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Magic: The Gathering |OT| Throne of Eldraine - Will and Rowan's Excellent Adventure

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SigmasonicX

SigmasonicX

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Oct 25, 2017
15,472
aidan said:
Are the problems in Standard at all related to them changing the block format, losing small sets, and having to develop every set with a relatively high power level because they're meant to be standalone?
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Overall, I think the problems are
* Pushing green and green-blue's power in many directions that add up. It's not just Oko, but also Gilded Goose, Wicked Wolf, Once Upon a Time, and Hydroid Krasis.
* Really overestimating how easy it was to kill planeswalkers.
* Reacting to powerful threats by printing even more powerful threats to counter them but also making them generally powerful so they just get played instead or in addition. We know for a fact that 3feri was printed to counter Nexus of Fate. Oko's loyalty was likely from (1) designing Questing Beast, (2) seeing Oko dies too easily to Questing Beast, (3) making Oko more powerful so he doesn't die too easily to Questing Beast, (4) forgetting why they designed Questing Beast and Fry in the first place.

Also,
 

Imperfected

Member
Nov 9, 2017
11,737
Seeing someone playing Teferi as their Brawl Commander seriously shakes my faith in humanity.

I'm going to tell myself they're just trying to win their five and leave, and insta-concede to it to help them along. Please don't come back, sir.
 
Toxi

Toxi

The Fallen
Oct 27, 2017
17,547
Wicked Wolf shows how important Green's inability to deal with creatures was for the balance of the game.
aidan said:
Are the problems in Standard at all related to them changing the block format, losing small sets, and having to develop every set with a relatively high power level because they're meant to be standalone?
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No. The block format had a huge number of problems. Just look at what happened with Mirrodin/Kamigawa; Mirrodin's broken themes got pushed through the roof by Darksteel, and then we got an entire block of stuff invalidated by Mirrodin's decks.
 
Toxi

Toxi

The Fallen
Oct 27, 2017
17,547
19 copies of Oko in the SCG Atlanta Modern top 8.

Can't even escape him outside standard.
 
Frankie Williamson

Frankie Williamson

Member
Nov 2, 2017
2,991
Here's what I've learned playing Brawl a TON.

Sorcerer's Spyglass in the 59 is banned because it blanks planeswalker commanders and this is considered unfair.
Oko is fine as a commander, despite him blanking all creature commanders and this is considered fair. Baral flashbacks here.
Golos/any super friends is fucking miserable unless you're straight, hateful aggro. Planeswalkers are really the worst thing to happen to magic.
How did anyone think 3feri was a fair card?
I really like playing big dumb lots of value midrange decks, but if I want to win nearly consistently (against a lot of the meta but Oko), I play Torbran.
 

Imperfected

Member
Nov 9, 2017
11,737
Frankie Williamson said:
Here's what I've learned playing Brawl a TON.

Sorcerer's Spyglass in the 59 is banned because it blanks planeswalker commanders and this is considered unfair.
Oko is fine as a commander, despite him blanking all creature commanders and this is considered fair. Baral flashbacks here.
How did anyone think 3feri was a fair card?
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Kitchen Table Magic in a nutshell: if your opponent is playing blue, concede immediately and call the police.
 
Bigkrev

Bigkrev

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Oct 25, 2017
12,304
How bad is standard now? There is a 5K NRG series event in Madison this weekend that currently has... two (2) players registered for it. They are canceling the event unless they get to at least 100
 
onpoint

onpoint

Neon Deity Games
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I feel like in this situation Play Design is Oko and we can't get them off the board no matter how hard we try.
 
IceMarker

IceMarker

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Oct 26, 2017
1,267
United States
What tri-color combinations need the most support in Magic (Standard or otherwise) right now? I feel like Mardu and Abzan are the weakest links by far. I think the last time Abzan was good was with Siege Rhino and Mardu had vehicles in Kaladesh. Mardu Knights in Standard just feels lackluster even with a designated land for it.
 
Frankie Williamson

Frankie Williamson

Member
Nov 2, 2017
2,991
IceMarker said:
What tri-color combinations need the most support in Magic (Standard or otherwise) right now? I feel like Mardu and Abzan are the weakest links by far. I think the last time Abzan was good was with Siege Rhino and Mardu had vehicles in Kaladesh. Mardu Knights in Standard just feels lackluster even with a designated land for it.
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Mardu Knights big problem is it doesn't play green. In fact, get rid of that pesky red and white and boom, good deck. Golgari knights is fun.
 
divisionbyzorro

divisionbyzorro

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Oct 25, 2017
3,771
Either Play Design didn't figure out that Oko was miserable, or Development refused to listen to what they told them. Either way the entire Play Design experiment seems to be failing.
 
divisionbyzorro

divisionbyzorro

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Oct 25, 2017
3,771
The problem is that Oko isn't the kind of busted that sells packs. He's the kind of busted that makes people want to stop playing. And that's what Play Design is supposed to do: make sure that Standard is good/fun to play.
 
onpoint

onpoint

Neon Deity Games
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Oct 26, 2017
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divisionbyzorro said:
The problem is that Oko isn't the kind of busted that sells packs. He's the kind of busted that makes people want to stop playing. And that's what Play Design is supposed to do: make sure that Standard is good/fun to play.
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I have literally bought zero Throne due to this. I know it's a drop in the bucket but this is me doing my part haha
 
TAFAE

TAFAE

Member
Aug 27, 2018
439
Michigan
Firemind said:
What happened at the mythic championship? Nobody even posted anything about it lol
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UGx decks successfully teched enough to beat down most of the Golos Field decks (only one in the top 8), although Field variants were still 8 of the top 16. Enough aggressive red decks got lucky with the bad UGx matchup/snuck past them into the top 8 that it was still interesting, and then Javier Dominguez got pretty lucky to beat two UGx decks with Gruul in order to get to a decent Golos matchup in the finals. It was also pretty clear that UGx would have all of the tools it needed to dominate the metagame following the anticipated Field ban. Behind the scenes, a few players got shafted by Arena client crashes and bad rules decisions.
 
Chojin

Chojin

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Oct 26, 2017
2,623
Goddamn these fucking ropers. Three in a row, all Oko decks. I'm sorry Oko wasn't the fucking instawin deck for you pal.
 

Imperfected

Member
Nov 9, 2017
11,737
I was going to say, "How about you give us real Historic support at least in the meantine?" But then I remembered Oko will just shit all over Historic, too.
 
Sejanoz

Sejanoz

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Nov 10, 2017
1,685
Bigkrev said:
Even though it's very likely that those "Mystery Boosters" later this year are going to functionally be Pioneer Masters, I still spent about $50 yesterday picking up various mono-red cards that I might want to play in a burn deck, as at this point my collection is down to just a modern burn deck. A ton of cards that could be good in the deck- Bomat Courier, Abbot of Keral Keep, Goblin Chainwhirler- are all at bulk or near bulk prices (Bomat Courer was 15 cents, Chainwhirler was a quarter, etc). I was surprised that Rampaging Ferocidon has actually gone up since the rotation!
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What did you end up getting? I'm a fellow burn player, always looking for useful cards. (although I'm leaning towards a UR Wizards Prowess deck for Pioneer)
 
Bigkrev

Bigkrev

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Oct 25, 2017
12,304
Sejanoz said:
What did you end up getting? I'm a fellow burn player, always looking for useful cards. (although I'm leaning towards a UR Wizards Prowess deck for Pioneer)
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I own a Modern Burn deck, so it was picking up stuff from the last few years that I didn't own that could possibly go into a mono-R deck, cause I don't buy physical cards anymore. Stuff like Chainwhirler, Light up the Stage, all the Dominaria cards, Rampaging Ferocidon, Equisite Firecraft, Hazoret, Soul-Scar mage, etc. I also got Arclights not because I think it's playable, but because it's really underpriced compared to how good it is going to be.
 
Firemind

Firemind

Member
Oct 25, 2017
15,529
Arclight Phoenix will likely light up Pioneer at some point.

(After some cards get banned)

Shame people already got wind of it.
 
TAFAE

TAFAE

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439
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Yeah, I realized last week that I needed about $5 worth of cards to finish a decent looking UR Phoenix for Pioneer so I gave in and bought them. If I lose a dollar on my Treasure Cruises when they inevitably get banned, so be it.

Always sad to hear about layoffs, but damn, TCGPlayer has over 200 employees? That was the real news to me. Hope all of those affected find new work quickly.
 
Steve Winwood

Steve Winwood

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Oct 31, 2017
2,589
Pioneer came at a really important time here. The optimism/excitement over that format is at least propping the competitive base up to some extent.

Finkel comes out and says the obvious take:



(Yes, there are examples of good, fun planeswalkers. That doesn't counter the point he makes. And, given the ability to print any planeswalkers, we know for a fact Wizards will regularly overpower them in a way that makes formats entirely about them and makes whole classes of cards irrelevant.)
 
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ZealousD

ZealousD

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Oct 25, 2017
2,303
I honestly think I'm done with paper standard. I like a constructed format that changes a lot but it seems like WotC doesn't know how to create a balanced standard format and that GRN/RNA standard was a fluke. Plus everybody seems to play Standard on Arena these days. The format was already on on its deathbed at my LGS when they introduced the new promo packs and Oko certainly hasn't helped. My LGS had way more Standard attendance back during the Temur Energy days.
 
TAFAE

TAFAE

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Aug 27, 2018
439
Michigan
Someone in Finkel's replies has a solution that I like, which is just print walkers at very high CMCs. If you want them to be incredibly powerful and cool for casual play, you can print almost anything you want on a card that costs 6+. Even if they get into constructed play that way, who really cares? Casting a 6 mana card should be a haymaker, and you still have stay in the game long enough to cast that card.

Spitballing, it would also be great if they made a rules change so that anything that targets creatures could also target Planeswalkers. There are so many good answers to creatures, and this wouldn't necessitate printing explicit walker hate. Also, give the opposing player priority before the first activation, since the near-guaranteed 2-for-1 is one of the best reasons to play most Planeswalkers.
 
onpoint

onpoint

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Oct 26, 2017
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ZealousD said:
I honestly think I'm done with paper standard. I like a constructed format that changes a lot but it seems like WotC doesn't know how to create a balanced standard format and that GRN/RNA standard was a fluke. Plus everybody seems to play Standard on Arena these days. The format was already on on its deathbed at my LGS when they introduced the new promo packs and Oko certainly hasn't helped. My LGS had way more Standard attendance back during the Temur Energy days.
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Quitting standard was among the happiest moments of my Magic life. It relieves so much tension.
 

Crocodile

Member
Oct 25, 2017
8,071
Bigkrev said:
TCGPlayer laid off 15% of their workforce https://www.syracuse.com/news/2019/10/tcgplayer-lays-off-about-15-percent-of-workforce.html
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Bummer. I never knew they had so many employees. I hope those fired find their footing and quickly get new jobs. As an aside, their "fantastical" office looks kind of tacky LOL

TAFAE said:
Someone in Finkel's replies has a solution that I like, which is just print walkers at very high CMCs. If you want them to be incredibly powerful and cool for casual play, you can print almost anything you want on a card that costs 6+. Even if they get into constructed play that way, who really cares? Casting a 6 mana card should be a haymaker, and you still have stay in the game long enough to cast that card.

Spitballing, it would also be great if they made a rules change so that anything that targets creatures could also target Planeswalkers. There are so many good answers to creatures, and this wouldn't necessitate printing explicit walker hate. Also, give the opposing player priority before the first activation, since the near-guaranteed 2-for-1 is one of the best reasons to play most Planeswalkers.
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The changes described in the last paragraph would basically make the card type unplayable. The number of truly problematic PWs that have been printed can be counted on one maybe two hands. Those cards have been REAL problems but I don't think that justifies trashing the entire card type.
 
Steve Winwood

Steve Winwood

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Oct 31, 2017
2,589
Crocodile said:
The changes described in the last paragraph would basically make the card type unplayable. The number of truly problematic PWs that have been printed can be counted on one maybe two hands. Those cards have been REAL problems but I don't think that justifies trashing the entire card type.
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The argument (whether you buy it or not) is about more than the worst PWs. Even "fair" pws that don't break the metagame tend to be bad for gameplay (again, as the argument goes): they create repetitive play patterns, they snowball, they make the game entirely about managing or killing them, and they package card advantage and kill condition into one card. They just do too much.

My experience is that gameplay is pretty much strictly better without that card type existing. I don't think it's a coincidence that, as people try Pauper and Old School, they tend to really enjoy those formats.

Again, I think it's fair to disagree with any or all of this. I just wanted to clarify that (for me and Finkel, at least) it's about more than the handful of truly problem PWs. I would be very curious to see how this standard would look if we simply removed all PWs from the equation. My instinct is that people would enjoy it a lot more than the "this Standard with an Oko ban."
 
TAFAE

TAFAE

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Aug 27, 2018
439
Michigan
Crocodile said:
The changes described in the last paragraph would basically make the card type unplayable. The number of truly problematic PWs that have been printed can be counted on one maybe two hands. Those cards have been REAL problems but I don't think that justifies trashing the entire card type.
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My counter argument is that people still play creatures even though most of them die to Doom Blade, Cast Down, Supreme Verdict, et al. Plenty of those creatures don't replace themselves or offer immediate value, but they still see play. The difference between playing Questing Beast and losing it to removal before you get to attack versus playing Oko and losing it before you get to tick up (if the rules worked this way) is nothing.
 
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