To answer a few comments...the enforcibility of Make Your Own Standard is both easy and difficult.
If each player announces their core set and blocks at the beginning of the tournament, then they can never play a card which is outside of those sets/blocks.
In singleton, it is difficult to know if they only have one Wrath of God in their deck or if they only ever played one - sure discard and milling might prove someone is cheating, but many decks would never know if their opponent's deck were legal when using the Tribal format filter.
The difficult part is that versions from other blocks are allowed which requires that an opponent know the contents of every set. Is counterspell in Eigth of just Seventh? What block formats include Harrow?
So the legality of a deck is completely verifiable for MYOS, but a player may not have the set knowledge to recognize an illegal deck without spending an excessive amount of time going between the collection page and the game or without having checklists for each block printed out and sitting in their lap.
I wouldn't say there a no fun formats left, there are just a lot of unfun people. For some reason, Magic seems to attract people who like to rain on parades. If something is fun and casual, there seems to be people who look for ways to say "Look what I can do to your format and there's nothing you can do because I am following the rules." I think Commander and Pauper are great examples of that as well. Vangaurd was trashed by people who felt they NEEDED to find ways to make the most broken deck possible. Commander fell victim to it a long time ago. As I mentioned in my post for Shard's article, my own format was trashed by the same process. Looks as though Tribal might be the next victim. I really wish I understood the mindset of people who feel compelled to trash casual formats.
Oh, are we making up numbers now? What I meant to say is that my deck wins 137% of the time.
Maybe you didn’t read the decklist, but I play 16 different Time Warps.
Taking extra turns doesn’t help when all I do is control the board. Time Warp reads: “Draw a card, make everyone mad.” And by the time things are under control it’s unnecessary.
The permanents you list (outside of Acidic Slime, which IS better than Wickerbough Elder) don’t fit the deck because they a)attract too much attention, b)die too easily – to my own strategy. And what Planeswalkers fit this kind of deck? I’ve never seen a PW remain on board for more than two turns at best.
Legacy Weapon IS a huge target, which is why I never play it before the board and my opponent’s hands are under control. I think I made too small a point of the fact that this deck is designed to dominate in 3 vs 1 situations.
The recursion lands you mention are a little narrow for this particular game plan. Duplicant is a great bullet for indestructible creatures and can be tutored up with Tooth and Nail, but mostly I’d much rather use one of the 16 Wraths and wipe the board. The ubiquitousness of Academy Ruins makes it difficult to play in a mana-hungry deck that can’t afford to let itself get Wastelanded.
I’ve played with all of the 5c Commanders except Prgenitus, and nothing stacks up to the Trample/Haste combo. I wrath so often that I can’t count on non-hastey dudes to take the day for me.
This format seems much to hard to enforce. Let me prefrence this that I know NOTHING about make your own standard. Am I allowed to run reprints? I choose as my two blocks, because I'm running vampires, Mirrodin (cause I love Mephidross Vampire for some reason) and Zendikar. Do I have to announce that to my opponent as soon as the game starts? So on turn three, after he knows I'm playing those two blocks, I used a Harrow from Tempest, so that I can cast a testless Terror. Both of those cards are in those sets, but I have probably thrown my opponent off nice and good. If I hadn't told him what blocks I was using and I went T1: Vampire (Zendikar), T2: Night's Whisper (5th Dawn), T3: Harrow (Tempest) + Terror (textless). My opponent is now probably questioning whether or not I know the rules, which, as I said, I don't.
I think the best solution was proposed by Paul. I think making it an entirely singleton format would help reel things in a bit. It doesn't limit the card pool, but it does impact deck functionality. Granted, the biggest downside to this (1) it kills a lot of bizarre tribes, so we'll see a lot more elves, zombies, soldiers, goblins, wizards, humans (2) it increases the chance of super swingy games where one player manages to get just that right creature into play and his opponent can't answer it fast enough. I can see T1: Figure of Destiny being a massive win condition.
The other solution that I think works best, and I'm not saying this just because I suggested it, would be to make it that all your non-land spells had to be creatures. I fully understand that would make the format a whole lot less fun and possibly lead to stalemates. That's why I said that it would be the most extreme solution.
Anyway, this article was really good. Well thought out and locially supported in your arguements. I like that you linked to Rosewater's article. Going to keep my opinions on his thoughts to myself. Briefly, I can say I never really heard anyone asking for colors to do things they weren't supposed to do. I thought that was the point of the color pie. But for anyone who wants a sarcastic laugh at the absurdity of magic developement these days, that a trip over to Magic Lampoon and read the two articles called "WOTC decides any color can do whatever it wants." It reads as if Mark Rosewater, himself, wrote it.
Not a huge fan of this article. The theme seems to be "I'm great and my deck is great". This hubris seems based on the following:
"But more recently I’ve found that my Commander deck wins more games than it loses, and in a format with three opponents instead of one, that’s big enough to warrant discussion."
Not really, most decks are much weaker than something like this. I'd say I win 75-80% of my Commander games and that is possible with good play and good deck building.
It is also amusing as you're not playing the best spells in Commander and don't even comment on them.
Time Warp, Capture of Jignzau (sp), Temporal Manipulation, and Time Stretch are better than probably 99 cards in your deck. On top of those where is Miarai's Wake and Mana Reflection? Not running those six cards in a deck with access to their colors is ether a conscious decision to make your deck weaker or insanity. Well at least you now have six cards to replace Ink Eyes with.
I'd also recommend getting better tutors and Deed but don't know how tight your budget is. Acidic Slime should also be added in place of Wickerbough Elder as it can kill troublesome lands and trade with anything that doesn't fly. The comment above is also spot-on with recommending Vorath's Stronghold and Academy Ruins.
I would also recommend some planeswalkers as they go very well with Wraths and I'm not sure why you're not running any.
In addition you claim to be aware of how important mana is but you're only running 40 lands in a 99 card deck. That is 40.4% or 24.2 lands in a 60 card deck. The five color control deck from standard you love to mention ran 28 or 46.7% not to mention much denser card draw.
Lastly your argument below is laughable
"Some players find this strategy contrary to the spirit of the format, thinking it better if the entire deck is built solely around the commander and its abilities. But I’m not sure why a one-card combo like Niv-Mizzet, the Firemind + Curiosity or a zero-card combo deck like Zur the Enchanter is more honest or fair than a 5-color control deck."
This can be distilled down to 'my deck is a pain in the ass but it could be worse.' Congratulations. How would you compare this to my Uril or Jenara decks which are nether a pile of good cards with 20 wraths or a combo deck?
While I love commander I feel it was all down hill from this article's title. Conceit and confidence can be fine but in this case I feel they are misplaced. Start taking some extra turns, then we can talk.
Ah I was thinking of 1 ticket total if you win one of your matches. But yeah that is still 8 tickets for 8 people and everyone gets a ticket unless they scrub out completely which doesn't sound smart. *gets a headache thinking about how to do it fairly and at a reasonable cost.*
Perhaps 3 rounds of swiss with a final top half listing with each person placing in that half winning a ticket. This brings up tie breakers which can be unpleasant but is sometimes necessary.
Ah yet another voice in the discussion! Great that you are thinking about this. Not so great that you prognosticate doom. Particularly since while I don't want to agree with your premise it is difficult to avoid. I think the solution is site registration even though it is a "barrier to entry". Precisely because it IS a barrier to entry, it will filter out a great deal of rules breaking and format warping simply by having enforcable rules. BYOS is no more enforcable for tribal than any of the other propositions including my own 3. (Pauper, Tribalton and Double Tribal. (Btw thanks for the mention, I feel like my article was shoved off the front page very quickly this week.)) Whatever approach we use, we either enforce the rules and keep them updated and viewable and have a serious interest in doing this or we do things casually and let the community busters come and wreck our plans. Eventually WOTC will have to make some decision even if it is to remove the Tribal Wars format entirely. That might be the only final solution given that with any 3 people no two can agree entirely. If that happens we will all move on to different formats. I am already starting to regear myself towards commander and am reading up on pauper with more interest since there seem to be NO fun formats left.
Interesting article. My notions deck is entirely different from yours yet I beleive I have built similar decks in the past. I am no vet of the commander game as I seem to play it once every 2-3 months, quitting again after encountering combo deck #12156 etc. That said I agree with some of what you said. I would go so far as to include Violent Ultimatum as another finisher. It isn't as all encompassing as Cruel but it can save your bacon versus a lock. In addition, I tend to run a much more elemental focused deck with cards like Reveillark, Mulldrifter, Harbinger, Vigor, Thresh, the mana guys, etc. This adds a layer of "I'll be back" to the many wraths I also include. Those who read my articles know I love Desolation Giant. He is my wrath of choice on a stick. Legacy weapon seems to me to be a gigantic "kill him now" sign. Play that and you better be ready to defend against all comers immediately. To a lesser extent that is also true of Portal.
In the recursion slots you did not mention two of my favorite lands: Volrath's Stronghold and Academy Ruins both of which are relatively cheap (5 tix for stronghold, .5 for ruins.) These allow you recursion tricks with cards like Duplicant, Mindslaver (another "kill me now" card and only eligible for ruins tricks), Triskelion, etc.
I am also a fan of cards like Far Wanderings which almost always fires in Commander and Search for Tomorrow. Harrow and Heart are other decent picks for the land fetch slots though Heart really sucks late game as do most land fetchers. Krosan Tusker is a perennial favorite and many of the landcyclers from Alara block are pretty decent too, fetching up your shocklands and duals. Expedition Map and Sylvan Scrying are great for getting those specific lands you need (Valakut for the mono red crowd, Emeria for monowhite, and the above mentioned lands for recursion.)
One last comment regarding the other 5c commanders. I think you sell some of them very short. Maybe they don't win for you but I have seen games where they dominated.
That was the one worry I tried to identify with this approach in the article. I know my Bears and Spiders decks would be unplayable with the Make Your Own Standard Tribal format.
I think it was in the comments to ShardFenix's latest article that someone suggested rotating the parameters of the Tribal Apocalypse tournament for singleton, pauper, extended, etc. as a means of keeping the format more relaxed and less sharkable. This may be the best option for Tribal Apocalypse, but I any solution for Tribal Classic as a legitimate format requires WotC to come up with an official solution that is enforced by the client.
restricting the card pool to one or two sets could really inhibit tribal imo because some of the non-synergic tribes have their few members stretched across many different sets and the result would be having to always pick Lorwyn in order to grab changelings
I would love it if players played Tribal, but that genie's bottle seems to have been broken. I don't think I have ever had a tribal deck that won through any means other than having a creature bash my opponent's life down to 0.
I have thought a lot more on this topic since I wrote this article, and the fact of the matter is that a casual tournament scene cannot exist. Someone will always be on the high end with their deck quality and there is no way that everyone can be on the same page for deck construction equality unless there is a "here's the format rules, go all out in creating your deck".
I don't like the idea of singleton for non-tribal components of a deck - it just narrows the build options for tribal too much as strategies that require cards with a large number of analogs (i.e., cards with similar effects such as Lightning Bolt, Incinerate, and Burst Lightning) become more reliable and produce more consistent results. In addition, creatures with enter the battlefield effects become more valuable as they allow a greater mass of spell-like effects to be repeated in a deck in a way that would not be available to other decks.
My line, "In addition, there may be a need for a couple of card bannings beyond the legacy or block format banned lists" is because that seems a true statement in any format - right now I do not forsee any, but that doesn't mean I am omniscient and can forsee all of the decks that can be built under the make your own standard. I have looked over a few decklists from Make Your Standard events and have not seen a plethora of borken combo decks.
I personally like running snow lands and whiteout any time I'm using Wild Mongrel.
Even as a singleton it lets you 'tog your lands for the kill when the chance comes up.
Or it can serve as an answer to pesky fliers.
So, except of having one (albeit it long) banned list, we need to scrounge over block format banned lists, legacy banned lists, and as you put it: " In addition, there may be a need for a couple of card bannings beyond the legacy or block format banned lists"..
Next to that, deckbuilding will feel more like playing limited than constructed, and players will still seek out that combo and throw in whatever tribe fits that block/core set the best.
ArchGenius has the best solution I think, because it will still allow people to play all cards AND still allow people to play tribal from all sets available:
"All non-tribal cards (exept basic lands) are restricted to one copy per deck."
Players should be playing TRIBAL, not throw together a game breaking combo and fill it up with whatever tribe fits it best..
When there's low avalability on cards that are played in decks (before the drafts start) there will be an increase of price on subpar cards. The real Setgems such as jace and persecutor will also be quite high at these times.
I recommend buying on day 3/4 after the booster drafts open.
I also recommend that you sell anything you get out of your booster against market value to the highest bidding bot on the day before the drafts start. You can easily buy it back within 3 days for the same price or lower.
On a personal note. Collect all cards that are automatic 4-offs or powercreeps of previous cards. This means cards like Smother... This baby will be worth something until the drafts start. I'm only going to hoard two rares of this set, and neither of them is jace.
Running sweepers in the Sideboard of aggro-ish decks is an old strategy. Essentially you bring it in for aggro mirrors, let your opponent over extend, playing just enough creatures to defend, then blow up the world and drop your hand.
I'm not too crazy about changing it without advanced notice BUT given say a 2 week lag between builds it seems very doable. Also I am as you know a vocal proponent of swiss style tourney. 1 ticket per win sounds about right...half of the total prize of single elimination.
Generally speaking there is no way to really tell for sure how things will change except to watch the way the major bots buy and sell cards and make notes. Also you can check the archived versions of this podcast for past charts and also Hammy's weekly State of the Program articles also on this site.
Nice stuff, only thing that looks "clunky" is the 4x Orzhov - they play well at 4?
To answer a few comments...the enforcibility of Make Your Own Standard is both easy and difficult.
If each player announces their core set and blocks at the beginning of the tournament, then they can never play a card which is outside of those sets/blocks.
In singleton, it is difficult to know if they only have one Wrath of God in their deck or if they only ever played one - sure discard and milling might prove someone is cheating, but many decks would never know if their opponent's deck were legal when using the Tribal format filter.
The difficult part is that versions from other blocks are allowed which requires that an opponent know the contents of every set. Is counterspell in Eigth of just Seventh? What block formats include Harrow?
So the legality of a deck is completely verifiable for MYOS, but a player may not have the set knowledge to recognize an illegal deck without spending an excessive amount of time going between the collection page and the game or without having checklists for each block printed out and sitting in their lap.
I wouldn't say there a no fun formats left, there are just a lot of unfun people. For some reason, Magic seems to attract people who like to rain on parades. If something is fun and casual, there seems to be people who look for ways to say "Look what I can do to your format and there's nothing you can do because I am following the rules." I think Commander and Pauper are great examples of that as well. Vangaurd was trashed by people who felt they NEEDED to find ways to make the most broken deck possible. Commander fell victim to it a long time ago. As I mentioned in my post for Shard's article, my own format was trashed by the same process. Looks as though Tribal might be the next victim. I really wish I understood the mindset of people who feel compelled to trash casual formats.
Oh, are we making up numbers now? What I meant to say is that my deck wins 137% of the time.
Maybe you didn’t read the decklist, but I play 16 different Time Warps.
Taking extra turns doesn’t help when all I do is control the board. Time Warp reads: “Draw a card, make everyone mad.” And by the time things are under control it’s unnecessary.
The permanents you list (outside of Acidic Slime, which IS better than Wickerbough Elder) don’t fit the deck because they a)attract too much attention, b)die too easily – to my own strategy. And what Planeswalkers fit this kind of deck? I’ve never seen a PW remain on board for more than two turns at best.
Thanks for the feedback, sir.
Legacy Weapon IS a huge target, which is why I never play it before the board and my opponent’s hands are under control. I think I made too small a point of the fact that this deck is designed to dominate in 3 vs 1 situations.
The recursion lands you mention are a little narrow for this particular game plan. Duplicant is a great bullet for indestructible creatures and can be tutored up with Tooth and Nail, but mostly I’d much rather use one of the 16 Wraths and wipe the board. The ubiquitousness of Academy Ruins makes it difficult to play in a mana-hungry deck that can’t afford to let itself get Wastelanded.
I’ve played with all of the 5c Commanders except Prgenitus, and nothing stacks up to the Trample/Haste combo. I wrath so often that I can’t count on non-hastey dudes to take the day for me.
This format seems much to hard to enforce. Let me prefrence this that I know NOTHING about make your own standard. Am I allowed to run reprints? I choose as my two blocks, because I'm running vampires, Mirrodin (cause I love Mephidross Vampire for some reason) and Zendikar. Do I have to announce that to my opponent as soon as the game starts? So on turn three, after he knows I'm playing those two blocks, I used a Harrow from Tempest, so that I can cast a testless Terror. Both of those cards are in those sets, but I have probably thrown my opponent off nice and good. If I hadn't told him what blocks I was using and I went T1: Vampire (Zendikar), T2: Night's Whisper (5th Dawn), T3: Harrow (Tempest) + Terror (textless). My opponent is now probably questioning whether or not I know the rules, which, as I said, I don't.
I think the best solution was proposed by Paul. I think making it an entirely singleton format would help reel things in a bit. It doesn't limit the card pool, but it does impact deck functionality. Granted, the biggest downside to this (1) it kills a lot of bizarre tribes, so we'll see a lot more elves, zombies, soldiers, goblins, wizards, humans (2) it increases the chance of super swingy games where one player manages to get just that right creature into play and his opponent can't answer it fast enough. I can see T1: Figure of Destiny being a massive win condition.
The other solution that I think works best, and I'm not saying this just because I suggested it, would be to make it that all your non-land spells had to be creatures. I fully understand that would make the format a whole lot less fun and possibly lead to stalemates. That's why I said that it would be the most extreme solution.
Anyway, this article was really good. Well thought out and locially supported in your arguements. I like that you linked to Rosewater's article. Going to keep my opinions on his thoughts to myself. Briefly, I can say I never really heard anyone asking for colors to do things they weren't supposed to do. I thought that was the point of the color pie. But for anyone who wants a sarcastic laugh at the absurdity of magic developement these days, that a trip over to Magic Lampoon and read the two articles called "WOTC decides any color can do whatever it wants." It reads as if Mark Rosewater, himself, wrote it.
Not a huge fan of this article. The theme seems to be "I'm great and my deck is great". This hubris seems based on the following:
"But more recently I’ve found that my Commander deck wins more games than it loses, and in a format with three opponents instead of one, that’s big enough to warrant discussion."
Not really, most decks are much weaker than something like this. I'd say I win 75-80% of my Commander games and that is possible with good play and good deck building.
It is also amusing as you're not playing the best spells in Commander and don't even comment on them.
Time Warp, Capture of Jignzau (sp), Temporal Manipulation, and Time Stretch are better than probably 99 cards in your deck. On top of those where is Miarai's Wake and Mana Reflection? Not running those six cards in a deck with access to their colors is ether a conscious decision to make your deck weaker or insanity. Well at least you now have six cards to replace Ink Eyes with.
I'd also recommend getting better tutors and Deed but don't know how tight your budget is. Acidic Slime should also be added in place of Wickerbough Elder as it can kill troublesome lands and trade with anything that doesn't fly. The comment above is also spot-on with recommending Vorath's Stronghold and Academy Ruins.
I would also recommend some planeswalkers as they go very well with Wraths and I'm not sure why you're not running any.
In addition you claim to be aware of how important mana is but you're only running 40 lands in a 99 card deck. That is 40.4% or 24.2 lands in a 60 card deck. The five color control deck from standard you love to mention ran 28 or 46.7% not to mention much denser card draw.
Lastly your argument below is laughable
"Some players find this strategy contrary to the spirit of the format, thinking it better if the entire deck is built solely around the commander and its abilities. But I’m not sure why a one-card combo like Niv-Mizzet, the Firemind + Curiosity or a zero-card combo deck like Zur the Enchanter is more honest or fair than a 5-color control deck."
This can be distilled down to 'my deck is a pain in the ass but it could be worse.' Congratulations. How would you compare this to my Uril or Jenara decks which are nether a pile of good cards with 20 wraths or a combo deck?
While I love commander I feel it was all down hill from this article's title. Conceit and confidence can be fine but in this case I feel they are misplaced. Start taking some extra turns, then we can talk.
Serrated Arrows was printed as a common in Duel Decks: Garruk vs. Liliana.
-Alex
How is Serrated Arrows legal?
Ah I was thinking of 1 ticket total if you win one of your matches. But yeah that is still 8 tickets for 8 people and everyone gets a ticket unless they scrub out completely which doesn't sound smart. *gets a headache thinking about how to do it fairly and at a reasonable cost.*
Perhaps 3 rounds of swiss with a final top half listing with each person placing in that half winning a ticket. This brings up tie breakers which can be unpleasant but is sometimes necessary.
Ah yet another voice in the discussion! Great that you are thinking about this. Not so great that you prognosticate doom. Particularly since while I don't want to agree with your premise it is difficult to avoid. I think the solution is site registration even though it is a "barrier to entry". Precisely because it IS a barrier to entry, it will filter out a great deal of rules breaking and format warping simply by having enforcable rules. BYOS is no more enforcable for tribal than any of the other propositions including my own 3. (Pauper, Tribalton and Double Tribal. (Btw thanks for the mention, I feel like my article was shoved off the front page very quickly this week.)) Whatever approach we use, we either enforce the rules and keep them updated and viewable and have a serious interest in doing this or we do things casually and let the community busters come and wreck our plans. Eventually WOTC will have to make some decision even if it is to remove the Tribal Wars format entirely. That might be the only final solution given that with any 3 people no two can agree entirely. If that happens we will all move on to different formats. I am already starting to regear myself towards commander and am reading up on pauper with more interest since there seem to be NO fun formats left.
Interesting article. My notions deck is entirely different from yours yet I beleive I have built similar decks in the past. I am no vet of the commander game as I seem to play it once every 2-3 months, quitting again after encountering combo deck #12156 etc. That said I agree with some of what you said. I would go so far as to include Violent Ultimatum as another finisher. It isn't as all encompassing as Cruel but it can save your bacon versus a lock. In addition, I tend to run a much more elemental focused deck with cards like Reveillark, Mulldrifter, Harbinger, Vigor, Thresh, the mana guys, etc. This adds a layer of "I'll be back" to the many wraths I also include. Those who read my articles know I love Desolation Giant. He is my wrath of choice on a stick. Legacy weapon seems to me to be a gigantic "kill him now" sign. Play that and you better be ready to defend against all comers immediately. To a lesser extent that is also true of Portal.
In the recursion slots you did not mention two of my favorite lands: Volrath's Stronghold and Academy Ruins both of which are relatively cheap (5 tix for stronghold, .5 for ruins.) These allow you recursion tricks with cards like Duplicant, Mindslaver (another "kill me now" card and only eligible for ruins tricks), Triskelion, etc.
I am also a fan of cards like Far Wanderings which almost always fires in Commander and Search for Tomorrow. Harrow and Heart are other decent picks for the land fetch slots though Heart really sucks late game as do most land fetchers. Krosan Tusker is a perennial favorite and many of the landcyclers from Alara block are pretty decent too, fetching up your shocklands and duals. Expedition Map and Sylvan Scrying are great for getting those specific lands you need (Valakut for the mono red crowd, Emeria for monowhite, and the above mentioned lands for recursion.)
One last comment regarding the other 5c commanders. I think you sell some of them very short. Maybe they don't win for you but I have seen games where they dominated.
I think a rotating special format rules may be the best option for Tribal Apocalypse.
However, I doubt the 1 ticket per swiss win is doable with the current prize pool. Eight people with three rounds of swiss equates to 12 tickets.
That was the one worry I tried to identify with this approach in the article. I know my Bears and Spiders decks would be unplayable with the Make Your Own Standard Tribal format.
I think it was in the comments to ShardFenix's latest article that someone suggested rotating the parameters of the Tribal Apocalypse tournament for singleton, pauper, extended, etc. as a means of keeping the format more relaxed and less sharkable. This may be the best option for Tribal Apocalypse, but I any solution for Tribal Classic as a legitimate format requires WotC to come up with an official solution that is enforced by the client.
restricting the card pool to one or two sets could really inhibit tribal imo because some of the non-synergic tribes have their few members stretched across many different sets and the result would be having to always pick Lorwyn in order to grab changelings
I would love it if players played Tribal, but that genie's bottle seems to have been broken. I don't think I have ever had a tribal deck that won through any means other than having a creature bash my opponent's life down to 0.
I have thought a lot more on this topic since I wrote this article, and the fact of the matter is that a casual tournament scene cannot exist. Someone will always be on the high end with their deck quality and there is no way that everyone can be on the same page for deck construction equality unless there is a "here's the format rules, go all out in creating your deck".
I don't like the idea of singleton for non-tribal components of a deck - it just narrows the build options for tribal too much as strategies that require cards with a large number of analogs (i.e., cards with similar effects such as Lightning Bolt, Incinerate, and Burst Lightning) become more reliable and produce more consistent results. In addition, creatures with enter the battlefield effects become more valuable as they allow a greater mass of spell-like effects to be repeated in a deck in a way that would not be available to other decks.
My line, "In addition, there may be a need for a couple of card bannings beyond the legacy or block format banned lists" is because that seems a true statement in any format - right now I do not forsee any, but that doesn't mean I am omniscient and can forsee all of the decks that can be built under the make your own standard. I have looked over a few decklists from Make Your Standard events and have not seen a plethora of borken combo decks.
I personally like running snow lands and whiteout any time I'm using Wild Mongrel.
Even as a singleton it lets you 'tog your lands for the kill when the chance comes up.
Or it can serve as an answer to pesky fliers.
"that's right. No common creature-lands."
Well we get Zendikons.......oh right.
So, except of having one (albeit it long) banned list, we need to scrounge over block format banned lists, legacy banned lists, and as you put it: " In addition, there may be a need for a couple of card bannings beyond the legacy or block format banned lists"..
Next to that, deckbuilding will feel more like playing limited than constructed, and players will still seek out that combo and throw in whatever tribe fits that block/core set the best.
ArchGenius has the best solution I think, because it will still allow people to play all cards AND still allow people to play tribal from all sets available:
"All non-tribal cards (exept basic lands) are restricted to one copy per deck."
Players should be playing TRIBAL, not throw together a game breaking combo and fill it up with whatever tribe fits it best..
0.02$
When there's low avalability on cards that are played in decks (before the drafts start) there will be an increase of price on subpar cards. The real Setgems such as jace and persecutor will also be quite high at these times.
I recommend buying on day 3/4 after the booster drafts open.
I also recommend that you sell anything you get out of your booster against market value to the highest bidding bot on the day before the drafts start. You can easily buy it back within 3 days for the same price or lower.
On a personal note. Collect all cards that are automatic 4-offs or powercreeps of previous cards. This means cards like Smother... This baby will be worth something until the drafts start. I'm only going to hoard two rares of this set, and neither of them is jace.
Running sweepers in the Sideboard of aggro-ish decks is an old strategy. Essentially you bring it in for aggro mirrors, let your opponent over extend, playing just enough creatures to defend, then blow up the world and drop your hand.
i do like swapping the brownsales for imps maindeck
I'm not too crazy about changing it without advanced notice BUT given say a 2 week lag between builds it seems very doable. Also I am as you know a vocal proponent of swiss style tourney. 1 ticket per win sounds about right...half of the total prize of single elimination.
Generally speaking there is no way to really tell for sure how things will change except to watch the way the major bots buy and sell cards and make notes. Also you can check the archived versions of this podcast for past charts and also Hammy's weekly State of the Program articles also on this site.
I really like this idea here. I can come up with plenty of crazy variants based on random deck restrictions.