1. Covid kept players away from each other.Modern is doing fine.
2. Magic Arena is pushed by GotC/Hasbro and pushing players into digital. The best answer.
3. Product fatigue.Arguable.
4. Card quality (or lack thereof). Arguable.
5. Price of admission to competitive Standard decks.Modern is much more expensive unless you play one deck no matter how badly it does..The format is full of cards from overpriced Modern specific sets. Fomat staples stay high.
6. Lack of support to LGSs. Agreed.
7. Lack of power/playable cards outside of mythics.Nothing nearly as egregious as Ragavan. Meathook Massacre was an outlier.
8. Slowness in banning overpowered and "unfun" cards. More like printing them in the first place, repeatedly, but agreed.
9. Price increases for sealed products.Modern, yet again.
10. Inflation.Bad for everything, but, once again, Modern is doing fine.
11. Success of Commander.
12. Wedging Commander cards and Commander product into Draft, Set and Collector Boosters.No disrespect, but competitive players care NOTHING about Commander, save for it possibly inflating prices on a single here or there. This rarely effects Stanard.
13. Collector Boosters chasing sales away from Draft booster boxes.We like them, it drove singles prices down. Unless you like foils and alt art cards, Standard is cheaper than it's been in a long time.
The perfect storm really and I haven't seen a lot from GotC/Hasbro to pull Standard out of what I believe is a death spiral.
Honestly i think he's just bad because he's trying to do too many things.
You want to keep him on the battlefield as long as possible for the anthem. But he also has a powerful sac ability.
His ability cost ton of mana and makes two different thing at once. You try to go both tall and wide but you got a terrible power/cost ratio for that.
If you spend a lot of mana and make him very big then it's a waste to sac him for the ability.
And the sac ability itself isn't worth it if you don't invest higly in going wide...
He's doing what G and W rare bears do, which is make Control's day hard. Thank goodness for The Meathook Massacre
For 3 CMC: discard, raise dead, they lose 2, draw a card.
I think it actually gains a ton of versatility in having Read Ahead. Play as is when you've got some breathing room or fast-forward when necessary. I'm definitely going to try these out a ton in limited.
That would likely be Pioneer playable as well. Jund sac decks would be all over it.
As far as I can tell, Shattered Seraph is implied to hide their wings Giada-style most of the time (note how both angels' wings are likely made of pure Halo, at least in their regular art). I guess even that angel might be hiding in a cathedral, though...
The name and the effect are total mismatches. Doesn't protect ANYTHING, especially graveyards - nothing about preventing damage, nothing about indestructibility, no ward, no Hexproof, etc, etc...
It's not green, so it doesn't get abilities tacked on for no reason.
Hard to really see where this fits outside EDH. You've really got to do something insane these days to be playable at 7 mana, and this just isn't it, even if it does take over the game given a few turns.
It fits in the Standard sideboards of scrubs players that hate losing to control, yet are too lazy to improve their play and/or deckbuilding. Less Easy Mode than the last few sets, but Easy Mode nonetheless.
My guess is if it looked too good/realistic, they would have to pay Jeff Goldblum.
What is the other viable 1-2 mana B removal spell for Standard after rotation?
He's doing what G and W rare bears do, which is make Control's day hard. Thank goodness for The Meathook Massacre
That would likely be Pioneer playable as well. Jund sac decks would be all over it.
This is 2 mana cheaper, has Ward, and you can get the trigger more than once. This is much more playable outside of a Reanimator strategy.
Don't forget Blood Moon and your opponent's Teferi, Time Raveler forcing you to play fair.
It's not green, so it doesn't get abilities tacked on for no reason.
2. Print another extra turn spell.
Make it make sense.
It fits in the Standard sideboards of
scrubsplayers that hate losing to control, yet are too lazy to improve their play and/or deckbuilding. Less Easy Mode than the last few sets, but Easy Mode nonetheless.