I'd say Knightly Valor and Thoughtflare are about even, but I was in an Izzet mood. Wayfaring Temple isn't very good. By itself it's a 1/1, it'll usually be somewhere between that and a 3/3, and it has no evasion to activate the populate.
The rest I agree, I probably should've splashed white for some more goodness.
Standard has improved since the lockdown, "don't cast anything days" of older sets. However, it still has some ways to go before it is as open a format as Modern. This may be because more players play the format and ideas get refined a lot faster, but I can't help feeling that standard is like magic's pet project. They keep tinkering with it in the hopes to get it right. They're getting better at designing cards, but there's still the problem of a handful of cards dominating the format. In the old days, these were instants and enchantments. Today, they're mainly creatures.
Every color needs a card like Thragtusk, or else Thragtusk should not exist. Here's what it might look like:
Black Thrag: 4B, 5/3, Intimidate. When Black Thrag enters play, target player loses five life.
Red Thrag: 4R, 5/3, Haste. When Red Thrag dies, it deals 5 damage to each creature and each player.
Blue Thrag: 4U, 5/3, Flying. When Blue Thrag becomes the target of a spell or ability an opponent controls, you may choose new targets for that spell or ability.
White Thrag: 4W, 5/3, Vigilance. When White Thrag attacks, creatures you control gain lifelink until your next upkeep.
Sounds ridiculous, right? No more so than a 5/3 beater that lets you gain five life and gives you a creature when it gets blinked. These are the cards that Wizards needs to stop printing. Phyrexian Obliterator is an example of a well-designed powerful card. It's hard to cast, but if you can bring it at instant speed during someone's attack, you win the game. It requires a bit of skill to use, whereas Thragtusk requires no skill at all. Standard is currently a format where you have to plan to hit for 25 to 30 points of damage and the only fault to be had in this is in the card design.
It may be impossible to design a perfect metagame for standard. Even so, I think Wizards should keep trying. They're closer than they've been in a while.
I think you're a bit too hostile to land destruction. It may be annoying in casual games, but it had an important function in competitive environments. LD spells keep big-spell decks in check. Right now it's far too easy for high cmc decks to go over the top of aggro decks, because the aggro decks aren't fast enough to cut them down before they can start throwing haymakers. Without mana denial, if you can't win by turn 5 the game is lost. Aggro decks are playing multiple 5 drops now, which is ludicrous. Losing Armageddon was also a huge blow to aggro decks hoping to fight control, since it was something they could use to punish the opponent for tapping out to Wrath. Manabarbs is the closest we've seen to that kind of punishing spell recently, and it was rarely good enough in recent years.
Despite legacy having the most powerful manabases available, mana in general is more stable right now in standard and modern than it is in legacy, where at least Wasteland keeps people honest. Heck, if they want to keep away from outright land *destruction*, even a reprint of Price of Progress and Blood Moon would do *something* to keep it in check.
Quick thought about vampires. Like Kuma, I also am a big fan of the midrange ones, and think there's a lot of unrealized potential in those guys. And the weenies vamps are not only overplayed, but underperforming. Go to vantar's statistics page (can't find the link to it, but I looked recently) and look at the WIN% for decks including the card Vampire Lacerator. It's awful. BR Vamp aggro is a fine sligh-style aggro deck with quickness, reach, and resilience, if built correctly. But for whatever reason, it doesn't get the job done in Tribal Apocalypse. Vampire Control decks always seem stronger.
The guy who said he was $400 away from being ready to play Modern should look at other Modern lists routinely going 4-0 in the dailies, and which cost half that price, if not less (of course now that the season is started, the prices are horribly inflated. Not a good time to buy Modern cards).
Truth is: some exceptions aside (Tarmogoyf, Vendilion Clique), the expensive cards in Modern are the Standard cards. Good luck playing high-level Standard without Geist of Saint Traft, Huntmaster of the Fells, Liliana of the Veil, etc.
I tend to think RexDart is right. A lot of people I know are holding back on diving into Modern in the hopes that Wizards will make everything dirt cheap so that everybody can get in on the ground floor. Basically, they want a $2000 deck to be available for ten bucks.
As for that guy I mentioned that said he was $400 away from being ready to play Modern, he's one of those guys that likes to bring the most expensive hot deck on the Pro Tour to FNM. His idea of a good time is facing some new player that has Cobblebrute and Axebane Stag in his deck with a deck featuring Tamiyo, Thragtusk, Entreat the Angels, etc.
I always used the caves to protect the goblins from the shrine when it died...otherwise killing the shrine was a WoG and there were 4x Strip Mine everywhere back then...so the shrine died a lot
The idea behind Goblin Caves I believe was to protect your x/2 goblins from bolts. Not that this justifies its existence but few auras of that era were better. In fact many were just as useless.
This attitude is all over the various "complain about prices" threads on MTG forums, and it is funny how eternal formats are the only ones where people feel they NEED the cards for a Tier One deck just to play local tournaments. They won't even consider entering the format unless they can enter at the pinnacle of that format right away.
Plenty of people show up to FNM and other local events with Standard decks that are budget-constrained, or totally rogue, or just for fun. Nobody says "I'm $400 away from playing standard" unless they're planning to PTQ. But there are all these people who keep saying they want to play Modern but first they demand to be handed all the Modern staples for the Tier One decks for pennies on the dollar. WotC foolishly listened and caved with Modern Masters -- in reality, those people will NEVER play Modern, they just like complaining.
After MM comes out, they still won't be playing Modern, they'll be complaining about the price of having a set of Zendikar fetchlands and demanding WotC publish a set of all 40 in a precon for $10. Complaining about money is what that whole sector of the MTG player base does 24/7, they can't be appeased. If they wanted to play a format, they'd be playing it because they LIKE it, and if money were a constraint they'd start out with a budget deck and gradually trade their way up, cut back on drafts, sell standard staples, etc.
I didn't, mostly as protest because I really despise the prize structure they got going. Which is kind of a shame, because I was looking forward to playing with Lotuses and Recalls outside of Shandalar.
Which is really sad because there are any number of budget decks. I got a newsletter from Star City featuring an aura deck in which the win condition is to slap a bunch of stuff on Slippery Bogle.
The store where I play scheduled Modern tournaments on Saturdays because a lot of people said they wanted them. The first Saturday, seven people showed up. The next week, three people showed up. We hyped it as much as we could and the only ones who showed up were me and the store owner. The perception of a lot of "our" players is that Modern is very expensive to build for and you must have all the power cards in order to play.
The store owner and I tried to point out that you don't have to invest heavily to play in a small store tournament. Just bust out those cards that have rotated and play what you used to play. The prevailing opinion was: if I can't play with one of "The Decks to Beat" then I won't play at all. One guy said he was "about $400 away from being ready to play Modern."
Might be. I admit I don't really get who these new players "just starting out" are supposed to be. Children? How old? Because I can't imagine even a 10-year-old playing exclusively with the Duel of the Planeswalkers card for more than a few months, then not becoming curious about what else is there. Maybe the very low cost of those expansions (and the fact that nobody can con you out of them) is supposed to allure the parents. If you think of it, letting your children enter an environment where there's cards worth one hundred dollars (or, you know, more), and where the top players are essentially poker players, might feel unsafe.
I could bet you were chasing money stuff in Masques (that's what Masques draft is for, of course), too bad you didn't tape one of the lucky ones, it would have been awesome to get your reaction in real time. :)
Out of curiosity: you DID do some cube draft during the holidays? Is there a hope we'll get one of those in the future of this series?
The constant rotation and having "to keep up with the latest thing" was the reason I quit paper MtG (I played paper Revised-Torment) although I love the game. I returned to Magic online during the Lorwun-Shadowmoor block (V2.5), but still dislike the shallow standard format. Although I have a serious budget, I still usually play as a default, classic, though not competitively, because of the wackiness of some cards. As my collection grows, I am probably going to shift towards modern. That will depend on cost and availability of the types of cards that interest me along with a more complete knowledge of the cardset that is Modern.
The idea of an unknown deck building environment intrigues me immensely and I too look forward to the release of Modern Masters.
That went interestingly for you. I didn't like P1P1 Thoughtflare over Wayfaring Temple and Knightly Valor, but you got some late Annihilating Fires so it panned out early. Later though I think you would've done well to splash white for some Dramatic Rescues, Arrest, and Eyes in the Skies.
Come on, Masques block draft is awesome! The thing is pretty much a griefer's paradise, with all the ridiculous effects that prevent combat from ever happening!
And yes, this enthusiasm may have to do with the fact that I opened a Tangle Wire and a Port in the space of two days. :)
As for Brainstorm, I guess I hadn't considered the obvious synergy with Rebel shuffle effects. I did try it in a subsequent draft and was impressed.
"In paper, I've played at a number of different stores."
Just to be sure (because the thread structure is a bit confusing): I was answering to Cownose, not you. :)
I agree about Standard being dull, but we should always maintain that this is our personal opinion and respect all the people who joyfully play the format (and joyfully put their money into it, apparently). I think WotC is perfectly safe with the way Standard is, there's certainly a lot of feedback analysis going on within their marketing department telling them what's right and wrong. After 20 years, Magic is more popular than ever. I believe a company that manages to do that has to know what it's doing.
They could improve Standard for *you and me*, but I'm not sure they need to improve Standard for the millions of players who are playing it (new players, mostly, like you said: when you have to rely on what's available in your neighborhood's store, you can't really play anything but Standard, with the only relevant exception of Commander and the other multiplayer variants, but those need a bit more of experience to be handled). In fact, I think they purposely created Modern for the players who were looking for a more satisfying experience (I'm not talking pros here. The pros are maybe 0.0001% of the actual players, they can't directly influence the market -- although they influence trends).
And whoa, no, a 4-set block (that wasn't Time Spiral anyway, only Lorwyn/Shadowmoor) is maybe fun conceptually, but it was a practical nightmare. Did you see how much the Eventide cards cost? That's because with a 4-set block, the last set is drafted only for a month or so. Doing 4-set blocks would cause the chase rares and mythics of the last set to become hugely pricey all the time, resulting in even more money issues for the players.
Surprised no one played Slivers. That's a tribe that lends itself very well to Commander.
Oh, nevermind! There was one deck! YAY! :) :) :)
I'd say Knightly Valor and Thoughtflare are about even, but I was in an Izzet mood. Wayfaring Temple isn't very good. By itself it's a 1/1, it'll usually be somewhere between that and a 3/3, and it has no evasion to activate the populate.
The rest I agree, I probably should've splashed white for some more goodness.
Vampire combo can work pretty well: Dark Ritual into Buried Alive for three Bloodghasts gets the job done quickly.
Standard has improved since the lockdown, "don't cast anything days" of older sets. However, it still has some ways to go before it is as open a format as Modern. This may be because more players play the format and ideas get refined a lot faster, but I can't help feeling that standard is like magic's pet project. They keep tinkering with it in the hopes to get it right. They're getting better at designing cards, but there's still the problem of a handful of cards dominating the format. In the old days, these were instants and enchantments. Today, they're mainly creatures.
Every color needs a card like Thragtusk, or else Thragtusk should not exist. Here's what it might look like:
Black Thrag: 4B, 5/3, Intimidate. When Black Thrag enters play, target player loses five life.
Red Thrag: 4R, 5/3, Haste. When Red Thrag dies, it deals 5 damage to each creature and each player.
Blue Thrag: 4U, 5/3, Flying. When Blue Thrag becomes the target of a spell or ability an opponent controls, you may choose new targets for that spell or ability.
White Thrag: 4W, 5/3, Vigilance. When White Thrag attacks, creatures you control gain lifelink until your next upkeep.
Sounds ridiculous, right? No more so than a 5/3 beater that lets you gain five life and gives you a creature when it gets blinked. These are the cards that Wizards needs to stop printing. Phyrexian Obliterator is an example of a well-designed powerful card. It's hard to cast, but if you can bring it at instant speed during someone's attack, you win the game. It requires a bit of skill to use, whereas Thragtusk requires no skill at all. Standard is currently a format where you have to plan to hit for 25 to 30 points of damage and the only fault to be had in this is in the card design.
It may be impossible to design a perfect metagame for standard. Even so, I think Wizards should keep trying. They're closer than they've been in a while.
God's win conditions are always "de jure". :-)
I think you're a bit too hostile to land destruction. It may be annoying in casual games, but it had an important function in competitive environments. LD spells keep big-spell decks in check. Right now it's far too easy for high cmc decks to go over the top of aggro decks, because the aggro decks aren't fast enough to cut them down before they can start throwing haymakers. Without mana denial, if you can't win by turn 5 the game is lost. Aggro decks are playing multiple 5 drops now, which is ludicrous. Losing Armageddon was also a huge blow to aggro decks hoping to fight control, since it was something they could use to punish the opponent for tapping out to Wrath. Manabarbs is the closest we've seen to that kind of punishing spell recently, and it was rarely good enough in recent years.
Despite legacy having the most powerful manabases available, mana in general is more stable right now in standard and modern than it is in legacy, where at least Wasteland keeps people honest. Heck, if they want to keep away from outright land *destruction*, even a reprint of Price of Progress and Blood Moon would do *something* to keep it in check.
Quick thought about vampires. Like Kuma, I also am a big fan of the midrange ones, and think there's a lot of unrealized potential in those guys. And the weenies vamps are not only overplayed, but underperforming. Go to vantar's statistics page (can't find the link to it, but I looked recently) and look at the WIN% for decks including the card Vampire Lacerator. It's awful. BR Vamp aggro is a fine sligh-style aggro deck with quickness, reach, and resilience, if built correctly. But for whatever reason, it doesn't get the job done in Tribal Apocalypse. Vampire Control decks always seem stronger.
"de jure" vs. "du jour" made me laugh, but great article, as always
The guy who said he was $400 away from being ready to play Modern should look at other Modern lists routinely going 4-0 in the dailies, and which cost half that price, if not less (of course now that the season is started, the prices are horribly inflated. Not a good time to buy Modern cards).
Truth is: some exceptions aside (Tarmogoyf, Vendilion Clique), the expensive cards in Modern are the Standard cards. Good luck playing high-level Standard without Geist of Saint Traft, Huntmaster of the Fells, Liliana of the Veil, etc.
I tend to think RexDart is right. A lot of people I know are holding back on diving into Modern in the hopes that Wizards will make everything dirt cheap so that everybody can get in on the ground floor. Basically, they want a $2000 deck to be available for ten bucks.
As for that guy I mentioned that said he was $400 away from being ready to play Modern, he's one of those guys that likes to bring the most expensive hot deck on the Pro Tour to FNM. His idea of a good time is facing some new player that has Cobblebrute and Axebane Stag in his deck with a deck featuring Tamiyo, Thragtusk, Entreat the Angels, etc.
Good story :D
I always used the caves to protect the goblins from the shrine when it died...otherwise killing the shrine was a WoG and there were 4x Strip Mine everywhere back then...so the shrine died a lot
....cards really sucked back then...
The idea behind Goblin Caves I believe was to protect your x/2 goblins from bolts. Not that this justifies its existence but few auras of that era were better. In fact many were just as useless.
Just noticed — I wrote "homonym" when I meant "synonym." Sorry everyone!
This attitude is all over the various "complain about prices" threads on MTG forums, and it is funny how eternal formats are the only ones where people feel they NEED the cards for a Tier One deck just to play local tournaments. They won't even consider entering the format unless they can enter at the pinnacle of that format right away.
Plenty of people show up to FNM and other local events with Standard decks that are budget-constrained, or totally rogue, or just for fun. Nobody says "I'm $400 away from playing standard" unless they're planning to PTQ. But there are all these people who keep saying they want to play Modern but first they demand to be handed all the Modern staples for the Tier One decks for pennies on the dollar. WotC foolishly listened and caved with Modern Masters -- in reality, those people will NEVER play Modern, they just like complaining.
After MM comes out, they still won't be playing Modern, they'll be complaining about the price of having a set of Zendikar fetchlands and demanding WotC publish a set of all 40 in a precon for $10. Complaining about money is what that whole sector of the MTG player base does 24/7, they can't be appeased. If they wanted to play a format, they'd be playing it because they LIKE it, and if money were a constraint they'd start out with a budget deck and gradually trade their way up, cut back on drafts, sell standard staples, etc.
I didn't, mostly as protest because I really despise the prize structure they got going. Which is kind of a shame, because I was looking forward to playing with Lotuses and Recalls outside of Shandalar.
Which is really sad because there are any number of budget decks. I got a newsletter from Star City featuring an aura deck in which the win condition is to slap a bunch of stuff on Slippery Bogle.
The store where I play scheduled Modern tournaments on Saturdays because a lot of people said they wanted them. The first Saturday, seven people showed up. The next week, three people showed up. We hyped it as much as we could and the only ones who showed up were me and the store owner. The perception of a lot of "our" players is that Modern is very expensive to build for and you must have all the power cards in order to play.
The store owner and I tried to point out that you don't have to invest heavily to play in a small store tournament. Just bust out those cards that have rotated and play what you used to play. The prevailing opinion was: if I can't play with one of "The Decks to Beat" then I won't play at all. One guy said he was "about $400 away from being ready to play Modern."
Might be. I admit I don't really get who these new players "just starting out" are supposed to be. Children? How old? Because I can't imagine even a 10-year-old playing exclusively with the Duel of the Planeswalkers card for more than a few months, then not becoming curious about what else is there. Maybe the very low cost of those expansions (and the fact that nobody can con you out of them) is supposed to allure the parents. If you think of it, letting your children enter an environment where there's cards worth one hundred dollars (or, you know, more), and where the top players are essentially poker players, might feel unsafe.
I could bet you were chasing money stuff in Masques (that's what Masques draft is for, of course), too bad you didn't tape one of the lucky ones, it would have been awesome to get your reaction in real time. :)
Out of curiosity: you DID do some cube draft during the holidays? Is there a hope we'll get one of those in the future of this series?
The constant rotation and having "to keep up with the latest thing" was the reason I quit paper MtG (I played paper Revised-Torment) although I love the game. I returned to Magic online during the Lorwun-Shadowmoor block (V2.5), but still dislike the shallow standard format. Although I have a serious budget, I still usually play as a default, classic, though not competitively, because of the wackiness of some cards. As my collection grows, I am probably going to shift towards modern. That will depend on cost and availability of the types of cards that interest me along with a more complete knowledge of the cardset that is Modern.
The idea of an unknown deck building environment intrigues me immensely and I too look forward to the release of Modern Masters.
That went interestingly for you. I didn't like P1P1 Thoughtflare over Wayfaring Temple and Knightly Valor, but you got some late Annihilating Fires so it panned out early. Later though I think you would've done well to splash white for some Dramatic Rescues, Arrest, and Eyes in the Skies.
That makes me wonder whether block formats shouldn't be the "new player format" everyone keeps talking about....
Come on, Masques block draft is awesome! The thing is pretty much a griefer's paradise, with all the ridiculous effects that prevent combat from ever happening!
And yes, this enthusiasm may have to do with the fact that I opened a Tangle Wire and a Port in the space of two days. :)
As for Brainstorm, I guess I hadn't considered the obvious synergy with Rebel shuffle effects. I did try it in a subsequent draft and was impressed.
Congratulations on a good performance. I was checking for your name in the GP results and was happy to see that you'd done so well.
"In paper, I've played at a number of different stores."
Just to be sure (because the thread structure is a bit confusing): I was answering to Cownose, not you. :)
I agree about Standard being dull, but we should always maintain that this is our personal opinion and respect all the people who joyfully play the format (and joyfully put their money into it, apparently). I think WotC is perfectly safe with the way Standard is, there's certainly a lot of feedback analysis going on within their marketing department telling them what's right and wrong. After 20 years, Magic is more popular than ever. I believe a company that manages to do that has to know what it's doing.
They could improve Standard for *you and me*, but I'm not sure they need to improve Standard for the millions of players who are playing it (new players, mostly, like you said: when you have to rely on what's available in your neighborhood's store, you can't really play anything but Standard, with the only relevant exception of Commander and the other multiplayer variants, but those need a bit more of experience to be handled). In fact, I think they purposely created Modern for the players who were looking for a more satisfying experience (I'm not talking pros here. The pros are maybe 0.0001% of the actual players, they can't directly influence the market -- although they influence trends).
And whoa, no, a 4-set block (that wasn't Time Spiral anyway, only Lorwyn/Shadowmoor) is maybe fun conceptually, but it was a practical nightmare. Did you see how much the Eventide cards cost? That's because with a 4-set block, the last set is drafted only for a month or so. Doing 4-set blocks would cause the chase rares and mythics of the last set to become hugely pricey all the time, resulting in even more money issues for the players.