Brainstorm
Force of Will
Lion's Eye Diamond
Counterbalance
Sensei's Divining Top
Tarmogoyf
Phyrexian Dreadnaught
Goblin Lackey
Standstill
Natural Order
"The Ancients teach us that if we can but last, we shall prevail."
—Kaysa, Elder Druid of the Juniper Order
Arena has a bit of a hump to get over before you get your first playable deck which is a bit annoying. I fortunately started during Ravnica Allegiance when you could craft mono blue shitters with only 3 rare wildcards but there's not so many easy budget decks now I don't think. Probably mono red cavalcade is now the best budget friendly deck to grind out some gold.
Also highly worth spending $20 for the two one-time bundles to get some gems so you can do some BO3 drafts.
I'm told that if you want to draft in Arena it's not too difficult to do without money. I have a friend who doesn't play paper but still gets to play a lot online because of arena and I think he's invested 20 total?
Drafting is fairly easy because you can take advantage of the bots by forcing certain archétypes that they undervalue.
After that, you still need to be a good player (And of course you still need to be able to draft properly) and to be able to notice the archétypes that are open, but i feel like getting to 7 wins in Bo1 drafts is fairly easy, which means you can at least draft Bo1 3 times every two weeks and draft Bo3 at least Once every two weeks (And more if you do good).
I once bought the welcome pack. I keep drafting at that rythm while building some tiers 1 decks in standard with my winnings.
After looking over the Mythic Championship results, this is my final guess for the B&R announcement today:
Standard Bans:
Field of the Dead
Nissa, Who Shakes the World
Hydroid Krasis
Modern Bans:
Mox Opal
Ancient Stirrings
Paradoxical Outcome
Legacy:
No changes
Vintage:
No Changes
Pauper Bans:
Arcum's Astrolabe
Uhh....they hit the wrong PW in standard? Mox Opal was a long time coming, but Stirrings ban seems rather petty. Was Tron running the format over with Stirrings?
He's guessing. My opinion is that I think Opal might get a ban because of the Emry/Urza combo variants that are rising up in force, but I don't think Stirrings will get banned. Tron is as popular/powerful as ever but it's natural predator (Burn) is also still quite prevalent.
EDIT: Ninja-ed!
Brainstorm Realist
I close my eyes and sink within myself, relive the gift of precious memories, in need of a fix called innocence. - Chuck Shuldiner
I think Stirrings gets hit because Tron has a ready replacement in Once Upon a Time, and Tron is the only deck that consistently has kept its head above water through both Urza/Emry/Outcome and Hogaak. Not to mention just how much the London Mulligan and Karn2 benefited the deck as well. It's basically on a different power level than the rest of the format right now, and only some other, even more broken things have masked that.
https://magic.wizards.com/en/article...announcement?s
Field in standard
Astrolabe in pauper
Not shocked.
Well, yeah. I mean, there is a 0% chance they want to tank the sales of their new set right out of the gate.
But, I sure wouldn't mind, because I wouldn't mind picking up some cheaper Okos for formats I care about.
As a philosophical question, what is up with Standard? I mean, on the one hand, powerful cards are far more interesting than low-powered ones. I find it a little hard to believe this is just gross incompetence. I could see a little of that, people make mistakes. But this just seems to keep happening now and so I think there is something more systemic happening.
Anyone want to weigh in? I don't play Standard, even on Arena, so I am detached. But I do have something of a pet theory as to what is going on with respect to the larger scale of things, but I am curious other's perspective before I just lob that out there.
"The Ancients teach us that if we can but last, we shall prevail."
—Kaysa, Elder Druid of the Juniper Order
Standard has been to various degrees fucked for awhile, and it's always due to the same reasons: lack of safety valves and lack of answers.
Remember when Red was so bad that they had to ban Ramunap Ruins for it? Yeah, there wasn't a single Loxodon Hierarch or equivalent to be found.
The big issue they have now is planeswalkers. Most of the best 'walkers ever printed, in any format, plus a bunch of other good ones, are all in standard right now. And nobody outside of black has a kill spell for them. White is supposed to what, use a 4 mana sorcery speed enchantment as an answer? That half the 'walkers you want to hit with it can destroy or bounce?
The other thing they're dealing with right now is just a general lack of decent removal. There isn't even a Doom Blade variant available in standard right now. With the current setup, Angrath's Rampage is probably one of, if not the best removal spell in the format, because it answers a turn 2 Oko or other 'walker, and is still relevant against other stuff.
The reason Ramp in general is so strong right now is that excess lands can be turned into threats - Nissa and Field of the Dead (they only got rid of one of the problem cards there), and the Ramp decks have a lot of extra deck slots available because Krasis does three things for them - lifegain, card draw, and finisher, which normally would be three different cards you'd have to pick between. Gilded Goose and Beanstalk Giant suffer from the same flaw, though they're actually much more balanced cards because they're limited.
Constantly shitting on Wraths and Counterspells might market test well, but if you're going to push everything else in the format like WotC has been lately, you can't skimp on them and expect things to be cool. That's why Quench got printed. It's an acknowledgment they need Mana Leak, even though they really don't want it.
White desperately needs a Terror variant for 'walkers, and red needs some burn spells that do double damage against walkers or something. The Royals and Oko coming down with 5-6 loyalty just puts them out of range of any red deck realistically being able to deal with them right now.
Interesting. I mean, I don't disagree. I was just thinking at a "higher level." I don't mean that as a "better level," but rather, one more abstract.
So, why are we in the sort of doldrums of removal then? Is it that the paradigm currently favors high powered threats over high powered removal? Is it that they think this makes for "more interesting" formats? Again, it certainly seems there is something more systemic than just an "oops" here or there.
I personally they think are deliberately push threats over removal because it likely "sells better." And then, they have already established that Standard bannings are now normative, they did it, multiple times now and the "sales sky" likely did not fall. So, now the gloves are off and it could be that the whole paradigm of "sell high power, low removal, ban the power, sell more cards" actually favors Wizards bottom line in the long run.
"The Ancients teach us that if we can but last, we shall prevail."
—Kaysa, Elder Druid of the Juniper Order
I'll have to take your word for it, because I don't know anything about that game.
But it would not surprise me that they might pull a page from their playbook. I mean, that game has been around a pretty long time too.
Also, if Arena was the video-game-ization of Magic, then this is all just "balance patches" which is not just normal, it's expected.
"The Ancients teach us that if we can but last, we shall prevail."
—Kaysa, Elder Druid of the Juniper Order
Alpine Moon and Blood Sun both rotated out of Standard, thus beginning the shitshow that was Field of the Dead, right?
I'm getting flashbacks to Battle of Zendikar, as it marks the point where WotC got megalomaniac - and they paid dearly for it. They only got back on track with Dominaria - and here we are 1.5 years later, as they're repeating the same shitty mistakes they've made before times and times again ad nauseam.
I blame Limited (and the amount of money it makes them online).
WOTC has decided they don't like Limited formats with Doom Blade because it makes Timmys feel bad after paying 6 mana for a Mythic bomb only to have it die, because bad players think winning Limited should be about luckdrawing your bomb and casting it, so they've been on a mission to power down removal spells over time. Even Oblivion Ring was overpowered as a draft common (picked over most rares), so they first upgraded it to uncommon and then started making it cost 1 more.
As a concession to Standard, they would print 1-2 pieces of "premium" removal at rare (Hero's Downfall, Murderous Rider, Bedevil, Never // Return, Ruinous Path..), just slow enough and rare enough to not warp Limited. Or they would print cheap uncommon removal that's hard to cast (Tyrant's Scorn, Angrath's Rampage). But this "premium" removal is still underpowered compared to old staples like Doom Blade, Lightning Bolt and Path to Exile.
To some extent I think they're pandering to the same type of players in Standard. They want players to resolve the big dumb creatures and big planeswalkers, so they keep powering up creatures (harder to kill or ETB/dies effects) while powering down cheap answers (counters, removal).
Creatures still die? Ok, let's just add more text to them. Eventually they start printing dumb stuff like Questing Beast and Hydroid Krasis and then wonder why Forest wins tournaments.
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