I agree since Kaladesh and Amonkhet provide most of the Red Firepower for Chainwhirler to easily slot into...I also expect Ravnica to be biased towards Blue due to Jace as the focus although Bolas(UBR), Teferi(UW), Tamiyo(UGW), Ral (UR) and Tezz (UB) all sharing that color as presumably relevant characters cannot hurt.
Design team is making too many cards that you either can't interact with or the way you interact is very narrow. Kaladesh is FULL of those and frankly vehicles is one of the worst design mistakes in years outside of individual OP cards.
It's not so much that just Goblin Chainsmuggler is so evil... it's the confluence of cards that together make red utterly dominant.
You can't block, you can't remove, Chandra, you can't destroy, Chandra, oh yea red went first you now have 40% less chance of winning.
They are going overboard on too many fronts. Look at the utter value each card red has to play provides. No drawbacks, no compromises, no weaknesses except poor draws and we can all see that's not happening very frequently.
Arena standard is exposing a lot of people to rampant red, vehicles, and control without very much else going on and it's just not that much fun anymore. I wish we could get back to balanced sets like we had 3 years ago like RTR and Khans. Even when they admit making mistakes (midrange stupidfest) they're not checking the desire to make cards that just end games or crowd out entire strategies that can't interact. Approach is part of that problem. God-Pharaoh's Gift (amongst all the other utter trash in Kaladesh)/Aetherworks McCheatypants are the problem. The rash of indestructible and uninteractive is the problem. They can't fix it with a single ban (as they've already tried with several.
They need to fix this garbage format at the drawing board. I for one cannot wait for Kaladesh et al to go away.
Design team is making too many cards that you either can't interact with or the way you interact is very narrow. Kaladesh is FULL of those and frankly vehicles is one of the worst design mistakes in years outside of individual OP cards.
It's not so much that just Goblin Chainsmuggler is so evil... it's the confluence of cards that together make red utterly dominant.
You can't block, you can't remove, Chandra, you can't destroy, Chandra, oh yea red went first you now have 40% less chance of winning.
They are going overboard on too many fronts. Look at the utter value each card red has to play provides. No drawbacks, no compromises, no weaknesses except poor draws and we can all see that's not happening very frequently.
Arena standard is exposing a lot of people to rampant red, vehicles, and control without very much else going on and it's just not that much fun anymore. I wish we could get back to balanced sets like we had 3 years ago like RTR and Khans. Even when they admit making mistakes (midrange stupidfest) they're not checking the desire to make cards that just end games or crowd out entire strategies that can't interact. Approach is part of that problem. God-Pharaoh's Gift (amongst all the other utter trash in Kaladesh)/Aetherworks McCheatypants are the problem. The rash of indestructible and uninteractive is the problem. They can't fix it with a single ban (as they've already tried with several.
They need to fix this garbage format at the drawing board. I for one cannot wait for Kaladesh et al to go away.
It's not the vehicles that are causing issues. The problem is all the low cost indestructible threats that require exile effects to even manage. I'm not just talking about the gods, but recurring threats as well such as scrapheap scrounger and Earthshaker Khenra. Because exiling is required and the team doesn't want to powercreep the game, the removal got bumped up to 4 CMC for unconditional spells as basic kill anything spells at 3 cmc or lower weren't cutting it. This was a format where Anguished Unmaking and Declaration in Stone would have worked wonders.
The post rotation landscape looks very different in terms of support spells, and I feel strongly it will be fair meta more than a rush and control one. Removal gets better when the threats can't keep coming back or are difficult to deal with, which is part of the reason red has been so dominant.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
1. (Ravnica Allegiance): You can't keep a good esper control deck down... Or Wilderness Reclamation... or Gates...
2. (War of the Spark): Guys, I know what we need! We need a cycle of really idiotic flavor text victory cards! Jace's Triumph...
3. (War of the Spark): Lets make the format with control have even more control!
I don't see how you can possibly ban GCW or any piece of the red decks without banning Teferi. When Teferi lands most games just end. If you drastically weaken the red decks Teferi is going to dominate and stifle the format.
That will never happen you can play R, RB, UB, UW and UBw anything as long as there is no Green.
But really the bar to banning Walkers is Sky High. WOTC is not liable to do that at all. Walkers are the heart of marketing campaign for Magic these days and among the most expensive cards especially when they are good enough to make it into Vintage, Legacy or Modern.
I don't like seeing different data for different arguments. When they banned Attune, they presented win matrix information. Here they just presented non-mirror win rate. If you are going to share the win matrix sometimes, I always want it. That way, I'm not concerned about cherry picking data.
As a hobbyist who rarely grinds, I think I will just be less likely to play in a PPTQ. FNM metas near me are fine, though.
Design team is making too many cards that you either can't interact with or the way you interact is very narrow. Kaladesh is FULL of those and frankly vehicles is one of the worst design mistakes in years outside of individual OP cards.
It's not so much that just Goblin Chainsmuggler is so evil... it's the confluence of cards that together make red utterly dominant.
You can't block, you can't remove, Chandra, you can't destroy, Chandra, oh yea red went first you now have 40% less chance of winning.
I quite disagree with the bolded. I NEVER want to return to pre-planeswalker world where all you could do as the proactive player was to lay creatures that could be swept by Wrath of God and the answer to "how to play proactively against sweepers" was either "DON'T" or "play burn". Vehicles are fun, it's just that the offenders are way undercosted in their stats and / or crew cost.
I don't like seeing different data for different arguments. When they banned Attune, they presented win matrix information. Here they just presented non-mirror win rate. If you are going to share the win matrix sometimes, I always want it. That way, I'm not concerned about cherry picking data.
As a hobbyist who rarely grinds, I think I will just be less likely to play in a PPTQ. FNM metas near me are fine, though.
It's not hard to see why the PPTQ and GPs are the way they are, though. I've been trying to brew deck ideas the last few days and the problem with all of them is that the clock one gets put on with red is so rough, there is no way to get most of the strategies online. If someone builds the deck to take on aggro, they are going to lose to the control match up because of the amount of creature removal necessary.
Basically, it's the battle of the sideboards and if it's possible to sideboard out enough cards to change the match up without compromising the original strategy. I'm pretty confident that mono-red has the best matchups with minimal sideboarding. Control can have a bad main deck and still pull somewhat well against mono-red and midrange decks, so they are kind of in the same position. At least in terms of the UW Lists I've seen.
Also, for the next three months it looks like zombies will be a thing again. Control just can't do anything against them except try to wipe the graveyard, and they have ways around it now with the bat token generators and the ability to just self exile for zombie tokens.
To put it frankly, they made red too good and overcosted everything needed to make any magic happen. The earliest free sacrifice outlet is at 3 mana, which is also where the enablers are for any kind of aristocrats build. They put a lot of decent support cards at the 1 and 2 cmc range, but they got only one toughness, making them too vulnerable to removal thanks to the lack of deck building restriction on the red archetype.
1. (Ravnica Allegiance): You can't keep a good esper control deck down... Or Wilderness Reclamation... or Gates...
2. (War of the Spark): Guys, I know what we need! We need a cycle of really idiotic flavor text victory cards! Jace's Triumph...
3. (War of the Spark): Lets make the format with control have even more control!
If vehicles couldn't be crewed by summoning sick creatures I'd have less of a problem with them.
Vehicles isn't the only part of cards you can't interact with. God-Pharaoh's Gift is a slightly more complicated way to cheat things in and Ixalan's Binding isn't even good enough to kill it because the cheat in spell doesn't cast it. Approach is narrow interaction unless you play counter spells or you red deck them dead before they can cast it... oops turn 4 is kind of fast.
Not to discount anything else being said here, but it seems to me that the best decks will always have powerful and difficult-to-interact-with cards. The next tier of decks also has slightly less unfair things to complain about, so without these particular issues, I imagine there will always be something.
I hoped that we would have a largely 'whirler meta that could be exploited with repeatable lifegain. I identified Wildgrowth Walker and Zacama as potential lifegain sources. The competitive meta has become mostly 'whirler and control. My Wildgrowth decks have shown some potential against 'whirler, but don't have enough of a clock to beat control. My Zacama decks have been terrible all around.
At FNM level these decks are still fun. When the ramp decks occasionally work, it can be good. Sandwurm Convergence is excellent against Glorybringer, Phoenix and Heart. Against control, the fail cases of ramp are hilariously bad. Land-based ramp is "not good" against Fall of the Thran, but in a way that provides amusement.
Not to discount anything else being said here, but it seems to me that the best decks will always have powerful and difficult-to-interact-with cards. The next tier of decks also has slightly less unfair things to complain about, so without these particular issues, I imagine there will always be something.
I hoped that we would have a largely 'whirler meta that could be exploited with repeatable lifegain. I identified Wildgrowth Walker and Zacama as potential lifegain sources. The competitive meta has become mostly 'whirler and control. My Wildgrowth decks have shown some potential against 'whirler, but don't have enough of a clock to beat control. My Zacama decks have been terrible all around.
At FNM level these decks are still fun. When the ramp decks occasionally work, it can be good. Sandwurm Convergence is excellent against Glorybringer, Phoenix and Heart. Against control, the fail cases of ramp are hilariously bad. Land-based ramp is "not good" against Fall of the Thran, but in a way that provides amusement.
I'm mostly disappointed in the ability to brew creative decks right now. I've thrown together a couple of bugler deck builds already that look really decent and I'm eager to try a kitchen sink approach to creature spam with Mardu.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
1. (Ravnica Allegiance): You can't keep a good esper control deck down... Or Wilderness Reclamation... or Gates...
2. (War of the Spark): Guys, I know what we need! We need a cycle of really idiotic flavor text victory cards! Jace's Triumph...
3. (War of the Spark): Lets make the format with control have even more control!
Green feels so freaking pushed right now. After ghalta, steel leaf, there's now gigantosaurus. I'm surprised Tidebinder Mage didn't get reprinted.
Green feels pushed yet is the weakest color still.
No it's not, I think the weakest is Blue. Blue has no way to fight off the vast number of super aggro decks at this point. It certainly helps that white is given tons of sweepers that blue can see some representation. But holy moly When you can get 10-11 power consistently on turn 3, that's on legacy level and a few games i've been Elf - Steel Leaf - Ripjaw - Ghalta or even the new green dino. I don't even know how it's being held in check when you can get lines like that.
Green feels so freaking pushed right now. After ghalta, steel leaf, there's now gigantosaurus. I'm surprised Tidebinder Mage didn't get reprinted.
Green feels pushed yet is the weakest color still.
No it's not, I think the weakest is Blue. Blue has no way to fight off the vast number of super aggro decks at this point. It certainly helps that white is given tons of sweepers that blue can see some representation. But holy moly When you can get 10-11 power consistently on turn 3, that's on legacy level and a few games i've been Elf - Steel Leaf - Ripjaw - Ghalta or even the new green dino. I don't even know how it's being held in check when you can get lines like that.
Red has a lot of ways to play the early game right now, which is very critical in the aggressive format we are in from Amonket. Ixalan is a stronger midrange set that has some early drops, and rivals has practically no early drops last I checked. Dominaria has a few, but they are white mostly. Core 2019 pushed more small fry into the fray, but I wouldn't call them hyper aggressive.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
1. (Ravnica Allegiance): You can't keep a good esper control deck down... Or Wilderness Reclamation... or Gates...
2. (War of the Spark): Guys, I know what we need! We need a cycle of really idiotic flavor text victory cards! Jace's Triumph...
3. (War of the Spark): Lets make the format with control have even more control!
Man if thread posting is any indication, Standard really is a dead format...
Anyway gonna ask: is the fog-turns deck legit? I can see the allure of getting instant value out of a Nexus of Fate instead of having to wait some turns after casting Approach of the Second Sun but Nexus of fate seems to demand more space. That said, can the deck withstand fast aggro openings? Will suck a lot for the red zone if it does, although it opens a wild format where everyone durdles and cares little about attacking. I can dig a relief from the usual but it's hard to imagine this was intended.
Sperling refers to the deck's success, at least for the short term the deck has reared its head and good luck getting your copies.
Thanks WotC, brilliant plan many of us told you was sh** last time you tried it.
<thumbs up>
Yeah in retrospective turbo-fog was a natural fit for Teferi. Like, instead of trying to have all kinds of permission and removal at the ready to protect, to the question of "how do we ensure Teferi survives on turn 5?" somebody finally mentioned "FOG!!". I wonder why R/B goes for the Insult which is kind of awkward if the opponent goes for the -2/-0 spell. IMO Sorcerous Spyglass on Teferi s also a beating since it forces them to topdeck fogs and Turns in the right order and screws them the moment they don't.
Question: How scarce are the Nexus of Fate compared to any other mythic? Given that not all mythics appear in boxes, it appears that Nexus would actually be more abundant than any one. Not that I defend the card, just that if it is abundant enough maybe there's not the risk of preparing for a deck whose chances to face are lower, which would make it the best deck by default.
The Nexus of Fate has a price that is floating higher than normal because the only way to get them is to buy a box of Core 2019. After a certain point all the promos will be released to market and the price should come down.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
1. (Ravnica Allegiance): You can't keep a good esper control deck down... Or Wilderness Reclamation... or Gates...
2. (War of the Spark): Guys, I know what we need! We need a cycle of really idiotic flavor text victory cards! Jace's Triumph...
3. (War of the Spark): Lets make the format with control have even more control!
It's not so much that just Goblin Chainsmuggler is so evil... it's the confluence of cards that together make red utterly dominant.
You can't block, you can't remove, Chandra, you can't destroy, Chandra, oh yea red went first you now have 40% less chance of winning.
They are going overboard on too many fronts. Look at the utter value each card red has to play provides. No drawbacks, no compromises, no weaknesses except poor draws and we can all see that's not happening very frequently.
Arena standard is exposing a lot of people to rampant red, vehicles, and control without very much else going on and it's just not that much fun anymore. I wish we could get back to balanced sets like we had 3 years ago like RTR and Khans. Even when they admit making mistakes (midrange stupidfest) they're not checking the desire to make cards that just end games or crowd out entire strategies that can't interact. Approach is part of that problem. God-Pharaoh's Gift (amongst all the other utter trash in Kaladesh)/Aetherworks McCheatypants are the problem. The rash of indestructible and uninteractive is the problem. They can't fix it with a single ban (as they've already tried with several.
They need to fix this garbage format at the drawing board. I for one cannot wait for Kaladesh et al to go away.
It's not the vehicles that are causing issues. The problem is all the low cost indestructible threats that require exile effects to even manage. I'm not just talking about the gods, but recurring threats as well such as scrapheap scrounger and Earthshaker Khenra. Because exiling is required and the team doesn't want to powercreep the game, the removal got bumped up to 4 CMC for unconditional spells as basic kill anything spells at 3 cmc or lower weren't cutting it. This was a format where Anguished Unmaking and Declaration in Stone would have worked wonders.
The post rotation landscape looks very different in terms of support spells, and I feel strongly it will be fair meta more than a rush and control one. Removal gets better when the threats can't keep coming back or are difficult to deal with, which is part of the reason red has been so dominant.
1. (Ravnica Allegiance): You can't keep a good esper control deck down... Or Wilderness Reclamation... or Gates...
2. (War of the Spark): Guys, I know what we need! We need a cycle of really idiotic flavor text victory cards! Jace's Triumph...
3. (War of the Spark): Lets make the format with control have even more control!
But really the bar to banning Walkers is Sky High. WOTC is not liable to do that at all. Walkers are the heart of marketing campaign for Magic these days and among the most expensive cards especially when they are good enough to make it into Vintage, Legacy or Modern.
Banmania in standard has officially ended.
I don't like seeing different data for different arguments. When they banned Attune, they presented win matrix information. Here they just presented non-mirror win rate. If you are going to share the win matrix sometimes, I always want it. That way, I'm not concerned about cherry picking data.
As a hobbyist who rarely grinds, I think I will just be less likely to play in a PPTQ. FNM metas near me are fine, though.
RNA Standard: Grixis Midrange, Jund Deathwhirler, Sultai Vannifar
GRN Standard: Red Midrange, Mono-Blue Tempo, Wr Aggro, Gruul Experimental Dinosaurs, Sultai Midrange, Jeskai Midrange
Modern: Bant Spirits
Forcing a single archetype in all formats: too many colors, bad mana.
I quite disagree with the bolded. I NEVER want to return to pre-planeswalker world where all you could do as the proactive player was to lay creatures that could be swept by Wrath of God and the answer to "how to play proactively against sweepers" was either "DON'T" or "play burn". Vehicles are fun, it's just that the offenders are way undercosted in their stats and / or crew cost.
It's not hard to see why the PPTQ and GPs are the way they are, though. I've been trying to brew deck ideas the last few days and the problem with all of them is that the clock one gets put on with red is so rough, there is no way to get most of the strategies online. If someone builds the deck to take on aggro, they are going to lose to the control match up because of the amount of creature removal necessary.
Basically, it's the battle of the sideboards and if it's possible to sideboard out enough cards to change the match up without compromising the original strategy. I'm pretty confident that mono-red has the best matchups with minimal sideboarding. Control can have a bad main deck and still pull somewhat well against mono-red and midrange decks, so they are kind of in the same position. At least in terms of the UW Lists I've seen.
Also, for the next three months it looks like zombies will be a thing again. Control just can't do anything against them except try to wipe the graveyard, and they have ways around it now with the bat token generators and the ability to just self exile for zombie tokens.
To put it frankly, they made red too good and overcosted everything needed to make any magic happen. The earliest free sacrifice outlet is at 3 mana, which is also where the enablers are for any kind of aristocrats build. They put a lot of decent support cards at the 1 and 2 cmc range, but they got only one toughness, making them too vulnerable to removal thanks to the lack of deck building restriction on the red archetype.
1. (Ravnica Allegiance): You can't keep a good esper control deck down... Or Wilderness Reclamation... or Gates...
2. (War of the Spark): Guys, I know what we need! We need a cycle of really idiotic flavor text victory cards! Jace's Triumph...
3. (War of the Spark): Lets make the format with control have even more control!
Vehicles isn't the only part of cards you can't interact with. God-Pharaoh's Gift is a slightly more complicated way to cheat things in and Ixalan's Binding isn't even good enough to kill it because the cheat in spell doesn't cast it. Approach is narrow interaction unless you play counter spells or you red deck them dead before they can cast it... oops turn 4 is kind of fast.
I hoped that we would have a largely 'whirler meta that could be exploited with repeatable lifegain. I identified Wildgrowth Walker and Zacama as potential lifegain sources. The competitive meta has become mostly 'whirler and control. My Wildgrowth decks have shown some potential against 'whirler, but don't have enough of a clock to beat control. My Zacama decks have been terrible all around.
At FNM level these decks are still fun. When the ramp decks occasionally work, it can be good. Sandwurm Convergence is excellent against Glorybringer, Phoenix and Heart. Against control, the fail cases of ramp are hilariously bad. Land-based ramp is "not good" against Fall of the Thran, but in a way that provides amusement.
RNA Standard: Grixis Midrange, Jund Deathwhirler, Sultai Vannifar
GRN Standard: Red Midrange, Mono-Blue Tempo, Wr Aggro, Gruul Experimental Dinosaurs, Sultai Midrange, Jeskai Midrange
Modern: Bant Spirits
Forcing a single archetype in all formats: too many colors, bad mana.
I'm mostly disappointed in the ability to brew creative decks right now. I've thrown together a couple of bugler deck builds already that look really decent and I'm eager to try a kitchen sink approach to creature spam with Mardu.
1. (Ravnica Allegiance): You can't keep a good esper control deck down... Or Wilderness Reclamation... or Gates...
2. (War of the Spark): Guys, I know what we need! We need a cycle of really idiotic flavor text victory cards! Jace's Triumph...
3. (War of the Spark): Lets make the format with control have even more control!
Modern Tallowisp Spirits - A Modern Tallowisp Deck UW
Eldrazi Ninjas - Summoning Octopus Jutsu YYYYAAAHHHH!
STANDARD
Naban Wizards
Green feels pushed yet is the weakest color still.
Standard: BG Golgari Midrange
Modern: U Merfolk GWUBR 5 Color Humans UBW Esper Gifts GW Bogles
No it's not, I think the weakest is Blue. Blue has no way to fight off the vast number of super aggro decks at this point. It certainly helps that white is given tons of sweepers that blue can see some representation. But holy moly When you can get 10-11 power consistently on turn 3, that's on legacy level and a few games i've been Elf - Steel Leaf - Ripjaw - Ghalta or even the new green dino. I don't even know how it's being held in check when you can get lines like that.
Modern Tallowisp Spirits - A Modern Tallowisp Deck UW
Eldrazi Ninjas - Summoning Octopus Jutsu YYYYAAAHHHH!
STANDARD
Naban Wizards
Red has a lot of ways to play the early game right now, which is very critical in the aggressive format we are in from Amonket. Ixalan is a stronger midrange set that has some early drops, and rivals has practically no early drops last I checked. Dominaria has a few, but they are white mostly. Core 2019 pushed more small fry into the fray, but I wouldn't call them hyper aggressive.
1. (Ravnica Allegiance): You can't keep a good esper control deck down... Or Wilderness Reclamation... or Gates...
2. (War of the Spark): Guys, I know what we need! We need a cycle of really idiotic flavor text victory cards! Jace's Triumph...
3. (War of the Spark): Lets make the format with control have even more control!
Modern Tallowisp Spirits - A Modern Tallowisp Deck UW
Eldrazi Ninjas - Summoning Octopus Jutsu YYYYAAAHHHH!
STANDARD
Naban Wizards
Anyway gonna ask: is the fog-turns deck legit? I can see the allure of getting instant value out of a Nexus of Fate instead of having to wait some turns after casting Approach of the Second Sun but Nexus of fate seems to demand more space. That said, can the deck withstand fast aggro openings? Will suck a lot for the red zone if it does, although it opens a wild format where everyone durdles and cares little about attacking. I can dig a relief from the usual but it's hard to imagine this was intended.
Sperling refers to the deck's success, at least for the short term the deck has reared its head and good luck getting your copies.
Thanks WotC, brilliant plan many of us told you was sh** last time you tried it.
<thumbs up>
And Green is getting some play those Sultai Decks look fun.
Question: How scarce are the Nexus of Fate compared to any other mythic? Given that not all mythics appear in boxes, it appears that Nexus would actually be more abundant than any one. Not that I defend the card, just that if it is abundant enough maybe there's not the risk of preparing for a deck whose chances to face are lower, which would make it the best deck by default.
1. (Ravnica Allegiance): You can't keep a good esper control deck down... Or Wilderness Reclamation... or Gates...
2. (War of the Spark): Guys, I know what we need! We need a cycle of really idiotic flavor text victory cards! Jace's Triumph...
3. (War of the Spark): Lets make the format with control have even more control!
What do you mean? Jace's defeat counters Jace and Gideon's defeat exiles an attacking Gideon.
Modern Tallowisp Spirits - A Modern Tallowisp Deck UW
Eldrazi Ninjas - Summoning Octopus Jutsu YYYYAAAHHHH!
STANDARD
Naban Wizards