With the printing of manglehorn there were clean answers to the combo in every color.
Now I'm supposed to deal with T3 ten damage from a toolcraft > heart > Gideon start and the response play black/red and have removal up? This balancing is a joke. I feel like Mardu's speed is equally unhealthy and yet it gets out unscathed. At least UW saw a reflector mage ban for crimes committed WHILE COLLECTED COMPANY WAS LEGAL to keep the format in check because it may run away with the meta after coco rotated.
Great news for my LGS because my confidence for buying singles is probably shot at this point.
I'm still amazed they didn't catch the combo in the first place. Seems like the community noticed it within minutes of seeing Felidar Guardian.
Keep in mind that the community had a full picture of the set. Planeswalkers are often times the last thing that get balanced, and they only have a couple pairs of eyes looking on things for Standard. I can see how they missed it. The design process for a game like Magic just doesn't allow for every interaction to be caught. That's why good design pushes a bunch of answers as safety valves for the format. Some efficient creature/pw kill, a good counterspell, some discard, maybe a torpor orb style card, etc... with those answers the combo never would have been a problem.
The issue is that Wizards keeps pushing threats (especially limited creatures) in the card slots that they need to be using on safety valves.
This is too forgiving though. I mean think about the design process
"We have Revolt as a mechanic so let's include some blink effects in this set.
"How about we include Restoration Angel? That card was super popular"
"Great idea! But let's make it an uncommon so we can get it into the draft environment. We'll just get rid of flash and take the power down a little"
"So we'll have a 1/4 that blinks a non-cat creature"
"We can get rid of the non-cat part. Sure it makes for infinite blinks with another Guardian, but that's still a 3 card combo at least for standard."
"So just blink a creature?"
"Let's do any permanent you control. This way people can reset auras or blink lands to get another mana"
"Perfect. Now before we send to print let's just do a quick gatherer search since this type of card goes infinite easily. 'create copy of creature' Oh hey Saheeli Rai goes infinite"
"Let's change it to non-planeswalker permanent. Good thing we spent 30 seconds on a card design that we already know goes ininite in 2 card combos."
That sounds logical and all, but remember that when they were developing Aether Revolt, Shadows over Innistrad wasn't even in Gatherer yet and Kaladesh was still also in development. Cards, especially Planeswalkers (and especially Planeswalkers added last minute to get a native 'walker into the set as its face) change a lot. I'd hope that they learn a lesson here (about having a better database, or being hyper-vigilant on anything that they find two-card combos since pros will likely always find a better two-card combo), but it isn't quite as easy as you make it sound.
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I'm still amazed they didn't catch the combo in the first place. Seems like the community noticed it within minutes of seeing Felidar Guardian.
Keep in mind that the community had a full picture of the set. Planeswalkers are often times the last thing that get balanced, and they only have a couple pairs of eyes looking on things for Standard. I can see how they missed it. The design process for a game like Magic just doesn't allow for every interaction to be caught. That's why good design pushes a bunch of answers as safety valves for the format. Some efficient creature/pw kill, a good counterspell, some discard, maybe a torpor orb style card, etc... with those answers the combo never would have been a problem.
The issue is that Wizards keeps pushing threats (especially limited creatures) in the card slots that they need to be using on safety valves.
I'm still amazed they didn't catch the combo in the first place. Seems like the community noticed it within minutes of seeing Felidar Guardian.
Keep in mind that the community had a full picture of the set. Planeswalkers are often times the last thing that get balanced, and they only have a couple pairs of eyes looking on things for Standard. I can see how they missed it. The design process for a game like Magic just doesn't allow for every interaction to be caught. That's why good design pushes a bunch of answers as safety valves for the format. Some efficient creature/pw kill, a good counterspell, some discard, maybe a torpor orb style card, etc... with those answers the combo never would have been a problem.
The issue is that Wizards keeps pushing threats (especially limited creatures) in the card slots that they need to be using on safety valves.
This is too forgiving though. I mean think about the design process
"We have Revolt as a mechanic so let's include some blink effects in this set.
"How about we include Restoration Angel? That card was super popular"
"Great idea! But let's make it an uncommon so we can get it into the draft environment. We'll just get rid of flash and take the power down a little"
"So we'll have a 1/4 that blinks a non-cat creature"
"We can get rid of the non-cat part. Sure it makes for infinite blinks with another Guardian, but that's still a 3 card combo at least for standard."
"So just blink a creature?"
"Let's do any permanent you control. This way people can reset auras or blink lands to get another mana"
"Perfect. Now before we send to print let's just do a quick gatherer search since this type of card goes infinite easily. 'create copy of creature' Oh hey Saheeli Rai goes infinite"
"Let's change it to non-planeswalker permanent. Good thing we spent 30 seconds on a card design that we already know goes ininite in 2 card combos."
That logic completely breaks if they design cards in a reverse order, or worse parallel design.
Sure, but Saheeli Rai is a planeswalker which was meant to be an iconic card that everyone knew and Felidar Guardian is a card which is from a type that is known to cause infinite combos. Even if they designed them in reverse order they should have left a note on Felidar saying, "Hey if you make something that copies a creature make sure we double check this guy."
The fact Felidar Guardian wasn't banned on Monday is the real insult. Banning it now isn't solving the trust issue. If anything it exacerbates it to think we need the only other example of an emergency ban in this game's history since Jace the Mindsculptor to deal with this problem when 4 days prior there had been a ban list which didn't. Or that only an outcry prompted this action, rather than the overwhelming data since its release that has been painfully abundant against anything but an immediate ban at their first chance.
An emergency ban suggests anything could happen at any time. A normal ban on Monday would have suggested some competency from those overlooking Standard which now we must wonder if is even there in the first place.
They should simply use a computer AI to look for potential "infinited" combos in a set and point them out.
Cant be "too" hard to analyze all the card text and see matches (like activation costs that result in 0 cost).
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A real human can still check these "highlights" , but it will help a lot to not oversee something that might change during testing of cards or an oversight.
There's a lot of hand-wringing about the cat. I don't get it. People are free to have their own opinions, but I think the bigger issues are: the process and the LAST ban.
Look, mistakes happen. I don't care that "the community caught it immediately." There community is >1,000,000 people and doesn't see the set until it's 100% done. R&D is <100 people and the set is constantly subtly shifting. Things are going to slip through, and I completely understand how it happened. Sets have a million moving parts. They haven't let a broken combo two-card combo slip into standard in a long, long time. Jace and Stoneforge were just busted cards. The Mirrodin debacle was more about all the most powerful cards being colorless than any 2 card combo. They goofed. It happens. I'm not mad. I'm surprised it hasn't happened before.
I'm annoyed by the process. While I actually DO agree that just biting the bullet and banning it 2 days later is better than letting us suffer for a month, it should have been banned off the bat. From a decision theory standpoint, banning it late > not banning it at all. But it's a bad choice vs a worse; they could have avoided it by just banning it with the initial announcement.
The bigger issue was the LAST ban. With the possible exception of Emrakul, none of the cards were "too powerful" in a vaccuum. Smuggler's Copter is good, but is it really that much better than Heart? Maybe more universally usable. And reflector mage, while supremely annoying, wasn't ruining the standard. People "whined" about Bant company in the same way that people whine about anything on the internet. The whining about bant company is quaint compared to the anger we see now. And it's funny how the "good standard environments" are always exactly 2-6 years ago. People whined about them back then. That doesn't mean that the current state isn't far far worse, but to argue that in 5 years we've gone from perfection to incompetence is disingenuous.
This is all a long way of saying, they banned to "shake up a stale format," which should never happen in standard. Absent a truly busted card/combo, natural rotation tends to solve this problem. If anything, this is NOT a lead time issue. They've been doing lead times equal/great than currently for years, if not a decade. If ANYTHING the issue is 4 unique block things in standard at any one time. Again, this presuposes that the Copy Cat miss isn't a huge deal in the grand scheme of things; it only looks worse because we JUST had our first standard ban in 6 years!
I don't know, those are my thoughts. Standard bans do tend to cluster. But it's not a good look when a series of bans need to shake up the format and then a broken deck pops up requiring another ban. Saga/Legacy was the last time (and let's be clear, that was still way worse). Curious if anyone agrees or just thinks i'm totally wrong.
This is all a long way of saying, they banned to "shake up a stale format," which should never happen in standard.
I do not agree. If we're not going to have rotations twice a year (and the public made it clear they didn't want spring rotations), then you need to expect bans more often to shake up the format. I would have preferred spring rotations and fewer bans, but we rejected spring rotations, so we'll probably have standard bans every year.
Its a game, not an investment. If the game has become stale because the player hivemind has solved it and a new small set doesn't seem to be enough to shake it up, then a ban should be an option to make standard fun again.
In a truly healthy standard, combo, control, aggro, midrange are all well represented. Cat Combo was not broken, at all. Wizards destroyed control, neutered fast mana, and got rid of pretty much any playable hand disruption that could get at the combo before it comes online. Hence why I hate the decision to drop the Core Sets. Love them or hate them, core sets are the PERFECT place to keep answers to upcoming power creep cards in check, Lightning Bolt, Duress, Mana Leak, Condemn/Path, nothing new, nothing broken, just answers that balance a format going forward. It isn't that hard R&D...
Control might be resurfacing given the new tools from Amonkhet, namely Essence Scatter and Censor. But how was cat combo NOT broken? A deck that can win out of nocons is and limits consistent your play pros isn't broken?
I think Wizards' neutering control was intentional and I think for good reason: it doesn't showcase new cards as well on Twitch and more importantly, it's not fun to play against.
Not to mention those instances where a control deck can drag a game out forever and then securing a win at the last minute and then walking away with a match win just because time ran out. Why should that person get points for an entire match when everyone else had to win two games? That is not fair and using a deck like that should be a DQ for slow play.
I believe what he was saying is that Copycat as a deck wasnt necessarily broken, but because the format didnt have appropriate answers for it, it became broken. At least thats how I read it.
In regard to your gripe with control, its still entirely possible to play control and win the necessary 2 match games. Yasooka and Romao proved that @ PT Kaladesh. Typically, its the control v control matchups that take a long time. THat said, "being fun to play against" shouldnt be a requirement. People should be allowed to play the decks THEY enjoy piloting. That's like telling a restaurant they shouldnt be allowed to serve fish because it smells and you like steak.
At the end of the day, this game is about fun. Would Wizards be able to sell cards and stay in business if this game isn't fun? Being fun is and has always been a requirement, because that's why this game and the company backing it has stayed in business for 20 years. Every FNM there's always at least one guy who plays the super slow control deck and drags the game on all night, and those are the type of people everyone else at the store loathe. I'm all about diversity in play styles and decks but when your preferred style starts to prevent others from having as good a time as you, then there should be a line drawn.
At the end of the day, this game is about fun. Would Wizards be able to sell cards and stay in business if this game isn't fun? Being fun is and has always been a requirement, because that's why this game and the company backing it has stayed in business for 20 years. Every FNM there's always at least one guy who plays the super slow control deck and drags the game on all night, and those are the type of people everyone else at the store loathe. I'm all about diversity in play styles and decks but when your preferred style starts to prevent others from having as good a time as you, then there should be a line drawn.
I would argue that every deck is fun to play and play against. Every game offers its own unique challenges and strategies. Ive been playing since revised and Ive never played against a standard deck and complained about it. Are some more frustrating? Sure. Thats part of growing as a player. If the control player is purposefully dragging out games then he should be warned for slow play...but he shouldnt have to stop playing it because you dont find it fun. Thats your problem, not his. This type of mentality bugs the hell out of me. Life is full of things you may not personally like and thus people shouldnt be individually catered to because of it.
When I personally throw words like incompetent around, it's not maliciousness or angry at everything WotC does. They have provided me with all the evidence I need in the past 2 years to make this statement. When mistakes are made, admitted, ignored, and then compounded/repeated, competence should come into question. We can use their own words from statements and interviews.
- When they introduced the new Standard bans they admitted they probably should 'have done something about CoCo'. This shows they let something get away from them and let it ride. They did this again with dirty kitty and they are doing it still with Heart/Gideon, Ally.
- The mere fact that they have to ban anything means they made mistakes. Multiple mistakes. They admitted that Emrakul was OP because they wanted 'story' to be felt in the game and they pushed her too far (and Aether Marvel was protected though degenerate).
They also admitted they wanted a new mechanic vehicles to have an impact so they pushed it too far. Smugglypants banned. But oh look here's not QUITE as broken Heart of King Gideon let's keep that one around some more.
They banned reflector mage (a not busted card) instead of banning CoCo which by the end of it's tenure was nearly completely dominant and NOT FUN to play against. It wasn't reflector mage, it was CoCo.
- They made the mistake of shortening the rotation cycle, then changed it back after consumer backlash, and now we get OP Gideon overlap still not being addressed. For their design team, Ally of Z would have rotated out of the current card pool they considered. Again dragging their feet for proactively fix it.
- After Felidar was spoiled a pro wrote an article just about the very next day outing the combo. They said they missed it. Instead of a pre-ban, they actually posted an article highlighting the combo as if it were something good for everyone to see. It's not just hindsight that shows they're wrong, pros have been telling them since discovery that combo was degenerate and going to warp the format. Did they not remember why they banned splinter twin?? Here we are now.
- Design and balance (Maro and others) have intentionally nerfed countermagic and kill spells to prop up midrange because 'that's what people like'. They've thrown out YEARS of how MTG has been designed intentionally and the current standard which has so many people angry (or have quit already) is the result. Mistake.
How else do you describe bad decision making and repeating the same mistakes?
Just last week Maro tweeted something about 'those are the kinds of cards people want to buy' as if it were a defense for degenerating standard into the current midrange mirrorfest.
I really want to play standard. I really really hope their "we've learned our lesson and will apply it to HoD" is going to work out, HOWEVER if they keep dropping the ball and repeating mistakes I don't have a lot of faith they'll get it right even when they try.
In a truly healthy standard, combo, control, aggro, midrange are all well represented. Cat Combo was not broken, at all. Wizards destroyed control, neutered fast mana, and got rid of pretty much any playable hand disruption that could get at the combo before it comes online. Hence why I hate the decision to drop the Core Sets. Love them or hate them, core sets are the PERFECT place to keep answers to upcoming power creep cards in check, Lightning Bolt, Duress, Mana Leak, Condemn/Path, nothing new, nothing broken, just answers that balance a format going forward. It isn't that hard R&D...
Control might be resurfacing given the new tools from Amonkhet, namely Essence Scatter and Censor. But how was cat combo NOT broken? A deck that can win out of nocons is and limits consistent your play pros isn't broken?
I think Wizards' neutering control was intentional and I think for good reason: it doesn't showcase new cards as well on Twitch and more importantly, it's not fun to play against.
Not to mention those instances where a control deck can drag a game out forever and then securing a win at the last minute and then walking away with a match win just because time ran out. Why should that person get points for an entire match when everyone else had to win two games? That is not fair and using a deck like that should be a DQ for slow play.
So the only things not unfair and fun are things you enjoy playing and playing against? Is that seriously what this game has come to?
If Magic degenerates any further into midrange turn monsters sideways decks for the sake of product placement on the interwebs then count me out. I played through combo winter, actually enjoyed playing Necropotence. I played through Saber Bargain when people hated Yawgmoth's Will, played through Affinity and it's hate. Each time those willing to play control or fringe aggro strategies feasted on the combo decks. Variety matters. No Cat Combo was not broken. A seven mana investment that dies immediately to removal, countermagic, or hand disruption is not broken. It's just very good. The fact that the answers in standard are lacking doesn't make the combo any more or less broken. Yawgmoth's Will, Yawgmoth's Bargain, Skirge Familiar, Dark Ritual, Grim Monolith that can win turn turn 2, that combo was broken, Channel Fireball was broken.
Slow play is a completely different issue and should be handled at the judge level. It doesn't matter what deck strategy they are playing, it's unfun for everyone involved against a slow player. Control being unfun to play against is your opinion. I enjoy it because it takes careful situational play analysis that turning dudes sideways doesn't. To each their own. But standard is dying because no one is happy with the format not being what they want it to be.
The lack of good answers for the combo in Standard is part of the reason why the combo is broken. Everyone says "just hold a Shock" but we did and yet copycat consistently takes home first place at almost every major event. The deck can also easily win without the combo, so if you focus on just preventing the combo, then you're likely to lose through other means. Not to mention deck building itself: building am anti copycat deck is very plausible but building one that's also good against Mardu Vehicles is practically impossible; that's what happened at PT AER. In conclusion, a deck that restricts how you play and even how you build your deck? Yeah quite broken.
More importantly, it's not fun to play against. Sitting through the whole game with the threat of an instant win while trying to prevent the onslaught of several other things is not fun: it makes one feel powerless and fighting a losing battle. Same goes for having all your creatures countered or losing an entire match after just one game. Many matches were won even if one loses the first round, but against a slow control deck they don't even get the chance. Even if you don't agree that it's slow play, you can't deny that outcomes like this are unfair and is annoying that there's no rule in place to mitigate this.
They should have just banned it with the first announcement. All this scrambling creates really poor optics. From an outside perspective, it looks like they aren't quite sure how to react to Standard performing worse than expected and they're getting increasingly frantic trying to fix the problem.
that's precisely what's happening. Just the fact that we're banning cards in standard again attests to that. The goal was to print cards that wouldn't need to be banned. I remember when the stoneforge/jace ban happened. Same story. They're starting to get a little lax in r&d. Hopefully they get it under control in the next few sets. We can't have standard unhealthy. Or rather they can't, that's a good chunk of revenue
- After Felidar was spoiled a pro wrote an article just about the very next day outing the combo. They said they missed it. Instead of a pre-ban, they actually posted an article highlighting the combo as if it were something good for everyone to see. It's not just hindsight that shows they're wrong, pros have been telling them since discovery that combo was degenerate and going to warp the format. Did they not remember why they banned splinter twin?? Here we are now.
*Snip*
I just wanted to highlight that, while they certainly missed the cat combo, Splinter twin was never a problem in standard. I think this is important to mention, as it reflects that a major part of the current problem (as others have mentioned) is their current design philosophy. They have been tuning threats up since at least M10 and tuning answers down for the last few years at least. On top of that, the loss of the core set and shift to two block design has likely proved to be a more complex problem than they were expecting. On top of THAT, the expectation of what blocks would be in standard shifted after theses sets were designed but before we got them. That is a lot of changes to a process that has functioned, more or less, for the last 20ish years.
It is also worth mentioning that the current standard's woes are somewhat unique. I remember caw-blade being busted and that sucked, but the format was kinda cool outside of that. However, it just seems like current standard is kinda miserable for some reason. Hopefully this ban helps it, but I don't know that I have felt this way about past standards, even when I didn't like them.
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In a truly healthy standard, combo, control, aggro, midrange are all well represented. Cat Combo was not broken, at all. Wizards destroyed control, neutered fast mana, and got rid of pretty much any playable hand disruption that could get at the combo before it comes online. Hence why I hate the decision to drop the Core Sets. Love them or hate them, core sets are the PERFECT place to keep answers to upcoming power creep cards in check, Lightning Bolt, Duress, Mana Leak, Condemn/Path, nothing new, nothing broken, just answers that balance a format going forward. It isn't that hard R&D...
Control might be resurfacing given the new tools from Amonkhet, namely Essence Scatter and Censor. But how was cat combo NOT broken? A deck that can win out of nocons is and limits consistent your play pros isn't broken?
I think Wizards' neutering control was intentional and I think for good reason: it doesn't showcase new cards as well on Twitch and more importantly, it's not fun to play against.
Not to mention those instances where a control deck can drag a game out forever and then securing a win at the last minute and then walking away with a match win just because time ran out. Why should that person get points for an entire match when everyone else had to win two games? That is not fair and using a deck like that should be a DQ for slow play.
So the only things not unfair and fun are things you enjoy playing and playing against? Is that seriously what this game has come to?
If Magic degenerates any further into midrange turn monsters sideways decks for the sake of product placement on the interwebs then count me out. I played through combo winter, actually enjoyed playing Necropotence. I played through Saber Bargain when people hated Yawgmoth's Will, played through Affinity and it's hate. Each time those willing to play control or fringe aggro strategies feasted on the combo decks. Variety matters. No Cat Combo was not broken. A seven mana investment that dies immediately to removal, countermagic, or hand disruption is not broken. It's just very good. The fact that the answers in standard are lacking doesn't make the combo any more or less broken. Yawgmoth's Will, Yawgmoth's Bargain, Skirge Familiar, Dark Ritual, Grim Monolith that can win turn turn 2, that combo was broken, Channel Fireball was broken.
Slow play is a completely different issue and should be handled at the judge level. It doesn't matter what deck strategy they are playing, it's unfun for everyone involved against a slow player. Control being unfun to play against is your opinion. I enjoy it because it takes careful situational play analysis that turning dudes sideways doesn't. To each their own. But standard is dying because no one is happy with the format not being what they want it to be.
The lack of good answers for the combo in Standard is part of the reason why the combo is broken. Everyone says "just hold a Shock" but we did and yet copycat consistently takes home first place at almost every major event. The deck can also easily win without the combo, so if you focus on just preventing the combo, then you're likely to lose through other means. Not to mention deck building itself: building am anti copycat deck is very plausible but building one that's also good against Mardu Vehicles is practically impossible; that's what happened at PT AER. In conclusion, a deck that restricts how you play and even how you build your deck? Yeah quite broken.
More importantly, it's not fun to play against. Sitting through the whole game with the threat of an instant win while trying to prevent the onslaught of several other things is not fun: it makes one feel powerless and fighting a losing battle. Same goes for having all your creatures countered or losing an entire match after just one game. Many matches were won even if one loses the first round, but against a slow control deck they don't even get the chance. Even if you don't agree that it's slow play, you can't deny that outcomes like this are unfair and is annoying that there's no rule in place to mitigate this.
Back in theros standard, it was not the control decks going to time, it was the gw devotion decks going to time. Last standard, it was bant company. There are a lot of scenarios that can lead to lengthy matches. If you lose a match due to going to time, blaming the loss on the clock instead of yourself is just as bad as blaming every loss to variance. I play control on MODO, and more often than not i end the match with twice as much time on my clock as they do. This is caused by the other player agonizing over every play in a game that is already lost. I can be at 20 life with 7 cards in hand while they are topdecking, and instead of scooping to game 2 they play it out for that .2% chance they miraculously come back. This happens very often in paper as well, when you sit down at a match and realize what your opponent is playing, you need to know how the matchup works. Are you the beat down? Are you the control deck? Does your life total matter? Is time an issue? These are all of the questions i start asking myself every match from the first land drop. If time is an issue in the matchup, scoop game 1 when you start thinking in your head silly things like "alright if i draw exactly this series of cards and they dont have a counter/wrath, i might have this" instead of playing it out. If life totals are typically under pressure quickly in the matchup, you fetch a basic and you chumpblock that 5/5. These are the things that separate good players from bad players
I don't know, those are my thoughts. Standard bans do tend to cluster. But it's not a good look when a series of bans need to shake up the format and then a broken deck pops up requiring another ban. Saga/Legacy was the last time (and let's be clear, that was still way worse). Curious if anyone agrees or just thinks i'm totally wrong.
Again, it comes down to answers. What people are using to win the game is totally irrelevant. In a world where every card is a Raging Goblin, Squire starts to look pretty damn good, and Storm Crow becomes format defining. If they ban the top cards, there will be new top cards that define the format. As long as the only answer to threats is playing your own bigger threats, it doesn't matter how much they ban, this will always remain true.
This is why formats need safety valves and efficient removal.
I would argue that every deck is fun to play and play against.
Why on earth would you want to try to make that argument? It seems almost impossible to convince anyone that this statement is true.
i dont need to convince anyone, nor am i going to try to. I enjoy all the variety the game has to offer and its a shame more people dont feel that way
If you truly enjoy playing against Lantern Control, we can only conclude that you enjoy sitting with your thumbs up your a**.
conclude whatever you like. It may not be exciting, but I appreciate it for what it is and what it brings to the table (to both pilot and play against). That said, it wouldnt be my first choice.
Most reputable online retailers will refund your purchase of cards banned within 30 days of the purchase (or orders placed as a result of the non-bannings if you bought an entire deck). Is it a hassle that shouldn't have occurred? Yeah, probably. At least players aren't completely left out in the weeds.
Will retailers refund purchases of Saheli when it was Felidar that was banned?
Actually, yes. CoolStuffInc will do that, at least. Would have to see about the others.
Don't know if someone has raised this, but I am more worried that Mardu Vehicles will get out of control next.
In Wizards' explanation for the ban, they explained that in the MTG Online metagame, Mardu Vehicles actually lost a lot of ground in the metagame, which was eaten up by Copycat. This is VERY likely because of all of the artifact hate in Amonkhet (Dissenter's Deliverance, Manglehorn, Forsake the Worldly, By Force, Harsh Mentor, Dispossess).
It's pretty obvious that they knew that Vehicles were going to be strong when they were developing Amonkhet, because all but two of those cards (By Force and Dispossess) are main-deckable.
Whether they banned CopyCat or not, company trust was going to go down. Either they mishandled Standard with a development mistake plus lack of ban action, or they would mishandle the ban system by banning CopyCat out of regular ban schedule. This was the situation they were in.
Opponents to the ban addendum - do you think worse of them than you would have thought if they let CopyCat take up to a 60% share of the metagame?
Do not mistake this question for whether you would think worse of them either way. This is a terrible situation and a terrible handling of a broken format. I'm just curious what you think is less terrible. Personally I feel less trusting of Wizards, but more trusting than I would've felt if they had let CopyCat ruin the Standard format. Big disclaimer however - I don't play Standard. I care about Standard and I care about how much fun players have. But it's an important distinction; while I severely take into consideration the actions they take in regards to formats I don't play, I don't actually buy singles for Standard, so I'm not affected in any way but trade value.
Also, just a small note - Mark Rosewater has stated that they are planning some form of change to company policy following this Cat-astrophe. (Sorry.) As far as I understand, however, it's not coming to be for a while though due to the long development cycle.
Now I'm supposed to deal with T3 ten damage from a toolcraft > heart > Gideon start and the response play black/red and have removal up? This balancing is a joke. I feel like Mardu's speed is equally unhealthy and yet it gets out unscathed. At least UW saw a reflector mage ban for crimes committed WHILE COLLECTED COMPANY WAS LEGAL to keep the format in check because it may run away with the meta after coco rotated.
Great news for my LGS because my confidence for buying singles is probably shot at this point.
That sounds logical and all, but remember that when they were developing Aether Revolt, Shadows over Innistrad wasn't even in Gatherer yet and Kaladesh was still also in development. Cards, especially Planeswalkers (and especially Planeswalkers added last minute to get a native 'walker into the set as its face) change a lot. I'd hope that they learn a lesson here (about having a better database, or being hyper-vigilant on anything that they find two-card combos since pros will likely always find a better two-card combo), but it isn't quite as easy as you make it sound.
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Yep, and that's why they gotta add more cards to the sets to allow for more utility/answer cards. If we had cards like Duress, Pithing Needle, Lightning Bolt, Moment's Peace, Path to Exile, Echoing Truth, or Rakdos Charm, there wouldn't have been a problem with CopyCat.
Sure, but Saheeli Rai is a planeswalker which was meant to be an iconic card that everyone knew and Felidar Guardian is a card which is from a type that is known to cause infinite combos. Even if they designed them in reverse order they should have left a note on Felidar saying, "Hey if you make something that copies a creature make sure we double check this guy."
An emergency ban suggests anything could happen at any time. A normal ban on Monday would have suggested some competency from those overlooking Standard which now we must wonder if is even there in the first place.
|| UW Jace, Vyn's Prodigy UW || UG Kenessos, Priest of Thassa (feat. Arixmethes) UG ||
Cards I still want to see created:
|| Olantin, Lost City || Pavios and Thanasis || Choryu ||
Cant be "too" hard to analyze all the card text and see matches (like activation costs that result in 0 cost).
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A real human can still check these "highlights" , but it will help a lot to not oversee something that might change during testing of cards or an oversight.
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Look, mistakes happen. I don't care that "the community caught it immediately." There community is >1,000,000 people and doesn't see the set until it's 100% done. R&D is <100 people and the set is constantly subtly shifting. Things are going to slip through, and I completely understand how it happened. Sets have a million moving parts. They haven't let a broken combo two-card combo slip into standard in a long, long time. Jace and Stoneforge were just busted cards. The Mirrodin debacle was more about all the most powerful cards being colorless than any 2 card combo. They goofed. It happens. I'm not mad. I'm surprised it hasn't happened before.
I'm annoyed by the process. While I actually DO agree that just biting the bullet and banning it 2 days later is better than letting us suffer for a month, it should have been banned off the bat. From a decision theory standpoint, banning it late > not banning it at all. But it's a bad choice vs a worse; they could have avoided it by just banning it with the initial announcement.
The bigger issue was the LAST ban. With the possible exception of Emrakul, none of the cards were "too powerful" in a vaccuum. Smuggler's Copter is good, but is it really that much better than Heart? Maybe more universally usable. And reflector mage, while supremely annoying, wasn't ruining the standard. People "whined" about Bant company in the same way that people whine about anything on the internet. The whining about bant company is quaint compared to the anger we see now. And it's funny how the "good standard environments" are always exactly 2-6 years ago. People whined about them back then. That doesn't mean that the current state isn't far far worse, but to argue that in 5 years we've gone from perfection to incompetence is disingenuous.
This is all a long way of saying, they banned to "shake up a stale format," which should never happen in standard. Absent a truly busted card/combo, natural rotation tends to solve this problem. If anything, this is NOT a lead time issue. They've been doing lead times equal/great than currently for years, if not a decade. If ANYTHING the issue is 4 unique block things in standard at any one time. Again, this presuposes that the Copy Cat miss isn't a huge deal in the grand scheme of things; it only looks worse because we JUST had our first standard ban in 6 years!
I don't know, those are my thoughts. Standard bans do tend to cluster. But it's not a good look when a series of bans need to shake up the format and then a broken deck pops up requiring another ban. Saga/Legacy was the last time (and let's be clear, that was still way worse). Curious if anyone agrees or just thinks i'm totally wrong.
I do not agree. If we're not going to have rotations twice a year (and the public made it clear they didn't want spring rotations), then you need to expect bans more often to shake up the format. I would have preferred spring rotations and fewer bans, but we rejected spring rotations, so we'll probably have standard bans every year.
Its a game, not an investment. If the game has become stale because the player hivemind has solved it and a new small set doesn't seem to be enough to shake it up, then a ban should be an option to make standard fun again.
At the end of the day, this game is about fun. Would Wizards be able to sell cards and stay in business if this game isn't fun? Being fun is and has always been a requirement, because that's why this game and the company backing it has stayed in business for 20 years. Every FNM there's always at least one guy who plays the super slow control deck and drags the game on all night, and those are the type of people everyone else at the store loathe. I'm all about diversity in play styles and decks but when your preferred style starts to prevent others from having as good a time as you, then there should be a line drawn.
The March 13th ban (which they decided 3 WEEKS prior to printing).
http://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/news/march-13-2017-banned-and-restricted-announcement-2017-03-13
When I personally throw words like incompetent around, it's not maliciousness or angry at everything WotC does. They have provided me with all the evidence I need in the past 2 years to make this statement. When mistakes are made, admitted, ignored, and then compounded/repeated, competence should come into question. We can use their own words from statements and interviews.
- When they introduced the new Standard bans they admitted they probably should 'have done something about CoCo'. This shows they let something get away from them and let it ride. They did this again with dirty kitty and they are doing it still with Heart/Gideon, Ally.
- The mere fact that they have to ban anything means they made mistakes. Multiple mistakes. They admitted that Emrakul was OP because they wanted 'story' to be felt in the game and they pushed her too far (and Aether Marvel was protected though degenerate).
They also admitted they wanted a new mechanic vehicles to have an impact so they pushed it too far. Smugglypants banned. But oh look here's not QUITE as broken Heart of King Gideon let's keep that one around some more.
They banned reflector mage (a not busted card) instead of banning CoCo which by the end of it's tenure was nearly completely dominant and NOT FUN to play against. It wasn't reflector mage, it was CoCo.
- They made the mistake of shortening the rotation cycle, then changed it back after consumer backlash, and now we get OP Gideon overlap still not being addressed. For their design team, Ally of Z would have rotated out of the current card pool they considered. Again dragging their feet for proactively fix it.
- After Felidar was spoiled a pro wrote an article just about the very next day outing the combo. They said they missed it. Instead of a pre-ban, they actually posted an article highlighting the combo as if it were something good for everyone to see. It's not just hindsight that shows they're wrong, pros have been telling them since discovery that combo was degenerate and going to warp the format. Did they not remember why they banned splinter twin?? Here we are now.
- Design and balance (Maro and others) have intentionally nerfed countermagic and kill spells to prop up midrange because 'that's what people like'. They've thrown out YEARS of how MTG has been designed intentionally and the current standard which has so many people angry (or have quit already) is the result. Mistake.
How else do you describe bad decision making and repeating the same mistakes?
Just last week Maro tweeted something about 'those are the kinds of cards people want to buy' as if it were a defense for degenerating standard into the current midrange mirrorfest.
I really want to play standard. I really really hope their "we've learned our lesson and will apply it to HoD" is going to work out, HOWEVER if they keep dropping the ball and repeating mistakes I don't have a lot of faith they'll get it right even when they try.
Why on earth would you want to try to make that argument? It seems almost impossible to convince anyone that this statement is true.
The lack of good answers for the combo in Standard is part of the reason why the combo is broken. Everyone says "just hold a Shock" but we did and yet copycat consistently takes home first place at almost every major event. The deck can also easily win without the combo, so if you focus on just preventing the combo, then you're likely to lose through other means. Not to mention deck building itself: building am anti copycat deck is very plausible but building one that's also good against Mardu Vehicles is practically impossible; that's what happened at PT AER. In conclusion, a deck that restricts how you play and even how you build your deck? Yeah quite broken.
More importantly, it's not fun to play against. Sitting through the whole game with the threat of an instant win while trying to prevent the onslaught of several other things is not fun: it makes one feel powerless and fighting a losing battle. Same goes for having all your creatures countered or losing an entire match after just one game. Many matches were won even if one loses the first round, but against a slow control deck they don't even get the chance. Even if you don't agree that it's slow play, you can't deny that outcomes like this are unfair and is annoying that there's no rule in place to mitigate this.
I just wanted to highlight that, while they certainly missed the cat combo, Splinter twin was never a problem in standard. I think this is important to mention, as it reflects that a major part of the current problem (as others have mentioned) is their current design philosophy. They have been tuning threats up since at least M10 and tuning answers down for the last few years at least. On top of that, the loss of the core set and shift to two block design has likely proved to be a more complex problem than they were expecting. On top of THAT, the expectation of what blocks would be in standard shifted after theses sets were designed but before we got them. That is a lot of changes to a process that has functioned, more or less, for the last 20ish years.
It is also worth mentioning that the current standard's woes are somewhat unique. I remember caw-blade being busted and that sucked, but the format was kinda cool outside of that. However, it just seems like current standard is kinda miserable for some reason. Hopefully this ban helps it, but I don't know that I have felt this way about past standards, even when I didn't like them.
If you truly enjoy playing against Lantern Control, we can only conclude that you enjoy sitting with your thumbs up your a**.
Back in theros standard, it was not the control decks going to time, it was the gw devotion decks going to time. Last standard, it was bant company. There are a lot of scenarios that can lead to lengthy matches. If you lose a match due to going to time, blaming the loss on the clock instead of yourself is just as bad as blaming every loss to variance. I play control on MODO, and more often than not i end the match with twice as much time on my clock as they do. This is caused by the other player agonizing over every play in a game that is already lost. I can be at 20 life with 7 cards in hand while they are topdecking, and instead of scooping to game 2 they play it out for that .2% chance they miraculously come back. This happens very often in paper as well, when you sit down at a match and realize what your opponent is playing, you need to know how the matchup works. Are you the beat down? Are you the control deck? Does your life total matter? Is time an issue? These are all of the questions i start asking myself every match from the first land drop. If time is an issue in the matchup, scoop game 1 when you start thinking in your head silly things like "alright if i draw exactly this series of cards and they dont have a counter/wrath, i might have this" instead of playing it out. If life totals are typically under pressure quickly in the matchup, you fetch a basic and you chumpblock that 5/5. These are the things that separate good players from bad players
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UBRJeleva, Nephalia's ScourgeUBR
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Again, it comes down to answers. What people are using to win the game is totally irrelevant. In a world where every card is a Raging Goblin, Squire starts to look pretty damn good, and Storm Crow becomes format defining. If they ban the top cards, there will be new top cards that define the format. As long as the only answer to threats is playing your own bigger threats, it doesn't matter how much they ban, this will always remain true.
This is why formats need safety valves and efficient removal.
Actually, yes. CoolStuffInc will do that, at least. Would have to see about the others.
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In Wizards' explanation for the ban, they explained that in the MTG Online metagame, Mardu Vehicles actually lost a lot of ground in the metagame, which was eaten up by Copycat. This is VERY likely because of all of the artifact hate in Amonkhet (Dissenter's Deliverance, Manglehorn, Forsake the Worldly, By Force, Harsh Mentor, Dispossess).
It's pretty obvious that they knew that Vehicles were going to be strong when they were developing Amonkhet, because all but two of those cards (By Force and Dispossess) are main-deckable.
Oh, also tons of graveyard hate to screw with Scrapheap Scrounger. Plus Magma Spray.
Whether they banned CopyCat or not, company trust was going to go down. Either they mishandled Standard with a development mistake plus lack of ban action, or they would mishandle the ban system by banning CopyCat out of regular ban schedule. This was the situation they were in.
Opponents to the ban addendum - do you think worse of them than you would have thought if they let CopyCat take up to a 60% share of the metagame?
Do not mistake this question for whether you would think worse of them either way. This is a terrible situation and a terrible handling of a broken format. I'm just curious what you think is less terrible. Personally I feel less trusting of Wizards, but more trusting than I would've felt if they had let CopyCat ruin the Standard format. Big disclaimer however - I don't play Standard. I care about Standard and I care about how much fun players have. But it's an important distinction; while I severely take into consideration the actions they take in regards to formats I don't play, I don't actually buy singles for Standard, so I'm not affected in any way but trade value.
Also, just a small note - Mark Rosewater has stated that they are planning some form of change to company policy following this Cat-astrophe. (Sorry.) As far as I understand, however, it's not coming to be for a while though due to the long development cycle.