Hehe, well honestly that card did not come to my mind. It is a card I usually avoid and put it only in decks that have a really hard time against Storm which isn't the case here. The decks usually aren't even white so I forgot that you can actually cast the card from your hand for 2WW ^_^.
Leyline of Sanctity is certainly much better in this deck since you can actually cast it.
Balance is a good card, but I like to try and draft key archetype pieces early. Balance fits nicely in certain decks, but is not key to their success, I feel.
Is the Vintage Cube designed in a way that Balance isn't as awesome a card as it usually is? I was surprised that wasn't a first pick over the Battlesphere?
I liked the pick recap at the end of each pack; it really helped keep track of the deck's progress. It's easy to forget that the readers don't have the benefit of the deck builder in front of them.
I don't like playing Standard in general but sometimes I play it, from time to time it is nice to play few tournaments and then get back to preferred format. I enjoyed majority of the Standard tournaments I participated in. The first one was the first WMCQ that I played with Grixis Control. Then I played some PPTQs with BUG Delirium and that was a lot of fun. But then Emrakul came and changed everything. My Delirium deck is still viable so I just put 2 Emrakuls in it and tried my luck at some other events. Playing Delirium mirrors seemed horrible at first but later I realized it wasn't that bad. Playing against Marvel was. Since people get Emrakuled for a longer while than me they know the feeling of being totally helpless more than me. I don't usually mind a Mindslaver effect, I had lots of fun with it from both sides of the table. I lived through worse. But what I don't really like is the fact that some decks simply die to it. There are so many nice decks that work but unfortunately lose to Emrakul decks and that is why even pros rather avoid those decks and stick to something that they know works. Some players come to play for fun and even their decks are not as powerful as tier one decks they usually can play a good game against them. Emrakul says 'no'.Some decks are simply too fair, too slow or not having enough disruption to stop the Mindslaver effect from happening. Summary Dismissal is one card, costs UU and thus only few decks can run it.
I haven't probably played too much of current Standard to hate it but I can see the players' faces at local tournaments and PPTQs. They are not happy when they see Emrakul. Sometimes it does not mean their game is lost but they know what is going to mostly happen and dislike it. I've also seen people's faces when they first played against a Marvel deck. Everyone was scared. No one expected turn 4 Emrakul. No one expected the game to end prematurely and I think that is the biggest problem. What those players worked towards just dissipates when Emrakul hits the board no skill (or close to none) involved. I've seen many badly played Emrakuls and badly executed Mindslavers but only the bad feeling makes everyone feel uneasy. It was the same with CoCo and Siege Rhino, people are just fed up with those cards. Or at least that is my point of view. I don't care about Mindslaver. I don't care about Stasis, I can play against Shops all day or even Stax where my only answer to Smokestack is Force of Will. But many Standard players aren't like that. They like their spells and permanents and they do not want anyone else to tinker with them.
Something I found funny, here are two of my recent tweets.
UW Flash is certainly very annoying deck and actually made me way more upset than Emrakul, but all one needs is to understand the deck and try to avoid the worst case scenarios that happen. Since my knowledge in Marvel vs UW matchup was practically none the game was bound to go awry. After I threw 4 Emrakuls at my opponent it came to this board state...mostly due to me messing as much as I could but I was told that this is nothing unusual in this matchup. I don't want to get to a similar position ever.
The second tweet is from a game where we both had Liliana's emblem in play but I would be the one who would eventually win if Emrakul wouldn't have happened. It was the only card that could have changed the outcome of the game. I was sad when Emrakul happened because till that moment the game was lots of fun and a big challenge. I could have win! ^_^
Winter Orb was fun, that artifacts shut off when tapped was fun, that tapped blockers didnt fight back was fun.
Mana burn was fun, combat damage on the stack was fun, that you were not allowed to concede without calling a judge was fun.
That scouting wasnt allowed was fun, interrupt was fun.
My first experience with backlash from using mindslaver was when I innocently put it in a commander deck (when that format was first introduced to MTGO) and ended up in a game where I could (and did) loop through Eternal Witness, Mindslaver, and Crystal Shard to completely control the game. I was very politely told that I was breaking the social contract and asked to not do it again. I took that to heart. I had not even considered Mindslaver to be in the same class as cards that are considered broken in commander.
I've certainly had it played against me and I have been slave locked out of the game too and it sucks. I totally get why people get angry or ragequit or simply just quit when this happens to them. And imho putting that ability on a 13/13 protection from instants flyer that timewalks your opponent is not a better thing to do than making a 15/15 protection from colored spells flyer with Annihilator 6 that time walks you!
In fact I think Emrakul #2 is more unfun in many important ways. But that said I think it is OK to have some unfun cards in the game to contrast against the many that are fun. And these cards are not dominating every aspect of the formats they are legal in (not more than any other top tier card anyway). They aren't affinity or storm or dredge.
As to Spell Quellers/Rattlechains, the deck's not unbeatable. Just high synergy and the problem with decks like these aren't that they are hard to beat, but that they reduce the number of possibilities that win against them by a large number. I agree that the archetype was pushed too hard, just as GW Tokens was before. It reduces the number of creative "monstrosities" that sometimes surprise us even at the pro level and make magic exciting and fun.
I don't know what would happen if R&D stopped doing that with each new Standard format and had no decks preplanned for but I expect things would eventually devolve to the same state more or less. We talk about tiers in magic not because of design only but because magic players think like that. Hierarchical deck tiers allow us to decide what decks are worth playing and which ones are merely a laugh or a "hrmmm".
With all that said I think it is legitimate to complain if all you see in the top tier are unfun cards. That does not draw people to the game. Typical new players aren't going to see that and go oh I need to make that deck now! On the other hand without decks like that, it becomes a slug fest of fun decks vs fun decks and we wouldn't want that! (I am still thinking of Armadillo cloak on Rith the Awakener here...)
Happy Holidays Pete and everyone here, Merry Xmas, Happy Qwanza, Happy (C)Hannukah, and a Joyous Yuletide to you all!
Casting and using Mindslaver was always super fun when I did it, and if it was done to me I just scooped if I had a hand that could wind up killing myself.
I get that people hate being mindslavered though, and it does seem like Standard is the format that wouldn't want something like that.
I'm in a similar boat. It's interesting to watch an opponent either come up with something I may not have seen, or more commonly, try and pilot a deck they are not familiar with.
I basically agree with Sam's point in his article, that occasional mind slaver effects are fine, and can be fun. It's a bit different when you and your opponent each play 3 Emrakuls (which, I have played). We basically were both spinning marvel trying to hit Ulamog and trading Emrakuls. That game got annoying.
Just to make sure it's not being misunderstood: Fireblast is gone in Pure events only. The Purification list is filled with stuff that, albeit strong, would never be banned in any other subformat.
First off much respect to you and your mtg opinions in general but I have to disagree with you here. With the caveat that I haven't been playing so maybe theory < practice. Fireblast is but one of many non-creature spells that make Tribal Wars hard to build for because no sideboards allowed means warping your main deck for contingencies against stuff. Sure burn has an innate advantage as its accompanying tribes all are aggressive or irrelevant to the win but that isn't because of one "free" spell that if you build your deck wrong can wreck you thoroughly. (Imho fireblast is a real skill tester.)
That said I think it is good to shake things up and discourage burn from going too "creatureless" in a creatures must be played format. So sure take out Fireblast. It earned its time out for sure.
The white decks often run 4 or more copies of Silver Knight or Auriok Champion, or even a Worship or two. Now, seemingly, those cards have less rai·son d'ê·tre with Fireblast gone. Once these narrow answers get replaced with more robust cards that help out in a variety of matchups, they will have more game against Junk decks (GWB decks, like Shaman) or even combo. U/B might easily become a popular color combination now with Fireblast gone.
I'm very happy you axed Fireblast. Now red, can win because of metagame reasons, not because decks were stretched too thin. I hated running stuff like Auriok Champion that was a necessary evil and not strong in 3 of 4 matchups. Tribal = no sideboards and Fireblast was a classic reason why there arguably could have been an exception as a strong strategy not met with cards normally good in tribal. With no Fireblasts, deckbuilding will feel more Tribal-ish.
I don't follow: how does Fireblast affect the white decks? (But I admit I'm not sure I get what the "hit-or-miss white decks" are.)
And how does banning the best card in Burn make Burn better? Which other line of action would have been preferable?
It looked like a no-brainer to me: that deck has won several games while not playing a single creature all game, while closing with 8 Fireblast damage to the dome. Answering that by purifying one of the creatures felt silly to me. If we want to prevent monored players from pursuing "creatures don't matter" builds, what should we do other than taking away the best non-creature cards in their arsenal?
This is a follow-up to a Wizards poll which found that a lot of people are very down on Standard right now.
This doesn't seem a fair assessment of what Stoddard said in that article. Which is (emphasis mine):
When I asked people on Twitter about their view of the format, a lot of people did give it very high ratings, citing the deck diversity and the format's evolution as high points. They were just generally enjoying themselves. At the same time, I read lots of criticisms of the format, many of which I thought were fair assessments of what those people did not like.
At no point he implies the people who gave the format high ratings are outnumbered by those who expressed criticisms. The word "a lot/lots" is used in both cases. I challenge anyone to find any poll about MTG where "a lot of people" didn't express an opinion while a different "lot of people" were expressing the opposite opinion.
Pete, I assume there's a big "Your Mileage May Vary" implied in your Opinion Section. Because I, for one, don't mind Mindslaver effects. I may even say I have fun seeing the opponent figuring out how to use my cards in the most harmful ways. Sometimes, there's not even one. Sometimes, you need to be cunning and creative.
Besides, a Mindslaver lock in Modern (such as the one from U Tron) just spells good game, because there's no reason not to concede at that point, unless you want to force the opponent to spend their clock, in which case you'll just click F6 and go read the news while your opponent finishes playing. Now, there's no such thing in current Standard. As Rick said, after Emrakul 2.0 rises, you may still stand a chance; but if you don't, the game is quickly going to end anyway. The greatest annoyance materializes when the unfun is also taking a very long time to seal the deal. That's why traditional prison decks aren't even the same sport to me. How can anyone have fun playing against Stasis and the likes? Where you keep being forced to stay in a game that you theoretically may still win, but where most of the turns you aren't even allowed to play. That sounds like having fun cutting myself or whipping my own back, or some such practice. It's entirely alien to me.
The point is: the Stasis-like effects or the mana denial strategies, they aren't really hard locks a la Mindslaver/Academy Ruins, where you just concede and that's it. If you do concede, it'd be mostly out of spite, since, technically, your deck could still have a way out, the opponent still has to take decisions leading to possible mistakes, and the prison needs to find new ways to rebuild itself over the course of the game. Your chances might be slim, yet the correct play is not to concede, therefore your inner Spike will demand for you to keep playing, and enduring the torture. That's the insanely masochistic part.
Any combo that quickly ends the game is no torture by definition; it's merciful. Classic prison decks are not, they're rather something out of Hellraiser.
It's weird to me that you find current Standard so repulsive, because in my game group, we had the opposite reaction. We usually despise Standard, but lately we started proxying a lot of Standard decks chosen among the most successful in the current meta, and we're having a blast playing them. Granted, we just do a few friendly matches, which is probably different than sitting through entire tournaments, but we still have to find a deck we don't like to play and play against, and the variety is so huge right now, that alone seems to tell us they're doing something right with Standard these days.
Wow, Fireblast gone is awesome. Now the hit-or-miss white decks will disappear somewhat which means the midrange junk decks won't be as oppressive (ironically, possibly making Burn better than ever as a metagame choice).
I love Emrakul from a pure design standpoint, but the gameplay is just completely miserable. I guess this makes it extra sweet when you win a game in which you were Emrakul'd twice (happened to me this week), but those are obviously few and far between.
Hehe, well honestly that card did not come to my mind. It is a card I usually avoid and put it only in decks that have a really hard time against Storm which isn't the case here. The decks usually aren't even white so I forgot that you can actually cast the card from your hand for 2WW ^_^.
Leyline of Sanctity is certainly much better in this deck since you can actually cast it.
I made the changes you suggested, it came up to 142 tix
https://www.mtggoldfish.com/deck/536016#online
What's up with Witchbane Orb? Isn't that a poor player's Leyline of Sanctity?
There is always a smooth way to make it happen. One has to carry it well. - Marla Ahlgrimm
There is a need to single out. Most especially during the game. - Marla Ahlgrimm
There are so many who wanted to be part of it. It is hard to be in the tournament. - Morgan Exteriors
There is a need to play it hard. So that there would be a high rank. - Morgan Exteriors
Fun is where fun is to be had, seeking or not seeking doesnt change it.
Balance is a good card, but I like to try and draft key archetype pieces early. Balance fits nicely in certain decks, but is not key to their success, I feel.
Is the Vintage Cube designed in a way that Balance isn't as awesome a card as it usually is? I was surprised that wasn't a first pick over the Battlesphere?
I liked the pick recap at the end of each pack; it really helped keep track of the deck's progress. It's easy to forget that the readers don't have the benefit of the deck builder in front of them.
I don't like playing Standard in general but sometimes I play it, from time to time it is nice to play few tournaments and then get back to preferred format. I enjoyed majority of the Standard tournaments I participated in. The first one was the first WMCQ that I played with Grixis Control. Then I played some PPTQs with BUG Delirium and that was a lot of fun. But then Emrakul came and changed everything. My Delirium deck is still viable so I just put 2 Emrakuls in it and tried my luck at some other events. Playing Delirium mirrors seemed horrible at first but later I realized it wasn't that bad. Playing against Marvel was. Since people get Emrakuled for a longer while than me they know the feeling of being totally helpless more than me. I don't usually mind a Mindslaver effect, I had lots of fun with it from both sides of the table. I lived through worse. But what I don't really like is the fact that some decks simply die to it. There are so many nice decks that work but unfortunately lose to Emrakul decks and that is why even pros rather avoid those decks and stick to something that they know works. Some players come to play for fun and even their decks are not as powerful as tier one decks they usually can play a good game against them. Emrakul says 'no'.Some decks are simply too fair, too slow or not having enough disruption to stop the Mindslaver effect from happening. Summary Dismissal is one card, costs UU and thus only few decks can run it.
I haven't probably played too much of current Standard to hate it but I can see the players' faces at local tournaments and PPTQs. They are not happy when they see Emrakul. Sometimes it does not mean their game is lost but they know what is going to mostly happen and dislike it. I've also seen people's faces when they first played against a Marvel deck. Everyone was scared. No one expected turn 4 Emrakul. No one expected the game to end prematurely and I think that is the biggest problem. What those players worked towards just dissipates when Emrakul hits the board no skill (or close to none) involved. I've seen many badly played Emrakuls and badly executed Mindslavers but only the bad feeling makes everyone feel uneasy. It was the same with CoCo and Siege Rhino, people are just fed up with those cards. Or at least that is my point of view. I don't care about Mindslaver. I don't care about Stasis, I can play against Shops all day or even Stax where my only answer to Smokestack is Force of Will. But many Standard players aren't like that. They like their spells and permanents and they do not want anyone else to tinker with them.
Something I found funny, here are two of my recent tweets.
UW Flash is certainly very annoying deck and actually made me way more upset than Emrakul, but all one needs is to understand the deck and try to avoid the worst case scenarios that happen. Since my knowledge in Marvel vs UW matchup was practically none the game was bound to go awry. After I threw 4 Emrakuls at my opponent it came to this board state...mostly due to me messing as much as I could but I was told that this is nothing unusual in this matchup. I don't want to get to a similar position ever.
https://twitter.com/stsungjp/status/810873423543107589
The second tweet is from a game where we both had Liliana's emblem in play but I would be the one who would eventually win if Emrakul wouldn't have happened. It was the only card that could have changed the outcome of the game. I was sad when Emrakul happened because till that moment the game was lots of fun and a big challenge. I could have win! ^_^
https://twitter.com/stsungjp/status/805817673724690432
Oh, I 'member. Nonetheless, fun is where you seek it, old or new.
Winter Orb was fun, that artifacts shut off when tapped was fun, that tapped blockers didnt fight back was fun.
Mana burn was fun, combat damage on the stack was fun, that you were not allowed to concede without calling a judge was fun.
That scouting wasnt allowed was fun, interrupt was fun.
Magic was more fun in the old days.
My first experience with backlash from using mindslaver was when I innocently put it in a commander deck (when that format was first introduced to MTGO) and ended up in a game where I could (and did) loop through Eternal Witness, Mindslaver, and Crystal Shard to completely control the game. I was very politely told that I was breaking the social contract and asked to not do it again. I took that to heart. I had not even considered Mindslaver to be in the same class as cards that are considered broken in commander.
I've certainly had it played against me and I have been slave locked out of the game too and it sucks. I totally get why people get angry or ragequit or simply just quit when this happens to them. And imho putting that ability on a 13/13 protection from instants flyer that timewalks your opponent is not a better thing to do than making a 15/15 protection from colored spells flyer with Annihilator 6 that time walks you!
In fact I think Emrakul #2 is more unfun in many important ways. But that said I think it is OK to have some unfun cards in the game to contrast against the many that are fun. And these cards are not dominating every aspect of the formats they are legal in (not more than any other top tier card anyway). They aren't affinity or storm or dredge.
As to Spell Quellers/Rattlechains, the deck's not unbeatable. Just high synergy and the problem with decks like these aren't that they are hard to beat, but that they reduce the number of possibilities that win against them by a large number. I agree that the archetype was pushed too hard, just as GW Tokens was before. It reduces the number of creative "monstrosities" that sometimes surprise us even at the pro level and make magic exciting and fun.
I don't know what would happen if R&D stopped doing that with each new Standard format and had no decks preplanned for but I expect things would eventually devolve to the same state more or less. We talk about tiers in magic not because of design only but because magic players think like that. Hierarchical deck tiers allow us to decide what decks are worth playing and which ones are merely a laugh or a "hrmmm".
With all that said I think it is legitimate to complain if all you see in the top tier are unfun cards. That does not draw people to the game. Typical new players aren't going to see that and go oh I need to make that deck now! On the other hand without decks like that, it becomes a slug fest of fun decks vs fun decks and we wouldn't want that! (I am still thinking of Armadillo cloak on Rith the Awakener here...)
Happy Holidays Pete and everyone here, Merry Xmas, Happy Qwanza, Happy (C)Hannukah, and a Joyous Yuletide to you all!
Casting and using Mindslaver was always super fun when I did it, and if it was done to me I just scooped if I had a hand that could wind up killing myself.
I get that people hate being mindslavered though, and it does seem like Standard is the format that wouldn't want something like that.
I'm in a similar boat. It's interesting to watch an opponent either come up with something I may not have seen, or more commonly, try and pilot a deck they are not familiar with.
I basically agree with Sam's point in his article, that occasional mind slaver effects are fine, and can be fun. It's a bit different when you and your opponent each play 3 Emrakuls (which, I have played). We basically were both spinning marvel trying to hit Ulamog and trading Emrakuls. That game got annoying.
Just to make sure it's not being misunderstood: Fireblast is gone in Pure events only. The Purification list is filled with stuff that, albeit strong, would never be banned in any other subformat.
First off much respect to you and your mtg opinions in general but I have to disagree with you here. With the caveat that I haven't been playing so maybe theory < practice. Fireblast is but one of many non-creature spells that make Tribal Wars hard to build for because no sideboards allowed means warping your main deck for contingencies against stuff. Sure burn has an innate advantage as its accompanying tribes all are aggressive or irrelevant to the win but that isn't because of one "free" spell that if you build your deck wrong can wreck you thoroughly. (Imho fireblast is a real skill tester.)
That said I think it is good to shake things up and discourage burn from going too "creatureless" in a creatures must be played format. So sure take out Fireblast. It earned its time out for sure.
The white decks often run 4 or more copies of Silver Knight or Auriok Champion, or even a Worship or two. Now, seemingly, those cards have less rai·son d'ê·tre with Fireblast gone. Once these narrow answers get replaced with more robust cards that help out in a variety of matchups, they will have more game against Junk decks (GWB decks, like Shaman) or even combo. U/B might easily become a popular color combination now with Fireblast gone.
I'm very happy you axed Fireblast. Now red, can win because of metagame reasons, not because decks were stretched too thin. I hated running stuff like Auriok Champion that was a necessary evil and not strong in 3 of 4 matchups. Tribal = no sideboards and Fireblast was a classic reason why there arguably could have been an exception as a strong strategy not met with cards normally good in tribal. With no Fireblasts, deckbuilding will feel more Tribal-ish.
I don't follow: how does Fireblast affect the white decks? (But I admit I'm not sure I get what the "hit-or-miss white decks" are.)
And how does banning the best card in Burn make Burn better? Which other line of action would have been preferable?
It looked like a no-brainer to me: that deck has won several games while not playing a single creature all game, while closing with 8 Fireblast damage to the dome. Answering that by purifying one of the creatures felt silly to me. If we want to prevent monored players from pursuing "creatures don't matter" builds, what should we do other than taking away the best non-creature cards in their arsenal?
This is a follow-up to a Wizards poll which found that a lot of people are very down on Standard right now.
This doesn't seem a fair assessment of what Stoddard said in that article. Which is (emphasis mine):
When I asked people on Twitter about their view of the format, a lot of people did give it very high ratings, citing the deck diversity and the format's evolution as high points. They were just generally enjoying themselves. At the same time, I read lots of criticisms of the format, many of which I thought were fair assessments of what those people did not like.
At no point he implies the people who gave the format high ratings are outnumbered by those who expressed criticisms. The word "a lot/lots" is used in both cases. I challenge anyone to find any poll about MTG where "a lot of people" didn't express an opinion while a different "lot of people" were expressing the opposite opinion.
Pete, I assume there's a big "Your Mileage May Vary" implied in your Opinion Section. Because I, for one, don't mind Mindslaver effects. I may even say I have fun seeing the opponent figuring out how to use my cards in the most harmful ways. Sometimes, there's not even one. Sometimes, you need to be cunning and creative.
Besides, a Mindslaver lock in Modern (such as the one from U Tron) just spells good game, because there's no reason not to concede at that point, unless you want to force the opponent to spend their clock, in which case you'll just click F6 and go read the news while your opponent finishes playing. Now, there's no such thing in current Standard. As Rick said, after Emrakul 2.0 rises, you may still stand a chance; but if you don't, the game is quickly going to end anyway. The greatest annoyance materializes when the unfun is also taking a very long time to seal the deal. That's why traditional prison decks aren't even the same sport to me. How can anyone have fun playing against Stasis and the likes? Where you keep being forced to stay in a game that you theoretically may still win, but where most of the turns you aren't even allowed to play. That sounds like having fun cutting myself or whipping my own back, or some such practice. It's entirely alien to me.
The point is: the Stasis-like effects or the mana denial strategies, they aren't really hard locks a la Mindslaver/Academy Ruins, where you just concede and that's it. If you do concede, it'd be mostly out of spite, since, technically, your deck could still have a way out, the opponent still has to take decisions leading to possible mistakes, and the prison needs to find new ways to rebuild itself over the course of the game. Your chances might be slim, yet the correct play is not to concede, therefore your inner Spike will demand for you to keep playing, and enduring the torture. That's the insanely masochistic part.
Any combo that quickly ends the game is no torture by definition; it's merciful. Classic prison decks are not, they're rather something out of Hellraiser.
It's weird to me that you find current Standard so repulsive, because in my game group, we had the opposite reaction. We usually despise Standard, but lately we started proxying a lot of Standard decks chosen among the most successful in the current meta, and we're having a blast playing them. Granted, we just do a few friendly matches, which is probably different than sitting through entire tournaments, but we still have to find a deck we don't like to play and play against, and the variety is so huge right now, that alone seems to tell us they're doing something right with Standard these days.
Wow, Fireblast gone is awesome. Now the hit-or-miss white decks will disappear somewhat which means the midrange junk decks won't be as oppressive (ironically, possibly making Burn better than ever as a metagame choice).
Hah! You know you were tapping into greatness when that happens. :D
I love Emrakul from a pure design standpoint, but the gameplay is just completely miserable. I guess this makes it extra sweet when you win a game in which you were Emrakul'd twice (happened to me this week), but those are obviously few and far between.