What's happening is that it looks like SCG isn't going to sponsor a team for the upcoming Pro Tour for whatever reason, so Channel Fireball are stepping up to the plate and sponsoring the old SCG team. (Mostly the SCG Black team)
At the same time, although we don't know if it's related or unrelated, a number of SCG content producers are switching from SCG to CFB starting next month, basically Jensen, Duke, Zvi and Costa, as well Finkel is going to start doing content for them (I don't think he was doing content for SCG before on a regular basis).
It seems to me this is less about CFB "outbidding" SCG and more about some things on the SCG side.
Just to make it perfectly clear to everybody, this card is probably mythic for LIMITED purposes. That is, this is going to be a horribly obnoxious card to play against in limited, and they wanted to make it show up less.
Flavor wise it's great. But playability wise..it's not just the worst guild keyword/ability, I'll go as far as to say it's the most boring keyword/ability we've seen in a LONG time.
There's a bunch of reasons, and they're all integrated into a sort of vertical strategy that's been VERY successful.
#1. New World Order. Taking complexity out of common. Making middle/large creatures actually powerful and useful. Focusing on the complexity of the basics.
#2. Duels of the Planeswalkers. Wouldn't have been possible (at all) without #1, like it or not. Because of that, it was possible to make an easy to use interface and easy but still interesting and interactive rich decks. The first one was kind of meh I thought, but the second one was really good. But DoTP pointed people towards...
#3. Friday Night Magic/LGS. Basically giving people a place to play/meet other players. By taking it out of the kitchen table and bringing it to a public place, it was a dramatic lowering of the barrier of entry for the solo player to start.
You have all these steps combined, which are linked together quite tightly, and that explains a lot of the resurgence of Magic.
Generally speaking it should be up to the loser to offer the handshake/the gg. If they have some particularly bad draws or feel like it's a one sided matchup, they might feel a bit bad about the whole thing and the winner offering it can feel like they're rubbing it in.
Now, that said, I'll do it on winning if it was obviously a great game, lots of back and forth and whatever. But generally if I win a stomp I think it's good manners to not rub it in your opponents face.
There actually is a combo deck in standard, it's just that it's too slow to be really successful, but if you want to play it, fill your boots.
Personally, I'm fully in favor of "baking in" reasonable combo strategies, but they have to be VERY careful about how they do it, because of the fear of "Combo Winter" all over again. There are a couple of rules I think, about how to go about it in Standard without turning the metagame into pointless paper-rock-scissors (which is what they're trying to avoid)
1. Earliest is a turn 5 MAYBE turn 4 kill.
2. It has to be interactive across the color pie. It has to involve permanents, and preferably a combination of permanent types. It can't be "play blue or die".
3. Pieces have to come out at Sorcery speed, again, more interactivity.
And that's it. The problem is that such a combo deck (For example, Splinter Twin would have been fine if Exarch, IMO didn't have Flash) would be viewed as many as unplayable/not a "real" combo deck. So I think they don't even bother. The potential downside of it being horribly broken by accident is much bigger than any potential upside.
So we have a game now that revolves around a different axis. Aggro/Midrange/Control with trick/wildcard decks popping up every now than then, such as Reanimator, or Valakut. And it's a wonderful metagame (In fact, Standard is really awesome right now). And often, the problem, at least the way I see it, is with the trick deck in the format. For example, I really do think the problem with CawBlade, or at least part of the problem was actually Valakut. Because Valakut fed...as these trick decks tend to do...on a specific part of the metagame, and that part of the metagame was the part that beats CawBlade, CawBlade had pretty much an open path.
And that's the problem, and what they're trying to avoid. There shouldn't be decks that have 80-90% win rates against other reasonable decks. That turns the game into luck-based in terms of matchups. It's not fun. Thus, why the new metagame is much much MUCH more popular than the old one.
And it has nothing to do with new player/old player. I started way back in Fallen Empires. Magic is better now than it's ever been.
We've been seeing printing/packaging errors as well. Boxes with half the packs having 2 instead of 3 uncommons (wtf?), packs with multiple of the same common (non-foil).
Decks are actually less land-greedy than they used to be, for the most part. That's because sets/formats are designed, at least in terms of Standard, where 4-5 mana spells are expected to be played on a regular basis.
Yeah, but they seem to be looking at it from the right side of things. Not that there are never any mistakes (watch the retrospective that Aaron Forsythe did at the Magic Cruise), but it's mostly about fun first. If we release a good product, everything else will follow.
And it's true.
Truth is, the reasoning behind the changes is simply this. The new player opens packs, sees a big Dragon, Angel, and Elemental, and is like WHOA that's powerful. And it used to be that no...they're not really.
But what if we made those things line up just a bit more? Open up that design space and see where it takes us. Sometimes it's a good direction (Baneslayer Angel) sometimes a bad direction (Primeval Titan), but at least it's going in new directions. For a game as old as Magic, that's crucially important.
The thing with Land Destruction is that it has a very real effect on the metagame...in that it puts up additional roadblocks against cards with higher mana costs, which already have significant roadblocks naturally (as they cost more).
Toning down the power of land destruction allows you to build out the mid-range more, which drastically increases the space for both card design and deckbuilding design, like it or not.
Way back when, most of the aggressive decks you saw were absurdly low-CC. Stompy, White Weenie, Sligh, etc, most operated in the 3 land range. Anything casting above this was basically unplayable. This of course shut down massive amounts of effective design space. It changed a bit after they powered down after the Urza's block, but that's how it used to be.
For what it's worth I do think that WotC should "bake in" some sort of 2-3 card combo that's set to go off turn 4/5 to appeal to combo players, however I suspect that people would see that as being too slow, especially if the combo parts are interactive (such as being creatures).
But yeah, if there's a choice between narrow land destruction and broad mid-range, I'll take mid-range in my Magic every single time.
I understand this feeling of the death of control, I started during Scourge/Mirrodin block (ah the fun of casual Clerics vs Storm, then for Mirrodin Arcbound Affinity Vs Mono Red Atog), granted I am a combo player and know full well how much Wizards has nerfed that recently (when was the last time we saw a Combo deck top tier in Standard?)
Last summer, actually. Splinter Twin, actually there are combo decks in Standard right now, if you wanted to play them. (Deadeye Navigator, Gilded Lotus/Zealous Conscripts).
There's also viable control decks in standard, Solar Flare being the most prominent one.
Edit: Actually, now that I think about it, just like Delver is Aggro-Control, I would argue that various zombie builds are Aggro-Combo hybrids.
There has been some discussion about this in the general forum, but I've lost track of it in the last two weeks and it really seems like it would be well suited here as well.
Right now, in terms of value of the cards you open, what faction should be chosen? Is there a sizable difference in value?
In terms of the Promo, probably not. I think that the Selesnya probably will see the most play (and not that much at that)
But in terms of the guild pack, I think it's easily Golgari, and not even close.
Local control decks have the same problem re: Time, and having a hard time finishing matches.
It actually wasn't two sets ago that we had control decks (U/B control) as a top-tier deck, and a year ago we had Caw-Blade as the God-tier deck. Cards such as Supreme Verdict and Detention Sphere are still being printed to create control decks around. Control isn't being neglected.
The problem, of course, is that mid-range isn't being neglected anymore. It used to not exist at all, for the most part. And believe it or not, this is a good thing. It actually increases the range of decks played (there's a huge variety of decks right now in Standard). It doesn't make the game simpler..combat, which there's a larger emphasis on now, is one of the most complicated and skillful parts of Magic as a whole.
I played way back when as well. And trust me, Magic is leaps and bounds better now than where it was. It's not even close.
At the same time, although we don't know if it's related or unrelated, a number of SCG content producers are switching from SCG to CFB starting next month, basically Jensen, Duke, Zvi and Costa, as well Finkel is going to start doing content for them (I don't think he was doing content for SCG before on a regular basis).
It seems to me this is less about CFB "outbidding" SCG and more about some things on the SCG side.
Ban: BBE, Kiki-Jiki, Unban: Ancestral Visions, Preordain
What would I LIKE to see the changes be?
Ban: BBE, Kiki-Jiki, Zen Fetches. (Yeah I went there)
Unban: Wild Nacatl, Ancestral Visions, Bitterblossom
#1. New World Order. Taking complexity out of common. Making middle/large creatures actually powerful and useful. Focusing on the complexity of the basics.
#2. Duels of the Planeswalkers. Wouldn't have been possible (at all) without #1, like it or not. Because of that, it was possible to make an easy to use interface and easy but still interesting and interactive rich decks. The first one was kind of meh I thought, but the second one was really good. But DoTP pointed people towards...
#3. Friday Night Magic/LGS. Basically giving people a place to play/meet other players. By taking it out of the kitchen table and bringing it to a public place, it was a dramatic lowering of the barrier of entry for the solo player to start.
You have all these steps combined, which are linked together quite tightly, and that explains a lot of the resurgence of Magic.
Now, that said, I'll do it on winning if it was obviously a great game, lots of back and forth and whatever. But generally if I win a stomp I think it's good manners to not rub it in your opponents face.
Personally, I'm fully in favor of "baking in" reasonable combo strategies, but they have to be VERY careful about how they do it, because of the fear of "Combo Winter" all over again. There are a couple of rules I think, about how to go about it in Standard without turning the metagame into pointless paper-rock-scissors (which is what they're trying to avoid)
1. Earliest is a turn 5 MAYBE turn 4 kill.
2. It has to be interactive across the color pie. It has to involve permanents, and preferably a combination of permanent types. It can't be "play blue or die".
3. Pieces have to come out at Sorcery speed, again, more interactivity.
And that's it. The problem is that such a combo deck (For example, Splinter Twin would have been fine if Exarch, IMO didn't have Flash) would be viewed as many as unplayable/not a "real" combo deck. So I think they don't even bother. The potential downside of it being horribly broken by accident is much bigger than any potential upside.
So we have a game now that revolves around a different axis. Aggro/Midrange/Control with trick/wildcard decks popping up every now than then, such as Reanimator, or Valakut. And it's a wonderful metagame (In fact, Standard is really awesome right now). And often, the problem, at least the way I see it, is with the trick deck in the format. For example, I really do think the problem with CawBlade, or at least part of the problem was actually Valakut. Because Valakut fed...as these trick decks tend to do...on a specific part of the metagame, and that part of the metagame was the part that beats CawBlade, CawBlade had pretty much an open path.
And that's the problem, and what they're trying to avoid. There shouldn't be decks that have 80-90% win rates against other reasonable decks. That turns the game into luck-based in terms of matchups. It's not fun. Thus, why the new metagame is much much MUCH more popular than the old one.
And it has nothing to do with new player/old player. I started way back in Fallen Empires. Magic is better now than it's ever been.
That said, yesterday at my LGS an AVR pack was opened that had 4 Bonfires. No joke.
I actually used to play 16 land decks.
And it's true.
Truth is, the reasoning behind the changes is simply this. The new player opens packs, sees a big Dragon, Angel, and Elemental, and is like WHOA that's powerful. And it used to be that no...they're not really.
But what if we made those things line up just a bit more? Open up that design space and see where it takes us. Sometimes it's a good direction (Baneslayer Angel) sometimes a bad direction (Primeval Titan), but at least it's going in new directions. For a game as old as Magic, that's crucially important.
Toning down the power of land destruction allows you to build out the mid-range more, which drastically increases the space for both card design and deckbuilding design, like it or not.
Way back when, most of the aggressive decks you saw were absurdly low-CC. Stompy, White Weenie, Sligh, etc, most operated in the 3 land range. Anything casting above this was basically unplayable. This of course shut down massive amounts of effective design space. It changed a bit after they powered down after the Urza's block, but that's how it used to be.
For what it's worth I do think that WotC should "bake in" some sort of 2-3 card combo that's set to go off turn 4/5 to appeal to combo players, however I suspect that people would see that as being too slow, especially if the combo parts are interactive (such as being creatures).
But yeah, if there's a choice between narrow land destruction and broad mid-range, I'll take mid-range in my Magic every single time.
Last summer, actually. Splinter Twin, actually there are combo decks in Standard right now, if you wanted to play them. (Deadeye Navigator, Gilded Lotus/Zealous Conscripts).
There's also viable control decks in standard, Solar Flare being the most prominent one.
Edit: Actually, now that I think about it, just like Delver is Aggro-Control, I would argue that various zombie builds are Aggro-Combo hybrids.
In terms of the Promo, probably not. I think that the Selesnya probably will see the most play (and not that much at that)
But in terms of the guild pack, I think it's easily Golgari, and not even close.
It actually wasn't two sets ago that we had control decks (U/B control) as a top-tier deck, and a year ago we had Caw-Blade as the God-tier deck. Cards such as Supreme Verdict and Detention Sphere are still being printed to create control decks around. Control isn't being neglected.
The problem, of course, is that mid-range isn't being neglected anymore. It used to not exist at all, for the most part. And believe it or not, this is a good thing. It actually increases the range of decks played (there's a huge variety of decks right now in Standard). It doesn't make the game simpler..combat, which there's a larger emphasis on now, is one of the most complicated and skillful parts of Magic as a whole.
I played way back when as well. And trust me, Magic is leaps and bounds better now than where it was. It's not even close.