Magic: The Gathering C/D

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mana fixing is a double edged sword kinda. if the power level of cards in standard is low and/or balanced across the spectrum, then the best decks are more heavily defined by which ones have good mana (we see this in block constructed a lot, it's why Borderland Ranger is a 4-of in almost every ISD block deck). if you improve the mana in this sort of environment, you can produce a pretty radically diverse metagame. this is what happened with the first Ravnica block, and led to the era that people have dubbed the 'tier 2 metagame' because there were dozens of viable Standard decks and none of them were really powerful enough to beat up on random homebrew decks.

the flipside is that if there are a few overpowered cards in Standard and the mana is good, the format warps around those cards, because there's nothing keeping you from dropping them into your off-color deck and then tweaking the manabase to fit.

ciderpress, Thursday, 23 August 2012 17:18 (eleven years ago) link

in general i think having 2 sets of duals per color pair is the sweet spot - we're a bit shy of that now but looks like we'll be heading there or beyond with a new Ravnica set

ciderpress, Thursday, 23 August 2012 17:26 (eleven years ago) link

Well Ravnica was before the era of Mythics. I remember Baneslayer Angel being the start of something newer and shittier, where the metagame wasn't so much tier 1 decks as it was tier 1 cards, and who could fit the most into their manabase. I haven't played Standard in a while but from what I remember there were a ton of archetypes, but in reality it was just a dozen ways different ways to lose to Wurmcoil. Nowadays I'd guess there are a bunch of decks with tortured mana bases that just want to get their Huntsmasters and Bonfires in as both cards are way over the curve. I remember feeling like Baneslayer was so stupidly overpowered that EVERY white deck should be packing them, no matter what (at least, before Dismember was printed). Jace 2.0 was the same way. And soon that kind of spilled over into, "if I've got a two color deck, can I make it three so I can play Jace?"

frogbs, Thursday, 23 August 2012 17:47 (eleven years ago) link

baneslayer, huntmaster, and wurmcoil are all strong cards, but i wouldn't call any of them format-warping - i would call jace and bonfire that though...

ciderpress, Thursday, 23 August 2012 18:03 (eleven years ago) link

Well the Baneslayer/Titan/Wurmcoil era really brought about an era where they were SO far ahead of any other 5-7 drop that you could hardly play anything else in those slots, even if they had abilities that fit your deck perfectly. I had a deck set up to abuse Flayer of the Hatebound in several ways, then found out that just straight up swapping them for Inferno Titans made my deck better, even though the synergy wasn't there anymore.

Anyway to make this fit my argument a little better I don't think Titans/Wurmcoil are the problem when it comes to excess mana fixing as any deck can play those. They are problematic, but for different reasons. But low-cost mythics like Lotus Cobra, Geist, Bonfire (sort of), and Jace do encourage a lot of dumb off-color splashing. I remember the Zendikar era being the same thing, "just play fetches and Lotus Cobra and your deck will rule"

frogbs, Thursday, 23 August 2012 18:13 (eleven years ago) link

i dont think bonfire is warping standard its not like every (any?)one is playing u/r delver

Lamp, Thursday, 23 August 2012 18:44 (eleven years ago) link

assuming steam vents is in RTR, i actually think that's the direction delver is headed after rotation - with most of the cheap blue spells gone i think there'll be an aggro version that goes UR for burn, and a more midrange one that's more about abusing snapcaster and restoration angel than flipping delvers

ciderpress, Thursday, 23 August 2012 19:04 (eleven years ago) link

of course this is all wild conjecture until we know whats in the new set

ciderpress, Thursday, 23 August 2012 19:04 (eleven years ago) link

the main thing bonfire has done so far is add a hilarious amount of variance to green midrange mirror matches

ciderpress, Thursday, 23 August 2012 19:09 (eleven years ago) link

yeah I dunno if we really can speculate on what's going to happen post-RTR. losing Ponder, Vapor Snag, GutShot, and Mana Leak seems like it would totally nerf Delver anyway.

frogbs, Thursday, 23 August 2012 19:31 (eleven years ago) link

Is it naive of me to feel annoyed that all the top decks in standard are variations on the same 2 or 3 themes ad infinitum?

Is it a lack of imagination or are those just the only decks that can possibly win?

Moodles, Friday, 24 August 2012 18:53 (eleven years ago) link

again a lot of this is because they've made a conscious decision that the mythics should be the most powerful cards in the game

frogbs, Friday, 24 August 2012 19:14 (eleven years ago) link

ime almost every rpg system when min/maxed comes down to 4-5 at most archetypes (i'm thinking particularly stuff like MMORPGs with tank/dps/heal archetypes, or magic/range/melee in diablolikes). when i played in 4th grade tho there were a million archetypes bc we weren't exactly scholars of the game and we played w/ whatever cards we had available.

Mordy, Saturday, 25 August 2012 00:13 (eleven years ago) link

yeah keep in mind we are at the tail end of the standard season, by this point everything's pretty much been figured out. though to be fair there are probably 15-20 reasonable deck choices, it's just that a lot of them fit under a few umbrella archetypes (green midrange, blue tempo/midrange, green ramp, black zombies)

ciderpress, Saturday, 25 August 2012 03:23 (eleven years ago) link

I made some tweaks to my exalted soldiers deck and was able to win about half the time in casual. So long as I'm not getting crushed over and over by delver decks, I'm ok with that.

Moodles, Saturday, 25 August 2012 05:46 (eleven years ago) link

yeah unfortunately a delver deck would be an exalted deck's nightmare matchup - delver handles single threats very well but has no way to deal with swarm tactics

ciderpress, Saturday, 25 August 2012 05:56 (eleven years ago) link

right, I've added in more cheap removal in order to neutralize some of the earlier threats so that I can ramp up to the big token cards like Captain of the Watch, Captain's Call, and the Odrics. Also swapped out Servant of Nefarox for Diregraf Ghoul which works really nicely with Duty-Bound Dead. Basically gives me an attacking 3/3 on turn 2 and allows me to flood the board with more little guys earlier on.

The other new addition that's really paying off me is Riders of Gavony, which immediately neutralizes a whole class of creatures.

Moodles, Saturday, 25 August 2012 13:41 (eleven years ago) link

Well Ravnica was before the era of Mythics. I remember Baneslayer Angel being the start of something newer and shittier, where the metagame wasn't so much tier 1 decks as it was tier 1 cards, and who could fit the most into their manabase.

The worst current example of this in the current Standard is the UW Delver deck that runs Geist of Saint Traft and Hero of Bladehold - those cards have zero synergy with anything else in your deck (beyond, like, "kinda aggro"), but they're so curve-exploding that it doesn't matter.

Gravel Puzzleworth, Saturday, 25 August 2012 13:57 (eleven years ago) link

what, that's not true at all. geist has very good synergy with snapcaster + vapor snag. its weakness is that it gets blocked easily, and being able to tempo their guys off the board is the solution to that.

i honestly don't get the fist-shaking at mythic rares. standard costs about the same now as it always did, adjusted for inflation etc. before mythics, you'd just pay more for stuff like dual lands and utility rares that are now dirt cheap. stratifying card availability like this is a net positive for new players because it gives them access to more cards even if the top few cards in each set are less accessible

ciderpress, Saturday, 25 August 2012 15:33 (eleven years ago) link

the idea of mythics (in the beginning) was that they were all gonna be splashy, powerful rares but not "4 of" type cards. so Baneslayer or the new Thundermaw are fine; it's when they started printing stuff like Lotus Cobra at Mythic that I started to feel like we were being exploited (to their credit Lotus Cobra seems like a one-time thing)

actually I don't mind the mythic rarity w/r/t what it does to the price of Standard, because as you point out it does keep regular rares like say, Restoration Angel in higher supply and does knock the price of stuff like duals down. my problem with it is when they take the mythic rarity as an opportunity to print stuff WAY over the curve that pretty much any deck in those colors has to consider playing. like I remember my jaw dropping when I saw Jace TMS, thinking "how could they do this?", and that was when I misread it at 5 mana!!

frogbs, Saturday, 25 August 2012 16:01 (eleven years ago) link

i played a sealed draft M13 this weekend w/ some friends visiting - i got one of the white mythics (serra something) and a ton of white exalted creatures, ran those w/ green for some bigger beatdown creatures and very little removal and dominated which was really exciting. then we played some edh. every time they come in and we play, i want to start seriously playing MTG again but then i'm left in philly at the end of the weekend w/ no one to play with. :(

Mordy, Sunday, 26 August 2012 01:48 (eleven years ago) link

^play Magic Online!

Here's what Mark Rosewater said when he introduced mythic rares:

This now leads us to the next question: How are cards split between rare and mythic rare? Or more to the point, what kind of cards are going to become mythic rares? We want the flavor of mythic rare to be something that feels very special and unique. Generally speaking we expect that to mean cards like Planeswalkers, most legends, and epic-feeling creatures and spells. They will not just be a list of each set's most powerful tournament-level cards.

We've also decided that there are certain things we specifically do not want to be mythic rares. The largest category is utility cards, what I'll define as cards that fill a universal function. Some examples of this category would be cycles of dual lands and cards like Mutavault or Char. That also addresses a long-standing issue that some players have had with certain rares like dual lands. Because we're making fewer cards per set, in the new world individual rares will be easier to acquire because each rare in a large set now appears 25% more often.

Personally I think "no cards that fill a universal function" is a little different from "no 4 of" cards. Geist of S-T and Hero of Bladehold are definitely 4-of cards, but I wouldn't say they fill a universal function; they're not in the same league as Mutavault or dual lands. Lotus Cobra is a bit more marginal, but as you say I think they recognise that as a mistake as they seem to have moved away from it in more recent sets.

webber, Sunday, 26 August 2012 11:33 (eleven years ago) link

Right, but I think there's a certain threshold where a card becomes so powerful where virtually any deck that can support it in its manabase will become more powerful for doing so, and they've definitely been toeing that line lately (if not outright crossing it with cards like Jace or Tarmogoyf)

frogbs, Sunday, 26 August 2012 18:28 (eleven years ago) link

tarmogoyf is not 'lately'

jace was a mistake, we know that. stoneforge mystic and snapcaster mage were too, though those weren't mythic rares. geist of saint traft and hero of bladehold are just strong cards; unlike all the overpowered creatures/planeswalkers, they don't play the defensive role and offensive role equally well, which limits their use and makes them fair

ciderpress, Sunday, 26 August 2012 19:36 (eleven years ago) link

is this all about the online game? i keep seeing this thread high up but can't understand the discourse.

magic ruled my world as a young teen. i quit after a bit and sold my "fork" for 100 pounds, plus "made" (recouped) a decent amount on the rest (10 per cent of what i spent, probably.)

had a brief relapse around the time of mirages, hammer of bogarden and all that shit, then quit again for good.

Know how Roo feel (LocalGarda), Sunday, 26 August 2012 19:41 (eleven years ago) link

hmm. forgot future sight was 5 years ago! whoa

still, I don't really think the format is necessarily unbalanced (as it was in say, the Affinity days), I just dislike the way cards that are way over the curve retroactively make a bunch of interesting or "build-around-me" stuff virtually unplayable in a serious deck, and the mythic era has kind of compounded this, as Wizards seems hellbent on printing a few such cards every set. Lately a lot of the most powerful cards have been either A) "deal with this immediately or you will lose" (such as the Titans, Wurmcoil, Hero, maybe Geist too), or B) "there is no good answer to this since it's too much card advantage/too cheap" - for example Snapcaster/Stoneforge/Delver really don't have good answers; they can be dealt with, but not in a way that's more efficient than the actual card. Wurmcoil sort of fits in this category too. Like, you may get burned by tapping out for Baneslayer and having it Dismembered right away, but most of the more powerful cards today don't even give your opponent the ability to respond to them in a manner that's actually efficient, meaning that the cards are so good that you have to search for reasons not to play them. Again I don't want to say this really unbalances things because T2 is relatively diverse now (or at least, it was a few months ago), it just sucks that Wizards has been printing so many neat/fun cards that really just can't see constructed play because they're so outclassed. anyway, rant over

frogbs, Sunday, 26 August 2012 20:05 (eleven years ago) link

I do give 'em credit for Birthing Pod though, most engine-type cards like that get nerfed horribly in development

frogbs, Sunday, 26 August 2012 20:07 (eleven years ago) link

just went on a little edh shopping spree on ebay. for less than $16 (including shipping) i got for my teneb the harvester deck: skullclamp, dauntless escort, aura shards, deadwood tree folk, loxodon hierarch, balance, qasali pridemage, saffi eriksdotter, elvish herder and magus of the disk.

Mordy, Sunday, 26 August 2012 21:01 (eleven years ago) link

i love birthing pod so much. i play it in my teneb deck. one of the most fun cards i've ever played w/ tbh

Mordy, Sunday, 26 August 2012 21:02 (eleven years ago) link

i'm particularly excited about a little loxodon hierarch/saffi eriksdotter/magus (and other removal) combo action

Mordy, Sunday, 26 August 2012 21:03 (eleven years ago) link

mordy come to ny some weekend and we can go to a draft together

iatee, Sunday, 26 August 2012 21:06 (eleven years ago) link

i would like to!

Mordy, Sunday, 26 August 2012 21:07 (eleven years ago) link

rancor is a pretty sweet card too

Mordy, Sunday, 26 August 2012 21:08 (eleven years ago) link

wait, Balance is LEGAL in EDH? (I don't really know what the ban list is but I'd assume the most powerful card of all time is on it)

frogbs, Sunday, 26 August 2012 22:43 (eleven years ago) link

balance def didn't have the feel of an ultimate broken card back in the day. was it because there weren't ways to use it as effectively?

iatee, Sunday, 26 August 2012 22:47 (eleven years ago) link

the same is true w/ swords

iatee, Sunday, 26 August 2012 22:48 (eleven years ago) link

looking it up it was restricted in 1995 so maybe I'm wrong

iatee, Sunday, 26 August 2012 22:55 (eleven years ago) link

This is a total guess but I think Zuran Orb might be the card that ultimately did it in?

frogbs, Sunday, 26 August 2012 22:57 (eleven years ago) link

yeah looking back at the era, that seems very likely:
http://www.wizards.com/magic/magazine/article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/feature/25b
http://www.wizards.com/magic/magazine/article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/feature/25e

iatee, Sunday, 26 August 2012 23:05 (eleven years ago) link

still feel like, overall even a deck w/ 4 zuran orbs and 4 balances back then wouldn't be dominant in later eras. like that hernandez deck is kinda innocent all things considered.

iatee, Sunday, 26 August 2012 23:07 (eleven years ago) link

i think balance is banned but restore balance isn't?

Mordy, Sunday, 26 August 2012 23:23 (eleven years ago) link

obv balance >>> restore balance alas

Mordy, Sunday, 26 August 2012 23:24 (eleven years ago) link

looking at old stuff balance-zuran orb was def 'a thing'

http://oracle.wizards.com/scripts/wa.exe?A2=ind9611b&L=mtg-l&D=1&P=19542

iatee, Sunday, 26 August 2012 23:31 (eleven years ago) link

I loved reading that post even from a non-Magic angle. It reminded me that the 1990s was not so long ago and people were actually clever and articulate, not just pre-Internet savages who ate their own hair.

fields of salmon, Sunday, 26 August 2012 23:36 (eleven years ago) link

I guess an interesting question is how dominant could it have grown in a counterfactual world where it was unrestricted during the necro era

iatee, Sunday, 26 August 2012 23:46 (eleven years ago) link

man that listserv is interesting

http://oracle.wizards.com/scripts/wa.exe?A2=ind9601B&L=MTG-L&P=R6178&D=1&I=-3

iatee, Monday, 27 August 2012 00:03 (eleven years ago) link

did u guys take the time to figure out why that deck would be unstoppable? i'm curious but not enough to look up all those cards

Mordy, Monday, 27 August 2012 00:08 (eleven years ago) link

ok, looked up a few. looks like your library is all very low cost artifacts so u can shed your hand quickly, tutor balance, then you rack them + paupers' cage them to death (both do damage to players w/ small hands)

Mordy, Monday, 27 August 2012 00:13 (eleven years ago) link

looks like you just blow your hand early, tutor for Balance (Mystical Tutor as a 4-of...whoa), use it to destroy their creatures and their hand, use Zur's Weirding to deny their draws, kill 'em with the Rack and Mishra's Factories?

at the time I don't think creature-based strategies were really quick enough to deal with something like this

frogbs, Monday, 27 August 2012 00:16 (eleven years ago) link

yeah creature decks were pretty much unplayable in the early days, they took like 5 or 6 turns to kill undisrupted, when that number really has to be 4 to compete with combo. the decks during urza's saga era couldn't even play the most efficient creatures like savannah lions because they had to play entirely artifact/enchantment destroying creatures like elvish lyrist and goblin tinkerer in order to have enough outs to the turn 2/3 combo kills.

ciderpress, Monday, 27 August 2012 02:30 (eleven years ago) link


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