[quote from="john_pirate »" url="/forums/the-game/standard-type-2/823764-is-it-me?comment=4"]
I think there's two different arguments here. The first is with regard to balance. Standard is pretty balanced right now between the aggro decks, combo/control decks, and midrangey strategies like mono-black/Orzhov. There's a decent number of decks to choose from and they all have relatively decent chances of winning depending on card-selection and sideboard tech. I actually think Standard is in a good place and generally pretty fun to play right now.
Argument 2 is "do we like the current school of thought re: design?" I'm not thrilled with the power level of a lot of the cards. Every creature doesn't need to replace itself or generate insane value or have built-in recursion. That being said, they have been at least trying to tone the power down which I applaud. Also, they have been upping the power level of answers a bit in the last couple of sets, which is a welcome change from "no 4 mana wraths, no 2 cmc kill spells."
The problem is now there are newer players used to the current paradigm who throw fits because of how "bad" some of the new cards are.
I would disagree with your first statement of the format being balanced. Take the recent Red Bull tournament (707 players) where the top 8 was 5 izzet control decks and 2 white weenie decks. The Japan Championship Series (128 payers) top 4 izzet control +2 white weenie in top 8. Red Bull (979 players) 3 izzet control 3 white weenie.
Yeah, you can go to your local store with green aggro and win 3 rounds, or with you black control, or zombies, or whatever. The actual real torunament stats prove how unbalanced the format is.
I would have to agree; standard is pretty horrible and has been for a long time now. White weenie is probably the worst offender of the new generation. In years past you often had a few bombs in the format (think before rosewater took over) and now we are too a point where everything is undercosted, where nearly every card is a 2 for 1 (but not removal), where a single card can win you the game out of nowhere, and games are expected to last about 5-7 minutes.
White weenie hits on all curves. 2/1 for 1 mana that make more creatues, cards that make your opponents stuff cost more which makes it hard to cast spells, removal on efficient creatures, evasion, creatures that are cheap and dont die to mass removal (lands), creatures that make other creatures. The deck is so cohesive and so cheap and there are so many cards in standard that have like effects right now that if there is a single banning or 2 that the deck probably wont be able to be fixed through due to like abilities on other cards.
A good way to explain it is decks use to be classified in different way... for example tempo or inevitability; however white winnie is kind of both as numerous cards have the ability to constantly gain value on their own. same with green aggro where a 2 mana 3/3 also draws cards or a 4/4 trample for 3 that comes back to ramp you AND become a 4/4 again. aggro decks no long say "i have to win by turn 6" they now just say "can you stop my relentless assault"
All you have to do is look at how many bannings we've had over the last 4 years to see how the game has changed. We had about 20 total cards banned, 75% of those being created enxclusively by mark rosewater, banned before 2017. Now since 2017 we've had 24 bans. I doubt we'll see any bans soon though, we also didn't get any bans when Black Devotion was a deck even though it was over 50% of the field; that doesn't make it right and that doesn't make the format or the direction good either.
I wouldn't mind Bolas losing. To this day I have no idea what his motivation is. Seems like a super bland villain. Bring back epic story lines like the Brothers War/Weatherlight please.
Timetwister and wheel of fortune don't do the same thing. Timetwister and windfall don't do the same thing. Wheel of fortune and windfall however do do the same thing so that in fact is the exact same 'theft' as polymorph. Blue copying spells is direct theft of fork. Your correct about the others which is fine, because it doesn't disprove that blue actually stole from red first, not to mention all the artifacts matter red cards from alpha which blue really bit off of
By your own definition, Wheel of Fortune and Windfall also don't do the same thing.
"Er I thought you wanted people to play enchantments?"
"Oh no I just want them to WANT to play them. Not actually use them. Well I'm off to my second job as head DLC guy for Activision"
Back to nature is from M15, not Theros...
And the Theros meta was better than KTK or BFZ metas which were dominated by Rhinos or GW.
Theros was a dumpster fire format where 1 deck... Monoblack devotion... took over 50% of the top 8 placements with the only other deck anywhere close to being relevant was mono-blue taking up another huge percentage for awhile.
Though on that note, we can pretty much say every standard format tends to go the same way as wizards is notoriously bad at not learning from their mistakes.
Vraska left Ravnica and it was noticed she disappeared in to a void. Fast forward we find out Nicol Bolas is once again meddling in peoples affairs for unknown reasons, we still have yet to find out why he wanted to release Emrakul and the rest of the Eldrazi. After Nicol Bolas' defeat at the hands of the planeswalkers in Hour of Devestation, our group of adventurers find out what Bolas' plan this whole time was to get back to Dominaria, believing that releasing the titans would weaken the separation in the multiverse. He was slightly correct, however it was a small hole and Vraska found it first. Vraska is now on Otaria, an island continent on Dominaria where she finds a group of Gorgons that she befriends, as well as a large diversified group of different creatures and beasts which came in to existence do to the Mirari. She's currently adding to her collection of petrified victims while looking for the Apocalypse Chime. Ajani finding out she planeswalked to Dominaria, and it being the first place he ever planeswalked to, also planeswalks there. The reason for his planeswalk is hidden for the time being. We will find out that Elspeth Tirel, while held captive by the Phyrexians as they invaded Dominaria, was able to planeswalk away from them during the period just before Yawgmoth was apparently killed by the Legacy Weapon. During the block we will see Sandruu as a planeswalker and will finally be introduced to Korlash, who will be very important to the future of magic the gathering.
The Merfolk from the Atlazan pack is from the same tribe as Gaea's Skyfolk. The Conquest of Power picture is a Zhalfir, a good example is Zhalfirin Crusader.
In the first set, we will find out something is going on with the Mer Empire, a dominant and powerful undersea power which holds main control over Otaria. In the 2nd set we will see once again, on a different plane though, that a group of people don't like who is in control and we'll see a battle for power.
This set is intended as a break from the current storyline, as almost nothing in the block will have to do with anything outside of the block. We will finally see the return of squirrels and slivers in this block, though we will only get 2 cards that create squirrels. And obviously a return to Dominaria will be much applauded as people have been asking for it forever. However the directions Wizards has taken with the set will have some old flavor, but will feel largely like the most recent blocks of magic with Ravnica type artwork styled from old Dominaria artwork.
If Scrap Trawler is real (and I assume it is, though I haven't seen confirmation,) there have to be combos with it, both infinite and otherwise. What've you got?
How do you have over 2,500 posts and not know where the right place to post this question is? Hint, it isn't here.
Why is everyone always ragging on Karador, Ghost Chieftain?
He's one of the most balanced (yet still playable) Commanders ever printed! Ghave, Guru of Spores is *much* more degenerate, in my experience.
I have to disagree, and I'm pretty sure most people would agree as people tend to name Karador far more often as broken. It's a card that pretty much ignores the whole commanders cost 2 more, allows you to consistently get back problematic cards like Vorinclex, is super easy to 'ramp' in to with cards that are super cheap that fill your graveyard and give you great targets for his ability, and it's very easy to lock out other players out of the game, most colors have no real way to interact with a graveyard and you need to run dedicated cards to deal with the strategy. All of this has only been compounded by the 'no-tuck' rule.
The main problem with Karador is that you can deal with it over and over and over again and it just never stops coming back every single turn. Pair this with the ability to continuously being able to get back other problematic creatures as well makes this not the funnest deck to go up against.
Compared to Ghave which follows commander rules of costing more to cast when it dies each time, and having to have other combo pieces that multiple colors can easily deal with in their regular decks (not having to be built around playing against an off hand strategy) this can quickly snowball in to the Ghave player just losing the game because they can't recast their Ghave or they don't have their combo pieces (which Karador can always get their creature pieces back every turn).
I'm pretty sure they've realed the numbers for these, where they didn't for expeditions. If I remember correctly these show up approximately 1 in 4 1/2 boxes (1 in 160). Everything I know about the Expeditions point towards them being printed at about 1 in 72 or 1 in 88.
If these numbers are correct, you'll be seeing far less masterpieces.
I think undying (ex. Hound of Griselbrand) and persist (ex. Murderous Redcap) make more sense flavor wise instead of regeneration for what the flavor of regeneration works out to be in many other settings, and are perhaps more easily balanced and understood by players, for something that takes otherwise lethal injuries then heals from such with a limited reserve of energy. You could even include mechanics on the card to remove the counters for a high cost as a way of allowing repeatable 'regeneration'. I don't like using temporary indestructibility in the place of every form of regeneration, for flavor and other reasons.
The problem is that undying and persist are horribly overpowering or work counter to their go to abilities with counters.
All the decks that have run murderous Madcap should be proof that persist is too overpowered. The fact wizards no longer likes making creatures with any form of drawback, and the fact they're unable to constantly keep making mechanics that give +1/+1 counters you now have undying in a spot where it doesn't work nearly as well. As well, the fact that +1/+1 and -1/-1 counters cancel each other out since NWO rules came about, we now have a horrible place for both of these effects to be abused for the rest of the time the game is around.
On the side of regeneration, they really just needed to change it back to how it worked pre-6th edition rule changes. Wizards loves saying they don't like to change stuff, but they really do it all the time. Good examples are interupts, mana sources, creature types, green creatures not having flying.... you say not recent enough... ok... how legendary works, new mulligan rules, how flip cards work (i.e. mana cost on both sides now), how shuffle effects work (i.e. blue sun zenith gets exiled before going to your deck you still shuffle).
As always, please let me know if you see any bugs and feel free to offer suggestions for improvement. Here is a link the the Kaladesh Sealed Pool Generator
Very first pack I opened had 11 commons, 2 uncommons, 1 rare
Kolaghan's Command just used the Kolaghanite. This can be gross in the right decks obviously. I can't believe this and Tezzeret's Ambition are both thought to be at the same power level (common). This just blows that out of the water.
In limited Cathartic Reunion gives you +0 card advantage, whereas Tezzeret's Ambition will almost always give you +2 card advantage. They are very different.
They are very different... one allows you to get rid of lands and still have mana left over to play something, where the other costs insanely more possbly still getting rid of a card and having a hard time playing anything else that turn. Where the red one you could put more than 2 in your deck... the blue one you almost certainly don't want 2 due to the high mana cost.
But Drawing three cards for 5 isn't insanely expensive, it's right around where it should be for a common. Also assuming this is limited, you need a lot of your lands to play your 4cmc+ cards, you're not always going to be able to toss them away.
Another question to ask is, "Which card would I rather topdeck?" Topdecking is a frequent occurrence in limited, and Cathartic Reunion is a god awful topdeck, as it's a dead card you can't play until you draw two more cards, of which you might want to play. Tezzeret's Ambition on the other hand is an excellent topdeck, and one I'd want to see.
Soundslike you don't draft very often. Most times when you 'top deck' that cathartic reunion it's pretty easy to figure you'll have some lands in your hand. On the flip side, having 7 lands on the battlefield facing death from your opponents creatures and drawing a tezzeret's ambition is almost always going to end in death. So much for that excellent top deck aye.
Kolaghan's Command just used the Kolaghanite. This can be gross in the right decks obviously. I can't believe this and Tezzeret's Ambition are both thought to be at the same power level (common). This just blows that out of the water.
In limited Cathartic Reunion gives you +0 card advantage, whereas Tezzeret's Ambition will almost always give you +2 card advantage. They are very different.
They are very different... one allows you to get rid of lands and still have mana left over to play something, where the other costs insanely more possbly still getting rid of a card and having a hard time playing anything else that turn. Where the red one you could put more than 2 in your deck... the blue one you almost certainly don't want 2 due to the high mana cost.
I would disagree with your first statement of the format being balanced. Take the recent Red Bull tournament (707 players) where the top 8 was 5 izzet control decks and 2 white weenie decks. The Japan Championship Series (128 payers) top 4 izzet control +2 white weenie in top 8. Red Bull (979 players) 3 izzet control 3 white weenie.
Yeah, you can go to your local store with green aggro and win 3 rounds, or with you black control, or zombies, or whatever. The actual real torunament stats prove how unbalanced the format is.
White weenie hits on all curves. 2/1 for 1 mana that make more creatues, cards that make your opponents stuff cost more which makes it hard to cast spells, removal on efficient creatures, evasion, creatures that are cheap and dont die to mass removal (lands), creatures that make other creatures. The deck is so cohesive and so cheap and there are so many cards in standard that have like effects right now that if there is a single banning or 2 that the deck probably wont be able to be fixed through due to like abilities on other cards.
A good way to explain it is decks use to be classified in different way... for example tempo or inevitability; however white winnie is kind of both as numerous cards have the ability to constantly gain value on their own. same with green aggro where a 2 mana 3/3 also draws cards or a 4/4 trample for 3 that comes back to ramp you AND become a 4/4 again. aggro decks no long say "i have to win by turn 6" they now just say "can you stop my relentless assault"
All you have to do is look at how many bannings we've had over the last 4 years to see how the game has changed. We had about 20 total cards banned, 75% of those being created enxclusively by mark rosewater, banned before 2017. Now since 2017 we've had 24 bans. I doubt we'll see any bans soon though, we also didn't get any bans when Black Devotion was a deck even though it was over 50% of the field; that doesn't make it right and that doesn't make the format or the direction good either.
His motivation is to get back to Dominaria.
By your own definition, Wheel of Fortune and Windfall also don't do the same thing.
Theros was a dumpster fire format where 1 deck... Monoblack devotion... took over 50% of the top 8 placements with the only other deck anywhere close to being relevant was mono-blue taking up another huge percentage for awhile.
Though on that note, we can pretty much say every standard format tends to go the same way as wizards is notoriously bad at not learning from their mistakes.
On an off note, it's a bit insane how far off topic these threads get... pretty much makes large portions of a topic unreadable.
Vraska left Ravnica and it was noticed she disappeared in to a void. Fast forward we find out Nicol Bolas is once again meddling in peoples affairs for unknown reasons, we still have yet to find out why he wanted to release Emrakul and the rest of the Eldrazi. After Nicol Bolas' defeat at the hands of the planeswalkers in Hour of Devestation, our group of adventurers find out what Bolas' plan this whole time was to get back to Dominaria, believing that releasing the titans would weaken the separation in the multiverse. He was slightly correct, however it was a small hole and Vraska found it first. Vraska is now on Otaria, an island continent on Dominaria where she finds a group of Gorgons that she befriends, as well as a large diversified group of different creatures and beasts which came in to existence do to the Mirari. She's currently adding to her collection of petrified victims while looking for the Apocalypse Chime. Ajani finding out she planeswalked to Dominaria, and it being the first place he ever planeswalked to, also planeswalks there. The reason for his planeswalk is hidden for the time being. We will find out that Elspeth Tirel, while held captive by the Phyrexians as they invaded Dominaria, was able to planeswalk away from them during the period just before Yawgmoth was apparently killed by the Legacy Weapon. During the block we will see Sandruu as a planeswalker and will finally be introduced to Korlash, who will be very important to the future of magic the gathering.
The Merfolk from the Atlazan pack is from the same tribe as Gaea's Skyfolk. The Conquest of Power picture is a Zhalfir, a good example is Zhalfirin Crusader.
In the first set, we will find out something is going on with the Mer Empire, a dominant and powerful undersea power which holds main control over Otaria. In the 2nd set we will see once again, on a different plane though, that a group of people don't like who is in control and we'll see a battle for power.
This set is intended as a break from the current storyline, as almost nothing in the block will have to do with anything outside of the block. We will finally see the return of squirrels and slivers in this block, though we will only get 2 cards that create squirrels. And obviously a return to Dominaria will be much applauded as people have been asking for it forever. However the directions Wizards has taken with the set will have some old flavor, but will feel largely like the most recent blocks of magic with Ravnica type artwork styled from old Dominaria artwork.
How do you have over 2,500 posts and not know where the right place to post this question is? Hint, it isn't here.
I have to disagree, and I'm pretty sure most people would agree as people tend to name Karador far more often as broken. It's a card that pretty much ignores the whole commanders cost 2 more, allows you to consistently get back problematic cards like Vorinclex, is super easy to 'ramp' in to with cards that are super cheap that fill your graveyard and give you great targets for his ability, and it's very easy to lock out other players out of the game, most colors have no real way to interact with a graveyard and you need to run dedicated cards to deal with the strategy. All of this has only been compounded by the 'no-tuck' rule.
The main problem with Karador is that you can deal with it over and over and over again and it just never stops coming back every single turn. Pair this with the ability to continuously being able to get back other problematic creatures as well makes this not the funnest deck to go up against.
Compared to Ghave which follows commander rules of costing more to cast when it dies each time, and having to have other combo pieces that multiple colors can easily deal with in their regular decks (not having to be built around playing against an off hand strategy) this can quickly snowball in to the Ghave player just losing the game because they can't recast their Ghave or they don't have their combo pieces (which Karador can always get their creature pieces back every turn).
If these numbers are correct, you'll be seeing far less masterpieces.
The problem is that undying and persist are horribly overpowering or work counter to their go to abilities with counters.
All the decks that have run murderous Madcap should be proof that persist is too overpowered. The fact wizards no longer likes making creatures with any form of drawback, and the fact they're unable to constantly keep making mechanics that give +1/+1 counters you now have undying in a spot where it doesn't work nearly as well. As well, the fact that +1/+1 and -1/-1 counters cancel each other out since NWO rules came about, we now have a horrible place for both of these effects to be abused for the rest of the time the game is around.
On the side of regeneration, they really just needed to change it back to how it worked pre-6th edition rule changes. Wizards loves saying they don't like to change stuff, but they really do it all the time. Good examples are interupts, mana sources, creature types, green creatures not having flying.... you say not recent enough... ok... how legendary works, new mulligan rules, how flip cards work (i.e. mana cost on both sides now), how shuffle effects work (i.e. blue sun zenith gets exiled before going to your deck you still shuffle).
Very first pack I opened had 11 commons, 2 uncommons, 1 rare
Soundslike you don't draft very often. Most times when you 'top deck' that cathartic reunion it's pretty easy to figure you'll have some lands in your hand. On the flip side, having 7 lands on the battlefield facing death from your opponents creatures and drawing a tezzeret's ambition is almost always going to end in death. So much for that excellent top deck aye.
They are very different... one allows you to get rid of lands and still have mana left over to play something, where the other costs insanely more possbly still getting rid of a card and having a hard time playing anything else that turn. Where the red one you could put more than 2 in your deck... the blue one you almost certainly don't want 2 due to the high mana cost.