Additionally, I should note Teferi have strong Walkers is nothing new. He does possess the only CEDH level Walker in Existence even if his deck was underpowered for Commander. His only garbage Walker is his Planeswalker Deck and those are designed for new players and thus are trash.
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Its not a fair point at all. Teferi was thematic to the set, consistent with the lore, and is a character from many of Dominari's sets. This is not 'forced diversity', and its dog whistle level dialog that is below worthless.
No. I'm genuinely interested in what it means. I know what it means, you know what it means, but I want TheOnlyOne652089 to say it. Which would be productive, if only to have grounds for the termination of every idjit making that argument.
But yeah, Teferi's been part of the lore forever, and if someone wants to say this "forced diversity" (i.e., black people existing in a multiverse) was set up during the Westherlight saga, when he phased out his own home to protect it from Phyrexia, I'm going to cry foul.
Anyway, to answer OP's question, he's not too powerful, and I didn't know there was a price control on Standard. You know, with Standard being the most expensive format already.
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Card advantage is not the same thing as card draw. Something for 2B cannot be strictly worse than something for BBB or 3BB. If you're taking out Swords to Plowshares for Plummet, you're a fool. Stop doing these things!
I gotta agree with you. I started when Tempest dropped and know players from earlier in the game. I've watched some of today's matches on YouTube and compared them to what I played. Where's the Metagame? Where's the decisions in between plays? It seems like the decks are basically the same but the rules change neutered the flow of the game. To me, Championship-level players and the game should last LONGER. I had Mercadian Masques drafts that had game last over three hours. It wasn't stalling tactics or control either. It was strategy. The Planeswalkers are just bloated enchantments.
Walkers really are better Enchantments considering how weak Enchantments are compared to Artifacts.
Still I don't think for a game WOTC wants to turn into an Esport they want matches to take 3 hours. An hr for three matches maybe probably more like 30 mins for three matches max lol
I put a ton of time into Arena, when I could grind out games with the start decks, and they ended in < 10 min. Now that I'm playing a more 'real' deck, and a game is 20, 30 min? I may as well be playing Modern again.
OP, regarding your point 1 and 1a, I felt the same way about many cards, and my answer was to just start playing Pauper exclusively for competitive magic. I absolutely hate "pushed" cards, and feel that all cards should be costed on the same power curve. I hate that there are sets with commons strictly inferior to rares (Sky Skiff and Smuggler's Copter in Kaladesh, Colossal Dreadmaw and Carnage Tyrant in Ixalan, and many other examples). If that's what WotC wants to do with Rares/Mythics, my answer is to just go "screw that" and avoid them all together.
And luckily I've loved the Pauper format. My local store runs it every Thursday night, and it's been a blast.
I don't think Teferi's more egregious than other Modern staples, but he really illustrates the price gradient that's developed with the encouragement of modern design
That said, agree with above; if you're not into competitive organized play, Pauper is a sweet format for the kinds of game I wanted old school MtG to be.
Looking at Granite Gargoyle I was reminded of "Whee! Color pie!"
Anyway, mythic, expected to be powerful. They can't all be Lich's Mirror or Archangel's Light. Rares have more split powerlevel, between "powerful", "Johnny card that no one else wants", "trap card that would be powerful except it's missing one small phrase" (e.g., Counterlash), and "part of a vertical cycle separated only by size". Commons tend to be either GILBIC or staple answers; every game needs trump cards, after all. Uncommons rarely let me down, TBH.
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Card advantage is not the same thing as card draw. Something for 2B cannot be strictly worse than something for BBB or 3BB. If you're taking out Swords to Plowshares for Plummet, you're a fool. Stop doing these things!
I'm not going to touch the rest of your arguments, but this is nonsense.
Nykthos requires devotion, therefore a board presence, that can be removed.
The rest are broken-as-***** lands that cost no mana to establish yet provide massive advantages. WotC don't support lands like that anymore, see what they did with Ramunap Ruins that are nowhere near the level of the lands you quoted. As such, land destruction as a solution to lands this problematic (Nykthos isn't even worth a Stone Rain) isn't really a reasonable solution, since even the cheapes LD Sinkhole costs 2 mana and is therefore a massively significant tempo disadvantage compared to Tolarian Academy.
If you want to be sensationalist about removal, don't use broken-as-***** lands from ages ago as examples, and don't use lands that necessiate a massive board presence as an argument either.
Dunno about why Teferi specifically is a problem. None of the arguments said are new or are just feelings (which I understand somewhat).
I stopped playing during Mercadian Masques and came back during New Phyrexia, so I also got shocked by the prices of the cards in Standard, PW cards, powerlevel of creatures, and mythic rarity. I think Jace hit like absurd $200 mark and Baneslayer was like 40~50. And in most Standard, some cards would reach $50 mark sometimes. So it's nothing new. I remember people complaining about $20 bucks T2 rares. Nothing new under the sky about pushed cards in Standard.
About Teferi being OP, I disagree. You need to keep control to the point Teferi is good, so you can't jam that in any deck. Control is on and off as being one of the best decks. It's very powerful and the demand makes it a $50+ card. However, it doesn't seem something broken that warps all formats around it. It's just something powerful aside Jace, the Mindscuptor that would be more OP card than Teferi overall. Maybe in the future something may make it broken, but it's unlikely. Other cards were OP in Standard for different reasons. Teferi is just one of the most powerful things you can do in Standard and other formats, but it's not the only thing.
1) I do agree with no card should be super expensive, but the only thing that would offset this is reprinting them in precon decks which is something WotC doesn't do normally. They aren't Pokemon. They are very conservative with it. Now I would not complain much specifically about Teferi. Standard overall is at all time high with $600 Standard decks which would put some Modern decks to shame value wise. I'd say Teferi's price at $50 feels more right than Jadelight Ranger, Carnage Tyrant, and so on. These seem way more overpriced.
Now the point 1a), if you believe that some people at WotC has links with some secondary market, so they can manipulate the prices indirectly, yeah it's probably right. Still, it's nothing new. They obviously know if a pushed card will be pricey with some confidence. Still it is set by the secondary market. They can do a douche move making some utility spells as rare or mythic. Carnage Tyrant and Rekindling Phoenix could be rare and some of the rare removal could be uncommon like in the past. However, they use the excuse of limited format to justify these upticks in rarities which makes prices high. They could design sets a bit more tightly that could sustain powerful cards at lower rarity, but they rarely do that and still make some mistakes while hurting the prices of Standard cards.
Still nothing new about it and not a Teferi specific problem. This particular card isn't even a good example (as people underestimated it as you could get Teferi for $15ish for a brief time and for less than $40 for weeks). Teferi is clearly not a good example of this problem.
2) I quite don't get this problem and Teferi. What the mulligan rule has to do with Teferi specifically? Lot of cards similar to Teferi were printed before during this period. If lack of interactivity is the problem, the mulligan rule would be worse with combo decks. They usually aren't interactive or solitaire style. You are complaining about a card that goes in a control shell which wants to interact with your opponent's card. WotC statements is making the game about the board, so Teferi is a good way to have control decks something on the board. Again, maybe Teferi isn't the best example for this "problem".
3) The emblem grip is just nonsense. If you get there, you are supposed to have it finish the game. That's the point of most ultimates. Maybe the problem is the design of emblems as you can't interact with any of them. Still not a problem specific with Teferi as well. We had Liliana's and Chandra's ultimate in the past that would finish games faster than Teferi's ultimate. You don't even need to ultimate with some other PWs like Karn and company.
So in the end, I understand some of the complains and they are mostly old problems/complaints. However, I don't quite get why Teferi is bad in the ways you explained it. It's either not alone in the problem or just the wrong example. I don't like pushed cards being at higher rarity and no good uncommon/common like most people I think. However, some of the complaints may just sound as "old school player" doesn't like "NWO" MTG. Some valid, some just a matter of taste, but hating on Teferi seems unwarranted.
I think you may have misinterpreted what I was saying regarding the mulligan. Teferi does not specifically add to any issue there. Specifically being the key word. What I was saying was that the Vancouver Mulligan was instituted to lessen the amount of games that felt super un-interactive. Teferi, in my opinion, epitomizes a card that is steeped with un-interactivity. What I was saying was that it seems contradictory to introduce mechanics that prevent that issue, only to print cards that exacerbate it.
In the manner that you are describing, I don't think Wizard's has some crazy insider trading insight into the "secondary market." I think we, the players dictate that. However, if there is no ceiling in terms of power, Wizard's has the ability to influence the primary market to an almost unethical degree. Where Call of the Herd was the nut high, for $20 a piece, and that just gave you two elephants sorcery speed, its concerning to me that wizard's can immediately influence the market, at their behest, just by printing this powerful cards. Like hey guys, looks like sales are down this quarter, so lets print something outrageous that sort of defies the ideology we have stuck to for years, because hey... we need profits. I can tell you first hand, this is not conducive to the garnering of new players.
Carney T @ 22 is reasonable for the nut high rare in the color. No issue with me here.
Jade Ranger @ 13 is reasonable for a staple in the most played deck currently. No issue with me here.
Being able to get a playset of the most powerful green rare in the format, for less than what I can get 2 Teferi for.... Big issue with me here. I think that should probably put some perspective on the problem.
As for the Ultimates... I understand the general premise... That said, it feels super clunky, pokemon-y, unmagic-like to me to win a game in that fashion. I have found myself in plenty of situations where I have been playing turbo fog against bg, both players with walkers set up, and its just a race to 'ultimate.' I feel like that deters from the strategy of the game when you can just, oops, I win like that. This is probably just the old, salty magic player in me, but even in my prime, if you beat someone with Phage the Untouchable, it wasnt really a mark of being a good player. Teferi, specifically, I sort of have an issue with the wording. Apparently there is a semantic rule difference between "when" and "whenever," which is somewhat unclear to me.
I'm still confused because price is a thing we do to ourselves.
We, as a player base, really really like spending cash for cards with little numbers on the top and big numbers on the bottom.
MtG hit that sweet spot of being a collectible and comprising competitive game pieces, where devoted players who started as kids are now making real money in real jobs and are bidding the prices up accordingly.
Teferi, in my opinion, epitomizes a card that is steeped with un-interactivity.
This is the hang up. Teferi is the centerpiece of a deck which is the definition of interactive. Unless you think creature based games are the pinnacle of interactive Magic, then this complain cannot apply to Teferi based decks.
I don't think he's even close to being worth complaining about, he's a strong planeswalker, but the deck he's in is highly destructible. Don't play into Settle the Wreckage, play Carnage Tyrants and Banefires, play sideboard cards like Unmoored Ego and Sorcerous Spyglass. Include enchantment removal for Seal Away. I don't like lucky chains of Nexus of Fate, though, that stuff is pretty cancerous.
So I have recently started sleeving up my magic cards and getting back into the spellsplinging action after a few year hiatus. You never really stop playing this game lol. I have had some initial thoughts on the state of the game, but figured I would keep them to myself for now, as they were probably just knee jerk reactions. After being back for a month, winning 3 of 4 of my local game store's drafts and being able to to put together some tier 1 one stuff on arena, I guess now would be a reasonable time to talk about something that seems like an absolute face palm to me.
Teferi.
This card poses a serious issue to the state of the game.
Firstly, my initial feeling when I came back was, daaaammmmnnnnn, these cards got super powerful. I mean, I recall what an uproar Psychatog was back in the day, reading some of the mythics, its like, wow..... that would have never been printed back in 2004 lol. I understand its not "back in the day," but needless to say, we are no longer in the 2/2 for 2 is the epitome of efficiency, kansas anymore.
I started mtg in the Psychatog era. Quit in Mirrodin and came back in Zendikar. Yeah, times have changed. Card power has creeped a bit, I still remember people saying Jade Leech was decent.. not we have Deadbridge Goliath. On Teferi issue, his price partly comes from Modern demand. He is a part of the UW control deck that is competitive in Modern right now.
3.) Teferi's emblem is absurd. Lord knows if they still eratta cards, but in no way, shape of form, should his emblem trigger for every card you draw. For example: Chemister's Insight. The emblem says whenever I draw a card I can exile a perm. I have emblem in play, cast chem insight.... It defies everything that feels right to me, that the teferi then triggers twice effectively, allowing me to exile two perms because I draw 2 cards off a single spell. On surveil triggers for example, its not as if Dimir Spybug gets 2 counters if you have one card that says "surveil 2." This to me just seems again to be over the top powerful, and super uninteractive, especially for new players.
These are just some quick thoughts, but Id be interested in hearing other opinions on this matter.
Thanks for reading, guys!!
A planeswalker should not be judged by their ultimate, because it requires some effort to reach that point.
I think you may have misinterpreted what I was saying regarding the mulligan. Teferi does not specifically add to any issue there. Specifically being the key word. What I was saying was that the Vancouver Mulligan was instituted to lessen the amount of games that felt super un-interactive. Teferi, in my opinion, epitomizes a card that is steeped with un-interactivity. What I was saying was that it seems contradictory to introduce mechanics that prevent that issue, only to print cards that exacerbate it.
The mulligan thing was more about having less non-games due to bad starting hands than interactiveness of cards, so your argument here makes little sense. The point of saying Teferi is not interactive makes even less sense. We are talking about a control card which means you wanna interact with your opponent.
In the manner that you are describing, I don't think Wizard's has some crazy insider trading insight into the "secondary market." I think we, the players dictate that. However, if there is no ceiling in terms of power, Wizard's has the ability to influence the primary market to an almost unethical degree. Where Call of the Herd was the nut high, for $20 a piece, and that just gave you two elephants sorcery speed, its concerning to me that wizard's can immediately influence the market, at their behest, just by printing this powerful cards. Like hey guys, looks like sales are down this quarter, so lets print something outrageous that sort of defies the ideology we have stuck to for years, because hey... we need profits. I can tell you first hand, this is not conducive to the garnering of new players.
Carney T @ 22 is reasonable for the nut high rare in the color. No issue with me here.
Jade Ranger @ 13 is reasonable for a staple in the most played deck currently. No issue with me here.
Being able to get a playset of the most powerful green rare in the format, for less than what I can get 2 Teferi for.... Big issue with me here. I think that should probably put some perspective on the problem.
As for the Ultimates... I understand the general premise... That said, it feels super clunky, pokemon-y, unmagic-like to me to win a game in that fashion. I have found myself in plenty of situations where I have been playing turbo fog against bg, both players with walkers set up, and its just a race to 'ultimate.' I feel like that deters from the strategy of the game when you can just, oops, I win like that. This is probably just the old, salty magic player in me, but even in my prime, if you beat someone with Phage the Untouchable, it wasnt really a mark of being a good player. Teferi, specifically, I sort of have an issue with the wording. Apparently there is a semantic rule difference between "when" and "whenever," which is somewhat unclear to me.
Still I have difficult comprehend why Teferi is a problem while you don't have problems with cards like Carnage Tyrant ($25 for a mostly SB card and the epitome of non-interactive threat) and Jadelight Ranger (a boring $16 value card needed in mostly green decks like you said) and also so many other cards that would fit the same Teferi bill.
No offense, but it seems more about being salty about a card you want but you don't feel like chewing the price. If you really believed Teferi was that broken of a design and that shady of a push by WotC, you should have cleared the house and bought them when you could get them for less than $20. Or less than $35, $40, and so on. If you really believe Teferi shouldn't exist because he fundamentally breaks some market pricing, just jump on this train already. It will be at $75+ someday if your opinions about it holds true. Of course, WotC can influence the prices; however, they do it more with reprints rather than printing obviously powerful cards. Like you said, the demand makes the price. If players believe the card is $50 powerful, it will be regardless of what WotC thinks.
I believe WotC thought Teferi would be a nifty PW for control and designed that way without thinking about just selling boxes or influence prices and so on. Like I mentioned already, if you follow the price history, at the beginning most people didn't think much of this card. Some even said he was similar to Jace from SOI block. Just a slightly upgrade vs a clunkier casting cost. Unlike Jace the Mindsculptor, people underestimated Teferi. It took some time to get to this point. This reflected in the price history.
Another example would be Liliana of the Veil. I think it was the first pushed 3cmc PW. At first people were hyped about her and this reflected the pre order price of $60 I believe (very pretty high at the time). After some weeks, she didn't see much play in Standard, so her price got as low as $2X. After people see her potential in Legacy and Modern, her price recovered a bit, but it was still around $40 and 50 for a good time till she started to explode in price reaching a whopping $80 which was very high at the time as well. The same complaints (maybe not the mulligan one as it seems so random) could apply to her: insane price for an obviously pushed card (it even had an official article about the designer basically bragging on how pushed she was), game ending ultimate, and so on.
Again I sympathize with your sentiment about prices, but just picking Teferi for this complaint it's not a good reason. This is not a new problem and not vaguely unique to or caused by Teferi. If you picked 100 Teferis at $15 or so, would you have the same complaint? Maybe we should start complaining about how Arclight Phoenix shouldn't exist as well. It seems very similar in case.
Your point about ultimates still doesn't make much sense. I think you only envision one way of playing and dismiss others. A race of who ultimate first is as valid as any situation. You are ignoring so much stuff that goes on those situations and simply judge it as not-MTG-like. There are so many different ways to get that "ops I win the game" or maybe "bad" ways to win the game through very low strategies and Teferi way would be very low on this list. Still it's fine if you have this opinion. What isn't fine is just Teferi. So many other PWs have similar problems, so why not make the complaint more general?
If you are playing Standard you sign up for expense. If Standard gets too cheap via lottery ticket masterpieces you put people like me who draft it off drafting because draft is only worth the money if you can defray costs with the cards. Many limited players don't play Standard, if Standard with masterpiece cards was very profitable for WOTC they would have kept at it. They do lose some reprint equity with these cards but I doubt they lose enough to warrant stopping lottery packs. Whether you hurt WOTC partners like CFB is another matter; I doubt masterpieces hurt CFBs profits either way.
As for Terferi, the issue is more with Planeswalker ultimates. If they ultimate you generally lose in a couple of turns unless you have the win in hand, you can't grind past them. Planeswalkers should have been more like Saga cards, but they were not, and the relentless focus on them, alienated many like me. The conspicuous lack of punishment for playing them, such as Solemnity failing to hit walkers, and focus on story meant they were pushed to the point that many players would happily disembowl the designers in front of their families with a forklift if it meant they could end the Jace and Mates (TM) Mtg. The walkers also pushed creatures over spells as creatures became the default mode of dealing wuth them, making the game seem narrow to many from older times.
Teferi itself is fine, from a Legacy or Modern pov. Standard is just Standard, you know what you are signing up for, a potential six months to two years of a card or mechanic dominating. From what I can see it is not dominating Standard, and if you re read nearly every ultimate as "you win the game" you will feel better about planeswalkers, as most of them do that, they win the game. You are not supposed to beat an ultimate in Standard by out grinding, you are basically allowed a couple of turns to seal the deal before you get deluged in card disadvantage. The Mtg, such that it is, is played before the ultimate.
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People with belligerent signatures are trying to compensate for something....
I'm not going to touch the rest of your arguments, but this is nonsense.
Nykthos requires devotion, therefore a board presence, that can be removed.
The rest are broken-as-***** lands that cost no mana to establish yet provide massive advantages.
"Nykthos is fine because it requires a board presence to be scary. Cradle, Academy, and Sanctum are broken despite needing a board presence to be scary."
I'm not saying the Bant Urza lands are non-broken (Phyrexian Tower is pretty strong too, but not quite on the same level; Shivan Gorge is the red-headed stepchild of the cycle and cries in the corner), I just think you need to check your logic. For Cradle to produce 2 mana, you need two creatures. With two creatures in play, Nykthos most likely produces 2-4 mana after a 2 mana investment (netting 0-2 mana), and it's certainly possible to get more mana from Nykthos with just two creatures (devotion 3+ on a single card is just much less common than 1-2). Nykthos also doesn't rely on a single permanent type; while Wrath of God reduces Cradle's output to 0, or Creeping Corrosion drops Academy to 0, or Back to Nature drops Sanctum to 0, none of those necessarily drop Nykthos to 0 on their own. Similarly, a single Planar Cleansing drops the Bant Urza lands and Nykthos to 0. Being able to produce any color is also very relevant. Maybe I've got a go-wide white weenie deck, and I can't really make much use of the green mana from Cradle, for example.
I really appreciate everyone's input on the topic. Thanks. I am slightly perplexed as to how I got a flame/troll warning for my commentary, however.
It is not hard to do.
Honestly, I dont have a problem with Teferi. I dont even see him lately in my local meta. The Nexus deck was hot for a second, but it has faded. We will probably see Teferi return in the form of Jeskai control, however.
When Teferi was hot, there were always answers. The one thing that made it tricky is that they could tap out for Teferi, and then his ability puts 2 mana back up so it could Negate (both the actual card and as a general term) spells that would otherwise kill it.
Teferi is strong, but I dont think overpowered. When you base a deck on Teferi, you open yourself up to a lot of vulnerabilities, in my opinion.
There are plenty of ways to beat Teferi- I think the reason people hate him now is because Nexus of Fate decks are just miserable to play against. They are beatable, and we have the tools to do it, but when they do work, they are miserable, and I feel like the whole object of that deck is to go to time every round and force a draw.
My issue with Teferi is that he's one of those cards that you pretty much have to remove the turn he's played in order to not lose.
This is technically OK as people said; there are a lot of answers. As long as you have two creatures in play, you should be fine. And if an opponent has the board state to block that, he's not playing draw go, and so Teferi has less power. Then you often have removal in hand that solves it anyways.
But there are still a lot of situations where he's outright stupid. Does the opponent have a blocker, and you can't remove him? You're probably dead.
No. I'm genuinely interested in what it means. I know what it means, you know what it means, but I want TheOnlyOne652089 to say it. Which would be productive, if only to have grounds for the termination of every idjit making that argument.
But yeah, Teferi's been part of the lore forever, and if someone wants to say this "forced diversity" (i.e., black people existing in a multiverse) was set up during the Westherlight saga, when he phased out his own home to protect it from Phyrexia, I'm going to cry foul.
Anyway, to answer OP's question, he's not too powerful, and I didn't know there was a price control on Standard. You know, with Standard being the most expensive format already.
On phasing:
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Still I don't think for a game WOTC wants to turn into an Esport they want matches to take 3 hours. An hr for three matches maybe probably more like 30 mins for three matches max lol
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And luckily I've loved the Pauper format. My local store runs it every Thursday night, and it's been a blast.
Corrupt Control B | Burn R | UG Turbofog UG | White Weenie W | GW Tethmos WG | BG Cycling Combo BG
Enchantress GBW | Colorless Tron C | Red Deck Wins R | UG Madness UG | Mono-G Tron G | UR Puzzlehorns UR
Rhystic Tron WU| WU Prowess WU | BR Reanimator BR | Mono-R Control R | Stompy G | Temur Tron URG
Mardu Infinite Priest WBR | 85-Card Dredge BRG | Elves GU | Boros Bully RW | Jeskai Familiars RWU
I don't think Teferi's more egregious than other Modern staples, but he really illustrates the price gradient that's developed with the encouragement of modern design
That said, agree with above; if you're not into competitive organized play, Pauper is a sweet format for the kinds of game I wanted old school MtG to be.
Anyway, mythic, expected to be powerful. They can't all be Lich's Mirror or Archangel's Light. Rares have more split powerlevel, between "powerful", "Johnny card that no one else wants", "trap card that would be powerful except it's missing one small phrase" (e.g., Counterlash), and "part of a vertical cycle separated only by size". Commons tend to be either GILBIC or staple answers; every game needs trump cards, after all. Uncommons rarely let me down, TBH.
On phasing:
I'm not going to touch the rest of your arguments, but this is nonsense.
Nykthos requires devotion, therefore a board presence, that can be removed.
The rest are broken-as-***** lands that cost no mana to establish yet provide massive advantages. WotC don't support lands like that anymore, see what they did with Ramunap Ruins that are nowhere near the level of the lands you quoted. As such, land destruction as a solution to lands this problematic (Nykthos isn't even worth a Stone Rain) isn't really a reasonable solution, since even the cheapes LD Sinkhole costs 2 mana and is therefore a massively significant tempo disadvantage compared to Tolarian Academy.
If you want to be sensationalist about removal, don't use broken-as-***** lands from ages ago as examples, and don't use lands that necessiate a massive board presence as an argument either.
I stopped playing during Mercadian Masques and came back during New Phyrexia, so I also got shocked by the prices of the cards in Standard, PW cards, powerlevel of creatures, and mythic rarity. I think Jace hit like absurd $200 mark and Baneslayer was like 40~50. And in most Standard, some cards would reach $50 mark sometimes. So it's nothing new. I remember people complaining about $20 bucks T2 rares. Nothing new under the sky about pushed cards in Standard.
About Teferi being OP, I disagree. You need to keep control to the point Teferi is good, so you can't jam that in any deck. Control is on and off as being one of the best decks. It's very powerful and the demand makes it a $50+ card. However, it doesn't seem something broken that warps all formats around it. It's just something powerful aside Jace, the Mindscuptor that would be more OP card than Teferi overall. Maybe in the future something may make it broken, but it's unlikely. Other cards were OP in Standard for different reasons. Teferi is just one of the most powerful things you can do in Standard and other formats, but it's not the only thing.
1) I do agree with no card should be super expensive, but the only thing that would offset this is reprinting them in precon decks which is something WotC doesn't do normally. They aren't Pokemon. They are very conservative with it. Now I would not complain much specifically about Teferi. Standard overall is at all time high with $600 Standard decks which would put some Modern decks to shame value wise. I'd say Teferi's price at $50 feels more right than Jadelight Ranger, Carnage Tyrant, and so on. These seem way more overpriced.
Now the point 1a), if you believe that some people at WotC has links with some secondary market, so they can manipulate the prices indirectly, yeah it's probably right. Still, it's nothing new. They obviously know if a pushed card will be pricey with some confidence. Still it is set by the secondary market. They can do a douche move making some utility spells as rare or mythic. Carnage Tyrant and Rekindling Phoenix could be rare and some of the rare removal could be uncommon like in the past. However, they use the excuse of limited format to justify these upticks in rarities which makes prices high. They could design sets a bit more tightly that could sustain powerful cards at lower rarity, but they rarely do that and still make some mistakes while hurting the prices of Standard cards.
Still nothing new about it and not a Teferi specific problem. This particular card isn't even a good example (as people underestimated it as you could get Teferi for $15ish for a brief time and for less than $40 for weeks). Teferi is clearly not a good example of this problem.
2) I quite don't get this problem and Teferi. What the mulligan rule has to do with Teferi specifically? Lot of cards similar to Teferi were printed before during this period. If lack of interactivity is the problem, the mulligan rule would be worse with combo decks. They usually aren't interactive or solitaire style. You are complaining about a card that goes in a control shell which wants to interact with your opponent's card. WotC statements is making the game about the board, so Teferi is a good way to have control decks something on the board. Again, maybe Teferi isn't the best example for this "problem".
3) The emblem grip is just nonsense. If you get there, you are supposed to have it finish the game. That's the point of most ultimates. Maybe the problem is the design of emblems as you can't interact with any of them. Still not a problem specific with Teferi as well. We had Liliana's and Chandra's ultimate in the past that would finish games faster than Teferi's ultimate. You don't even need to ultimate with some other PWs like Karn and company.
So in the end, I understand some of the complains and they are mostly old problems/complaints. However, I don't quite get why Teferi is bad in the ways you explained it. It's either not alone in the problem or just the wrong example. I don't like pushed cards being at higher rarity and no good uncommon/common like most people I think. However, some of the complaints may just sound as "old school player" doesn't like "NWO" MTG. Some valid, some just a matter of taste, but hating on Teferi seems unwarranted.
I think you may have misinterpreted what I was saying regarding the mulligan. Teferi does not specifically add to any issue there. Specifically being the key word. What I was saying was that the Vancouver Mulligan was instituted to lessen the amount of games that felt super un-interactive. Teferi, in my opinion, epitomizes a card that is steeped with un-interactivity. What I was saying was that it seems contradictory to introduce mechanics that prevent that issue, only to print cards that exacerbate it.
In the manner that you are describing, I don't think Wizard's has some crazy insider trading insight into the "secondary market." I think we, the players dictate that. However, if there is no ceiling in terms of power, Wizard's has the ability to influence the primary market to an almost unethical degree. Where Call of the Herd was the nut high, for $20 a piece, and that just gave you two elephants sorcery speed, its concerning to me that wizard's can immediately influence the market, at their behest, just by printing this powerful cards. Like hey guys, looks like sales are down this quarter, so lets print something outrageous that sort of defies the ideology we have stuck to for years, because hey... we need profits. I can tell you first hand, this is not conducive to the garnering of new players.
Carney T @ 22 is reasonable for the nut high rare in the color. No issue with me here.
Jade Ranger @ 13 is reasonable for a staple in the most played deck currently. No issue with me here.
Being able to get a playset of the most powerful green rare in the format, for less than what I can get 2 Teferi for.... Big issue with me here. I think that should probably put some perspective on the problem.
As for the Ultimates... I understand the general premise... That said, it feels super clunky, pokemon-y, unmagic-like to me to win a game in that fashion. I have found myself in plenty of situations where I have been playing turbo fog against bg, both players with walkers set up, and its just a race to 'ultimate.' I feel like that deters from the strategy of the game when you can just, oops, I win like that. This is probably just the old, salty magic player in me, but even in my prime, if you beat someone with Phage the Untouchable, it wasnt really a mark of being a good player. Teferi, specifically, I sort of have an issue with the wording. Apparently there is a semantic rule difference between "when" and "whenever," which is somewhat unclear to me.
We, as a player base, really really like spending cash for cards with little numbers on the top and big numbers on the bottom.
MtG hit that sweet spot of being a collectible and comprising competitive game pieces, where devoted players who started as kids are now making real money in real jobs and are bidding the prices up accordingly.
This is the hang up. Teferi is the centerpiece of a deck which is the definition of interactive. Unless you think creature based games are the pinnacle of interactive Magic, then this complain cannot apply to Teferi based decks.
Spirits
I started mtg in the Psychatog era. Quit in Mirrodin and came back in Zendikar. Yeah, times have changed. Card power has creeped a bit, I still remember people saying Jade Leech was decent.. not we have Deadbridge Goliath. On Teferi issue, his price partly comes from Modern demand. He is a part of the UW control deck that is competitive in Modern right now.
A planeswalker should not be judged by their ultimate, because it requires some effort to reach that point.
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The mulligan thing was more about having less non-games due to bad starting hands than interactiveness of cards, so your argument here makes little sense. The point of saying Teferi is not interactive makes even less sense. We are talking about a control card which means you wanna interact with your opponent.
Still I have difficult comprehend why Teferi is a problem while you don't have problems with cards like Carnage Tyrant ($25 for a mostly SB card and the epitome of non-interactive threat) and Jadelight Ranger (a boring $16 value card needed in mostly green decks like you said) and also so many other cards that would fit the same Teferi bill.
No offense, but it seems more about being salty about a card you want but you don't feel like chewing the price. If you really believed Teferi was that broken of a design and that shady of a push by WotC, you should have cleared the house and bought them when you could get them for less than $20. Or less than $35, $40, and so on. If you really believe Teferi shouldn't exist because he fundamentally breaks some market pricing, just jump on this train already. It will be at $75+ someday if your opinions about it holds true. Of course, WotC can influence the prices; however, they do it more with reprints rather than printing obviously powerful cards. Like you said, the demand makes the price. If players believe the card is $50 powerful, it will be regardless of what WotC thinks.
I believe WotC thought Teferi would be a nifty PW for control and designed that way without thinking about just selling boxes or influence prices and so on. Like I mentioned already, if you follow the price history, at the beginning most people didn't think much of this card. Some even said he was similar to Jace from SOI block. Just a slightly upgrade vs a clunkier casting cost. Unlike Jace the Mindsculptor, people underestimated Teferi. It took some time to get to this point. This reflected in the price history.
Another example would be Liliana of the Veil. I think it was the first pushed 3cmc PW. At first people were hyped about her and this reflected the pre order price of $60 I believe (very pretty high at the time). After some weeks, she didn't see much play in Standard, so her price got as low as $2X. After people see her potential in Legacy and Modern, her price recovered a bit, but it was still around $40 and 50 for a good time till she started to explode in price reaching a whopping $80 which was very high at the time as well. The same complaints (maybe not the mulligan one as it seems so random) could apply to her: insane price for an obviously pushed card (it even had an official article about the designer basically bragging on how pushed she was), game ending ultimate, and so on.
Again I sympathize with your sentiment about prices, but just picking Teferi for this complaint it's not a good reason. This is not a new problem and not vaguely unique to or caused by Teferi. If you picked 100 Teferis at $15 or so, would you have the same complaint? Maybe we should start complaining about how Arclight Phoenix shouldn't exist as well. It seems very similar in case.
Your point about ultimates still doesn't make much sense. I think you only envision one way of playing and dismiss others. A race of who ultimate first is as valid as any situation. You are ignoring so much stuff that goes on those situations and simply judge it as not-MTG-like. There are so many different ways to get that "ops I win the game" or maybe "bad" ways to win the game through very low strategies and Teferi way would be very low on this list. Still it's fine if you have this opinion. What isn't fine is just Teferi. So many other PWs have similar problems, so why not make the complaint more general?
As for Terferi, the issue is more with Planeswalker ultimates. If they ultimate you generally lose in a couple of turns unless you have the win in hand, you can't grind past them. Planeswalkers should have been more like Saga cards, but they were not, and the relentless focus on them, alienated many like me. The conspicuous lack of punishment for playing them, such as Solemnity failing to hit walkers, and focus on story meant they were pushed to the point that many players would happily disembowl the designers in front of their families with a forklift if it meant they could end the Jace and Mates (TM) Mtg. The walkers also pushed creatures over spells as creatures became the default mode of dealing wuth them, making the game seem narrow to many from older times.
Teferi itself is fine, from a Legacy or Modern pov. Standard is just Standard, you know what you are signing up for, a potential six months to two years of a card or mechanic dominating. From what I can see it is not dominating Standard, and if you re read nearly every ultimate as "you win the game" you will feel better about planeswalkers, as most of them do that, they win the game. You are not supposed to beat an ultimate in Standard by out grinding, you are basically allowed a couple of turns to seal the deal before you get deluged in card disadvantage. The Mtg, such that it is, is played before the ultimate.
I'm not saying the Bant Urza lands are non-broken (Phyrexian Tower is pretty strong too, but not quite on the same level; Shivan Gorge is the red-headed stepchild of the cycle and cries in the corner), I just think you need to check your logic. For Cradle to produce 2 mana, you need two creatures. With two creatures in play, Nykthos most likely produces 2-4 mana after a 2 mana investment (netting 0-2 mana), and it's certainly possible to get more mana from Nykthos with just two creatures (devotion 3+ on a single card is just much less common than 1-2). Nykthos also doesn't rely on a single permanent type; while Wrath of God reduces Cradle's output to 0, or Creeping Corrosion drops Academy to 0, or Back to Nature drops Sanctum to 0, none of those necessarily drop Nykthos to 0 on their own. Similarly, a single Planar Cleansing drops the Bant Urza lands and Nykthos to 0. Being able to produce any color is also very relevant. Maybe I've got a go-wide white weenie deck, and I can't really make much use of the green mana from Cradle, for example.
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It is not hard to do.
Honestly, I dont have a problem with Teferi. I dont even see him lately in my local meta. The Nexus deck was hot for a second, but it has faded. We will probably see Teferi return in the form of Jeskai control, however.
When Teferi was hot, there were always answers. The one thing that made it tricky is that they could tap out for Teferi, and then his ability puts 2 mana back up so it could Negate (both the actual card and as a general term) spells that would otherwise kill it.
Teferi is strong, but I dont think overpowered. When you base a deck on Teferi, you open yourself up to a lot of vulnerabilities, in my opinion.
There are plenty of ways to beat Teferi- I think the reason people hate him now is because Nexus of Fate decks are just miserable to play against. They are beatable, and we have the tools to do it, but when they do work, they are miserable, and I feel like the whole object of that deck is to go to time every round and force a draw.
YMMV
This is technically OK as people said; there are a lot of answers. As long as you have two creatures in play, you should be fine. And if an opponent has the board state to block that, he's not playing draw go, and so Teferi has less power. Then you often have removal in hand that solves it anyways.
But there are still a lot of situations where he's outright stupid. Does the opponent have a blocker, and you can't remove him? You're probably dead.