Quote from -spooky- »Commune With the Gods is pretty sweet tech. How does the deck play for you?
It's surprisingly good against slower midrange decks, I had a game where I was able to loop 2 eternal winesses against Jund to hold off a tarmgoyf until I drew into the white source for congregation. Commune is a solid dig spell to replace the sunstrike legionaries.
A "50/50 deck" that's also perfectly balanced can't exist due to metagame shifts. Even if only players with significantly above average skill played the 50/50 deck, that's still a massive portion of the meta. Of course, there are also a massive number of players who aren't that good but think they are, or will just copy what the pros are winning with, making the deck even bigger. I'd expect a "50/50 deck" to quickly reach at least 20% of the meta, and likely more. Once you start to grow beyond 20% of the meta people start metagaming against that deck because it's now worth sacrificing other matchups for free wins against it. If strategies dedicated to fighting the deck can't get better than 50/50 against it that means the "50/50 deck" is obviously stronger than 50/50. If those strategies can get free wins, then it's no longer a 50/50 deck.
It definitely would have been a problem in RTR-THS standard, where esper control was already a top-tier deck while running Dissolve.It might have helped THS-KTK standard where Abzan was completely dominant. I can't imagine it being healthy in KTK-BFZ standard with Jace, Vryn's Prodigy and four-color goodstuff decks everywhere - it would likely lead to one of the WUBR decks dominating. I don't think it would have made a difference after that; Collected Company decks and Emrakul/Mardu Vehicles decks were dominant enough that I think Mana Leak wouldn't be able to shift them. Aetherworks Marvel, Copycat, and Temur Energy could all play Mana Leak themselves anyway.
Since Caw-Blade and Delver demonstrated it was necessary to pull back on blue's power level. It's really not the power of counterspells that's killed control in standard - one of the strongest decks in RTR-THS standard was a control deck that didn't run a single creature outside of Mutavault, with Dissolve as its primary counterspell. The real problem is the lack of four-mana unconditional wrath effects.
This is a terrible idea. Small set limited environments have been tried, and they always turn out terrible. Stop trying to "fix" a format that's one of the most popular in the game just because you personally don't like it.
I'm pretty sure you're also vastly overestimating how may "useless" cards there are. I'd estimate close to 70% of a set's commons are playable in limited even if they're not optimal, (Monastery Flock was actually a decent card in its format) and another 15% are cards that have a constructed use even if they're no good in limited. (Naturalize variants for sideboards, or build-around cards like the aforementioned Amulet of Vigor)
On a more general level, there's only so many modern-playable cards possible that aren't simply straight power creep. Take 1cmc targeted discard spells, for example: No deck is going to run more than 8 of them. (even 8rack, since they need to be able to get lands out of your hand) Any new modern-playable 1cmc targeted discard spell would have to supplant Inquisition of Kozilek or Thoughtseize.
You've missed my point entirely. It doesn't matter how much more consistency you give people, because the correct move won't be to play the more consistent deck - it'll be to play fewer lands. Legacy decks have lots of consistency tools, but instead of preventing Mana screw they just cut down on land counts even further.
The ability to discard lands at-will isn't just a risk for combos. There are a few lands that care about being in the graveyard like [/card]Dakmor Salvage[/card], a massive number of cards that benefit from throwing lands in the graveyard such as anything with Dredge and Threshold, and several cards that mitigate the downside of discarding lands like [/card]Crucible of Worlds[/card].
The game is inherently balanced around the way the mana system works now, and any changes made to it won't actually have the effect you want. As you've stated there are plenty of tools to reduce variance in the card pool, but they never result in more consistent decks. Instead, people simply use them to play fewer lands. There's no way around this without drastically reworking the rules from the ground up. It's not a lack of access to consistent mana, it's simply game theory pushing people towards an equilibrium that trades consistency for power.
I think the mistake that leads people to believe in a "matchup lottery" is the assumption of competence. If people goldfish optimally, and their decks don't interact, then you'd get a "matchup lottery." But most people don't goldfish perfectly, the pros simply play their own decks better than most people. At my last FNM, I won multiple "bad" matchups because my opponents weren't very good at piloting their decks and lost a "good" matchup to a tier 3 deck because the player was good.
That all falls under the purview of development, not design.
The problem is more in the distribution of answers. Right now all the strongest removal options, including [/card]Glorybringer[/card], are red. The other colors don't have the ability to match them. That said, I think energy is just too efficient to be stopped by targeted answers - especially since the deck can splash for whatever the best threats are. We could use better answers to The Scarab God, sure, but the fact that a Temur Energy deck can run it in the first place is an even bigger problem.
It remains to be seen how the development shakeups that happened after the bannings will affect standard.
- Traditional reanimator like YellowMimic's list, with game-ending creatures.
- A list that combines living end with the old Gifts Ungiven and Unburial Rites package for extra consistency.
- Lists based around any creature combo you want.
- Play Eternal Witness so you can get living end back and cast it again!
Most of these possibilities are probably bad, but the sheer size of the space having access to any creature rather than just cycling opens up means there's likely a few alternative builds that are viable.
I'm not sure Grixis Shadow is entirely a midrange deck. Midrange decks don't usually play cards like Temur Battle Rage. It's the best parts of midrange combined with the best parts of tempo decks like Delver.
There's a lot of redundant options for everything but Drake and Living Death. If you have a land that taps for multiple mana, you can replace the Viscera Seer and Haruspex with an outlet for it.
You can use milling instead of drawing, but that makes the combo take forever due to each loop increasing the number of ETB/Death triggers. The combo itself won't make your table mad, but making them sit there while you go through a dozen ETB and death triggers just so you can loop Living Death again with even more creatures in the graveyard will certainly make them never want to play with you again.
And I'm saying you're wrong about that. Take a look at the actual standard decks from back then and you'll find they play just as many rares as decks today do. Take a look at the sets overall and you'll find just as much useless junk.