They don't need to push it that far. When the full spoiler for M13 was out, Thragtusk was the one card that stood out over everything else, it was clear its powerlevel was way above everything else in the set.
Almost the same can be said about Restoration Angel, when I saw it at 3 bucks initially I was 100% sure that that card was going to be played extensively.
Next time that happens I won't hesitate to take the opportunity to profit
They don't need to push it that far. When the full spoiler for M13 was out, Thragtusk was the one card that stood out over everything else, it was clear its powerlevel was way above everything else in the set.
Almost the same can be said about Restoration Angel, when I saw it at 3 bucks initially I was 100% sure that that card was going to be played extensively.
Next time that happens I won't hesitate to take the opportunity to profit
This has been a massive trend with a lot of sets recently, cards such as bonfire, sphinx's revelation, and deathrite shaman also started out around 5$ and look at where they are at now.
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Current Decks Standard : Bant FlashUWG Modern : JundRBGW Legacy : JundRBG
One of the things I like about the current format: Average card quality seems worse. While there are still some nut cards (Thragtusk), there isn't the solid wall of insane quality that New Magic 2011 or Zendikar had. Instead, people have to make real choices with the cards they put in decks... Outside of the few obvious ones, of course.
Powerfull cards are sweet, imagine how dull magic would be if wizards did not print powerful cards like that.
Powerful cards are sweet, but too many powerful cards leads to formats that feel "pre-planned" and cookie-cutter... And if they don't go that route, they go the "OH CRAP WE DIDN'T REALIZE HOW BROKEN AFFINITY WOULD BE!" route.
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The wedding is over. Now it's time for the honeymoon.
To the point that there is "nothing to rally against," that is good. What is wrong with getting rid of a supreme evil and then not having anything to prepare almost exclusively for? You see, the thing I like about it is that we have people at my LGS who always netdeck the best deck in the format, and they are getting mad, mad that there is no deck that is guaranteeing them a place in the top half. This is a deckbuilder's meta, and more importantly, a player's meta. If you know how to play Magic without any assistance in the building process or the game process, you are going to do great, exceptional in fact. However, if you have been basing your Magic knowledge on what other people have told you, then you are going to suffer. That is what is happening now. Those that dislike it, or think it is unhealthy (to continue the Dark Knight analogy) are more into watching a movie than making one.
The reason I believe it is important to have something like Jund or Faeries is that it keeps the duel aspect of the game alive, it also gives the SB much more purpose.
I love having a ton of options like we have now, but I hate just flat out losing to nut draws and not having enough SB space to combat nut draws from so many angles. I am a competitive player and I want to win, I love losing, but I love losing when I can actually criticize my play rather than having to chalk it up to a loss from the nuts.
In summary, we have an open one, a healthy one is debatable.
First up, I don't want to pick on Kamahl, we're bros and he is a good dude.
I do want to act as a counterpoint though, simply to say, some players prefer a 'settled' metagame with the deck and anti-decks (Type A); others prefer a very open field (Type B).
In a Type A format, the capacity to metagame and plan is paramount. Understanding what makes the deck function is critical to finding weaknesses in it to exploit, whether that be by developing anti-strategies based around 'counter-cards' (eg: innovations in UW vs UWr vs UWb Cawblade mirrors) or on exploiting timings (the midrange mono red Koth decks than run through Cawblade but didnt beat much else). When you're only seeing a few decks in large events, depth of understanding to find very small advantages over the long run are rewarded. Some players love this sort of metagame and it rewards are very specific skillset. On the other hand, if you don't like one of the handful of viable decks (none of them are an archetype you enjoy playing), the format is going to be horrid. Type A formats tend to favour and be favoured by pro players because if you hav eenough time to prepare really deeply and gain a strong understand of a handful of matchups, you can do really, really well. That is why when Cawblade was #1 we saw the same few names every week in the Top 8 of the SCGs ~ the best players only had to play a couple of matchups and were able to gain significant edges over players with less time.
Type B formats, where there are MANY viable decks (according to mtgo-stats, I would say there are at least 8 Tier 1 decks in this format, with half a dozen more strong, competitive Tier 2 decks) reward preparation and broad understanding of fundamentals. Standard right now is much more like legacy than anything else ~ lots of viable decks, the respective power of which will wax and wane relative to the popularity and innovations in other comparably strong decks. No one deck has even matchups across the field ~ every deck has good and bad matchups. While this limits your capcacity to gain a huge advantage against a limited number of decks, it rewards players with a broad and strong understanding of archetypes and appropriate playstyles to respond, as well as the ability to understand what really matters when building a 75 card deck for the metagame. Let me illustrate with an example (its going to be red based, sorry):
In a Type A format, where the best deck is obvious (CawBlade or Delver for example), I know that no matter what, I want to devote not only a lot of my maindeck to this matchup, but a bunch of sideboard cards as well. I don't care if those cards areonly for this matchup. This makes building a sideboard easy, and you get forumlaic approaches where you go 'I want 6 cards for Deck A (most popular), 4 cards for deck B and C (strongest 2 anti-decks)'. You saw a lot of this sort of sideboarding in the last two seasons. This isn't very skill testing at all ~ you just cram your sideboard full of cards to beat the decks you KNOW you will face.
In a Type B format you cant do that. Instead, you need to understand how your deck is positioned relative to the field. You don't have enough sideboard space to have cards for every deck ~ so you need to take a more broad approach and focus on sideboarding on the decks that are going to matter to you. I have a section in the Mono Red primer called 'sideboard for the decks you can beat, sideboard for the decks you need to beat' (link in sig) that expands upon this. What this boils down to is understanding the format well enough to know that against the random rogue decks, playing Mono Red means I am never really worse than 45%, so I just am not going to sideboard there. Post-board against UWr Flash, no matter how much we respectively sideboard, the matchup is still going to be about 52% in their favour ~ so I just am not going to sideboard much there. I would need to devote a huge amount of cards to get over 50% my way and it just isnt worth it when I can have a couple of cards and be only a few % worse. However, in some matchups, like aggro mirrors or against midrange, with only a few sideboard cards I can go from ~50% to 80% even when theyre sideboarding against me. So that is where I am going to pick up the real points with sideboarding.
The difference here might not be immediately obvious so it if you're confused or thing I am wrong, read it against and think on it before responding that I am crazy Type B formats reward players that can position a deck in the format. What does this mean? You can build a Mono Red to be really fast (all-in sligh with 19 land) or much slower (sledgehammer red). You can build it to be grindy for creature matchups (maindecking cards like Hellion Crucible, Hound of Griselbrand, Flames of the Firebrand). Changing 5-10 cards in the deck can change its fundamental clock from an expected turn 4 kill, to a deck that is happy to go to turn 8-10 against a control deck and win there. Knowing which changes to make and how fast to make the deck require an understanding of what points in the metagame can be exposed during a given period. This can be quite alienating in Standard, because it can feel like the metagame is moving so quickly, so I understand the fear of investing only to have a deck go from 'great' to 'meh' (eg: Jund). In Legacy, the metagame is developed enough (due to no rotation) that there are many, many decks that are viable ~ we would reach this point in standard if not for new sets being released; so while the comparison isn't perfect, I hope that I am getting my point across. Players like Legacy because they can play anything they want. You can broadly do that in this Standard. You will notice that pro players often don't do as well in Legacy events as players who focus on Legacy, and that is because they just don't have the broad understanding of the metagame and how to position a deck and what to look out for ~ they want that Type A metagame where you only have to prepare for a couple of decks and they can turn their superior analytical skills to breaking down those matchups.
I don't think Type A or Type B is better or worse, they're just different. Right now, I do like that we have a break from the monotony of UW decks getting all the best cards.
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To the point that there is "nothing to rally against," that is good. What is wrong with getting rid of a supreme evil and then not having anything to prepare almost exclusively for? You see, the thing I like about it is that we have people at my LGS who always netdeck the best deck in the format, and they are getting mad, mad that there is no deck that is guaranteeing them a place in the top half. This is a deckbuilder's meta, and more importantly, a player's meta. If you know how to play Magic without any assistance in the building process or the game process, you are going to do great, exceptional in fact. However, if you have been basing your Magic knowledge on what other people have told you, then you are going to suffer. That is what is happening now. Those that dislike it, or think it is unhealthy (to continue the Dark Knight analogy) are more into watching a movie than making one.
I am with you there. I have nothing against netdecking a deck that you yourself enjoy playing, I just do not like to netdeck the best deck becuase I do not want to face mirror matches all day long. I like building my own decks, using decks that have done well as a skeleton and tweak it to my own playstyle. Usually when there is a bid bad deck, my rogue decks do a little bit better because I know the meta, so my decks stay stagnant. I like it now because I constantly have to tweak my decks based on what I expect the meta to be, week in and week out, and I find that super exciting.
This week my 60 was the same 60 that won the SCG open this past week, however my sideboard was drastically different based on what I felt I would think would be better for my meta, and that tweak to the sideboard was a good call. Next week, the 60 will change based on what I felt will be better.
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Tried to pull away, but now I'm Back At it
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Hailing from the BA, accumulating CA"
Yea, those are MTG Bars. What can I say, I am a dork
The meta is fine. I can't really get behind the "its awesome" thing but i think its fine.
I started the season playing jund, then bant then UW flash and now Naya and to be perfectly honest im kind of bored of casting thragtusk and to some extent restoration angel. RDW and Zombies don't particularly appeal to me...sooo.....? Esper control? I'm not good enough with it to win with Esper.
So do you want to cast sphinx's revelation, restoration angel or thundermaw hellkites?
Im not saying its a bad meta game, im just bored with it and im spending most of my time on modern lately. Go me.
i play a super clunky deck that u think wouldn't be competitive but its super crazy and fun, its a mono black midrange post deck runs trading post + demonic rising/homicidal seclusion as a win con. beaten alot of decks with it mostly aggro but a few control decks too
A couple nitpicks. I don't even think it's necessarily a matter of time with Best Decks that leads to the edge. I think it's a more fundamentally understanding of the core of magic strategies for archetypes that makes playing these decks easier.
I'd argue that sideboarding while different isn't necessarily more difficult in either type of meta. In Type A, you have a limited portion of decks your focusing on, but you also face the reality that the good decks are never beaten by cards but strategies. Boarding is often just taking out dead cards for reasonable one. In a Type B format, you're often going to see a sideboards with 4 or 5 generic plans for generic strats (reanimator, agro, midrange etc.), with 3 card slots dedicated to problem cards. Generally in type B formats, everything's equal, but there will be 3~4 cards that your deck doesn't realistically beat, hence you see things like nevermore and slaughter games in peoples sideboards.
Lastly, not really related, but I feel pros perform above expectation Legacy because they're focused on winning the tournament and carefully choose there decks going into to tourney instead of playing their Hive Mind deck which they've been playing for 3 years(made up number). Saito was banned for a year and a half and still finished top 16 of GP Denver after all. Of course, this takes into consideration good pros versus bad pros but that's a topic for another day.
LP, I'm checking your article out as well. Behind all of your swag is the brain of one of the most intelligent Magic players I've ever known. I guess that's one more thing for you to add to the wall of ego that is your Sally sig.
I can go with that. LK, you are the Mace Windu of red mages...cool, tempered logic in deliberation, but capable of just flat kicking tail when the situation warrants it.
I hate the way everyone just crams in the good cards in their colors and wins. This is the most boring Standard I've ever played in. I can name half the cards in your deck after turn 2. That's not fun to me.
The meta is fine. I can't really get behind the "its awesome" thing but i think its fine.
I started the season playing jund, then bant then UW flash and now Naya and to be perfectly honest im kind of bored of casting thragtusk and to some extent restoration angel. RDW and Zombies don't particularly appeal to me...sooo.....? Esper control? I'm not good enough with it to win with Esper.
So do you want to cast sphinx's revelation, restoration angel or thundermaw hellkites?
Im not saying its a bad meta game, im just bored with it and im spending most of my time on modern lately. Go me.
That's what I was going for before when I said some cards are pushed too much.
It limits competitive deckbuilding since it pushes other cards out of the viable pool.
I hate the way everyone just crams in the good cards in their colors and wins. This is the most boring Standard I've ever played in. I can name half the cards in your deck after turn 2. That's not fun to me.
To be fair, I can't think of a standard season where that wasn't possible for many years. That's the nature of a format with a limited card pool I think.
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I hate the way everyone just crams in the good cards in their colors and wins. This is the most boring Standard I've ever played in. I can name half the cards in your deck after turn 2. That's not fun to me.
Yeah I'm aware of your feelings due to that other thread.
I just feel like for format with such a limited card pool, it's rather amazing how diverse it is. We can only go up from here.
Ooooh, I wouldn't say that DTG99 ~ it quite possible that much like after the release of AVR (with Restoration Angel going into Delver) that despite the increase in the size of the card pool, one card improves an existing deck so much that many others lose competitiveness. It can happen.
Nothing so far looks like it will do that, but we have not only a lot of cards still to be revealed, but also no experience playing with them.
I am as optimistic as you though ~ hopefully all the existing decks better and some new ones develop!
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To be fair, I don't think Wizards expected sphinx's revelation to be quite this good and regardless, it's not like it's ZOMG OP. It's just a reasonably powerful card. Thundermaw hellkite is another card that while powerful is really just getting it's time in the sun after not being able to do much in delver's world.
LP, I'm checking your article out as well. Behind all of your swag is the brain of one of the most intelligent Magic players I've ever known. I guess that's one more thing for you to add to the wall of ego that is your Sally sig.
I can go with that. LK, you are the Mace Windu of red mages...cool, tempered logic in deliberation, but capable of just flat kicking tail when the situation warrants it.
I just feel like for format with such a limited card pool, it's rather amazing how diverse it is. We can only go up from here.
I think this is basically what we're all hoping for - a standard that remains diverse but isn't just decks that are running the best five cards cards with slight variations in the supporting cast.
Of course the alternative is that you have one obviously best deck and half a dozen other deck that are trying to metagame like in delver/cawblade standard.
To be fair, I don't think Wizards expected sphinx's revelation to be quite this good and regardless, it's not like it's ZOMG OP. It's just a reasonably powerful card. Thundermaw hellkite is another card that while powerful is really just getting it's time in the sun after not being able to do much in delver's world.
Instant speed Card Draw with Life gain in one card is always going to be a powerful card, so I do not assume Wizards did not expect the outcome of the card, I mean they made it mythic, so they had some idea.
With that said I agree with you that is a powerful card, but not over powered. I have powered through Sphinx's revelation a couple of times before so it is beatable. I acutually lose more, believe it or not to Sphinx's revelation than to thundermaw hellkites but I have always played decks that can deal with it.
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Love is Emphatic, cards need to be played
Hailing from the BA, accumulating CA"
Yea, those are MTG Bars. What can I say, I am a dork
Once GC launches everything will change.
Right now its awesome, wait till we have a full set of shocks.
Its gonna be bonkers.
not sure how "good" it will be but its gonna be bonkers.
Mega durdling and mega aggro........
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Fight what? The dregs of whatever control decks delver hadn't beaten out of the format?
However, if they didn't print stupid stuff like Snapcaster Mage/Geist of Saint Traft/Thragtusk/Restoration Angel there'd be no need for them.
Current Decks
Standard : Bant FlashUWG
Modern : Jund RBGW
Legacy : JundRBG
Almost the same can be said about Restoration Angel, when I saw it at 3 bucks initially I was 100% sure that that card was going to be played extensively.
Next time that happens I won't hesitate to take the opportunity to profit
This has been a massive trend with a lot of sets recently, cards such as bonfire, sphinx's revelation, and deathrite shaman also started out around 5$ and look at where they are at now.
Current Decks
Standard : Bant FlashUWG
Modern : Jund RBGW
Legacy : JundRBG
So we could have a format of nothing but b/r aggro?
Powerful cards are sweet, but too many powerful cards leads to formats that feel "pre-planned" and cookie-cutter... And if they don't go that route, they go the "OH CRAP WE DIDN'T REALIZE HOW BROKEN AFFINITY WOULD BE!" route.
Thanks to Rivenor of Miraculous Recovery Signatures!
You sir have a limited mind.
To the point that there is "nothing to rally against," that is good. What is wrong with getting rid of a supreme evil and then not having anything to prepare almost exclusively for? You see, the thing I like about it is that we have people at my LGS who always netdeck the best deck in the format, and they are getting mad, mad that there is no deck that is guaranteeing them a place in the top half. This is a deckbuilder's meta, and more importantly, a player's meta. If you know how to play Magic without any assistance in the building process or the game process, you are going to do great, exceptional in fact. However, if you have been basing your Magic knowledge on what other people have told you, then you are going to suffer. That is what is happening now. Those that dislike it, or think it is unhealthy (to continue the Dark Knight analogy) are more into watching a movie than making one.
MTGS egos at their finest.
Thoughts on proxies:
First up, I don't want to pick on Kamahl, we're bros and he is a good dude.
I do want to act as a counterpoint though, simply to say, some players prefer a 'settled' metagame with the deck and anti-decks (Type A); others prefer a very open field (Type B).
In a Type A format, the capacity to metagame and plan is paramount. Understanding what makes the deck function is critical to finding weaknesses in it to exploit, whether that be by developing anti-strategies based around 'counter-cards' (eg: innovations in UW vs UWr vs UWb Cawblade mirrors) or on exploiting timings (the midrange mono red Koth decks than run through Cawblade but didnt beat much else). When you're only seeing a few decks in large events, depth of understanding to find very small advantages over the long run are rewarded. Some players love this sort of metagame and it rewards are very specific skillset. On the other hand, if you don't like one of the handful of viable decks (none of them are an archetype you enjoy playing), the format is going to be horrid. Type A formats tend to favour and be favoured by pro players because if you hav eenough time to prepare really deeply and gain a strong understand of a handful of matchups, you can do really, really well. That is why when Cawblade was #1 we saw the same few names every week in the Top 8 of the SCGs ~ the best players only had to play a couple of matchups and were able to gain significant edges over players with less time.
Type B formats, where there are MANY viable decks (according to mtgo-stats, I would say there are at least 8 Tier 1 decks in this format, with half a dozen more strong, competitive Tier 2 decks) reward preparation and broad understanding of fundamentals. Standard right now is much more like legacy than anything else ~ lots of viable decks, the respective power of which will wax and wane relative to the popularity and innovations in other comparably strong decks. No one deck has even matchups across the field ~ every deck has good and bad matchups. While this limits your capcacity to gain a huge advantage against a limited number of decks, it rewards players with a broad and strong understanding of archetypes and appropriate playstyles to respond, as well as the ability to understand what really matters when building a 75 card deck for the metagame. Let me illustrate with an example (its going to be red based, sorry):
In a Type A format, where the best deck is obvious (CawBlade or Delver for example), I know that no matter what, I want to devote not only a lot of my maindeck to this matchup, but a bunch of sideboard cards as well. I don't care if those cards areonly for this matchup. This makes building a sideboard easy, and you get forumlaic approaches where you go 'I want 6 cards for Deck A (most popular), 4 cards for deck B and C (strongest 2 anti-decks)'. You saw a lot of this sort of sideboarding in the last two seasons. This isn't very skill testing at all ~ you just cram your sideboard full of cards to beat the decks you KNOW you will face.
In a Type B format you cant do that. Instead, you need to understand how your deck is positioned relative to the field. You don't have enough sideboard space to have cards for every deck ~ so you need to take a more broad approach and focus on sideboarding on the decks that are going to matter to you. I have a section in the Mono Red primer called 'sideboard for the decks you can beat, sideboard for the decks you need to beat' (link in sig) that expands upon this. What this boils down to is understanding the format well enough to know that against the random rogue decks, playing Mono Red means I am never really worse than 45%, so I just am not going to sideboard there. Post-board against UWr Flash, no matter how much we respectively sideboard, the matchup is still going to be about 52% in their favour ~ so I just am not going to sideboard much there. I would need to devote a huge amount of cards to get over 50% my way and it just isnt worth it when I can have a couple of cards and be only a few % worse. However, in some matchups, like aggro mirrors or against midrange, with only a few sideboard cards I can go from ~50% to 80% even when theyre sideboarding against me. So that is where I am going to pick up the real points with sideboarding.
The difference here might not be immediately obvious so it if you're confused or thing I am wrong, read it against and think on it before responding that I am crazy Type B formats reward players that can position a deck in the format. What does this mean? You can build a Mono Red to be really fast (all-in sligh with 19 land) or much slower (sledgehammer red). You can build it to be grindy for creature matchups (maindecking cards like Hellion Crucible, Hound of Griselbrand, Flames of the Firebrand). Changing 5-10 cards in the deck can change its fundamental clock from an expected turn 4 kill, to a deck that is happy to go to turn 8-10 against a control deck and win there. Knowing which changes to make and how fast to make the deck require an understanding of what points in the metagame can be exposed during a given period. This can be quite alienating in Standard, because it can feel like the metagame is moving so quickly, so I understand the fear of investing only to have a deck go from 'great' to 'meh' (eg: Jund). In Legacy, the metagame is developed enough (due to no rotation) that there are many, many decks that are viable ~ we would reach this point in standard if not for new sets being released; so while the comparison isn't perfect, I hope that I am getting my point across. Players like Legacy because they can play anything they want. You can broadly do that in this Standard. You will notice that pro players often don't do as well in Legacy events as players who focus on Legacy, and that is because they just don't have the broad understanding of the metagame and how to position a deck and what to look out for ~ they want that Type A metagame where you only have to prepare for a couple of decks and they can turn their superior analytical skills to breaking down those matchups.
I don't think Type A or Type B is better or worse, they're just different. Right now, I do like that we have a break from the monotony of UW decks getting all the best cards.
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I am with you there. I have nothing against netdecking a deck that you yourself enjoy playing, I just do not like to netdeck the best deck becuase I do not want to face mirror matches all day long. I like building my own decks, using decks that have done well as a skeleton and tweak it to my own playstyle. Usually when there is a bid bad deck, my rogue decks do a little bit better because I know the meta, so my decks stay stagnant. I like it now because I constantly have to tweak my decks based on what I expect the meta to be, week in and week out, and I find that super exciting.
This week my 60 was the same 60 that won the SCG open this past week, however my sideboard was drastically different based on what I felt I would think would be better for my meta, and that tweak to the sideboard was a good call. Next week, the 60 will change based on what I felt will be better.
Tried to pull away, but now I'm Back At it
Love is Emphatic, cards need to be played
Hailing from the BA, accumulating CA"
I started the season playing jund, then bant then UW flash and now Naya and to be perfectly honest im kind of bored of casting thragtusk and to some extent restoration angel. RDW and Zombies don't particularly appeal to me...sooo.....? Esper control? I'm not good enough with it to win with Esper.
So do you want to cast sphinx's revelation, restoration angel or thundermaw hellkites?
Im not saying its a bad meta game, im just bored with it and im spending most of my time on modern lately. Go me.
A couple nitpicks. I don't even think it's necessarily a matter of time with Best Decks that leads to the edge. I think it's a more fundamentally understanding of the core of magic strategies for archetypes that makes playing these decks easier.
I'd argue that sideboarding while different isn't necessarily more difficult in either type of meta. In Type A, you have a limited portion of decks your focusing on, but you also face the reality that the good decks are never beaten by cards but strategies. Boarding is often just taking out dead cards for reasonable one. In a Type B format, you're often going to see a sideboards with 4 or 5 generic plans for generic strats (reanimator, agro, midrange etc.), with 3 card slots dedicated to problem cards. Generally in type B formats, everything's equal, but there will be 3~4 cards that your deck doesn't realistically beat, hence you see things like nevermore and slaughter games in peoples sideboards.
Lastly, not really related, but I feel pros perform above expectation Legacy because they're focused on winning the tournament and carefully choose there decks going into to tourney instead of playing their Hive Mind deck which they've been playing for 3 years(made up number). Saito was banned for a year and a half and still finished top 16 of GP Denver after all. Of course, this takes into consideration good pros versus bad pros but that's a topic for another day.
We are polar opposites.
I hate the way everyone just crams in the good cards in their colors and wins. This is the most boring Standard I've ever played in. I can name half the cards in your deck after turn 2. That's not fun to me.
That's what I was going for before when I said some cards are pushed too much.
It limits competitive deckbuilding since it pushes other cards out of the viable pool.
To be fair, I can't think of a standard season where that wasn't possible for many years. That's the nature of a format with a limited card pool I think.
Want to see me in action? Check out my stream! Currently broadcasting Boros Burn in Standard. Full archive available.
Want to play better magic? Come join us at diestoremoval.com
Yeah I'm aware of your feelings due to that other thread.
I just feel like for format with such a limited card pool, it's rather amazing how diverse it is. We can only go up from here.
Nothing so far looks like it will do that, but we have not only a lot of cards still to be revealed, but also no experience playing with them.
I am as optimistic as you though ~ hopefully all the existing decks better and some new ones develop!
Want to see me in action? Check out my stream! Currently broadcasting Boros Burn in Standard. Full archive available.
Want to play better magic? Come join us at diestoremoval.com
I think this is basically what we're all hoping for - a standard that remains diverse but isn't just decks that are running the best five cards cards with slight variations in the supporting cast.
Of course the alternative is that you have one obviously best deck and half a dozen other deck that are trying to metagame like in delver/cawblade standard.
Pick your poison i guess.
Instant speed Card Draw with Life gain in one card is always going to be a powerful card, so I do not assume Wizards did not expect the outcome of the card, I mean they made it mythic, so they had some idea.
With that said I agree with you that is a powerful card, but not over powered. I have powered through Sphinx's revelation a couple of times before so it is beatable. I acutually lose more, believe it or not to Sphinx's revelation than to thundermaw hellkites but I have always played decks that can deal with it.
Tried to pull away, but now I'm Back At it
Love is Emphatic, cards need to be played
Hailing from the BA, accumulating CA"
Right now its awesome, wait till we have a full set of shocks.
Its gonna be bonkers.
not sure how "good" it will be but its gonna be bonkers.
Mega durdling and mega aggro........