily replace it is just wrong; the deck has a ton of power to it. The question is if it has too much right now, and that's a question I'm not willing to give an answer to currently. It does have a rather stunning 33% metashare of winning decklists, which is where I tend to consider decks to be too strong for the format personally. This sort of performance is not particularly common in the larger picture. For now, I'll be on the wait and see plan.
If we are discussing whether or not Mardu vehicles is a problem, the place to look is Scraphead Scrounger to be frank. It's a pretty nutty card.
I'm still not sure why people focus on bannings rather than new cards. Amonkhet releases Apr 28th, and the cat lady combo (plus Gideon's uber-efficiency) has been on R&Ds radar since the protour. I dislike the state of standard, but I'd rather see R&D address this by introducing some answers in amonkhet rather than with banning. The greatest problem with this route is "they don't have enough time to do this", but I disagree. R&D has been keeping an eye on Mardu/catlady since the protour, and there are lots of old cards that could be reprinted, which are proven to not break formats. There is no reason to not include those cards even if last minute. Yes, creating new art in an issue, but I'm sure players would forgive R&D if some reprints have old art but help to improve the format.
Consider some reprints of old standard stables that could work. For example, hero's downfall and some powerful all-purpose sweeper (something like an uncountarable version of planar cleansing) could go a long way towards fighting vehicles (which has mutated into a "planeswalkers on cars" deck) AND the combo. A functional reprint of Virulent plague would also nerf 4c saheeli significantly, as well as gideon. These are cards RD can easily sneak into the set without too much fuss, since they wont break non-rotating formats. Another card that R&D should consider printing (and is clearly non broken) is a 1U "counter target creature or planeswalker" spell. The problem of combo an vehicles is that they split their threats more or less evenly between walkers and creatures, and there are very little good answers that are simultanously good vs creatures and walkers. Hero's downfall + this new counterspell would greatly help mitigate this issue.
I know this is from a few pages back, and Bloodraid Elf gave a good explanation, but I feel this bears repeating.
R&D works two years in advance. Generally speaking they have more or less finished a set entirely a year before the set is released to the public. Amonkhet was already well and truly in print and ready for distribution by the time Pro Tour Aether Revolt came about. Hour of Devastation is likely already at the printers as well. The absolute best you could ask for is something in the Fall 2017 set, however that inclusion would be an emergency addition to the set without any sort of testing at all. Even then, it would be cutting it almost to the wire in terms of when they need things finalized. If they were print an "answer" to Cat-Combo, the earliest realistic printing would be the Winter 2017-2018 Small Set (Second set to this year's fall set). More realistically, it would be an addition to the Large Spring 2018 set.
This is why simply printing answers to current problems is untenable. It just can't work given the timeframes, and doesn't fix the problems at hand. And let's be honest: Silver-Bullet style answers are never particularly good against what they are supposed to answer. Skullcrack was fine, but did help against Thragtusk. Hallowed Moonlight saw some play, but hardly event dented the CoCo builds running around. Right now we have Authority of the Consuls, which hard-locks the combo and yet it doesn't see any play. The reasoning is simple: The specific "answer" cards due to being so narrow are also incredibly easy and simple to play around, and thus they don't end up doing their job at all.
Limited usage cards like Authority of the Consuls aren't so "limited" when the deck it is used against counts for 20%+ of the format. Also Thalia hard-locks the combo as well and is seeing play. Authority has use against Vehicles as well: life gain and preventing their creatures from crewing immediately are both quite valuable. But I am not playing one of the top tier decks right now, so I can make room for cards like that. If you're dead set on playing one of the tier 1 decks, it's probably harder to compromise.
I'm just hoping that isn't the kind of person Wizards is listening to for doing bannings. Unfortunately, I don't know what they are going to do otherwise besides ban something because without some kind of good answer coming in Amonket the meta is probably not going to change a whole lot. The signs seem to point towards a similar situation to what was going on moving from Eldrich moon into Kaladesh standard.
... Seriously who thinks energy needed bannings? This guy is making my head explode.
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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!
what I dont get is that Standard is supposed to be the shinning light of MTG. Yet it is the most oppressive and most narrow format.
There are people getting fired over this at WoTC so something went seriously wrong. This isn't the first time things have been this bad, but it has been a very long time.
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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!
what probably needs to happen to see a healthy diverse standard is a dedicated control deck that can beat both vehicles and saheeli but would lose to the G/B aggro and midrange decks
When GB was on the uptick I played a UB control that wrecked it and anything midrange.
Vehicles were just too fast though. One for one if your draw spells and kill spells hit just right you can outlast them up too many Scroungers and you're done. What control needs is some lifegain to help keep even tempo. You can't afford to transgress and not affect the board. Maybe transgress and get +life/CMC of the exiled card. Just keeping even could be enough.
I didn't know people were getting fired but with stockholders needing steady and increased profits it's not shocking.
Monday's getting close we will see. I put us at 80% there will be bans. Just watching Grand Prix NJ shows they have to make big adjustments.
As far as Vehicles goes, just baning Gideon isn't going to cut it's speed enough. I hope that's not their solution.
Felidar Guardian or Saheeli Rai - the combo needs to go. I don't know which one it should be. Don't particularly care. People say that Guardian should go because it would upset players to ban a pricey mythic, but when Saheeli is a $2 mythic in two weeks because Guardian got banned, that's gonna piss those same players off as well, right? Just ban the one that has more degenerate interactions with future sets' cards. I assume that will be Guardian, because I assume WOTC tested their marquee large-set planeswalker for Constructed play, and they obviously didn't test Guardian for it (or they'd have seen the combo immediately). But whichever one is fine.
Gideon, Ally of Zendikar - look, I love Gideon, I've won a lot of games and tournaments literally just getting carried to wins solo by Gideon. That kinda speaks to the issue. Gideon has made the Finals of every Standard Pro Tour since his printing. Don't believe me? Look it up:
Pro Tour Battle for Zendikar: Abzan Aggro (1st), Jeskai Midrange (2nd)
Pro Tour Shadows over Innistrad: GW Tokens (1st)
Pro Tour Eldritch Moon: BW Control (1st)
Pro Tour Kaladesh: Jeskai Control (2nd)
Pro Tour Aether Revolt: Mardu Vehicles (1st, 2nd)
In five Pro Tour finals since his printing, there have been 27 copies of Gideon, out of a maximum possible 40. Better yet, you have a perfect spectrum of decks playing him: two hardcore aggro decks (2x Mardu Vehicles), three aggressively-slanted midrange decks (Abzan Aggro, Jeskai Midrange, GW Tokens), and two control decks (BW Control, Jeskai Control).
The card is too good when you're ahead, and so much of being ahead around turn 4 when he comes down has to do with winning the die roll or drawing really hot compared to your opponents. The counterplay to turn-4 Gideon is "hope you have 4 power in play and enough removal to punch through all available blockers". Forget trying to play control decks, even honest-to-goodness midrange decks - you know, the ones that are supposed to be getting into planeswalker slugfests and able to handle something like Gideon without being massively depleted of cards, board presence, life total or multiple of the above - can't beat Gideon out of an aggro deck without the opponent stumbling in some way.
The final nail in the coffin? Amonkhet and Hour of Devastation weren't designed with Gideon in mind. He was supposed to rotate in a month.
Time to move that rotation schedule up, if you ask me.
what I dont get is that Standard is supposed to be the shinning light of MTG. Yet it is the most oppressive and most narrow format.
There are people getting fired over this at WoTC so something went seriously wrong.
Source? I know Worth Wolpert left (not sure if he was outright fired or not), but I didn't know of anyone else; a quick search for firings only turns up his name. But Wolpert left before the current Standard debacle and wasn't really involved in Standard to begin with, so I doubt that's what you're referring to.
what I dont get is that Standard is supposed to be the shinning light of MTG. Yet it is the most oppressive and most narrow format.
There are people getting fired over this at WoTC so something went seriously wrong.
Source? I know Worth Wolpert left (not sure if he was outright fired or not), but I didn't know of anyone else; a quick search for firings only turns up his name. But Wolpert left before the current Standard debacle and wasn't really involved in Standard to begin with, so I doubt that's what you're referring to.
It was a while back at the start of January so I'm not really sure I'm going to have much luck finding it. A lot of what gets talked about is from MTG podcasts and youtube so it's a game as to find the original articles and to be frank, if it's two months ago I'm not going to go hunting it down. At the end of the day it's not really going to matter much.
Private Mod Note
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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!
Here is an oddball suggestion: what would happen if Toolcraft Exemplar got banned? It might just be me but it seems that all of the Mardu deck's busted draws involve this guy in one form or another. Him leaving would mean that Heart of Kiran got just a tad more difficult to crew and slower decks might actually get enough time to get a game going without being clocked three damage per turn starting on turn 2.
On the financial side banning that card could save a lot of the expensive mythic rares from the chopping block. Players couldn't exactly say that they were scammed out of their money when they bought those high-priced cards since they would still be legal and probably just as playable, just not in deck that's fast even by Modern standards.
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In my dream, the world had suffered a terrible disaster. A black haze shut out the sun, and the darkness was alive with the moans and screams of wounded people. Suddenly, a small light glowed. A candle flickered into life, symbol of hope for millions. A single tiny candle, shining in the ugly dark. I laughed and blew it out.
Many thanks to HotP Studios. Special thanks to DNC for this great sig.
"A lot of what gets talked about is from MTG podcasts and youtube"
Desolator Magic?
Oh dear god, don't get me started on him. Fun guy to listen to, but sometimes he goes into the worst rants I've ever had the displeasure of listening to on a drive to work. He has his good moments such as box EVs and what is selling hot, but he does have more oddball videos than other places.
Private Mod Note
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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!
Mark my words, we will see bans to the top decks every announcement from now on if they hold too much metashare or have degenerate synergies. This is how they are going to keep standard fresh while not having to to do a double rotation every year. It also has the side effect of added risk to netdecking; which, whether you like it or hate it, hinders showcasing even more of their cards. The question then becomes, is this healthy for the longevity if the game and I don't know the answers to that.
Mark my words, we will see bans to the top decks every announcement from now on if they hold too much metashare or have degenerate synergies. This is how they are going to keep standard fresh while not having to to do a double rotation every year. It also has the side effect of added risk to netdecking; which, whether you like it or hate it, hinders showcasing even more of their cards. The question then becomes, is this healthy for the longevity if the game and I don't know the answers to that.
This isn't true. The reason they are doing the double banning cycle is that the set designs this standard are very messed up and this is going beyond any kind of 6 month rotation issue. Without going over all the information, my own take on the scenario is that they came up with some good mechanics and made a very open set design, but due to the attempt to make the deck building experience very flexible the testing team had a very hard time getting everything checked before releasing the set into the wild. The new bannings will be nothing like the ones they made for kaladesh and to be frank I'm not sure they can salvage this format.
What are they going to do? They can ban Felidar Guardian, Winding Constrictor, and heart of Kiran if they want to kill all three major deck builds taking over the meta, but then we'll just get three new ones taking their place because the set is so flexible and filled with redundancy. Frontier format has all the answers needed to handle the crazy set, but standard doesn't have a chance.
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!
There's not much outside Felidar Guardian they can ban without damaging the format and the player confidence even more. When they banned cards in Standard it used to be game breaking cards that still see play in legacyup to this day or that are alsobanned in there. The January bannings are nowhere near the power level of those cards, nor is anything that is currently in Standard right now. Not even CoCo was a bannable offense (okay, it was, but it wasn't because of the card per se, but due to other factors). The problem is not the power level. It's that there are no answers. They have adhered religiously to this idiotic mentality where creature removal should cost 3+ at sorcery speed, wraths at 5+ or that counterspells are "unfun", all while powercreeping the creatures to the absolute maximum. It's all about creatures, creatures, and more creatures, oh, and creatures again. It has turned into "Creatures: the Tappening".
They get on curve stats, if not above, with a plethora of super good EtB effects that basically even if you remove them, the caster still has gotten a benefit. Shock my Rogue Refiner, I've still gotten a card and two Energy out of the deal. Harnessed Lightning my Pia Nalaar, she still leaves behind a Thopter. They have screwed up so hard they messed with a fundamental game mechanic that has been around since Alpha and was never broken: mana dorks. Elvish Mystic and it's ilk are considered "too strong for Standard" now, but a 13/13 flying mindslaver with built in protection is ok. A 4/5 trampler that casts Lightning Helix on the opponent is also ok. If we had stuff like Go for the Throat, Lightning Strike or Mana Leak, let alone graveyard hate when you print a block chock full of graveyard mechanics, this would've never, ever happened. Period.
Remember the Theros era where if you said that if Standard was dying and that if things kept going downhill like that it would inevitably die people called you out on being a hater, being delusional, not knowing nothing, etc? I'd like to see all those people now.
It's been very little diversity in the last few standard blocks, but what do Wizard expect when they print all the best cads in the same few colors? If say Red or black had a 1 drop as good as Exemplar og thraben inscpector we would already see a lot more diversity than now. Not to mention how Wizard always have to push GB cards for some reason. The only reason GB don't dominate is due to it's weakish interaction against Felidar.
There's not much outside Felidar Guardian they can ban without damaging the format and the player confidence even more. When they banned cards in Standard it used to be game breaking cards that still see play in legacyup to this day or that are alsobanned in there. The January bannings are nowhere near the power level of those cards, nor is anything that is currently in Standard right now. Not even CoCo was a bannable offense (okay, it was, but it wasn't because of the card per se, but due to other factors). The problem is not the power level. It's that there are no answers. They have adhered religiously to this idiotic mentality where creature removal should cost 3+ at sorcery speed, wraths at 5+ or that counterspells are "unfun", all while powercreeping the creatures to the absolute maximum. It's all about creatures, creatures, and more creatures, oh, and creatures again. It has turned into "Creatures: the Tappening".
They get on curve stats, if not above, with a plethora of super good EtB effects that basically even if you remove them, the caster still has gotten a benefit. Shock my Rogue Refiner, I've still gotten a card and two Energy out of the deal. Harnessed Lightning my Pia Nalaar, she still leaves behind a Thopter. They have screwed up so hard they messed with a fundamental game mechanic that has been around since Alpha and was never broken: mana dorks. Elvish Mystic and it's ilk are considered "too strong for Standard" now, but a 13/13 flying mindslaver with built in protection is ok. A 4/5 trampler that casts Lightning Helix on the opponent is also ok. If we had stuff like Go for the Throat, Lightning Strike or Mana Leak, let alone graveyard hate when you print a block chock full of graveyard mechanics, this would've never, ever happened. Period.
Remember the Theros era where if you said that if Standard was dying and that if things kept going downhill like that it would inevitably die people called you out on being a hater, being delusional, not knowing nothing, etc? I'd like to see all those people now.
While I generally agree with most of what you said, I do have to point out something on mana dorks. Turn 1 mana dorks were not removed because they were too strong. Rather they were removed under the premise that it hindered their ability to make interesting high impact 3 mana creatures, as those creatures would be cast on turn 2 and well before they were intended. A similar logic was used for Doom Blade and Lightning Strike: It's difficult to make interesting variant of these cards, as there just isn't anywhere to go with them.
While that premise is an interesting one, we haven't really seen it come to fruition at all. There is nothing in green I would consider particularly problematic if cast on turn 2 instead of turn 3. There is no interesting Doom Blade variants at all that play with removal in an interesting way. Where was Delerium Blade, for instance? A Removal spell that turn from something like Disfigure into hard removal once you have Delerium? Where is the interesting Red removal they said Lightning Strike was keeping from being printed? The only one that comes to mind that is remotely worthwhile is Harnessed Lightning, and that would likely be played in the decks it is played in exactly the same numbers (Given that it is Red Doom Blade in those decks).
While I can appreciate experimenting with removing Mystic, Doom Blade, and Lightning Strike, I feel they didn't actually experiment with interesting things you can do in the format without them. They just removed them and called it a day.
There's not much outside Felidar Guardian they can ban without damaging the format and the player confidence even more. When they banned cards in Standard it used to be game breaking cards that still see play in legacyup to this day or that are alsobanned in there. The January bannings are nowhere near the power level of those cards, nor is anything that is currently in Standard right now. Not even CoCo was a bannable offense (okay, it was, but it wasn't because of the card per se, but due to other factors). The problem is not the power level. It's that there are no answers. They have adhered religiously to this idiotic mentality where creature removal should cost 3+ at sorcery speed, wraths at 5+ or that counterspells are "unfun", all while powercreeping the creatures to the absolute maximum. It's all about creatures, creatures, and more creatures, oh, and creatures again. It has turned into "Creatures: the Tappening".
They get on curve stats, if not above, with a plethora of super good EtB effects that basically even if you remove them, the caster still has gotten a benefit. Shock my Rogue Refiner, I've still gotten a card and two Energy out of the deal. Harnessed Lightning my Pia Nalaar, she still leaves behind a Thopter. They have screwed up so hard they messed with a fundamental game mechanic that has been around since Alpha and was never broken: mana dorks. Elvish Mystic and it's ilk are considered "too strong for Standard" now, but a 13/13 flying mindslaver with built in protection is ok. A 4/5 trampler that casts Lightning Helix on the opponent is also ok. If we had stuff like Go for the Throat, Lightning Strike or Mana Leak, let alone graveyard hate when you print a block chock full of graveyard mechanics, this would've never, ever happened. Period.
Remember the Theros era where if you said that if Standard was dying and that if things kept going downhill like that it would inevitably die people called you out on being a hater, being delusional, not knowing nothing, etc? I'd like to see all those people now.
You know what is very funny about this entire situation? Modern Masters 2017 has the exact kind of thing we should have seen in this standard as far as removal goes. White got Path to Exile, Golgari got Abrupt Decay, Damnation is no longer a meme, and the only color that got completely gipped was probably red due to a lack of any dedicated 3 damage burn spell. The set still has the blue deficiency known to the modern format, but that is nothing new and Wizards is definitely going to be changing that around soon enough after this standard disaster.
Regardless of standard bannings I'm still voting that the value of this Kaladesh block is going to be out of this world in the future due to them having so many powerful creatures and tools printed. They just need to balance that with better answers in the future so the entire format doesn't devolve into creature wars or net deck killers that focus on nothing but removal / tapping down their field (yes, that is literally the standard meta I'm in right now). The truly abysmal part is that the GB decks have enough recursion to fight through even the net deck killers right now, so there's no doubt in my mind which of the three decks topping the meta is the strongest one. You can't kill a deck that can use Liliana, the Last hope to just recur stuff while also turning the GY into value city. We don't even have Tormod's Crypt or that card from kahn's block.
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!
There's not much outside Felidar Guardian they can ban without damaging the format and the player confidence even more. When they banned cards in Standard it used to be game breaking cards that still see play in legacyup to this day or that are alsobanned in there. The January bannings are nowhere near the power level of those cards, nor is anything that is currently in Standard right now. Not even CoCo was a bannable offense (okay, it was, but it wasn't because of the card per se, but due to other factors). The problem is not the power level. It's that there are no answers. They have adhered religiously to this idiotic mentality where creature removal should cost 3+ at sorcery speed, wraths at 5+ or that counterspells are "unfun", all while powercreeping the creatures to the absolute maximum. It's all about creatures, creatures, and more creatures, oh, and creatures again. It has turned into "Creatures: the Tappening".
They get on curve stats, if not above, with a plethora of super good EtB effects that basically even if you remove them, the caster still has gotten a benefit. Shock my Rogue Refiner, I've still gotten a card and two Energy out of the deal. Harnessed Lightning my Pia Nalaar, she still leaves behind a Thopter. They have screwed up so hard they messed with a fundamental game mechanic that has been around since Alpha and was never broken: mana dorks. Elvish Mystic and it's ilk are considered "too strong for Standard" now, but a 13/13 flying mindslaver with built in protection is ok. A 4/5 trampler that casts Lightning Helix on the opponent is also ok. If we had stuff like Go for the Throat, Lightning Strike or Mana Leak, let alone graveyard hate when you print a block chock full of graveyard mechanics, this would've never, ever happened. Period.
This is so true. I like the examples hitting it right on the head.
For me it's like R&D decided that Supreme Verdict was too dominating so they permanently screwed wrath effects and overcorrected with all the creatures. If any format needs a 4 mana wrath it's this one. Hell with these creatures we need a Supreme Verdict back that also hits artifacts. I've been complaining about the lack of GY hate forever. It's the perfect example of design not wanting their favored cards to be countered at all. BALANCE! If you make a great card (or mechanic) always make it's bloody counter or we get 2 deck formats that suck.
The thing that will save us is IF these bans are only temporary to help correct for their screwups and planning for the faster rotation. IF THEY LISTEN to the community and realize their error, in 2-3 future sets design correction will lead to fewer bannings until bans are no longer necessary.
I do fear that Gideon will go especially since they're giving us 2 more next set... although we have plenty of chandras don't we. Short term bans are painful but long term they cannot leave the format as it is with further poorly designed sets dropping. I think if they were REALLY smart about it... they'd pre-ban cards as a set releases. Play with the OP crap in limited but standard 'investors' will know not to buy the stuff in the first place. That way no one gets pissy they've spent cash and then had it taken away. Copycat was called BEFORE the set released. Make R&D do some overtime and catch the bad and PREBAN.
I wholeheartedly disagree. Especially about Scrounger. There are several 3 power creatures in Mardu colors to replace it with. Just not at 2 mana, and don't reanimate themselves ad nauseum. Hell, Depala was made for this deck!
While true, the big reason they can leverage those spells so well is due to how sub-optimally people need to build their deck and play the game in order to just not lose to the combo in game 1. I said it earlier in the thread, and I'll say it again here: I don't find infinite 2-card combos to be healthy for any format, particularly in standard which due to the low card pool does not have a lot of strong options to deal with it. Post board there are cards which can hose it, but pre-board it is an unreasonable effect to ask people to deal with and overall has a negative impact on the format. It it does exist, however, there needs to be a ton of ways to disrupt it in almost every color. As of right now, most of the "answers" to it are rather clunky and inefficient, or just plain ineffective.
Kitty combo ends the game if uninterrupted. Done. No next turn.
Emrakul could be countered (they still get to take your turn), so can saheeli and kitty.
Resolved emmy for me is equivalent to an uninterrupted combo. Just like emmy, ok you countered the first one. Here's the next one... and the next one... and by the way here are some thopters, etc. While you have to hold mana up every turn AND have a good supply of counters they can tap out and keep playing threats.
There's also the fun sniff test.
"-having access to an immediate two-card, game-ending combo forces people to play sub-optimally." -Brian Braun-Duin
That's a pro's take on it, and he's not the only one.
"It's also a high-stress format, which certainly lowers the fun factor for a lot of players, including myself. You have to constantly make plays and just hope they don't have a certain card that you're just stone dead to if they do. Usually that's the Copy Cat combo or Unlicensed Disintegration or Gideon from Mardu. Compare that to previous formats where the power level of various cards is more evenly distributed, and gameplay is more about maneuvering for an advantage and less about how the game centers around the hyper-powerful cards." -Brian Braun-Duin
At the core this is why I fall into the ban category. It's not fun. I don't want to do that to someone else, and I don't want the stress of playing against it. I actually love MTG, I want it to be a GOOD format that is successful and fun for everyone... with more than 2 decks to play.
While it's not entirely replaceable, it's not as though the deck can't exist outside of Scounger. The deck would likely just go back to its pre-Mardu roots and be straight R/W vehicles, which was a deck that saw good results. It doesn't *need* scrounger to function in the least, and one could argue that having access to a 3/2 attacker on turn 2, a 3/1 that scrys 2 and pumps vehicles for 2, and a 3/2 recursive creature for 2 might be a tad much particularly when a significant portion of the deck dodges sorcery speed sweepers like Tendrils and Radiant Flames.
To say it kills the deck because they can't easily replace it is just wrong; the deck has a ton of power to it. The question is if it has too much right now, and that's a question I'm not willing to give an answer to currently. It does have a rather stunning 33% metashare of winning decklists, which is where I tend to consider decks to be too strong for the format personally. This sort of performance is not particularly common in the larger picture. For now, I'll be on the wait and see plan.
If we are discussing whether or not Mardu vehicles is a problem, the place to look is Scraphead Scrounger to be frank. It's a pretty nutty card.
I know this is from a few pages back, and Bloodraid Elf gave a good explanation, but I feel this bears repeating.
R&D works two years in advance. Generally speaking they have more or less finished a set entirely a year before the set is released to the public. Amonkhet was already well and truly in print and ready for distribution by the time Pro Tour Aether Revolt came about. Hour of Devastation is likely already at the printers as well. The absolute best you could ask for is something in the Fall 2017 set, however that inclusion would be an emergency addition to the set without any sort of testing at all. Even then, it would be cutting it almost to the wire in terms of when they need things finalized. If they were print an "answer" to Cat-Combo, the earliest realistic printing would be the Winter 2017-2018 Small Set (Second set to this year's fall set). More realistically, it would be an addition to the Large Spring 2018 set.
This is why simply printing answers to current problems is untenable. It just can't work given the timeframes, and doesn't fix the problems at hand. And let's be honest: Silver-Bullet style answers are never particularly good against what they are supposed to answer. Skullcrack was fine, but did help against Thragtusk. Hallowed Moonlight saw some play, but hardly event dented the CoCo builds running around. Right now we have Authority of the Consuls, which hard-locks the combo and yet it doesn't see any play. The reasoning is simple: The specific "answer" cards due to being so narrow are also incredibly easy and simple to play around, and thus they don't end up doing their job at all.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YYaB-dknRMc&t=0s
I'm just hoping that isn't the kind of person Wizards is listening to for doing bannings. Unfortunately, I don't know what they are going to do otherwise besides ban something because without some kind of good answer coming in Amonket the meta is probably not going to change a whole lot. The signs seem to point towards a similar situation to what was going on moving from Eldrich moon into Kaladesh standard.
... Seriously who thinks energy needed bannings? This guy is making my head explode.
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!
C Long Live Eldrazi C
There are people getting fired over this at WoTC so something went seriously wrong. This isn't the first time things have been this bad, but it has been a very long time.
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!
Vehicles were just too fast though. One for one if your draw spells and kill spells hit just right you can outlast them up too many Scroungers and you're done. What control needs is some lifegain to help keep even tempo. You can't afford to transgress and not affect the board. Maybe transgress and get +life/CMC of the exiled card. Just keeping even could be enough.
I didn't know people were getting fired but with stockholders needing steady and increased profits it's not shocking.
Monday's getting close we will see. I put us at 80% there will be bans. Just watching Grand Prix NJ shows they have to make big adjustments.
As far as Vehicles goes, just baning Gideon isn't going to cut it's speed enough. I hope that's not their solution.
Felidar Guardian or Saheeli Rai - the combo needs to go. I don't know which one it should be. Don't particularly care. People say that Guardian should go because it would upset players to ban a pricey mythic, but when Saheeli is a $2 mythic in two weeks because Guardian got banned, that's gonna piss those same players off as well, right? Just ban the one that has more degenerate interactions with future sets' cards. I assume that will be Guardian, because I assume WOTC tested their marquee large-set planeswalker for Constructed play, and they obviously didn't test Guardian for it (or they'd have seen the combo immediately). But whichever one is fine.
Gideon, Ally of Zendikar - look, I love Gideon, I've won a lot of games and tournaments literally just getting carried to wins solo by Gideon. That kinda speaks to the issue. Gideon has made the Finals of every Standard Pro Tour since his printing. Don't believe me? Look it up:
Pro Tour Battle for Zendikar: Abzan Aggro (1st), Jeskai Midrange (2nd)
Pro Tour Shadows over Innistrad: GW Tokens (1st)
Pro Tour Eldritch Moon: BW Control (1st)
Pro Tour Kaladesh: Jeskai Control (2nd)
Pro Tour Aether Revolt: Mardu Vehicles (1st, 2nd)
In five Pro Tour finals since his printing, there have been 27 copies of Gideon, out of a maximum possible 40. Better yet, you have a perfect spectrum of decks playing him: two hardcore aggro decks (2x Mardu Vehicles), three aggressively-slanted midrange decks (Abzan Aggro, Jeskai Midrange, GW Tokens), and two control decks (BW Control, Jeskai Control).
The card is too good when you're ahead, and so much of being ahead around turn 4 when he comes down has to do with winning the die roll or drawing really hot compared to your opponents. The counterplay to turn-4 Gideon is "hope you have 4 power in play and enough removal to punch through all available blockers". Forget trying to play control decks, even honest-to-goodness midrange decks - you know, the ones that are supposed to be getting into planeswalker slugfests and able to handle something like Gideon without being massively depleted of cards, board presence, life total or multiple of the above - can't beat Gideon out of an aggro deck without the opponent stumbling in some way.
The final nail in the coffin? Amonkhet and Hour of Devastation weren't designed with Gideon in mind. He was supposed to rotate in a month.
Time to move that rotation schedule up, if you ask me.
GW ~ Angels ~ WG
Modern:
RBW ~ Shadowmancer ~ WBR
Legacy:
BUG ~ Shadow Delver ~ GUB
It was a while back at the start of January so I'm not really sure I'm going to have much luck finding it. A lot of what gets talked about is from MTG podcasts and youtube so it's a game as to find the original articles and to be frank, if it's two months ago I'm not going to go hunting it down. At the end of the day it's not really going to matter much.
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!
Desolator Magic?
C Long Live Eldrazi C
On the financial side banning that card could save a lot of the expensive mythic rares from the chopping block. Players couldn't exactly say that they were scammed out of their money when they bought those high-priced cards since they would still be legal and probably just as playable, just not in deck that's fast even by Modern standards.
Many thanks to HotP Studios. Special thanks to DNC for this great sig.
Oh dear god, don't get me started on him. Fun guy to listen to, but sometimes he goes into the worst rants I've ever had the displeasure of listening to on a drive to work. He has his good moments such as box EVs and what is selling hot, but he does have more oddball videos than other places.
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!
This isn't true. The reason they are doing the double banning cycle is that the set designs this standard are very messed up and this is going beyond any kind of 6 month rotation issue. Without going over all the information, my own take on the scenario is that they came up with some good mechanics and made a very open set design, but due to the attempt to make the deck building experience very flexible the testing team had a very hard time getting everything checked before releasing the set into the wild. The new bannings will be nothing like the ones they made for kaladesh and to be frank I'm not sure they can salvage this format.
What are they going to do? They can ban Felidar Guardian, Winding Constrictor, and heart of Kiran if they want to kill all three major deck builds taking over the meta, but then we'll just get three new ones taking their place because the set is so flexible and filled with redundancy. Frontier format has all the answers needed to handle the crazy set, but standard doesn't have a chance.
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!
They get on curve stats, if not above, with a plethora of super good EtB effects that basically even if you remove them, the caster still has gotten a benefit. Shock my Rogue Refiner, I've still gotten a card and two Energy out of the deal. Harnessed Lightning my Pia Nalaar, she still leaves behind a Thopter. They have screwed up so hard they messed with a fundamental game mechanic that has been around since Alpha and was never broken: mana dorks. Elvish Mystic and it's ilk are considered "too strong for Standard" now, but a 13/13 flying mindslaver with built in protection is ok. A 4/5 trampler that casts Lightning Helix on the opponent is also ok. If we had stuff like Go for the Throat, Lightning Strike or Mana Leak, let alone graveyard hate when you print a block chock full of graveyard mechanics, this would've never, ever happened. Period.
Remember the Theros era where if you said that if Standard was dying and that if things kept going downhill like that it would inevitably die people called you out on being a hater, being delusional, not knowing nothing, etc? I'd like to see all those people now.
Thanks to DNC from Heroes of the Plane Studios for the sig
Check my Pauper Cube!
While I generally agree with most of what you said, I do have to point out something on mana dorks. Turn 1 mana dorks were not removed because they were too strong. Rather they were removed under the premise that it hindered their ability to make interesting high impact 3 mana creatures, as those creatures would be cast on turn 2 and well before they were intended. A similar logic was used for Doom Blade and Lightning Strike: It's difficult to make interesting variant of these cards, as there just isn't anywhere to go with them.
While that premise is an interesting one, we haven't really seen it come to fruition at all. There is nothing in green I would consider particularly problematic if cast on turn 2 instead of turn 3. There is no interesting Doom Blade variants at all that play with removal in an interesting way. Where was Delerium Blade, for instance? A Removal spell that turn from something like Disfigure into hard removal once you have Delerium? Where is the interesting Red removal they said Lightning Strike was keeping from being printed? The only one that comes to mind that is remotely worthwhile is Harnessed Lightning, and that would likely be played in the decks it is played in exactly the same numbers (Given that it is Red Doom Blade in those decks).
While I can appreciate experimenting with removing Mystic, Doom Blade, and Lightning Strike, I feel they didn't actually experiment with interesting things you can do in the format without them. They just removed them and called it a day.
You know what is very funny about this entire situation? Modern Masters 2017 has the exact kind of thing we should have seen in this standard as far as removal goes. White got Path to Exile, Golgari got Abrupt Decay, Damnation is no longer a meme, and the only color that got completely gipped was probably red due to a lack of any dedicated 3 damage burn spell. The set still has the blue deficiency known to the modern format, but that is nothing new and Wizards is definitely going to be changing that around soon enough after this standard disaster.
Regardless of standard bannings I'm still voting that the value of this Kaladesh block is going to be out of this world in the future due to them having so many powerful creatures and tools printed. They just need to balance that with better answers in the future so the entire format doesn't devolve into creature wars or net deck killers that focus on nothing but removal / tapping down their field (yes, that is literally the standard meta I'm in right now). The truly abysmal part is that the GB decks have enough recursion to fight through even the net deck killers right now, so there's no doubt in my mind which of the three decks topping the meta is the strongest one. You can't kill a deck that can use Liliana, the Last hope to just recur stuff while also turning the GY into value city. We don't even have Tormod's Crypt or that card from kahn's block.
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!
This is so true. I like the examples hitting it right on the head.
For me it's like R&D decided that Supreme Verdict was too dominating so they permanently screwed wrath effects and overcorrected with all the creatures. If any format needs a 4 mana wrath it's this one. Hell with these creatures we need a Supreme Verdict back that also hits artifacts. I've been complaining about the lack of GY hate forever. It's the perfect example of design not wanting their favored cards to be countered at all. BALANCE! If you make a great card (or mechanic) always make it's bloody counter or we get 2 deck formats that suck.
The thing that will save us is IF these bans are only temporary to help correct for their screwups and planning for the faster rotation. IF THEY LISTEN to the community and realize their error, in 2-3 future sets design correction will lead to fewer bannings until bans are no longer necessary.
I do fear that Gideon will go especially since they're giving us 2 more next set... although we have plenty of chandras don't we. Short term bans are painful but long term they cannot leave the format as it is with further poorly designed sets dropping. I think if they were REALLY smart about it... they'd pre-ban cards as a set releases. Play with the OP crap in limited but standard 'investors' will know not to buy the stuff in the first place. That way no one gets pissy they've spent cash and then had it taken away. Copycat was called BEFORE the set released. Make R&D do some overtime and catch the bad and PREBAN.