So I'm a long time MTG player, my jam is usually modern, legacy, multiplayer & commander.
I've been trying to get into standard, after mostly avoiding it due to cost, for the last 3 years or so.
I've done online, card shops, competitive meets etc., and I've come to the conclusion that Standard just isn't for me.
Of course this year its all been online (I prefer face to face meets)
In no other format I play, can I regularly expect to play against the EXACT same deck, including sideboard choices, 7 or 8 times in a row.
I don't think WotC swinging the ban-hammer in regular fashion, as they have in the last few years, is likely to really change that. I will say though, regularly banning cards has made standard an expensive format!
Think I'll be leaving standard for a while.
Its not just Standard. (Although Standard is the worst offender) Pioneer has the same problem to a lesser extent. Same Tier 1 decks over and over. Same boring play lines, same boring results. Too bad players couldn't be rewarded for deck originality in some fashion. You play a Tier netdeck and you don't win a bigger prize than someone running some style of homebrew. I don't know how that would be regulated though. I don't know what the answer to this problem could be.
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Playing since 1994: Currently MAGS (HomeBrew),Standard & Pauper (Pioneer and Modern are degenerate trash formats)
STOP using "dude/bro" as a pejorative or insult. Grow up.
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Personally, I feel that players should get XP for playing decks with under a certain threshold of rares/mythics (10? 15?) whether they win or lose (as long as they don't surrender) and that players should get a bonus to XP when they win a game using a deck with only commons and uncommons.
This would make it easier to grind experience and rewards while brewing (or if you are new enough not to have a meta deck) and would promote the creation of top-tier decks within these categories (such as the cavalcade of meyhem decks, W/B lifegain decks, or guildgate decks in recent memories) that 1) can train new players by pointing them to the most affordable deck option for them and show them how it works and 2) will increase variety among games by allowing top-tier constructed, top-tier no-rare, and experimental decks between them to all coexist in the same queues.
...Plus, the existence of a popular common/uncommon only scene on Arena may have an impact on how commons and uncommons are designed (more playable "draft signpost" uncommons, good threats and removal at lower rarities, etc.)
Hey guys, it is perfectly fine to net deck. This is a common issue that occurs for mid-tier players that are transitioning from casual to competitive magic.
I get it, you are Johnny, you like to express yourself with your deck building, not everyone is like that, in competitive magic they are all Spikes and will play whatever wins. You have to decide what you care about more, winning or expression.
I say this as a Johnny that will spend months and years tuning a sub-optimal strategy to the maximum of its capability but I know that sometimes I am just going to get run over by a net deck and that's on me, not my opponent.
The only person with blame here is WotC for pushing mythic harder and harder until standard breaks and you can't play with a highly synergistic deck filled with uncommons.
I have a bunch of "cute" UR decks you can try out if you want to play something rouge.
Netdecking isn't the problem. I understand why you feel the way that you do, but netdecking will always exist. The major issue is that in recent metas, the tier one strategy has been incredibly obvious to everyone but WOTC's future future league. The tier one strategy has also been so dominant, that there's no rock-paper-scissors effect that normally happens in the standard metagame.
This issue is also exacerbated by there being very little in-paper play. When you're playing at your local shop, not everyone has all the cards for tier one decks, and FNM level gameplay is generally not as optimized. This leaves some room for more rogue decks at that level, and it's genuinely fun to brew when that happens. The worst part is, with everyone playing digitally right now, the digital playerbase is much larger than usual, and metas get solved even faster than they normally would. Its so much easier to get so many reps in with a deck that optimizations take much less time.
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Come watch me stream over at my twitch channel. I play Loam Pox, Ad Nauseam, and jank in modern on MTGO.
I feel that net decks/meta strats are a common occurrence among any game that has any kind of competitive scene. I's not really unique to standard to even MtG.
While I understand the frustration, as I've heard people complain about it for a few years and it's probably only gotten common now that it's so easy to get information now that there are so many ways to get information and so much magic is being played online now.
I've kinda noticed a few things happen, at least at the fnm level. I've seen people not show up to fnm as they found it was a lot of similar decks all the time. I've also seen people not show up to fnm because they found the skill level too low or they only wanted to play against meta/"net" decks. I don't even think I could imagine being able to make both sides of this happy tbh
Hey guys, it is perfectly fine to net deck. This is a common issue that occurs for mid-tier players that are transitioning from casual to competitive magic.
I get it, you are Johnny, you like to express yourself with your deck building, not everyone is like that....
I think we might be talking from a different perspective here. I've been playing MTG for almost 20 years, both casually & competitively.
I'm not saying, "My pile of trash isn't competitive", but I am saying, "The standard meta for years now, has had an obvious top choice deck that a clear majority of players adopt quickly, which crushes diversity".
The fall out from this, is that the effective card pool of standard becomes very small. I don't believe banning cards from the strongest deck is always the right answer here.
I feel that net decks/meta strats are a common occurrence among any game that has any kind of competitive scene. I's not really unique to standard to even MtG.
I've kinda noticed a few things happen, at least at the fnm level. I've seen people not show up to fnm as they found it was a lot of similar decks all the time. I've also seen people not show up to fnm because they found the skill level too low or they only wanted to play against meta/"net" decks. I don't even think I could imagine being able to make both sides of this happy tbh
I'm a long term legacy player, I know what you mean about there being clear top decks etc., but I feel legacys' large card pool enables many decks to compete against the better decks out there. I feel it's about creating a balance.
In standard, the smaller card pool means we need more options to even the odds against the best cards or decks out there.
Why MTG still prints cards like Murasa Brute, but doesn't print multiple answers to Field of the Dead is beyond me.
netdeck is not the issue.
bad game design that inviabilizes 90% of all cards on constructed is.
And here I think is a good issue. Cherry picking the best cards is part of the game, but lately MTG has seemed happy to ban cards instead of creating answers or hate dedicated to forcing players to grind out matches instead of just goldfishing to a win.
And here I think is a good issue. Cherry picking the best cards is part of the game, but lately MTG has seemed happy to ban cards instead of creating answers or hate dedicated to forcing players to grind out matches instead of just goldfishing to a win.
Wizards of the Coast knows that EDH / Commander players like to goldfish more rather than grind out matches like most players in competitive formats do especially in cEDH to a lesser extent which explains their current design philosophy as of late. The difficulty is in designing cards that accommodate both Standard and EDH / Commander in a way that doesn't make the other imbalanced to the point where there would be less bans in Standard where as in EDH / Commander it's not broken enough due to how vast the card pool is in dealing with those threats.
There does seem to be a reluctance on Wizards of the Coast's part not to print answers or hate cards to problematic cards in Standard because they aren't willing to take a financial loss in Expected Value (EV) sales at the expense of balancing the format. For example If there had been plenty of answers and hate cards for dealing with threats like Uro, Titan of Nature's Wrath or Oko, Thief of Crowns then there's a good chance that those cards never would've gotten banned and probably not worth as much as they were going for. They'd still make money but probably not enough to appease the shareholders at Hasbro.
"Restriction breeds creativity." - Sheldon Menery on EDH / Commander in Magic: The Gathering
"Cancel Culture is the real reason why everyone's not allowed to have nice things anymore." - Anonymous
"For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul?" - Mark 8:36
"Most men and women will grow up to love their servitude and will never dream of revolution." - Aldous Huxley, Brave New World
"Every life decision is always a risk / reward proposition." - Sanjay Gupta
I second that the issue is less about netdecking and more about the popularity of Arena and current research and design issues.
WotC is convinced (and they have the data, so I'm not saying they're wrong) that MtG is less "fun" when your opponent can stop you from doing the stuff you want to do. Current design philosophy is heavily skewed towards threats over answers. This bums me out, because I like to play reactively.
I agree that grinding the Arena ladder just isn't super fun because when everyone can afford to play a tier 1 strategy, that's what everyone does. When you have a limited pool like in Standard, that means you get at best three or four truly viable decks. Historic is a little better, which is why I find myself playing that more than Standard these days. When I do play Standard, it's usually an event or just regular play--I usually avoid ranked.
I like having Arena as an option, but I'm very much looking forward to FNMs again because there's definitely more diversity.
The problem to my mind is caring so much about "feel bads". I've been playing since 95. The bad old days of no creature/little creature decks were indeed bad. But the pendulum has swung way to the other end for a long time. All the market research shows that people like planeswalkers. And that's what the game has become...planeswalkers+creatures. Yes, there are spells, but let's be honest: most spells interact with permanents and there is far too much love for creatures at this point. Rather than innovate and introduce complex interactions between creatures and other permanent types or spell types, it's creatures, then spells. There is no variety, no true capacity to stay way creature light. I am not saying, again, that we need to return to creature free decks, but there should be more room for a creative mix, where it isn't just "duh, my ____ deck wins". There was a time this was the case, but it crashes into another problem, namely that themes have way overtaken game play. Everything is story-connected now. Magic is basically just an "event" game like Marvel/DC has become event-driven far more than it was individual comic storylines driven. Too tight. There were always dominant storyarchs, but there were also quirky things that didn't fit the themes. There were interactive spells, creatures, things that made you think. Slivers, to give one example. Or Goblin King. Now, Magic is way too "I play, you play". I am not advocating the return of "draw/go", but I am saying that something like that can be revisited as part of a mix. And I'll speak to the elephant in the room: WOTC's general e version to land destruction has made mid-range dominant, as has their lack of interest in effective control/control, as has their aversion to effective discard strategies. We have been one way for a long time. Yes, there have been variables, but I long for the day where things were more free-range. Creature-focus has hurt Magic and I wish they would dip another way for a while. Because I don't care about feel bads. I care about strategy, and what the OP is complaining about here is that strategy is dead because there just aren't that many viable options for top-tier decks.
Because I don't care about feel bads. I care about strategy, and what the OP is complaining about here is that strategy is dead because there just aren't that many viable options for top-tier decks.
As far as I have thought about the problem, WotC's fear of feel bads comes from their focus on EDH and the general consensus there that feel bads are bad for the game. For quite some time I thought EDH was very annoying for this reason, but I think I can understand why people there think that if they like their way of playing.
I generally play Cube and am a huge fan of resource-restricting strategies (landdestruction, discard, aggro) as a lever to keep decks honest. The thing is, if in Cube my two lands in my starting hand get shredded by Dark Ritual --> Hymn to Tourach and I don't draw lands for two turns, I concede and play another game. In a multiplayer EDH game it might however not be so trivial to simply go to the next game, because Stax and Aggro are so slow in going over the finish line against 3 opponents with 40 life, and so 3 players just pass turns while one player plays.
What I want to say is that with 40 life multiplayer in mind, resource denial is annoying because it takes the offending deck an eternity to put all the nails in the coffins. This leads players to cry about those strategies and WotC to circumvent them, although they are a fundamental part of the rock-paper-scissors of Magic.
I know this is a standard forum, but the reply by GeneH rang true with some thoughts I had about the game and thus decided to post here.
You have to welcome netdecking as a form of refinement for homebrew. The top deck might be beatable, but only by facing it and embracing the challenge will you be able to breach that frontier. It will after all, likely be what you face in the end anyways.
I played Pokemon Trading Card Game online for a few years, and I started from scratch. I didn't netdeck anything. Everything I came up with was superior to the top decks of the time. People even stole my concepts and they became archtypes for top decks. Often, there is alpha potential that people don't see or realize. You do need some insight on the game and its dynamics to find this yourself though.
What kind of deck are you envisioning right now?
What is the top deck that's troubling you?
Maybe I can help provide some insights to help you.
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So I'm a long time MTG player, my jam is usually modern, legacy, multiplayer & commander.
I've been trying to get into standard, after mostly avoiding it due to cost, for the last 3 years or so.
I've done online, card shops, competitive meets etc., and I've come to the conclusion that Standard just isn't for me.
Of course this year its all been online (I prefer face to face meets)
In no other format I play, can I regularly expect to play against the EXACT same deck, including sideboard choices, 7 or 8 times in a row.
I don't think WotC swinging the ban-hammer in regular fashion, as they have in the last few years, is likely to really change that. I will say though, regularly banning cards has made standard an expensive format!
Think I'll be leaving standard for a while.
Does no one brew their own decks anymore?
STOP using "dude/bro" as a pejorative or insult. Grow up.
Margaret Thatcher: “The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money.”
Benjamin Franklin: "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."
Martin Luther King Jr.: "I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character."
This would make it easier to grind experience and rewards while brewing (or if you are new enough not to have a meta deck) and would promote the creation of top-tier decks within these categories (such as the cavalcade of meyhem decks, W/B lifegain decks, or guildgate decks in recent memories) that 1) can train new players by pointing them to the most affordable deck option for them and show them how it works and 2) will increase variety among games by allowing top-tier constructed, top-tier no-rare, and experimental decks between them to all coexist in the same queues.
...Plus, the existence of a popular common/uncommon only scene on Arena may have an impact on how commons and uncommons are designed (more playable "draft signpost" uncommons, good threats and removal at lower rarities, etc.)
I get it, you are Johnny, you like to express yourself with your deck building, not everyone is like that, in competitive magic they are all Spikes and will play whatever wins. You have to decide what you care about more, winning or expression.
I say this as a Johnny that will spend months and years tuning a sub-optimal strategy to the maximum of its capability but I know that sometimes I am just going to get run over by a net deck and that's on me, not my opponent.
The only person with blame here is WotC for pushing mythic harder and harder until standard breaks and you can't play with a highly synergistic deck filled with uncommons.
I have a bunch of "cute" UR decks you can try out if you want to play something rouge.
Pioneer:UR Pheonix
Modern:U Mono U Tron
EDH
GB Glissa, the traitor: Army of Cans
UW Dragonlord Ojutai: Dragonlord NOjutai
UWGDerevi, Empyrial Tactician "you cannot fight the storm"
R Zirilan of the claw. The solution to every problem is dragons
UB Etrata, the Silencer Cloning assassination
Peasant cube: Cards I own
bad game design that inviabilizes 90% of all cards on constructed is.
This issue is also exacerbated by there being very little in-paper play. When you're playing at your local shop, not everyone has all the cards for tier one decks, and FNM level gameplay is generally not as optimized. This leaves some room for more rogue decks at that level, and it's genuinely fun to brew when that happens. The worst part is, with everyone playing digitally right now, the digital playerbase is much larger than usual, and metas get solved even faster than they normally would. Its so much easier to get so many reps in with a deck that optimizations take much less time.
While I understand the frustration, as I've heard people complain about it for a few years and it's probably only gotten common now that it's so easy to get information now that there are so many ways to get information and so much magic is being played online now.
I've kinda noticed a few things happen, at least at the fnm level. I've seen people not show up to fnm as they found it was a lot of similar decks all the time. I've also seen people not show up to fnm because they found the skill level too low or they only wanted to play against meta/"net" decks. I don't even think I could imagine being able to make both sides of this happy tbh
I think we might be talking from a different perspective here. I've been playing MTG for almost 20 years, both casually & competitively.
I'm not saying, "My pile of trash isn't competitive", but I am saying, "The standard meta for years now, has had an obvious top choice deck that a clear majority of players adopt quickly, which crushes diversity".
The fall out from this, is that the effective card pool of standard becomes very small. I don't believe banning cards from the strongest deck is always the right answer here.
I'm a long term legacy player, I know what you mean about there being clear top decks etc., but I feel legacys' large card pool enables many decks to compete against the better decks out there. I feel it's about creating a balance.
In standard, the smaller card pool means we need more options to even the odds against the best cards or decks out there.
Why MTG still prints cards like Murasa Brute, but doesn't print multiple answers to Field of the Dead is beyond me.
And here I think is a good issue. Cherry picking the best cards is part of the game, but lately MTG has seemed happy to ban cards instead of creating answers or hate dedicated to forcing players to grind out matches instead of just goldfishing to a win.
There does seem to be a reluctance on Wizards of the Coast's part not to print answers or hate cards to problematic cards in Standard because they aren't willing to take a financial loss in Expected Value (EV) sales at the expense of balancing the format. For example If there had been plenty of answers and hate cards for dealing with threats like Uro, Titan of Nature's Wrath or Oko, Thief of Crowns then there's a good chance that those cards never would've gotten banned and probably not worth as much as they were going for. They'd still make money but probably not enough to appease the shareholders at Hasbro.
"Restriction breeds creativity." - Sheldon Menery on EDH / Commander in Magic: The Gathering
"Cancel Culture is the real reason why everyone's not allowed to have nice things anymore." - Anonymous
"For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul?" - Mark 8:36
"Most men and women will grow up to love their servitude and will never dream of revolution." - Aldous Huxley, Brave New World
"Every life decision is always a risk / reward proposition." - Sanjay Gupta
WotC is convinced (and they have the data, so I'm not saying they're wrong) that MtG is less "fun" when your opponent can stop you from doing the stuff you want to do. Current design philosophy is heavily skewed towards threats over answers. This bums me out, because I like to play reactively.
I agree that grinding the Arena ladder just isn't super fun because when everyone can afford to play a tier 1 strategy, that's what everyone does. When you have a limited pool like in Standard, that means you get at best three or four truly viable decks. Historic is a little better, which is why I find myself playing that more than Standard these days. When I do play Standard, it's usually an event or just regular play--I usually avoid ranked.
I like having Arena as an option, but I'm very much looking forward to FNMs again because there's definitely more diversity.
As far as I have thought about the problem, WotC's fear of feel bads comes from their focus on EDH and the general consensus there that feel bads are bad for the game. For quite some time I thought EDH was very annoying for this reason, but I think I can understand why people there think that if they like their way of playing.
I generally play Cube and am a huge fan of resource-restricting strategies (landdestruction, discard, aggro) as a lever to keep decks honest. The thing is, if in Cube my two lands in my starting hand get shredded by Dark Ritual --> Hymn to Tourach and I don't draw lands for two turns, I concede and play another game. In a multiplayer EDH game it might however not be so trivial to simply go to the next game, because Stax and Aggro are so slow in going over the finish line against 3 opponents with 40 life, and so 3 players just pass turns while one player plays.
What I want to say is that with 40 life multiplayer in mind, resource denial is annoying because it takes the offending deck an eternity to put all the nails in the coffins. This leads players to cry about those strategies and WotC to circumvent them, although they are a fundamental part of the rock-paper-scissors of Magic.
I know this is a standard forum, but the reply by GeneH rang true with some thoughts I had about the game and thus decided to post here.
You have to welcome netdecking as a form of refinement for homebrew. The top deck might be beatable, but only by facing it and embracing the challenge will you be able to breach that frontier. It will after all, likely be what you face in the end anyways.
I played Pokemon Trading Card Game online for a few years, and I started from scratch. I didn't netdeck anything. Everything I came up with was superior to the top decks of the time. People even stole my concepts and they became archtypes for top decks. Often, there is alpha potential that people don't see or realize. You do need some insight on the game and its dynamics to find this yourself though.
What kind of deck are you envisioning right now?
What is the top deck that's troubling you?
Maybe I can help provide some insights to help you.