Quote from Teia Rabishu »There's a lot about the pro scene that really trickles some bad values down through the playerbase when you get right down to it. Problem is I can only antagonize so many people in one article, you know?
True that.
There's only so many times I can handle people questioning why I mainboard Duress instead of Thoughtseize or inquisition of Kozilek, when those cards are outrageously priced and someone would have to have either gotten lucky with their drafts or have a lot of disposable income devoted to magic just to have them. But yeah, it goes back to the whole deal of Wizards needing to print something like Vingolf Engage Knights each rotation that contains all the dominant main deck cards found in top pro-tour decks that are rotating out. Just slap two of each in there and sell them at msrp 35 usd to all major retailers.
Joke aside, I'm hoping they got something good to actually show in the next few days. This is not giving me a good impression considering they are charging a lot more for this.
Fyi, I mostly have stuck in two color instead of venturing into three color since I like the consistency, so my advice is coming from my experience playing dimir mill and Orzhov gideon stomps.
Also, Tyrant's Scorn works better if you include counter spells like Thought collapse, Sinister Sabotage, etc. That way if you need to deal with something that is too big for scorn to kill, you bounce it and counter it. I'd pick a multi-color counter for hero to trigger.
Imagine what happens next year if they do something like Battlebond 2, only they price it at the price of modern horizons and throw enemy fetchlands in.
I agree with everything you stated except for the state of standard. I guess you can call it karma finally doing it's thing, but the net deck culture has completely obliterated the game as far as the one vs one matches. This is going to encourage wizards to push for more Dragons style type flex cards over the original cheap and low cost narrow answers they used to print a lot, resulting in a power creep of the 2-4 cmc spells much like how we saw a power creep of the 2-4 mana creature spells back around Kahns -> Kaladesh. Wizards actually power crept the 4-6 cmc slots in Amonkhet -> Rivals to push a top end format, and I'd argue that some of the things we see now are stronger than even the dragons out of Dragons of Tarkir or the Eldrazi in BFZ. The only things close to the new creatures in the 5-6 cmc are the original Eldrazi and trons two signature top end walkers.
Also, standard health is partially linked to the Limited and Draft environments of Arena. A lot of people who dump tons of time into arena use the two as a way to optimize their card acquisition, and War is a very "you get a bomb or die" limited experience. So regardless of how nice the money looks coming in from MTG:A, this looks a bit like WoW going out of Wrath of the Lich King to Cataclysm.
Then on top of this, there is the problem with the Mythic Edition sales on Ebay plus the company wants to do a special Japanese card promotion, which means having to dedicate resources to not only print english boxes, but Japanese boxes of the same set. Then they are also releasing the Japanese promotional walkers at a rate of 1/4 prize packs.
War of the Spark is probably going to get opened even more than Dominaria thanks to the theme and power of the set, resulting in an implosion of the card values in the set and an inflation of all the shocklands as people rush to get their mana bases sorted. Guilds of Ravnica and Allegiance are no longer going to be drafted heavily, leaving a limited supply of shocklands on the table.
Meanwhile, all the checklands are rotating soon, and Sulfur Falls got a 3 of spot in the UR Tempo decks. If someone wants to get the best bang for their buck, just get UR tempo. It comes with a Phoenix, three sulfur falls, and a bunch of other decent cards at a good price. There's still one lingering at my Target that I am probably going to go get while every timmy is blowing money on WAR.
Also, Rivals and Ixalan are being powered by EDH at the moment and are mostly forgotten. If you have anything you want from there I'd grab them when you have the chance. Core 2019 was dismally opened as well and a lot of the modern playable sideboard cards are dirt cheap. All the money is stuck in Nicol Bolas, the Ravager, which is going to plummet in value once rotation hits to probably 10-15 dollars before going up again due to EDH.
Dominaria got opened so much the prices are depressed heavily on the singles. I wouldn't take the price as any indication of lack of playability. We're talking Kahns of Tarkir 2.0 due to Teferi and Karn soaking up dollar value.
I was actually serious. I didn't keep track of modern the past few weeks so it was a legitimate question, not sarcasm.
Also Frontier isn't glorious, it's a niche format that has a cult following. That and I'm not holding my breath for anything WoTC pushes as a format to hold, but I do know some people who are speculating on that inbetween standard and modern format.
Technically, EDH seems to be having a huge boom thanks to War of the Spark, given the price trends I've seen.
The problem with predicting what is good in the new set is that no one has really built a deck with the design space opened up to such a degree. Walkers that are enchantments, even if they are costed at 3+, are pretty damn powerful even at uncommon. The main issue is combating the degeneracy that got introduced from expanding on existing areas like recurring graveyard threats. The new Teferi is another one of the walkers that I think is going to become a staple pretty fast.
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This just happened to me and I've never opened something worth more than a modern masters box on release.
The fact they put Jace and Ugin in the last one is pretty telling, to be frank. I think the artwork on a lot of the mythic edition cards this time around looks bad, especially Nahiri and Tezzeret.
I mean, adding brawl is relatively easy to do from a programming perspective and they probably have it on their shortlist of things to add in, the main issues they have on defcon one (or should have, at least) are all with best of one and getting SOI and up into the game. They need a format with a large number of sets that people can fall back on, since Arena right now is mimicking the worst aspects of Force of Will.