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Magic still has a lot of variance though. It can take a lot of data to prove a deck is 55/45 against the entire field, and such a deck is tier 0. Wizards hides a bunch of that data, and given the tournament scene for Legacy lately, such information can be hard to come by. The truth is that for the players it's as much about perception as reality, though Wizards to their credit makes data driven ban choices.Quote:
Originally Posted by rufus
I agree that there's a lot of variance. I'm not as sure that WotC makes data driven ban decisions.Quote:
Originally Posted by Brael
Why do they hide so much data? Surely it would be better for them and the community if things were much more transparent?
They've said that they don't want to contribute too much to formats being "solved" as quicky as possible. They intentionally don't give all the data.Quote:
Originally Posted by Smuggo
They're actually forcing people to pull data they don't like. Remember when MTGGoldfish did detailed data analysis of limited environments and constructed formats with MTGO (great stuff) before WotC forced them to stop it, otherwise they would lose support like previews etc.?Quote:
Originally Posted by UnderwaterGuy
Jup. WotC isn't fond of people collecting data to show if a format is solved by sheer performance and percentages. They are obviously interrested in making formats look diverse and wide open. Can't blame themQuote:
Originally Posted by Barook
You can blame them if they're obfuscating information that shows its not as diverse as they make out, that's just misleading people.Quote:
Originally Posted by Lemnear
http://www.starcitygames.com/article...uncements.html
Interesting change from SCG - we get 1x Legacy (boo!), 2x Team Constructed (3 player teams, one each for Standard/Modern/Legacy; due to popular request), 2x Standard (!) and 6x Modern (!).
This probably mirrors the general trend that Modern starts to rival or even overtake Standard in terms of popularity.
And it's on a holiday weekendQuote:
Originally Posted by Barook
At the bombed out costco
the weekend after eternal weekend
And the Midwest gets screwed again... sigh...Quote:
Originally Posted by Barook
I've pretty much given up on SCG for anything close. Hell, St. Louis for Legacy was still fine for driving from the Twin Cities.Quote:
Originally Posted by Lord Seth
I'll probably fly out to D.C (haven't been there in like 30 years and I want to be a tourist sometimes, heh.) Also, going to Eternal Weekend (due to one bye and doing well last year)
Other then that, I'm going to rely on some the local stores to keep legacy going. We have a good player base in the Min/Wis area, so I have little fear of it dying out.
The current state of Magic: Creatures are fucking disgusting. Show anyone from 5 years ago any creature printed nowadays and they would puke. What ever happened to all the overpowered spells?
All the hub-bub about WotC not knowing what they are doing with Standard, with a huge 4 card ban-list. All those cards are creatures. Make non-creature spells great again, please.
MNCSGA!
Any creature? I kind of doubt someone who's been exposed to Delver of Secrets would find a Graceful Cat particularly threatening.Quote:
Originally Posted by Kanti
Even if we limit ourselves to the cream of the crop, creatures honestly haven't gotten much better since 5 years ago, which if you'll remember was around the time of Avacyn Restored's release. If they've already been exposed to Tarmogoyf, Delver, Griselbrand, etc. then what new creatures are going to shock them that much? Maybe True-Name Nemesis simply for the absurdity of its design, but that's really it.
If I recall correctly, Treasure Cruise and Dig Through Time got banned in Legacy, so that's what happened to them.Quote:
What ever happened to all the overpowered spells?
But those creatures aren't that great. Look at the cards: Felidar Guardian, Emrakul the Promised End, Smuggler's Copter, and Reflector Mage. Are those among the all-time great creatures in Legacy? No. Do they even really see play? Emrakul and Smuggler's Copter sees a small amount of fringe play, but the other two see zero. Even if we move to the lower power Modern, all four of those cards are fairly fringe.Quote:
All the hub-bub about WotC not knowing what they are doing with Standard, with a huge 4 card ban-list. All those cards are creatures. Make non-creature spells great again, please.
So the idea that they're some kind of power creep past where we were 5 years ago is obviously pretty false. Take those creatures, then compare them to Delver of Secrets, Griselbrand, Snapcaster Mage, and Thalia Guardian of Thraben, which have all made a big splashy in Legacy and (except for Griselbrand) were highly prominent in Standard.
So, what's the problem with these creatures, if they're not really an improvement over what we had 5 years ago? The big problem with Standard is how awful they've made the answers. Not just in terms of removal, but in terms of general answers. Consider the fact that Grave Birthing is one of the best graveyard hate cards in the Standard where they decided to print Emrakul, the Promised End.
Do you think Emrakul would be as powerful if something like Scrabbling Claws were played? Do you think Smuggler's Copter or CopyCat would've been as powerful as they were if Pithing Needle were around? Reflector Mage (and also CopyCat) would've gotten a lot worse if Torpor Orb or even Hushwing Gryff was legal. But none of those cards are legal.
So the problem really isn't the creatures themselves, which as noted aren't substantially better than what we had 5 years ago. The problem is the general Standard environment. If you look at every previous Standard banning or restriction since the format's reception, almost all of them, at least at the time, were a big force in the larger formats (and possibly got banned there at all). Stoneforge Mystic, Jace, the Affinity cards, Skullclamp, Dream Halls, Lotus Petal, Tolarian Academy, Windfall... you look at those cards, and then you look at Reflector Mage and the contrast is obvious. Even cards banned/restricted in Standard that seem goofy nowadays (like Fork) were at least considered really good in larger formats at the time (Fork also got restricted in Vintage). Not so with these 4 bans.
I know here I'm just saying what I've said repeatedly in other topics and other boards, but that's really what it comes down to. Standard isn't messed up because the creatures are overpowered (granted, CopyCat by itself is pretty innocuous, it's the combo that's the problem--but that combo, which took up something like 40% of the format in Standard, is an utter nonentity in Legacy and isn't seen much at all in Modern), it's because of the weakening of answers to the point those creatures have become an issue due to the general context, which is why cards that would be utterly laughable to ban anywhere else are considered so broken in Standard that they necessitate bans.
Creatures keep being printed, but to be honest, Seth has it right.
Funny enough, even TNN is 4 years old. Pyro took a *long* time to find a shell IIRC, and really made the splash after Gurmag, but gurmag is only B different than Stalker, and I still find myself vastly prefering stalker. Stalker in turn is the same set as Goyf.
Grisel and DRS are crazy, but that's also back 5 years or so.
I mean, what.. are we gonna talk Siege Rhino? EotGR? HMentor? MMentor? These are all *very* fringe. People whine about not printing good spells, but they still do. Omniscience came from DRS's block IIRC. Past in Flames? Same thing. They've been printing draw 7's, 3-mana time walk, and a few other pretty intense spells that happen to not be *quite* broken; or no one has figured them out yet. But I mean.. just wait. A draw 7, even at sorcery speed, even with "end the turn" is brutal. Someone just has to figure out how to make it relevant.
Fatal Push is a reasonable spell, the Emrakul's Hymn is pretty OK. Wizards is trying to find ways to balance out some pretty good (read as: the best spells in their class) and some of them were pure broken (read as: Terminus.) While I often look at the new sets and thing "boy this is so creature centric, and the spells suck, and boy look at that power-creeped dude"; looking at all the fringe things that didn't break into legacy.. I seem to have been wrong in those judgements.
We can say "boy a 2/3 deathtouch for 1 if you meet some condition!?" and remember that there's been a 2/3 for 1 (multiple for many of us) since before we started. "A 4/3 for 2 if you meet some condition?" we can say similar things for Tempest era, or a 3/3 for 2 with no conditions 10+ years ago. There's been a little creep, but it's honestly if it was by much we would be introducing new dudes as more than 1-ofs or 2-ofs in T1.5 decks.
EDIT: I rarely get a feeling now with out a lot of skepticism like the feeling I got when they spoiled Vengeful Devil. That seemed so broken and creeped; and yet, it's hard to put into casual decks even once you understand it. That's good design. So huge you want to use it, and so specific that it's difficult to extract the raw power it screams it has at you. I think their sets have been poorly designed for awhile, but I also think their "good cards" are dancing a pretty reasonable tightrope.
hey sorry my timeline was all messed up. 10 years ago it is, gotta go back to like Goyf days.Quote:
Originally Posted by Lord Seth
It's not just creature power creep but also it seems like they give all the "cool" abilities to creature ETB triggers rather than making them spells.Quote:
Originally Posted by Lord Seth
I think you're right about answers which is why they need to have a Core Set. They can easily print a baseline level of constructed answers in Core without ruining the limited environment. Which I have to say, Amonkhet drafts have been a blast. So bring back Core and keep the best of both worlds.
There is one other thing worth remembering.
The initial bannings (Copter, Mage, Emrakul) were of cards that, strictly speaking, weren't all that broken, at least not more so than various cards in the last 6 years that never got banned. UW Aggro was the clear best deck (Reflector Mage playing a part in that) and Smuggler's Copter was everywhere... but Standard usually has a clear best deck, UW Aggro wasn't really any worse than things like Monoblack Devotion or UW Delver, and Smuggler's Copter wasn't as omnipresent as Mutavault was during RTR-Theros Standard. A lot of people hated Emrakul, but it's not that uncommon for a particular card to get a lot of hatred (Thragtusk, Bonfire of the Damned, Pack Rat, Siege Rhino). And while Emrakul was powerful and saw a good deal of play, most decks weren't playing her and UW Aggro, again the best deck, wasn't at all.
No, the cards got banned because although in terms of metagame numbers nothing was more out of whack than is often the case in Standard, players just plain didn't like it and were leaving. It didn't start with that metagame either, players didn't take to Collected Company.format in the previous Standard or the fetchland+battleland combo (with not a single bit of hate against the interaction) that made Standard exceedingly expensive and turned it into a bunch of goodstuff decks because you actually had a better manabase in 3 colors than in 2. And you had the more rapid rotation driving people off even more. Granted, people always complain about something during Standard so it's tough to tell at what point the complaints became bigger than normal, but it seemed to me that people really started getting grumpy starting with Khans-Battle.
Of course, there were a number of factors that went into the above issues, but one was lack of answer or suitable hate cards; it didn't necessarily make the banned cards overpowered, but it made them obnoxious enough they were turning people off. Khans-Battle wouldn't have been as irritating if something like Blood Moon or even just Burning Earth was legal, but there was nothing unless you want to count Crumble to Dust. The good news is that Wizards of the Coast seems to have finally understood the fact they needed to have decent answers for the metagame to be any fun, but it'll take a while for them to act on it and it remains to be seen how well they've understood the issues.
It's ironic that the current R&D tries to make Magic, a game that lives from interaction, as uninteractive as possible because "getting my stuff destroyed makes be feel bad, wah, wah, wah!". Good cards need good answers, so the metagame can balance itself out. We've already seen what happens if everybody is left to their own devices.Quote:
Originally Posted by Lord Seth
It's also funny how the whole 2-set rotation backfired - hard. Many of the current problems can be traced back to this stupid decision made out of pure greed. Not only did it increase Standard's cost by alot, driving people away, it also lead to fucking stupid design decisions like the whole dual/fetch Standard because appearently it is okay if the format is fucked for half a year until it rotates. Sound logic right there. The same thing lead to the whole pushed cards/nerfed answers Standard is suffering from right now since they planned for rotations to sweep their garbage designs under the rug.
Getting rid of Core sets for more new sets did sound good on paper - who wanted to see the xth reprint of garbage? Reality turned out to be different. They didn't reprint jackshit (aka much needed answers) in the block sets while said sets are filled with garbage throwaway mechanics, with no time to explore the more interesting ones (like e.g. colorless mana).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ysa5OBhXz-QQuote:
Originally Posted by Barook
aaaaaaaaa zavenya
That may be one of the most interesting vids I've watched in a couple years, and it's 5 minutes..Quote:
Originally Posted by Scott
..and I'm an AI enthusiast/professional