MTGNexus

Rampaging Ferocidon unbanned, except in Bo1!

https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/a ... 2019-08-26

How will this affect the meta in these few remaining weeks before Throne?

tbh I think that the interaction between it and field of the dead from the bant scapeshift decks is going to be interesting but overall I don't feel that it matters too much because rotation is so close

are there even any important standard events coming up?

motleyslayer wrote: ↑

4 years ago

are there even any important standard events coming up?

Nope, not really! There's like one Standard Classic left. MCQ's and most SCG IQ's coming up are Modern. And it won't matter much on Arena, since it's still banned in Bo1.

Standard in general is mostly in the "just wait until rotation" phase at this point, at least in terms of paper Magic.

usually standard at this time of year is just wait until rotation but at least they gave red some strength against the top decks right now in the meantime

I always felt they banned it before in order to prevent mono red from becoming too good after they banned energy out of the format before

figured I'd just get another post in since the rotation has happened. Golos field is so good, been grinding with it on arena and I feel like I've been playing it poorly but the deck is so good that it doesn't even matter. There's no way its not getting banned on Monday

We have graduated from "wait until rotation" to "wait until emergency bans"!

For the record, I hope they do ban Golos and Field of the Dead. I think the format could be very interesting with that deck out of the way. Right now it's Tier 1: Golos and Tier 2: Everything Else.

I am torn. Part of me wants to see MC5 demonstrate a diverse meta with competitive decks that can beat Golos Field, resulting in no Field ban. And I don't think Golos needs to be banned, even if Field does. But another part of me wants to play bigger midrange decks featuring creatures with lots of text. In theory, Golos Fields makes hash them, while not appealing to me.

Field of the dead is getting banned for sure. It's too dominant.

What do people think of Oko with it gone? Seems it might also be ripe for a hammer.

I too am worried that Oko or something else from SimicFood should eat a ban, lest Simic Food become 40+% of the meta like we have now with Golos after Golos eats a ban. I think LSV is right to be concerned about that possibility, and the huge amount of egg on Wizard's face if they have to do not one, but two emergency bans in 3 months would be crazy.

And make no mistake, that would be an emergency ban as far as I'm concerned. Moving the date doesn't change the fact that its a ban outside the normal announcement cycle and should be called "emergency" as such.

Field of the Dead is indeed banned: announcement here.

So Simic Food is clearly the new tier 0. (Or some version of Simic/Bant variant based on the same stuff).

Is it strong enough that it requires intervention? Unsure.

But if your going to attack tier 0, isn't the Doom Foretold/Dance of the Manse deck the place to start?
That deck struck me as good against Simic and awful against Field.

Small sample size caveats apply, but MTGGoldfish's analysis of MC V suggests that Selesnya Adventures may be good against Food decks. Fires decks and Control decks also seem like potentially effective competitors.

I think the issue with stax deck is that it's really slow. It can definitely be overwhelmed early game because it has a rather weak early game. Maybe that could be adjusted though with some different 1-2 drops.

But I guess we'll see how it goes in the meta game.

hoser2 wrote: ↑

4 years ago

Small sample size caveats apply, but MTGGoldfish's analysis of MC V suggests that Selesnya Adventures may be good against Food decks. Fires decks and Control decks also seem like potentially effective competitors.

I almost thought of buying into Selesnya adventures, it always seems like a good deck. Does it have any advantages over GB adventures?

As I understand the analysis, it is more aggressive and goes wider (because it is also a token deck) than GB. Oko decks are supposed to have trouble with decks that go wide and whose creatures are upgraded when they become elk. This is from reading, not direct experience. I think yoman5 has an analysis in his latest (link in the competitive discussion sub).

I still haven't bought into GW adventures yet, but GB seems good. I might take gb to paper events I go to anytime soon, although I'm not sure if I'll be going to any soon. I feel like the deck is reasonable and it's the only one I really have reps with

Well, I responded to your post in the GW thread before I saw this, and it seems we agree that GB may be well positioned. Could use a thread ... hint, hint

In today's Banned and Restricted Announcement: Oko, Thief of Crowns; Once Upon a Time; Veil of Summer were all banned in Standard.

Even though I'm not a Standard player when it comes to MTG, I am gravely concerned about how the current state of the format is driving away players at the LGS and how it's impacting the game as a whole. The problem is that since Ixalan, Wizards of the Coast has been actively trying to push the power creep of Standard to be closer to Modern so that they could sell Standard legal cards to Modern and EDH / Commander players.

What I'm currently seeing with MTG is what I've already seen with discontinued Trading Card Games / Collectible Card Games over the past decade where these gaming companies ended up pushing the power creep so high to where players couldn't tolerate it. The Standard Meta for MTG is so bad right now that it would literally take Wizards of the Coast 4 years to fix it which by then Hasbro would've already made enough money to sell off Wizards of the Coast.

Attributing motivation regarding other formats doesn't seem necessary. I think Ixalan was underpowered and they needed to increase the power level to sell cards, period. While Narset and 3feri are format-warping, they apparently weren't so oppressive that they demanded a ban. Clearly, with Oko, Veil, Field and Once Upon a Time, mistakes were made. While many games have fallen, I don't know that MTG is due for a collapse.
However, Standard is currently hurting near me also. As far as I can tell, this third iteration of Eldraine seems diverse and challenging, but it doesn't matter if the events won't fire. Standard attendance took a several hits in the Zendikar/Innistrad era. The reigns of Field and then Oko each took more of a toll and now there is competition from Pioneer. It remains to be seen if Theros Beyond Death will be enough to get Standard events firing with regularity in my area.
I have seen it argued (BBD, Sperling, I forget where I saw it) that Play Design is conflicted in that they are helping develop cards as well as testing. That there needs to be more purely critical attention devoted to these sets to reduce the frequency of mistakes.

Broken cards, broken gameplay, Standard that nobody wants to play, cards getting overpriced to unaffordability where you can't even afford to play Standard anymore, and then piling other stuff on top of it. It's greed because Wizards of the Coast / Hasbro wants to make more money on Standard, adding side products and collectors crap. Not wanting distributors and LGS's to take margins selling direct-to-consumer by putting the LGS out of business is greed. What was the whole point of Secret Lair If they're wanting more people to play MTG Arena online instead of at the LGS?

Those people at Wizards of the Coast / Hasbro need to get a clue and realize that you don't make any money If you kill the game. They also need to realize that they became the number one Trading Card Game / Collectible Card Game in the world with Magic: The Gathering FOR A REASON and If they want to STAY THERE and make money just by default they need to not attempt to make way too much money too quickly. Counterproductive it seems on the surface....but it's not. Perhaps they never actually heard of a little something called "wallet fatigue".

A lot of services and products went from really popular being the cheapest best most liked in the industry in their market to dead when they tried to over monetize their customers. Let's not kid ourselves, these mistakes were done on purpose where even though Play Design may have thought some cards were problematic their excuse was like, "Yeah...but that's what we're doing." If these cards are Standard good then it's only going to be like a $3 card. If they want to save Standard then they need to revise upcoming Standard sets they've already finalized for 2020 to lower the power level. Well guess what? They're not going to.

If they want to sell powerful cards to Modern and EDH / Commander players do it in a Masters-esque set like Modern Horizons but only once a year and held twice a year. They are so far behind on reprints that they could literally get away with doing it twice a year for the next five years and they still wouldn't run out of valuable cards. Thing is that they won't have a game by 2021 to fix their current "mistakes" let alone a product or a company left. No amount of marketing dollars will get people to come play again because it'll be like, "fool me once shame on you, fool me twice I'm playing a different game screw you."

Flaming will not be tolerated -hoser2

hoser2 wrote: ↑

4 years ago

Attributing motivation regarding other formats doesn't seem necessary. I think Ixalan was underpowered and they needed to increase the power level to sell cards, period. While Narset and 3feri are format-warping, they apparently weren't so oppressive that they demanded a ban. Clearly, with Oko, Veil, Field and Once Upon a Time, mistakes were made. While many games have fallen, I don't know that MTG is due for a collapse.
However, Standard is currently hurting near me also. As far as I can tell, this third iteration of Eldraine seems diverse and challenging, but it doesn't matter if the events won't fire. Standard attendance took a several hits in the Zendikar/Innistrad era. The reigns of Field and then Oko each took more of a toll and now there is competition from Pioneer. It remains to be seen if Theros Beyond Death will be enough to get Standard events firing with regularity in my area.
I have seen it argued (BBD, Sperling, I forget where I saw it) that Play Design is conflicted in that they are helping develop cards as well as testing. That there needs to be more purely critical attention devoted to these sets to reduce the frequency of mistakes.

I haven't played standard in paper i my area since at least before Throne was released. Standard already struggled in my area pre Throne but people would sometimes play a Showdown for the cool packs. I'm kinda hoping Theros will revive standard but Magic as a whole in my area is slow

Card Slinger, I remember you making the same exact arguments back on Sally for almost a decade now, whenever the power level goes up or there are expensive decks. I'm not seeing how this standard is fundamentally different than caw go's time in the sun in terms of cost or broken cards or high power level, but I do notice that the broken cards got banned faster than they did back then.

I'm not saying standard is perfect, far from it, but the problems you are talking about have been around for a LONG time. Lorwyn into Alara into Zendikar into Scars into Innistrad was a long stretch of the format being dominated by one major deck and a handful of other competitors, typically with the decks being around $200-$300. Faeries wasn't as dominant (because there were a number of really powerful for standard decks during it's reign which went on to be extended staples) and Jund was relatively cheap, but otherwise the main difference between then and now is how Planeswalker centric the format has become. Oh, and they are more willing to ban problem cards, which would probably have resulted in some of the boogeymen from that era being taken down a peg (or clipped sooner in the case of caw blade).

Really, the main problem that I see with standard is how important Planeswalker are to the format. That ensures the format is typically driven by mythic rare mid-range value engines that support mid-range and control decks and make both more expensive and harder to deal with than they would otherwise be, and it's only broken by the occasional mistake that lets a combo deck surface or makes an aggro deck too strong. People get tired of the relative sameness year to hear of PW control or PW mid-range dominating, and even some successful aggro decks, long the source of cheap entry to the format, rising in price by having PWs like Gideon Ally be an essential part. If you aren't all about all PW all the time, you look to other formats. That being said, this standard is still relatively diverse compared to others over the past decade.

I think a lot of the issue with events not firing has to do with arena. It's cheaper to play standard there and you don't have to clear a few hours on Friday night to do it. If people don't want to maintain two collections, they end up getting their competitive fix there rather than irl. It's been far more heavily marketed than mtgo ever was except maybe right at the beginning back in the early 00s.

I've seen people come in to play Standard events because of Arena, but I can't tell how many are not coming because of Arena, so I can't say the net effect.
The effect I am sure of is the effect of bad Standard. Aetherworks Marvel, Cat Combo definitely caused people to lose interest. Oko was the same: given a choice of playing against Oko or playing Oko, some people opted for neither and stayed home. Less competitive rewards for Standard in paper have an effect also.

standard is dieing because they keep having the bans. it is broken so no-one play, then they ban everybodys deck and no-one plays. they are killing standard slowly like modern for pioneer and arena. arena is the real money.