Since Throne of Eldraine it seems Standard has been a roller coaster of "That seems cool, let's print that!" then "oops, turns out Oko, Thief of Crowns was really ******* broken, so ***** lets ban him". Then it's "Omnath, Locus of Creation decks are now literally 30% of the meta, so lets ban Uro, Titan of Nature's Wrath instead of him. And we ended up having to ban Omnath anyways. Oh well."
Yes, I'm pretty salty. I pulled an Uro and didn't get a chance to sell him before his ban, and now he's dropped $15.
Then again, I don't play standard anyways, and I pulled a foil borderless Oko at a draft and sold him right before I was banned and got $80 off him. So maybe I should be grateful to Wizards for making such a blatantly overpowered card.
I don't feel I'm alone with my general loathing of Wizards right now, with bans happening every other day and the new Walking Dead *****.
This isn't mindless rage posting, I'm just trying to figure out how everyone else feels. My playgroup is definitely on the "**** Wizards" side of things, but I don't know how everyone else is.
Also, I heard that Oko was a misprint, that his "target artifact or creature becomes a useless 3/3" was actually supposed to be "target artifact or creature YOU CONTROL becomes a 3/3 dork". Does anyone know if that's true?
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"Life is a jape. Yours, mine, everyone's."
—Tyrion Lannister, A Dance with Dragons
What I have heard regarding Oko isn't that it was a "misprint", per se, but a misunderstanding of how people would want to use him. Wizards thought that players would use it mostly on their own creatures... much as wizards thought that having skullclamp decrease toughness was a *downside*.
As someone who doesn't really play standard, I'm pretty insulated against most of the changes. I originally was pretty mad at TWD for being a "pseudo-reserved list" before I checked blogatog and realized that these TWD cards and any functional reprint will be ruled to be the same card on gatherer (so you can't play four of each in a single deck, for example), which removed a lot of my rage (even though only having certain legal cards only available in certain countries is still pretty sucky).
WotC has a very real tendency to make Blue/Green cards stupendously overpowered.
Its ramp, big creature, card draw, a very easy recipe to make a card that warps a format around it or produces a speed-boost to a combo deck to kick the opposition in the dirt.
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In standard something is always "the best" card and "the best" deck, always.
It just matters by what degree.
Even with Affinity around you had decks that specifically tried to beat it, and thats still the case.
If the "counter" deck can consistently beat the best deck, it can win a tournament if a large number of the best deck are around and profit from it ; a very classic meta game choice.
If the best deck becomes so oppressive that no other deck can realistically beat it in good numbers and that special deck loses to anything else in large numbers, then its a de-functional format that cant fix itself.
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If the best deck is also a 5-color play everything thats good kind of deck, you put yourself in an even worse situation, as now, even if a deck is good against the best deck, its really easy for the deck to adapt and change.
With a maindeck wish card that has access to its sideboard game 1 thats even more ridiculous.
And then you have some "snowball" cards, that if you assemble them provide a near unbeatable advantage (Lucky Clover did that, as each game with that turn 2 is so much more in favor to the adventure deck, as it doubles everything they do, and if they dont have turn 2 Lucky Clover, its much worse, unless it can slow the game down to still find one later on).
As it is, good cards that also beat almost anything else and have basically no clean answer that favors the defending player are a problem that does not go away unless the card is banned.
Oppressive powerful cards make every format worse, as they shift and warp everything around them and make most other cards "unplayable" as they are objectively worse in every way that matters.
----
Current standard is also in the "Theme deck" trap.
Every deck has some theme it builds around and it abuses and if the deck just happens to get a "broken" card it lifts off and leaves the rest behind.
Back in the days we always had these theme decks, but it was very carefully "balanced" around a guideline of what power/thoughness to manacost ratio a creature should have, and cards that provided a constant card advantage had to have some investment, either life, mana and/or being slow.
And the answers from control decks where just better and the threats less game warping, so the opponent had more time to respond to what the other is doing, overextending to a mass removal, or slowly creeping back in a game where more realistic than now.
Also, I heard that Oko was a misprint, that his "target artifact or creature becomes a useless 3/3" was actually supposed to be "target artifact or creature YOU CONTROL becomes a 3/3 dork". Does anyone know if that's true?
What was said was similar but not actually this. The play testers mostly used Oko to turn their own food into 3/3 creatures. They only occasionally use it to shut down powerful artifacts which is why they were shocked when it was so oppressive shutting down all relevant threats. They simply didn't see it as a valid use. Which is obviously a problem but when you look at a site like this where the major are looking at using his +1 only on himself and a very small minority are all "hey! doesn't this seem strong when using it on opponents stuff?" it gets hard to blame them for missing its use. They just don't have enough time or people to try everything and unless they implement some odd procedures such as "1 person has to use a card that seems OK in a way no one else uses it to see if its broken" it isn't easy to find this problems.
If the best deck becomes so oppressive that no other deck can realistically beat it in good numbers and that special deck loses to anything else in large numbers, then its a de-functional format that cant fix itself.
That is literally the definition of broken.
Back around Mirrodin block, when they explicitly set out to make the cards powerful enough to affect Eternal formats, at least they had the excuse of "everything we print must be legal in Standard". Not so much these days. Your salt is reasonable and I'd think whatever they call the FFL these days should be able to catch most of the broken that gets through. I can see them not catching Lucky Clover, but Omnath and Oko are just embarrassing. Did they really learn nothing about upticking cheap planeswalkers on great abilities with Wrenn and Six?
I wouldn't necessarily say I'm salty but I feel like I'm getting worn out by the constant power creep that warrants bans all the time. I just wanna be able to play Magic without worrying about bans or playing against broken non sense
in general i'm just so tired of being bombarded with products and then seeing the flagship format polluted in such a way by broken ridiculousness that people don't even want to play it. the past year has exposed that something is broken between departments when it comes to card design. either the team playtesting is bad, or more likely isn't even listened to.
i worry for the future because edh has seen a massive uptick in players. what else were you going to do during toxic standard environments and covid. that growth has caused them to take notice, and we're slated to get many new cards aimed directly at that format. given how bad standard has been almost the entire year that does not bode well for the stability of any other format they choose to design for.
it'd be nice if they took some of the resources being dumped into product bombardment and toned it back, instead dedicating more time and money toward creating balanced, fun, sets once again.
i don't need a new product every 2 weeks, i need a reason to buy existing product.
Yes, I'm pretty salty. I pulled an Uro and didn't get a chance to sell him before his ban, and now he's dropped $15.
Then again, I don't play standard anyways, and I pulled a foil borderless Oko at a draft and sold him right before I was banned and got $80 off him. So maybe I should be grateful to Wizards for making such a blatantly overpowered card.
I don't feel I'm alone with my general loathing of Wizards right now, with bans happening every other day and the new Walking Dead *****.
This isn't mindless rage posting, I'm just trying to figure out how everyone else feels. My playgroup is definitely on the "**** Wizards" side of things, but I don't know how everyone else is.
Also, I heard that Oko was a misprint, that his "target artifact or creature becomes a useless 3/3" was actually supposed to be "target artifact or creature YOU CONTROL becomes a 3/3 dork". Does anyone know if that's true?
"Life is a jape. Yours, mine, everyone's."
—Tyrion Lannister, A Dance with Dragons
As someone who doesn't really play standard, I'm pretty insulated against most of the changes. I originally was pretty mad at TWD for being a "pseudo-reserved list" before I checked blogatog and realized that these TWD cards and any functional reprint will be ruled to be the same card on gatherer (so you can't play four of each in a single deck, for example), which removed a lot of my rage (even though only having certain legal cards only available in certain countries is still pretty sucky).
Its ramp, big creature, card draw, a very easy recipe to make a card that warps a format around it or produces a speed-boost to a combo deck to kick the opposition in the dirt.
----
In standard something is always "the best" card and "the best" deck, always.
It just matters by what degree.
Even with Affinity around you had decks that specifically tried to beat it, and thats still the case.
If the "counter" deck can consistently beat the best deck, it can win a tournament if a large number of the best deck are around and profit from it ; a very classic meta game choice.
If the best deck becomes so oppressive that no other deck can realistically beat it in good numbers and that special deck loses to anything else in large numbers, then its a de-functional format that cant fix itself.
----
If the best deck is also a 5-color play everything thats good kind of deck, you put yourself in an even worse situation, as now, even if a deck is good against the best deck, its really easy for the deck to adapt and change.
With a maindeck wish card that has access to its sideboard game 1 thats even more ridiculous.
And then you have some "snowball" cards, that if you assemble them provide a near unbeatable advantage (Lucky Clover did that, as each game with that turn 2 is so much more in favor to the adventure deck, as it doubles everything they do, and if they dont have turn 2 Lucky Clover, its much worse, unless it can slow the game down to still find one later on).
As it is, good cards that also beat almost anything else and have basically no clean answer that favors the defending player are a problem that does not go away unless the card is banned.
Oppressive powerful cards make every format worse, as they shift and warp everything around them and make most other cards "unplayable" as they are objectively worse in every way that matters.
----
Current standard is also in the "Theme deck" trap.
Every deck has some theme it builds around and it abuses and if the deck just happens to get a "broken" card it lifts off and leaves the rest behind.
Back in the days we always had these theme decks, but it was very carefully "balanced" around a guideline of what power/thoughness to manacost ratio a creature should have, and cards that provided a constant card advantage had to have some investment, either life, mana and/or being slow.
And the answers from control decks where just better and the threats less game warping, so the opponent had more time to respond to what the other is doing, overextending to a mass removal, or slowly creeping back in a game where more realistic than now.
WUBRG#BlackLotusMatterWUBRG
👮👮👮 #BlueLivesMatter 👮👮👮
That is literally the definition of broken.
Back around Mirrodin block, when they explicitly set out to make the cards powerful enough to affect Eternal formats, at least they had the excuse of "everything we print must be legal in Standard". Not so much these days. Your salt is reasonable and I'd think whatever they call the FFL these days should be able to catch most of the broken that gets through. I can see them not catching Lucky Clover, but Omnath and Oko are just embarrassing. Did they really learn nothing about upticking cheap planeswalkers on great abilities with Wrenn and Six?
in general i'm just so tired of being bombarded with products and then seeing the flagship format polluted in such a way by broken ridiculousness that people don't even want to play it. the past year has exposed that something is broken between departments when it comes to card design. either the team playtesting is bad, or more likely isn't even listened to.
i worry for the future because edh has seen a massive uptick in players. what else were you going to do during toxic standard environments and covid. that growth has caused them to take notice, and we're slated to get many new cards aimed directly at that format. given how bad standard has been almost the entire year that does not bode well for the stability of any other format they choose to design for.
it'd be nice if they took some of the resources being dumped into product bombardment and toned it back, instead dedicating more time and money toward creating balanced, fun, sets once again.
i don't need a new product every 2 weeks, i need a reason to buy existing product.
I used to be a demigod, but now I'm an omnimage