Over the last six months, I've gradually drifted away from Magic.  I play fewer casual games, only play Premiere Events competitively, and I have only written one article. In thinking about why, it's not for the usual reasons.  I don't hate V3, don't strongly care about leagues or multiplayer, and don't think the shuffler is rigged.  I've had no major life events draw me away from Magic either.  Quite simply, I think Wizards strategic attempts to acquire new players are driving me away.

Almost a year ago, Wizards debuted some major and minor changes to the game aimed at improving "acquisition" of new players, which you are probably familiar with.  Set sizes were decreased, Mythic rares introduced, and lands added to packs.  Around the spring/summer MTGO switched from V2 to V3, and besides changing the client also changed the structure of how Daily Events and constructed competition worked.  All of the weekly tournaments in formats like Singleton and Tribal Wars were taken off the schedule.  Furthermore, certain formats have been relegated to introductory formats and given secondary consideration. In this article, I'm going to voice my opinions on Planeswalkers, and how Wizards treatment of fringe formats has disappointed me and caused me to drift from the game.

Planeswalkers

Good planeswalker

I haven't seen this opinion expressed widely, but planeswalkers suck (and I'm not alone in this given the smattering of "no planeswalker" games in the casual room).  More specifically, planeswalkers suck for casual Magic.  I'm ok with a few counterspells and some land destruction, but whenever I see a planeswalker, I consider conceding . My current format of choice is Prismatic, and my winning percentage with planeswalkers in play is probably less than 25%.  

Most planeswalkers are prisons.  They die only to damage, which means you either have to be playing red, or have creatures on the table.  If you're playing red, planeswalkers turn into literal 2- or 3-for-1 ones, as you have to spend multiple burn cards while they use one of their effects.  If you're not playing red, you have to attack them, which can be difficult since they have abilities to protect themselves, and your opponent has removal too.  Since these two avenues of attack are so difficult to navigate, almost any planeswalker played on an empty table ends the game, not immediately, but over the course of five or six turns as every spell is answered. The guy with the planeswalker gets to do whatever he wants while his opponent sits there emasculated (if the opponent was female, would she be defeminized?).  This is doubly true for casual games where decks aren't tuned to kill as quickly as possible.  

The designers and developers have written about planeswalkers a number of times, describing how planeswalkers should feel special, but still be able to be dealt with.  For me, the designers have failed.  Not enough cards can deal with them.  Old "get out of jail" cards like Void and Akroma's Vengeance cannot destroy them, and Vindicate and Maelstrom Pulse are both rares.  I suppose I could play Rootgrapple, but that seems like overkill.

Bad planeswalker

While I doubt planeswalkers are going to be removed from the game any time soon, I have a few proposals for how they can be designed so that they no longer warp casual Magic. I'm relatively ok with some of the planeswalkers, like Jace Beleren, Ajani Goldmane, or even Garruk Wildspeaker.  What they all have in common is that they have relatively low loyalty at the start, and they don't directly interact with other players' permanents.  All of these planeswalkers are constructed playable, without being frustrating in casual games.  On the other hand there are cards like Ajani Vengeant or Nicol Bolas, Planeswalker which are incredibly un-fun to play against.  Ajani is almost impossible to attack, since he will kill any small creatures, and keep the big ones tapped; then his ultimate ability is one that has been on a card since 4th Edition.  Nicol Bolas starts with eight life, and steals any creature that might attack.  If you play either of those against me, I hope you don't mind early concessions.

Planeswalkers and their promotion are becoming in increasingly common part of the game, and are part of Wizards push to acquire new players.  Unfortunately, they are also making the game less fun for me.

Why fringe formats

Probably the most important aspect of my drift away from the game is the death of competitive fringe formats.  Before V3, Singleton and Tribal Wars events fired every week, and Vanguard about half the time.  I realize that a number of formats have constructed queues, those don't really interest me.  If I wanted to play a "two person queue" I could just join the Tournament Practice Room.  There truly is no replacement for a multi-round tournament.

While I can't say why all people play fringe formats, I can relate why I do.  I play casual games (e.g. Prismatic), but when I enter a Premiere Event or queue, I want to compete in a format in which I have a chance.  I consider myself a good but not great Magic player, with constructed and limited ratings around 1700 (trust me!).  While I could probably improve my game, it would take considerable effort to be effective in Standard or Alara Limited.  Instead, I try to play formats like 100C Singleton where there is no known best deck, and where the deck I create may be something new.

As an outsider, I can guess Wizards main motivation in supporting fringe formats.  First, Wizards wants a strong secondary card market so that drafters have an outlet for cards, and so that older sets maintain some semblance of monetary value.  More importantly, Wizards want people playing Magic, since more games played correlates with money spent in the store.

In a recent interview, Mike Gills suggested that these fringe formats act as feeders into more traditional formats, which I think is the wrong way to treat them for two reasons.  First, I'm not sure whether this actually happens.  SpikeBoyM writes about Pauper for this site, but does not seem to have Top Eighted any non-Pauper formats (at least not that Google can find).  The same is true of Tarmotog. Personally, this has never happened for myself either.

At a higher level, treating some formats as introductory formats implies that certain formats are better than others, which is completely untrue.  Some people like playing limited, while others prefer constructed.  Some people like playing Classic, while others like Block.  Some people like playing Standard, while others prefer Standard Tribal Wars.  All of these formats have their enthusiasts who are devoted to their format.  In fact, the diversity in the number of ways to play magic is one of its greatest strengths.  Rather than treating some formats as lesser, each format should be given the same treatment.  On a business level, it certainly would not make sense for wizards to run daily Singleton events like they do Standard, but each format should be given the amount of support that its players demand, not what some suit (or since this is Wizards, t-shirt) decides.*

Getting back to why fringe formats, I play them because they offer me a chance to compete on an even playing field, and Wizards offers tournaments in   fringe formats so they can make money.  Back in V2, Wizards ran four fringe daily events every weekend: Vanguard, Singleton, Tribal Wars (Standard) and Classic.  Only Classic survived the transition to V3 intact; Tribal Wars (Standard) lost all support, while Vanguard and Singleton kept their Premiere Events.  I would like to see the return of Tribal Wars and Singleton to weekly event status, to give me a tournament to plan around.  Given a little time, and a modicum of support, these tournaments could be firing weekly, and draw players deeper into the game, players that may not want to deal with the deck costs and competitiveness of formats like Standard or Classic.  It would also draw me back into the game.

*More explicitly, Pauper deserves Daily Events.  There's a thread about it on the Wizards forum.  Even if they need to reduce prizes Momir Basic style, it would still be progress towards treating formats based on popularity rather than writ.

Vanguard (Standard)

Where have you gone Dakkon DiMaggio?

Notice that the one format I didn't feel deserved a weekly slot is Vanguard.  In the interview Mike Gills gave above, he mentioned that the format is on the ropes for official sanction.  The Premiere Events routinely fire with just over the minimum number of players, as people scrabble together decks to get the free prizes.  Over the past few months, I have seen a paucity of Vanguard games fire in the casual room, and majority of them are Classic/Extended or Momir/Jhoira. As it stands, I can see why Wizards has Standard with Vanguard on the chopping block: no one's interested in it. There are a few reasons for this:

1.) It's hard to design a balanced avatar.  Most Vanguard avatars suck, like Diamond Faerie.  They are simply not powerful or interesting enough to build decks around. Other avatars are format specific, like Kresh the Bloodbraided or Raksha the Golden Cub.  Once their keyword rotates from Standard, they are no longer usable.  And even if your avatar is cool, and doesn't rely on format cards, it may be overpowered, like any number of avatars from the past (Mirri, Heartwood Storyteller, Oni, Prodigal Sorcerer, Nekrataal...).  Even more so than cards, avatars have to walk a fine line between power and coolness.  Restricting avatars to Standard ignores the years of accumulated wealth avatar design has.  It also means that there are only a handful of interesting avatars in any given environment, which leads to point number...

2.) Players don't like being told what to do.  Years ago Wizards used to design blocks around mechanics, and pushed those mechanics to their limit.  This made deck-building pretty easy, since you just threw together all the cards relevant to a mechanic.  This block design also made deck building boring, since it was pretty obvious what decks would be powerful, and there was little room for innovation.  One of the best examples of this is UG Madness in Odyssey Standard, where everyone quickly figured out it was a great deck.  Since then, Wizards design has backed off on pushing mechanics, and tried to create modular cards that work together, but in more subtle ways.  Theoretically, this has led to the explosion of viable deck archetypes in Standard, Extended, and other formats.

I wonder how to build a deck around this guy...

Compare that situation to Standard with Vanguard, where we are given a handful of viable avatars, some of which have keywords on them (see Kresh on side). Why didn't Wizards just print the decklist on the card? It would have saved everyone time.

A key component of any format is discovery.  Every tournament in Vanguard used to be a chance to see cool new decks working with avatars that haven't seen play in a while.  When Morningtide was released, an old avatar, Nekrataal, became the dominant avatar of the format.  While Nekrataal rogues was a degenerate deck that needed to be nerfed, it was still cool to see an old card turn new tricks.  There can be no discovery with so few avatars.

So my simple proposal is that we go back to the golden days of yore when you could play any avatar in Standard.  Players clearly prefer it, given that they play Extended and Classic Vanguard in the casual room.  They also are not attending PEs, firing queues, or writing articles about Vanguard Standard.  Rather than continue to let Vanguard wither away, it is time to shake the format up.

Vanguard was by far my favourite fringe format before the changes, and I would love to see it gain popularity.  It is the only magic format truly unique to Magic Online.  Part of Vanguard's problem is that no one is writing about it.  I wrote a dozen articles on it in the past. I would love to do so again.