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Thread: The current state of Magic

  1. #781
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    Re: The current state of Magic

    Quote Originally Posted by Aggro_zombies View Post
    I suspect what will happen is that these ratios will go live and the game will bomb because a ton of people will try it for the IP and realize it's too hard to get traction and build the decks they want, and they'll move to the plethora of other games out there that are more generous, or move back to MTGO to get a Magic experience that's more true to the dynamics of the paper game.
    Sounds pretty accurate. If it goes live the current rates, it's going to be a major buzzkill that's going to be hard to recover from, especially if you want to get new players. "That buggy Hearthstone rip-off that's even more expensive than Hearthstone" is probably going to be the sentiment of lots of people.

    Let's also not forget that Hasbro has stated multiple times in their shareholder reports that they expect major returns from Arena (probably based on the idea that Hearthstone + Magic = $$$). I wonder what the consequences are going to be if it truely bombs.

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    Re: The current state of Magic

    This might sound tangential, but I think the biggest problem for Arena is likely to be bannings. We've had seven Standard bans in the past year. And these haven't been "curb the dominance of some deck" bannings; they've been "burn everything" bannings. They banned 250%-COSTED BARBARIAN RING. I would've considered it a fluke if the bans had stopped with Marvel, Guardian, and the helicopter, but this is something else entirely, and the fact they've done it twice in a row indicates that it isn't a fluke. Used to be that banned cards were good enough to play in wider, more high-powered formats, and only one of the currently banned cards has made waves anywhere but Standard.

    I'm wondering whether there's a sea change going on right now, whereby bans are no longer the last resort. There are tons of implications if this is the case, but I'll stick to Arena.

    So we know that Arena is Standard/Limited focused, and that singles are out. A problem for the impact of Arena is that I don't think people are likely to get into Arena if they don't already play paper or online MtG, meaning that it wouldn't be a major path for people to enter Magic; why play Arena when you could play any of its competitors? Sure, there's no major reason NOT to play it, but Wizards is a bit late to the party if they think they'll walk into the digital market and take a big portion of the market share other games/companies already have. But regardless of whether that's true, would enfranchised players want to branch out into another platform when they already have to worry that their paper or MTGO cards could get hit with a ban? Why take an even bigger risk by jumping onto a third platform?

    And for people who are discovering Magic through Arena, what's going to happen when their deck gets crushed like Energy just did?
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    Re: The current state of Magic

    Wait, I don't follow Standard or its bannings at all, but how the hell did Ramunap Ruins warrant a ban? That's so hilariously bad in any other format.

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    Re: The current state of Magic

    Ramunap Ruins adds a lot of "invisible power" to the deck, often acting as a virtual reduction to the opponent's starting life total. It also provides a high level of inevitability in matchups that go long, such as against the blue-black control decks popular at last year's World Championship (which have since fallen out of favor, in part because of this). Without Ramunap Ruins, the general play pattern of the deck remains largely the same, but the deck will lose some amount of the free win percentage that this land contributed.
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    Re: The current state of Magic

    Wow, so basically they are trying so hard to have a format that has predefined decks in it, to the point where they need a specific color of control that is "supposed to win late game," that they will just ban anything that kills their idea of perfect. I guess their design philosophy is more along the lines of "give them the cookie cutter decks they expect."

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    Re: The current state of Magic

    A small note on Ruins: It's not a more expensive Barbarian Ring. It's an engine. You can sacrifice any Desert. You don't get to play four uncounterable Shocks, you get to play 10, 6 of which do other stuff (= 1 more point to the head as ETB or give all Deserts a Relic of Progenitus-esque sac-to-nuke-all-yards ability). That is a lot of low-interactivity reach given how awful land destruction is in the format.
    Quote Originally Posted by Lemnear
    (On Innistrad)
    Yeah, an insanely powerful block which put the "derp!" factor in Legacy completely over the top.

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    Re: The current state of Magic

    Quote Originally Posted by Zombie View Post
    That is a lot of low-interactivity reach given how awful land destruction is in the format.
    I swear to god, this is what will ruin magic. They refuse to print decent ways to kill lands, but also print lands that have abilities.

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    Re: The current state of Magic

    It is better to ask and look stupid then keep your mouth shut and remain so.
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  9. #789

    Re: The current state of Magic

    RE: Frequent Bans

    I think this is a major shift in expectations not on the side of Wizards, but the side of players. Players are increasingly getting into card games through digital means, so they're used to balance patches being frequent and hitting lots of things at once, and are developing an expectation that if an environment gets unhealthy, the devs will fix it quickly. One of the perennial complaints people have about Hearthstone is that obviously stilted Ladder environments take months to fix, for example.

    Magic can't errata cards, or rather, Magic has (correctly) chosen not to errata cards to affect power level, so the major recourse for unbalanced environments is to ban the shit out of things. I think the scale of the bans is partly a move by Wizards to try to restore consumer confidence by being seen to take aggressive corrective action, but I also think that some of this is that players are quicker to call for said action because of a growing expectation that unfun environments be actively policed.

    RE: Land Destruction

    Wizards is on record saying that they believe players have more fun when they're able to cast their spells, and having robust manabases is the key to that. Wizards therefore can't print nonbasic land hate that compromises mana fixing. However, the best use of nonbasic land hate is mana denial and to punish greedy splashes, so you end up with all these ineffectual riffs on Ghost Quarter that are all universally less strong than Ghost Quarter because GQ was the most efficient implementation of the "resource exchange" nonbasic hate card. You also end up with Not-Quite-Blood-Moons because actual Blood Moon is a ball-busting card and probably shouldn't exist in a world where people aren't running mono-basics manabases.

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    Re: The current state of Magic

    Quote Originally Posted by Aggro_zombies View Post
    RE: Frequent Bans

    I think this is a major shift in expectations not on the side of Wizards, but the side of players. Players are increasingly getting into card games through digital means, so they're used to balance patches being frequent and hitting lots of things at once, and are developing an expectation that if an environment gets unhealthy, the devs will fix it quickly. One of the perennial complaints people have about Hearthstone is that obviously stilted Ladder environments take months to fix, for example.

    Magic can't errata cards, or rather, Magic has (correctly) chosen not to errata cards to affect power level, so the major recourse for unbalanced environments is to ban the shit out of things. I think the scale of the bans is partly a move by Wizards to try to restore consumer confidence by being seen to take aggressive corrective action, but I also think that some of this is that players are quicker to call for said action because of a growing expectation that unfun environments be actively policed.
    That's an interesting point, and one I hadn't considered. It feels like they've crossed a line, though; they're not just banning Marvel and Rogue Refiner; they banned 20% of the cards in the deck—in the second round of bannings. I feel like that indicates that it's stopped being a concession to players and has started to be a punitive measure against other players.

    Their justification was that the card was providing "free wins." 5-cost Shock is providing free wins. Ok, fine, but what is dying to it? What kind of deck is performing well elsewhere but dying to Ramunap Ruins? Does that deck have the right to exist if this is the card that's getting "free wins" against it on turn 17? This isn't Skullclamp. It's not even Fanatic of Mogis. [Dice_Box, thank you for linking the article.]

    Quote Originally Posted by Zombie View Post
    A small note on Ruins: It's not a more expensive Barbarian Ring. It's an engine. You can sacrifice any Desert. You don't get to play four uncounterable Shocks, you get to play 10, 6 of which do other stuff (= 1 more point to the head as ETB or give all Deserts a Relic of Progenitus-esque sac-to-nuke-all-yards ability). That is a lot of low-interactivity reach given how awful land destruction is in the format.
    You're right, though I'd be surprised if one could regularly activate Ruins more than twice in a game. Maybe I'm just out of touch, but in a red deck that doesn't seem likely or optimal.

    I guess my point is this: what's happened to the game design when they have to double-nuke a deck, and when the only other banned cards are a) one-half of an infinite combo, and b) a nonbasic land that costs four mana to activate? I was a durdling king when I started playing Magic, and I don't think I'd want to play much more if the deck I built to get into the game disappeared, or if they started banning cards that are comically bad ≥80% of the time. I'd probably quit Arena then and there, and I wouldn't have a thick enough skin to bear losing money on a game because of their own poor design decisions.
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  11. #791

    Re: The current state of Magic

    Quote Originally Posted by Ronald Deuce View Post
    That's an interesting point, and one I hadn't considered. It feels like they've crossed a line, though; they're not just banning Marvel and Rogue Refiner; they banned 20% of the cards in the deck—in the second round of bannings. I feel like that indicates that it's stopped being a concession to players and has started to be a punitive measure against other players.



    Their justification was that the card was providing "free wins." 5-cost Shock is providing free wins. Ok, fine, but what is dying to it? What kind of deck is performing well elsewhere but dying to Ramunap Ruins? Does that deck have the right to exist if this is the card that's getting "free wins" against it on turn 17? This isn't Skullclamp. It's not even Fanatic of Mogis. [Dice_Box, thank you for linking the article.]



    You're right, though I'd be surprised if one could regularly activate Ruins more than twice in a game. Maybe I'm just out of touch, but in a red deck that doesn't seem likely or optimal.

    I guess my point is this: what's happened to the game design when they have to double-nuke a deck, and when the only other banned cards are a) one-half of an infinite combo, and b) a nonbasic land that costs four mana to activate? I was a durdling king when I started playing Magic, and I don't think I'd want to play much more if the deck I built to get into the game disappeared, or if they started banning cards that are comically bad ≥80% of the time. I'd probably quit Arena then and there, and I wouldn't have a thick enough skin to bear losing money on a game because of their own poor design decisions.
    The problem with Ranumap Red is that all the normal things you'd do to stop a Red deck either suck or are actively countered for free by the cards in it. Like Ferocidon shuts down both lifegain and token plans. Crasher and the 2/1 guy both invalidate blocking, and have haste. So you can't gain life (the lifegain right now sucks anyways, there's nothing close to a Finks or Hierarch or even Baloth out right now), you can't block, and you can't kill their board because the wraths cost 5 and none of the existing removal is instant speed. Plus their dudes have flashback. And I mean counter things? lol @standard.

    In a real format Ramunap Red isn't a great deck, it's a bad one trick pony. But they've neutered standard so badly that just curving out with unblockable Haste duders is the best thing going. It's like the debut of Sligh all over again. Every sucks so bad Ironclaw Orcs is a winning play.

    By taking away counters, sweepers, instant removal, and leaving manabases completely free from danger, they've taken all the tension out of the game. Their best case scenario at this point is Siege Rhino vs. Siege Rhino.

    EDIT: the complete refusal to print a 2 mana Rampant Growth is also a big problem since nobody else can match the speed of red/energy.

  12. #792
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    Re: The current state of Magic

    They have banned crappy cards before. Squandered Resources is kinda useless, but made for not-fun, non-interactive games when it was in the game’s first combo. There was just no way to fight it in the block. We can complain, but they are still just trying to keep the format fun.
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    Re: The current state of Magic

    If you don't actually play standard then probably don't post about it because a lot of what I am reading here seems to be some real chicken little shit

    Wow, so basically they are trying so hard to have a format that has predefined decks in it, to the point where they need a specific color of control that is "supposed to win late game," that they will just ban anything that kills their idea of perfect. I guess their design philosophy is more along the lines of "give them the cookie cutter decks they expect."
    They want to have a metagame with multiple different decks in it.
    1. Energy was clearly the most dominant deck (in terms of results and meta share)
    2. In order to make the standard metagame more diverse cards from energy need to be banned (if you're a fan of Attune mirrors then you can disagree with the axiom that the metagame needs to be diverse, in the vein of how I think Brainstorm is fine)
    3. If you ban cards to make energy worse and don't do anything else, then based on the current metagame data red aggro decks would become the default best deck and then we are back to square 1 ('unhealthy' metagame again)
    4. Therefore something from the red deck needs to be banned as well
    That's it
    Reading into this any further is like a borderline conspiracy theory...

    Their justification was that the card was providing "free wins." 5-cost Shock is providing free wins. Ok, fine, but what is dying to it? What kind of deck is performing well elsewhere but dying to Ramunap Ruins? Does that deck have the right to exist if this is the card that's getting "free wins" against it on turn 17? This isn't Skullclamp. It's not even Fanatic of Mogis. [Dice_Box, thank you for linking the article.]
    There is no opportunity cost to putting Ramunap and a couple of Deserts in your mono red deck and it effectively means that against any control opponent you start the game with a free leyline that Lava Axes your opponents face. If there were no other playable aggressive red cards then sure, maybe this wouldn't matter, but there are good cards like Bomat Courier and Hazoret to go alongside it. Bannings matter in context. Thirst for Knowledge is still restricted in vintage even though it's legal x4 in Modern and Legacy and close to unplayable in both of those (not to mention all the other restricted shit that's only viable because of Workshop).

    It feels like they've crossed a line, though; they're not just banning Marvel and Rogue Refiner; they banned 20% of the cards in the deck—in the second round of bannings. ... I guess my point is this: what's happened to the game design when they have to double-nuke a deck
    It would have been very difficult to predict at the time of the Marvel banning that the format would converge on Energy midrange as being the default best deck because the energy deck with Marvel in it was totally different and created a negative tournament experience for an entirely separate reason. Calling this 2nd ban a double whammy against the same deck is really dumb. (And it's not like actual successive bans against similar decks haven't happened in the past, with DRS getting banned after BBE, or Dig getting banned after Cruise, or Necro getting banned after X Y and Z). Erring in the other direction and definitively obliterating entire 'archetypes' whenever they ban something the first time is probably a much worse philosophy because it a) Is bad optics when they ban many cards at a time, as this thread proves, and b) makes the "I'm quitting magic because they made all my cards unplayable" crowd even more upset

    I feel like that indicates that it's stopped being a concession to players and has started to be a punitive measure against other players
    What does this even mean
    Last edited by kombatkiwi; 01-29-2018 at 07:20 AM.

  14. #794
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    Re: The current state of Magic

    Off the current topic, but still sorta related to 'the current state of Magic'...

    Has anyone else been enjoying the Team Constructed coverage from SCG?
    I'm mostly happy to occasionally see Legacy being played, but I'm also surprised I don't loathe watching Standard.

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    Re: The current state of Magic

    Quote Originally Posted by Aggro_zombies View Post
    RE: Land Destruction

    Wizards is on record saying that they believe players have more fun when they're able to cast their spells, and having robust manabases is the key to that. Wizards therefore can't print nonbasic land hate that compromises mana fixing. However, the best use of nonbasic land hate is mana denial and to punish greedy splashes, so you end up with all these ineffectual riffs on Ghost Quarter that are all universally less strong than Ghost Quarter because GQ was the most efficient implementation of the "resource exchange" nonbasic hate card. You also end up with Not-Quite-Blood-Moons because actual Blood Moon is a ball-busting card and probably shouldn't exist in a world where people aren't running mono-basics manabases.
    We might see more GQ/Field of Ruin/Blood Sun-type of non-basic hate in the future, as they attack non-basics without reducing the amount of available mana for the opponent (unless they're super-greedy), which was WotC's/Maro's main gripe with land destruction.

    Although I wonder why nobody has tried starting to abuse Ramunap Excavator + Field of Ruin yet.

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    Re: The current state of Magic

    The 2 mana activation cost and there being so few decks that have both Crucible and large amounts of basics.
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    Re: The current state of Magic

    Remember the age of Time Spiral, Lorwyn/Morningtide, Zendikar, and Shards of Alara standard? That shit was lit. There were very powerful decks, tons of interaction, viable RDW/agro decks, mid-range, control, and even a few combo decks. Dropping the power level in order to 'level the field', as it seems like they are doing, makes for an environment where the field is just boring. Drop in UB Faeries or Broodmate Dragon Jund from their standard formats and they are almost viable in Modern (bans aside.) I can't remember the last time I thought a Standard deck was even interesting, let alone powerful in the same way those were.

    I see more and more players gravitating towards eternal formats at my LGS, whether it be Modern, Legacy, or Commander. They want their cards to be relevant for a long time, not just for a year or so (or however long Standard formats last, IDK, IDC.) I can honestly say that, for me, nothing beats real-life magic with real cards and real human interaction.

    Not sure if anyone has seen the video by Tolarian Academy on YouTube about Dominaria yet, but I think he makes some good points. Love him or hate him, I agree that Dominaria is make-or-break for MtG as we know it.



    EDIT: goddamnit, I can't figure out how to get the video in the actual post...link above
    Last edited by Dice_Box; 01-29-2018 at 04:18 PM. Reason: Formatting.
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    Re: The current state of Magic

    Quote Originally Posted by Mr. Safety View Post
    Remember the age of Time Spiral, Lorwyn/Morningtide, Zendikar, and Shards of Alara standard? That shit was lit. There were very powerful decks, tons of interaction, viable RDW/agro decks, mid-range, control, and even a few combo decks. Dropping the power level in order to 'level the field', as it seems like they are doing, makes for an environment where the field is just boring. Drop in UB Faeries or Broodmate Dragon Jund from their standard formats and they are almost viable in Modern (bans aside.) I can't remember the last time I thought a Standard deck was even interesting, let alone powerful in the same way those were.
    A few? Oh, oh no. TS-Lor/Sha-CSnap Standard was a time when you could legit talk about combo as an archetype, not just a deck in the format. One combo in a format? Try six. In Standard. And those are just the actually halfway-sane ones that actually had decks around them at some point or another of the sets' lifespan, not cheeky shit like trying to get four Nettle Sentinels in play for infinite Sprout Swarms (was in the format, btw) or chucking Shivan Meteors at Stuffy Doll.
    Quote Originally Posted by Lemnear
    (On Innistrad)
    Yeah, an insanely powerful block which put the "derp!" factor in Legacy completely over the top.

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    Re: The current state of Magic

    Quote Originally Posted by Mr. Safety View Post
    Not sure if anyone has seen the video by Tolarian Academy on YouTube about Dominaria yet, but I think he makes some good points. Love him or hate him, I agree that Dominaria is make-or-break for MtG as we know it.

    I'm not too concerned about the power level of Dominaria, given that Garfield is on board. Innistrad and RtR had quite the power in them. I do agree that Dominaria is make-or-break for them. Standard currently isn't doing too hot for them and the card stock issues with bending cards damages the reputation of the game. And when was the last time you saw a Standard decks and thought "Hey, that looks kinda nifty!"?

    However, question is whether or not Dominaria can actually live up the hype. 25th anniversary is a pretty big milestone and expectations are really, really high.

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    Re: The current state of Magic

    I was trying not to turn this into the B/R thread, so apologies if that's the way things are going.

    Quote Originally Posted by kombatkiwi View Post
    There is no opportunity cost to putting Ramunap and a couple of Deserts in your mono red deck and it effectively means that against any control opponent you start the game with a free leyline that Lava Axes your opponents face.
    No, it isn't; it's a free card that flashback Firebolts your opponent every turn if you control a Desert once you reach turn 5 if you found the card in the top 12–13 cards in your deck and you've found Deserts enough to expend them on each of those turns. But explain to me how that's the card that's torpedoing the format and why the deck's competitors should exist, either, if they die to that.

    Quote Originally Posted by kombatkiwi View Post
    If there were no other playable aggressive red cards then sure, maybe this wouldn't matter, but there are good cards like Bomat Courier and Hazoret to go alongside it. Bannings matter in context. Thirst for Knowledge is still restricted in vintage even though it's legal x4 in Modern and Legacy and close to unplayable in both of those (not to mention all the other restricted shit that's only viable because of Workshop).
    This gets to the heart of my question; if there are other red cards that are turning everything else on its head, why ban the card that happens to be good in certain matchups when they go long instead of the one that's so unfair? Morgan_coke pointed out how problematic Ferocidon was, so I'll concede that maybe that card deserved a hit. But we're effectively in agreement here—that cards are good or bad because of the cards that surround them. (It also sounds like we feel the same way about Workshop, though I don't play Vintage, either because...I bought a yacht yesterday...I swear...it even had a minibar stocked with, uh, Naragansett....) So my point was that I think design is in a really bad place when, to quote you, "a free leyline that Lava Axes your opponent's face" (not that I agree with that characterization) is the card that gets banned for pushing a deck over the top.

    Quote Originally Posted by kombatkiwi View Post
    It would have been very difficult to predict at the time of the Marvel banning that the format would converge on Energy midrange as being the default best deck because the energy deck with Marvel in it was totally different and created a negative tournament experience for an entirely separate reason.
    OK, that's fair that Marvel decks and Longtusk decks are different enough not to be considered the same. But my point still stands: they banned 12 energy cards out of 60 from the same deck. After they already banned the heavy-hitter energy card in the block. That's not balancing; that's eliminating a mechanic. There once was a time when that was the last thing they wanted to do, like when they banned Sensei's Top in Legacy, y'know, last year.

    Quote Originally Posted by kombatkiwi View Post
    Erring in the other direction and definitively obliterating entire 'archetypes' whenever they ban something the first time is probably a much worse philosophy because it a) Is bad optics when they ban many cards at a time, as this thread proves, and b) makes the "I'm quitting magic because they made all my cards unplayable" crowd even more upset....What does this even mean
    It means exactly what you said; Aggro_zombies said that the new ban philosophy (assuming that's what it is) is much closer in line with the method used by digital-platform companies, when they ban things because of player outrage on a regular basis to provide "balance." I was pointing out that they're not just banning the single design mistake that's making everything else go fully degenerate; they're banning as much of an entire aspect of design as they can get their hands on (and cards that are good in completely different decks) because they made a terrible set, and the people who play with those decks have to bend over backwards for the people who don't. Bans used to be minimally invasive; this is maximally invasive.
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    Just in time for Valentines Day 💝

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