Another recent example of degeneracy on Arena: I was playing a control vs. control matchup. A typical slow slogfest of what that is. It got to a point where the game turned around in my favor because they literally were about to run out of cards long before me. So then what do they do? They use Teferi's 2nd ability on itself for about 20 turns, returning it to their library over and over as the only card in their library, when they should have lost long ago for running out of cards. Someone else in my position would have rage quit but I didn't. I had Kaya out and kept exiling from their graveyard every turn. Eventually I got enough exiled to kill them. But really, I'm not sure you're supposed to be able to do the shennanigans with Teferi they pulled and that was the most absurd game on Arena I've played so far.
Teferi tucking is a legit win con in control right now.
'
If so, it's one of the most cheesy win cons ever.
Another recent example of degeneracy on Arena: I was playing a control vs. control matchup. A typical slow slogfest of what that is. It got to a point where the game turned around in my favor because they literally were about to run out of cards long before me. So then what do they do? They use Teferi's 2nd ability on itself for about 20 turns, returning it to their library over and over as the only card in their library, when they should have lost long ago for running out of cards. Someone else in my position would have rage quit but I didn't. I had Kaya out and kept exiling from their graveyard every turn. Eventually I got enough exiled to kill them. But really, I'm not sure you're supposed to be able to do the shennanigans with Teferi they pulled and that was the most absurd game on Arena I've played so far.
Teferi tucking is a legit win con in control right now.
'
If so, it's one of the most cheesy win cons ever.
Control has always had those grindy win cons. UW control in Theros standard had a tier 1 deck with Elixir of Immortality that was used to mill the opponent. The Teferi tuck plan is usually used as a get an emblem then tuck teferi infinitely to exile a permanent each turn, but can be used just to stave off mill too.
I'm mostly doing a mix of Bo1 and Bo1-up-to-10 via the constructed events for extra gold and cards with the extra gems left over after buying packs.
That is your problem Bo1 is a terrible "grinding" format, as it lets the decks that are super strong game 1 run rampant. Imagine the Meta that Dredge would invoke if Vintage were Bo1s
The other frustration I'm sometimes finding with MTG Arena is that I could swear a chunk of the players are trolls or are cheesing the system. As in they abuse the "time out" feature to try to get others to rage quit or otherwise stretch the time of play out unnecessarily. I've spent way too many matches swearing under my breath waiting for the other player to do something, and I'm pretty sure it's not just the server being slow.
Yeah. I run into that occasionally. It sucks. I guess if enough people report it, the players who do it will get weeded out. But sometimes I don't bother reporting them. Sometimes they play fine until they are about to lose, then use all their timeouts.
Those Arena matches where the opponent let's every single time out go right to the last bit drives me insane. It's annoying there isn't a report function for people doing that.
You need to provide evidence for them stalling. By the end of the game I just want to toss my computer into the wall and be done with it hehe... so don't want to bother going through capturing evidence and stuff like that.
Pretty annoying.
We can report a player similarly to a bug, but it's not easy. I have to submit the log file, etc. An easy report feature would be great. It would take time to go through all the reported logs manually, but I'd bet a script could be developed to preprocess them pretty quickly. Once people get weeded out or warned, the incidence should go down. Developer and support priorities.
Another recent example of degeneracy on Arena: I was playing a control vs. control matchup. A typical slow slogfest of what that is. It got to a point where the game turned around in my favor because they literally were about to run out of cards long before me. So then what do they do? They use Teferi's 2nd ability on itself for about 20 turns, returning it to their library over and over as the only card in their library, when they should have lost long ago for running out of cards. Someone else in my position would have rage quit but I didn't. I had Kaya out and kept exiling from their graveyard every turn. Eventually I got enough exiled to kill them. But really, I'm not sure you're supposed to be able to do the shennanigans with Teferi they pulled and that was the most absurd game on Arena I've played so far.
Teferi tucking is a legit win con in control right now.
'
If so, it's one of the most cheesy win cons ever.
Control has always had those grindy win cons. UW control in Theros standard had a tier 1 deck with Elixir of Immortality that was used to mill the opponent. The Teferi tuck plan is usually used as a get an emblem then tuck teferi infinitely to exile a permanent each turn, but can be used just to stave off mill too.
Control definitely has its wild win cons at times and can be a pain. I am a running an Esper control deck with Teferi myself, among other decks. But I never thought to use Teferi in the way I describe, I figure its ultimate is "ouch" enough as it is. The particular spin on Esper control I'm running, though, is a bit different than the net decks with Karn and Teferi that I see everywhere. My primary planeswalker and win con is actually Kaya, in a deck filled with exile cards. Teferi is only there for further support and "win more" or as an alternate win con.
After encountering the "Teferi tucking" thing, though, I still think that's really cheesy. Cheesier than simply using its ultimate.
Those Arena matches where the opponent let's every single time out go right to the last bit drives me insane. It's annoying there isn't a report function for people doing that.
You need to provide evidence for them stalling. By the end of the game I just want to toss my computer into the wall and be done with it hehe... so don't want to bother going through capturing evidence and stuff like that.
Pretty annoying.
Reporting never occurred to me really, or capturing evidence. It just seems like an annoying plague that I ultimately can't do much about.
It's obvious what's going on when they clearly do it the moment that the game has turned around against their favor or they are going to lose in a few turns. And I just find myself muttering "lose with grace and just press the concede button". That's what I do if I see I clearly am going to lose in a turn or two.
It's especially obvious and unecessary when people are literally running mono-red rush or burn decks. You don't need to even use the time out feature at all with that. Actually, even when playing a slow control deck, I've never once used the time out feature myself at all.
And if people are going to abandon the game midway to go cook something, they shouldn't have started the game.
The Tier rankings I see:
Proven (Tier 1-1.5): Esper Control, Wx Aggro, Mono-R
Established: Mono-U, GBx Midrange, Gruul, Nexus, Bant Mid/Flash, Esper Mid, Grixis Control
Based loosely on: SCG Richmond Open/Classic, Fandom Legends 5/9, MPL Week 1
Corrections, improvements? I expect to be wrong on some borderline situations and don't want to create a problem, so please let's just try to get this approximately right (or if someone wants to go nuts on this, PM me with a proposal).
I expect to implement this (with corrections based on feedback) on Wednesday.
The next significant results seem like SCG Syracuse Classic, MPL Week 2.
Since the MPL decks are submitted a week in advance and are not actually played very much in the league, I am not sure how up-to-date and significant they are. My assumption of their significance is thinking that the pros test them heavily before submission. I think time will tell whether they are a trailing indicator, a leading indicator, an inbred metagame or some combination.
Edit: I left Phoenix in Established also. It looks to me like we need Nexus, Bant Midrange/Flash and Esper Midrange threads if anyone feels inspired.
Corrections, improvements? I expect to be wrong on some borderline situations and don't want to create a problem, so please let's just try to get this approximately right (or if someone wants to go nuts on this, PM me with a proposal).
I am curious what your criteria for Proven and Established is. I would argue that Grixis Control is up there with Mono Red Aggro, and Esper Control... Bant Midrange is seemingly up there as well.
If your goal is to delineate what decks are viable for something like an Open event and what decks are known to have stuck around as more than just a flavor of the week, then something like Mono Blue Aggro does not belong in Proven or Established. If you are talking about ranking to Mythic on Arena, then Bant Midrange and Grixis Control are far superior to Mono Blue Aggro. In which case they probably belong in Proven while decks like Simic Midrange, Nexus, Mono Blue Aggro, and Esper Midrange are still playable but much lesser quality for ranking purposes.
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LEGACY|UWStonebladeCOMMANDER|UBGThe Mimeoplsm Ooze & Aghhs!MODERN|UWAzorius Control THE JUICE[BOX]³ CUBE
I have no objective criteria for these tier listings. If anyone wants to propose some, feel free. I am just looking at significant tournament results.
Eyeballing the Syracuse results and MPL decklists, I conclude that Esper Midrange is Proven, Jeskai Superfriends is Established. 4C Dreadhorde could also be Established, but it can be covered by our GBx Midrange thread. Esper Control seems to have fallen to Established. The MPL decklists seem dated.
In the absence of significant disagreement, I will implement this on about Wednesday.
I went to an MCQ yesterday. Pretty much every round there was some 4 colour command the dreadhorde mirror that went to time because the state was such a mess and they gained so much life. My buddy went 3-1-3 with the deck and all 3 his draws were mirrors (one of those mirrors went an extra 40 minutes after time, with no extensions)
I can only take so much Field of the Dead and Nissa, Who Shakes the World, at this point. There was enough of it before rotation and I am not very pleased to see that the format on Arena is still absolutely homogenized by these cards. I am typically not someone in favor of card bans, but it is crazy how out of control they are letting design get these days. No wonder this section of the forums is a ghost town.
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Standard is weird right now. I can't really wrap my head around it and have only made it to Silver 1 (I'm not a good player either, so take everything as a grain of salt).
I decided to go and build a slower deck, so I'm running Bant (ie mono green with Oko and selesnya legend splash) food wolves, and maaaaaaaaaan the format is either ridiculously fast or centered around Field of the Dead. I'm not really that fond of it. At least you know what you face when they play stuff. That's what I hated about blue back when Nexus was legal in BO1. You had to play the game completely differently whether they used counterspells or fogs, and they only played lands until you knew what you were going against. When someone drops a Gutterbones or a guildgate at least I know what I need to do.
I don't know why but I feel as though Wizards of the Coast treats Standard nowadays as an obligation more than a passion project because of how they're sacrificing the health of the format in order to power creep certain cards for other formats without any sort of ramification whatsoever. If the company hates Standard so much why not go back to the old rotation system that made the format more enjoyable for those who don't have to worry about cards getting rotated out so soon? I just don't like how Play Design at Wizards of the Coast are perfectly fine with emergency bannings in Standard at the cost of losing players at the LGS just because they have Magic Arena to fall back on.
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America Bless Christ Jesus
"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 might actually start caring more about standard now, as I heard stores are actually scheduling standard RCQs now. Is it all just Bx(x) decks right now?
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If so, it's one of the most cheesy win cons ever.
Control has always had those grindy win cons. UW control in Theros standard had a tier 1 deck with Elixir of Immortality that was used to mill the opponent. The Teferi tuck plan is usually used as a get an emblem then tuck teferi infinitely to exile a permanent each turn, but can be used just to stave off mill too.
That is your problem Bo1 is a terrible "grinding" format, as it lets the decks that are super strong game 1 run rampant. Imagine the Meta that Dredge would invoke if Vintage were Bo1s
Dragons of Legend, Lead by Scion of the UR-Dragon
The Gitrog Monster
Gonti, Lord of Luxury
Shogun Saskia
Hive World
Atraxa hates fun
Abzan
Yeah. I run into that occasionally. It sucks. I guess if enough people report it, the players who do it will get weeded out. But sometimes I don't bother reporting them. Sometimes they play fine until they are about to lose, then use all their timeouts.
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.
You need to provide evidence for them stalling. By the end of the game I just want to toss my computer into the wall and be done with it hehe... so don't want to bother going through capturing evidence and stuff like that.
Pretty annoying.
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.
Control definitely has its wild win cons at times and can be a pain. I am a running an Esper control deck with Teferi myself, among other decks. But I never thought to use Teferi in the way I describe, I figure its ultimate is "ouch" enough as it is. The particular spin on Esper control I'm running, though, is a bit different than the net decks with Karn and Teferi that I see everywhere. My primary planeswalker and win con is actually Kaya, in a deck filled with exile cards. Teferi is only there for further support and "win more" or as an alternate win con.
After encountering the "Teferi tucking" thing, though, I still think that's really cheesy. Cheesier than simply using its ultimate.
Reporting never occurred to me really, or capturing evidence. It just seems like an annoying plague that I ultimately can't do much about.
It's obvious what's going on when they clearly do it the moment that the game has turned around against their favor or they are going to lose in a few turns. And I just find myself muttering "lose with grace and just press the concede button". That's what I do if I see I clearly am going to lose in a turn or two.
It's especially obvious and unecessary when people are literally running mono-red rush or burn decks. You don't need to even use the time out feature at all with that. Actually, even when playing a slow control deck, I've never once used the time out feature myself at all.
And if people are going to abandon the game midway to go cook something, they shouldn't have started the game.
Proven (Tier 1-1.5): Esper Control, Wx Aggro, Mono-R
Established: Mono-U, GBx Midrange, Gruul, Nexus, Bant Mid/Flash, Esper Mid, Grixis Control
Based loosely on: SCG Richmond Open/Classic, Fandom Legends 5/9, MPL Week 1
Corrections, improvements? I expect to be wrong on some borderline situations and don't want to create a problem, so please let's just try to get this approximately right (or if someone wants to go nuts on this, PM me with a proposal).
I expect to implement this (with corrections based on feedback) on Wednesday.
The next significant results seem like SCG Syracuse Classic, MPL Week 2.
Since the MPL decks are submitted a week in advance and are not actually played very much in the league, I am not sure how up-to-date and significant they are. My assumption of their significance is thinking that the pros test them heavily before submission. I think time will tell whether they are a trailing indicator, a leading indicator, an inbred metagame or some combination.
Edit: I left Phoenix in Established also. It looks to me like we need Nexus, Bant Midrange/Flash and Esper Midrange threads if anyone feels inspired.
Edit 2: The (MOCS?) Standard Premier #11866401 seems like a relevant tournament result.
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 am curious what your criteria for Proven and Established is. I would argue that Grixis Control is up there with Mono Red Aggro, and Esper Control... Bant Midrange is seemingly up there as well.
If your goal is to delineate what decks are viable for something like an Open event and what decks are known to have stuck around as more than just a flavor of the week, then something like Mono Blue Aggro does not belong in Proven or Established. If you are talking about ranking to Mythic on Arena, then Bant Midrange and Grixis Control are far superior to Mono Blue Aggro. In which case they probably belong in Proven while decks like Simic Midrange, Nexus, Mono Blue Aggro, and Esper Midrange are still playable but much lesser quality for ranking purposes.
THE JUICE[BOX]³ CUBE
Eyeballing the Syracuse results and MPL decklists, I conclude that Esper Midrange is Proven, Jeskai Superfriends is Established. 4C Dreadhorde could also be Established, but it can be covered by our GBx Midrange thread. Esper Control seems to have fallen to Established. The MPL decklists seem dated.
In the absence of significant disagreement, I will implement this on about Wednesday.
- hoser2
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 can only take so much Field of the Dead and Nissa, Who Shakes the World, at this point. There was enough of it before rotation and I am not very pleased to see that the format on Arena is still absolutely homogenized by these cards. I am typically not someone in favor of card bans, but it is crazy how out of control they are letting design get these days. No wonder this section of the forums is a ghost town.
THE JUICE[BOX]³ CUBE
I decided to go and build a slower deck, so I'm running Bant (ie mono green with Oko and selesnya legend splash) food wolves, and maaaaaaaaaan the format is either ridiculously fast or centered around Field of the Dead. I'm not really that fond of it. At least you know what you face when they play stuff. That's what I hated about blue back when Nexus was legal in BO1. You had to play the game completely differently whether they used counterspells or fogs, and they only played lands until you knew what you were going against. When someone drops a Gutterbones or a guildgate at least I know what I need to do.
"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