Great read as always - looking forward to part 2!!!
I would like to know what you think about this: Duress, Despise, Inquisition of Kozilek + free Surgical Extraction? godd bye Stoneforge Mystic, Jace 2.0 etc. I would try this in Mono Black I guess.
The deck plays fewer threats because of the inquisition package. Without the lightning bolts the deck needs to play another source of removal and the go for the throats take up those slots. Lilliana is interesting in this format, I don't feel versed enough to make a verdict either way on her, she has been really strong at times and really weak as well.
I always look forward to your previews. You point out a lot of good stuff that I would normally miss.
I really don't think that Jin-Gitaxias is going to make that good of a blue commander. Overall he's a 10 mana creature that is only 5/4. With's blue's lack of acceleration it will be a while before you can get him out, then he's bound to die very quickly. Then at +2 mana for every cast you are going to have trouble bringing him out more than once or twice. His special abilities look look powerful, but there are other cards that do much the same thing. Blue Sun's Zenith will draw you just as many cards for the same mana, but at the end of your opponent's turn. Plus it has the flexibility of being cast earlier if you need the cards. Myojin of the Night's Reach is better at emptying every opponent's hand. It's in black, but it's only 8 mana and can't be thwarted by Reliquary Tower. J-G only scares me in a deck that can bring him out early when I don't expect him, like a Blue-Green deck.
I enjoyed the deck as well. Though it kicked my butt royally our second game out. Was fun helping you tune it up a little.
Woodfall Primus just added itself to my stable of Commander staples. Also of note Avalanche Riders and Acidic Slime. Black has Befoul and Sinkhole of course and blue has Spreading Seas and Capsize. Neither are perfect answers but they do stop momentary problems. And of course Ruination, Armageddon and other global destruction spells work to end that kind of thing. Unfortunately against green decks you will be facing Life from the Loam and there is also Crucible.
Great article as always. It was interesting comparing this deck to Lord Erman's deck from last week. They were both mono white but were very different under the hood.
I remember watching that game where you had to face 3 Mazes of Ith (Maze of Ith's?). And that was two players that had three between them. Targeted land destruction is becoming a must for the format and with the three you listed it's easy to put in any deck. They are pretty much auto-includes in any deck I make now.
As much as I'd like to see the new client, I'm not interested in beta testing. I just wouldn't try hard enough to bug hunt. That being said, do any of you who have participated in betas have any interesting stories of any bugs you've found?
Also, AJ. Would you be able to attend the Community Cup if nominated? If I'm not mistaken, you were nominated before but couldn't make it. You have my vote if you can go. I think you deserve another shot.
By all means speak your mind, we chose the topic because of comments generated by the previous podcast. We want this to be ingageing for everyone.
Just know that as i did earlyer at least I of the 3 of us will defend myself and my opinions. Comments are more then welcome. i dont thing that these posts have had anything offensive in them at all yet. but im also a really laid back guy most of the time.
I think that the point of thge topic was not to blast the people on soap boxes crieing about prices, but instead to show the people interested in trying that it is not all about a big wallet. You could litterly do anything if you wanted to start collecting eternal staples, if your in magic online, and your interested in eternal, and the costs associated with it theres gotta be something your good at.
Constructed, start with pauper or block to build up tix.
Draft, draft high ev and nix tix sets. ie TSE, MVW, UUU, ZZW. bouns for good practise for eternal play skills.
Trading, Start small and build up staples. a perfect example of this is from mtgoacdemy. plejades starts with a booster pack, and last i checked he was somewhere at about 150 in value from the booster, just trading, and at limited amounts of time, like 2 hours a week.
Content, if your not good at any of the top things you could consdier sharing your voice with puremtgo. Quality articles are always welcome, and nearly all the writers would help out with any questions from "newbs"
Text
video
and to some extent audio are all welcome ranging from.
tourny
casual
humor
staistical
finacial
and lastly you could put your self on an appropriate budget and long term it.
I don't blame Jace itself, what I don't like is that his brokenness led to this situation where if you go to any competitive standard tournament you will face countless mirror matches (assuming you want a chance to win). That's just not fun to me.
I always was a limited player at heart but now even more than ever, it's your only chance to get some variance between rounds.
I am aware that in the past there were other metagame-defining cards but that's the main reason I don't like standard in general; I only think that since jace found his best deck the situation just got a lot worse.
In the near future we will see because of the sheer number of power cards rotating out; if they don't make another mistake printing another card SO broken I think we could see some variance in the top-8 again.
I am not trying to be a troll, heres the thing, I like all sorts of formats of magic because I'm a long time magic player, and so I do have a vested interest even in formats I am not choosing to currently afford. If the speakers on the podcast had not so strongly engaged the subject I would agree that bringing it up would be off, but they did again very strongly and if discussion and commentary about things in article's/podcasts are not welcome if not in agreement well I don't know why one should have a comment section at all since clearly then the authors would just like to be speaking at their audience not to them. (I don't know if that's the case with all the participants of this podcast but I sure hope not).
The guy I was mostly reacting to did warn about his abrasive style, and I can deal with that, but again it doesn't make me think that disagreement is inappropriate. I know a lot of people consider any long posts not in agreement as trolling. It's silly but there it is.
Mostly my comments originally about it boiled down to this: Just because you don't buy into legacy doesn't mean you don't really want to play, it's more complicated than that.
Thanks.
Both you and Paul caught onto exactly what I was getting at.
Now keep in mind I also am primarily a niche player due to deck costs.
However this doesn't keep me away from making it a goal that i keep to achieve.
I am slowly working myself into a decent collection for legacy and classic but I know it's going to take time.
(currently I think my biggest road block to entry is wasteland as I have the cards to play multiple decks otherwise)
I've built my collection much the same way that MMogg has and it's served me well for any and all formats that i wish to enjoy playing.
As for the "degeneracy" of the formats as was said in a recent podcast classic is like a joke either you're in on it or you're not, it's not a format for everyone.
My point about standard was actually two fold.
A) That every standard is going to have a card or a few cards that are "villians" Cards that the casual masses hate for any number of reasons.
Be it jealously because of card price or due to the power level of the card.
B)That the classic and legacy formats have ALL of those "villian" cards available to them to do some pretty crazy things and make people cry unless they're prepared to have nose bleed style swings in a game.
I don't think he was necessarilty lashing out at you, but rather wonder why--if you can't afford to play Classic/Legacy--you decided to pitch in about it on a classic/legacy oriented podcast. It is kind of like me going onto a website for a game I don't play and talking about how much I hate it...it does not add anything to the conversation and sometimes comes off a trollish.
I totally understand if you can't afford classic/legacy. $1K is a LOT of money to pay for virtual cards and had I not gotten in on the ground floor with 13 dollar Fows and 4 dollar wastes, I would probably be with you...but if you can't/don't play the format...why pitch in to tell us about it? Niche formats are awesome, I play a lot of them...but this is not about them.
This isnt just you BTW...almost every classic/legacy article has someone who posts just to whine about cost and degeneracy. It's almost as if it is a sour grapes situation where because they cannot afford to enjoy a format, they need to tell everyone else to to as well. It's counterproductive to what classic/legacy players are trying to accomplish by building the format, so you have to understand if we get annoyed when the posts in classic and legacy articles do everything they can to convince people not to play.
Mythics in general...I still can't fathom what WoTC was thinking....yes, i see that increasing rarity leads to more packs, but when those type of cards have had the power creep/jump they have, you are hurting the overall game environment. I am like Thisismich, I have stopped playing Standard and will not resume until Jace/Valakut are gone. The reason more people hate on Jace, references my post on Classic..PRICE...say you want to play Valakut..go pick up the entire deck for ~$400...if you want to buy CAW Blade..~$400, not including anything outside of Jace, so while both are ALOT of money, the ease and cost of building a Valakut deck are far superior to building a CAW deck or anything with Blue in it, thanks to Jace. In essence, Jace ruined the ability to play an whole color(if you don't have Jace) because you will feel that your deck could be better with it, but perhaps can't afford it. Hurry up Innistrad..
Nice to see you hopping into teh Commander arena. I'm surpised you passed up Well of Lost Dreams for W draw. With life gain in the deck, it can come in handy - it's less threatening than Mind's Eye and tends to stick around. With Venser's Journal or Diamond Mine it just becomes sick. I've found that even something as simple as the Shrine or a Warden really help things along too.
I've been playing Copmmander a while now on MTGO and as far as power levels, etc - I don't think it's as much about how strong a deck is, or even spoecific interactions. It's playing things that prevent the other players from playing their deck. Nobody wants to sit through Winter Orb - Yosei or stare at a Linvala or Iona unable to play a card. Just like body wants to watch somebody recast Palinchron 18 times on High Tide for Inf mana and play Time stretch for inf turns. A strong interaction that can be broken is hated less than a weak interaction that prevents people from playing. Storm Cauldron, even without a lock combo draws more hate, from what I've seen, than say Mind's Eye. though I would argue that Mind's Eye is stronger as a single card - Storm Cauldron just affects teh other players more and, therefore, draws the hate faster.
Sir, I mentioned the designers of it's context, I think that means that I mean that jace is not the problem by himself. if aggro were too good right now Koth might be a $75 card, that would also be a problem, there are more facets to this to be scrutinized than just saying that Jace is not the original source of Jace being too good, which by itself is a meta analysis of a meta situation, Jace was originally "not a problem" because BB elf was too good, chicken egg, Jace is dumb, staple mythics are dumb, stagnant formats are dumb, WOTC not taking appropriate action to ensure the enjoyment of the game by their customers is short sighted and Ostrich-like.
Uhm, I'm going to same thing once again: If you want to hate a card, then the card you should hate is not Jace but Valakut. Aggro is Jace's natural hate. Jace is so strong now because Aggro is so weak at the moment. Let us all realize this first.
LE
PS: And yes, Jace is broken!
Edit: I just looked at the decklists above in the article and there are eight Control decks, one midrange deck and only one (as in ONE!) true Aggro deck there. This IS the problem. And this problem is NOT Jace's fault. That's all I'm saying.
Its not responsible for all the bad things, a number of overpowered cards are, titans, stoneforge, jace, gideon, mana leak, hawks, (valakut isnt really that big an issue without prime titan) jace is just the worst offender and one of the worst ever because he's a mythic (mythic staples in gen are problems) from a small set not opened that much comparatively. BB elf was a problem card but a cheap problem card at least. I don't blame the card I blame the people who designed it and it's context, there are no hate cards for jace, and none of NPH is a reasonable answer. you need something like an artifact for 2 mana that when it etb draw a card, shroud, cannot be countered. planeswalkers cost 1 more to play, their abilities cost an additional 2 mana to activate. Something that hurts either player playing one to reduce the desire to play walkers in general so you dont just play the answer with jace vs other jaces ect. not rocket science to design hate cards, hate cards are format insurance, something gets too good the hate cards go into everyone's sb's and the card gets played less. Without that insurance much like our economic system, when the environment fails prediction, you wind up with a bankrupt environment, if you refuse to respond to that failure after the fact you have to live through a depression. (where the wealthy do fine as it happens)
When WOTC themselves admit that they underestimated the influence and power of a card we can safely assume it was mistake. And I agree, past Standards have not been nearly as broken as the ones with JTMS. That said,I agree about Stoneforge Mystic being Format Defining. Without it I do not think, things would be so locked in. With several good equipment in Standard (the swords for example), Mystic gives the top decks unassailability and JTMS locks it down.
BTW Ranth can get a little hot wordwise but I think he means well. His point is, this format more than Standard even is just not available to the masses in general. You have to start somewhere in Legacy and build up to Classic. Whether you can innovate or not is to some extent a matter of skill and creativity even though the smaller tighter field makes it harder to do so successfully. But as each new set comes a long that becomes less true. So I say keep thinking about it and keep observing.
I for one will never be in a position to do what MMogg has done for instance but I respect the way he has done it. Puts the hobbit in our Hobby for sure. :P
It's totally incredible how many people believe that Jace is the reason of all the bad things in Standard right now. I really don't understand this way of thinking to be honest. Jace was legal last year too and as far as I remember no one was complaining about him, but everyone was throwing rocks at Bloodbraid Elf and the Jund deck she was played in (Bloodbraid Elf into Blightning was the biggest issue of the Magic community when Jace was also legal in the format).
Anyway, do you really want to blame a card? Fine, blame Valakut then. Because of that card, Aggro doesn't have a chance in the meta and Aggro is the best answer to Jace. A four mana planeswalker that can only bounce back a creature or brainstorm once before dying isn't a big deal for Aggro. But a repeatable 3 damage off of a land, is (thank you Primeval Titan, we love you too!).
So basically Valakut killed Aggro and Jace killed the Valakut. That simple.
So please let's calm down a bit. Standard was annoying when Fae was the best deck and everything else was Tier-2. Standard was also boring when everybody was playing Jund mirror games all day long. Nothing has changed now. Names and cards change but the situation is still the same. There is one big bad boy, two or three decks that can compete with it and anything else is Tier-2.
This year we complain about Jace. Next year it will be something else. I'd say get used to this.
LE
PS: None of the things I said changes the fact that Jace is broken. He never should have had that brainstorming ability. Remove it from him and he'll become a nice and totally balanced planeswalker. Having said that, it's not his fault that Standard nowadays is so stale. Believe me, not much will change next year.
And so annoying. This is the main reason I don't play standard and sell JTMS as soon as I open one. It's, of course, my personal opinion but to me playing mirror match after mirror match in a tournament is just boring and not fun at all.
I'd surely be BUG or Valakut anyway because I like that style of play better, but still. To be completely fair, my favorite playstyle is RB vampires, but it's just not as competitive as the above mentioned decks.
I'm just waiting for the moment JTMS rotates out to see what's in store for the future.
Correct me if I'm wrong but by the end of the year many of the current standard staples will rotate out. I can't wait to see what new decks are waiting without that great blue whale in them; Hopefully aggro will rise again.
Just wondering why BUG here is running 7 non-jace boom booms instead of the 9 Ive seen RUG plays, Liliana seems weak in a world of squad hawks as well, but maybe its sweet in certain matchups, just not seeing where. Seems like BUG could be very good, not sure where red beats blue in the RUG decks, lightning bolt is good of course, maybe just being able to pop jace for 1 mana is supreme game 1, dunno.
Well first off i agree with you that beast with in is not so hot in legacy, but i firmly believe it will change the face of green in classic and vintage.
You also said that the degeneracy of classic prohibits brewing. This is true to an extent but not absolute, otherwise something like my hott mess deck from whiffy's lunch box 48 would not have been even a little viable.
yes the formats degenerate but your brew will be as well. and with shop and oath doing the best the metagame has a huge target that even a blind guy could hit if he brewed appropriatly.
That was Joshua Claytor who definitely deserves a second chance along with AJ, Keya, Heath and some others I can think of off the top of my head.
Great read as always - looking forward to part 2!!!
I would like to know what you think about this: Duress, Despise, Inquisition of Kozilek + free Surgical Extraction? godd bye Stoneforge Mystic, Jace 2.0 etc. I would try this in Mono Black I guess.
I was never nominated to either of the two previous cups. (Well, a few people put my name forward, but I have never been chosen as a representative.)
The deck plays fewer threats because of the inquisition package. Without the lightning bolts the deck needs to play another source of removal and the go for the throats take up those slots. Lilliana is interesting in this format, I don't feel versed enough to make a verdict either way on her, she has been really strong at times and really weak as well.
I always look forward to your previews. You point out a lot of good stuff that I would normally miss.
I really don't think that Jin-Gitaxias is going to make that good of a blue commander. Overall he's a 10 mana creature that is only 5/4. With's blue's lack of acceleration it will be a while before you can get him out, then he's bound to die very quickly. Then at +2 mana for every cast you are going to have trouble bringing him out more than once or twice. His special abilities look look powerful, but there are other cards that do much the same thing. Blue Sun's Zenith will draw you just as many cards for the same mana, but at the end of your opponent's turn. Plus it has the flexibility of being cast earlier if you need the cards. Myojin of the Night's Reach is better at emptying every opponent's hand. It's in black, but it's only 8 mana and can't be thwarted by Reliquary Tower. J-G only scares me in a deck that can bring him out early when I don't expect him, like a Blue-Green deck.
I enjoyed the deck as well. Though it kicked my butt royally our second game out. Was fun helping you tune it up a little.
Woodfall Primus just added itself to my stable of Commander staples. Also of note Avalanche Riders and Acidic Slime. Black has Befoul and Sinkhole of course and blue has Spreading Seas and Capsize. Neither are perfect answers but they do stop momentary problems. And of course Ruination, Armageddon and other global destruction spells work to end that kind of thing. Unfortunately against green decks you will be facing Life from the Loam and there is also Crucible.
Great article as always. It was interesting comparing this deck to Lord Erman's deck from last week. They were both mono white but were very different under the hood.
I remember watching that game where you had to face 3 Mazes of Ith (Maze of Ith's?). And that was two players that had three between them. Targeted land destruction is becoming a must for the format and with the three you listed it's easy to put in any deck. They are pretty much auto-includes in any deck I make now.
As much as I'd like to see the new client, I'm not interested in beta testing. I just wouldn't try hard enough to bug hunt. That being said, do any of you who have participated in betas have any interesting stories of any bugs you've found?
Also, AJ. Would you be able to attend the Community Cup if nominated? If I'm not mistaken, you were nominated before but couldn't make it. You have my vote if you can go. I think you deserve another shot.
By all means speak your mind, we chose the topic because of comments generated by the previous podcast. We want this to be ingageing for everyone.
Just know that as i did earlyer at least I of the 3 of us will defend myself and my opinions. Comments are more then welcome. i dont thing that these posts have had anything offensive in them at all yet. but im also a really laid back guy most of the time.
I think that the point of thge topic was not to blast the people on soap boxes crieing about prices, but instead to show the people interested in trying that it is not all about a big wallet. You could litterly do anything if you wanted to start collecting eternal staples, if your in magic online, and your interested in eternal, and the costs associated with it theres gotta be something your good at.
Constructed, start with pauper or block to build up tix.
Draft, draft high ev and nix tix sets. ie TSE, MVW, UUU, ZZW. bouns for good practise for eternal play skills.
Trading, Start small and build up staples. a perfect example of this is from mtgoacdemy. plejades starts with a booster pack, and last i checked he was somewhere at about 150 in value from the booster, just trading, and at limited amounts of time, like 2 hours a week.
Content, if your not good at any of the top things you could consdier sharing your voice with puremtgo. Quality articles are always welcome, and nearly all the writers would help out with any questions from "newbs"
Text
video
and to some extent audio are all welcome ranging from.
tourny
casual
humor
staistical
finacial
and lastly you could put your self on an appropriate budget and long term it.
sorry for the horrible spelling.
I don't blame Jace itself, what I don't like is that his brokenness led to this situation where if you go to any competitive standard tournament you will face countless mirror matches (assuming you want a chance to win). That's just not fun to me.
I always was a limited player at heart but now even more than ever, it's your only chance to get some variance between rounds.
I am aware that in the past there were other metagame-defining cards but that's the main reason I don't like standard in general; I only think that since jace found his best deck the situation just got a lot worse.
In the near future we will see because of the sheer number of power cards rotating out; if they don't make another mistake printing another card SO broken I think we could see some variance in the top-8 again.
I am not trying to be a troll, heres the thing, I like all sorts of formats of magic because I'm a long time magic player, and so I do have a vested interest even in formats I am not choosing to currently afford. If the speakers on the podcast had not so strongly engaged the subject I would agree that bringing it up would be off, but they did again very strongly and if discussion and commentary about things in article's/podcasts are not welcome if not in agreement well I don't know why one should have a comment section at all since clearly then the authors would just like to be speaking at their audience not to them. (I don't know if that's the case with all the participants of this podcast but I sure hope not).
The guy I was mostly reacting to did warn about his abrasive style, and I can deal with that, but again it doesn't make me think that disagreement is inappropriate. I know a lot of people consider any long posts not in agreement as trolling. It's silly but there it is.
Mostly my comments originally about it boiled down to this: Just because you don't buy into legacy doesn't mean you don't really want to play, it's more complicated than that.
Thanks.
Both you and Paul caught onto exactly what I was getting at.
Now keep in mind I also am primarily a niche player due to deck costs.
However this doesn't keep me away from making it a goal that i keep to achieve.
I am slowly working myself into a decent collection for legacy and classic but I know it's going to take time.
(currently I think my biggest road block to entry is wasteland as I have the cards to play multiple decks otherwise)
I've built my collection much the same way that MMogg has and it's served me well for any and all formats that i wish to enjoy playing.
As for the "degeneracy" of the formats as was said in a recent podcast classic is like a joke either you're in on it or you're not, it's not a format for everyone.
My point about standard was actually two fold.
A) That every standard is going to have a card or a few cards that are "villians" Cards that the casual masses hate for any number of reasons.
Be it jealously because of card price or due to the power level of the card.
B)That the classic and legacy formats have ALL of those "villian" cards available to them to do some pretty crazy things and make people cry unless they're prepared to have nose bleed style swings in a game.
I agree with everything here.
I frown on two card infinite combos with tutors. It makes the game very boring for everyone else.
I don't think he was necessarilty lashing out at you, but rather wonder why--if you can't afford to play Classic/Legacy--you decided to pitch in about it on a classic/legacy oriented podcast. It is kind of like me going onto a website for a game I don't play and talking about how much I hate it...it does not add anything to the conversation and sometimes comes off a trollish.
I totally understand if you can't afford classic/legacy. $1K is a LOT of money to pay for virtual cards and had I not gotten in on the ground floor with 13 dollar Fows and 4 dollar wastes, I would probably be with you...but if you can't/don't play the format...why pitch in to tell us about it? Niche formats are awesome, I play a lot of them...but this is not about them.
This isnt just you BTW...almost every classic/legacy article has someone who posts just to whine about cost and degeneracy. It's almost as if it is a sour grapes situation where because they cannot afford to enjoy a format, they need to tell everyone else to to as well. It's counterproductive to what classic/legacy players are trying to accomplish by building the format, so you have to understand if we get annoyed when the posts in classic and legacy articles do everything they can to convince people not to play.
What he said! ;)
Mythics in general...I still can't fathom what WoTC was thinking....yes, i see that increasing rarity leads to more packs, but when those type of cards have had the power creep/jump they have, you are hurting the overall game environment. I am like Thisismich, I have stopped playing Standard and will not resume until Jace/Valakut are gone. The reason more people hate on Jace, references my post on Classic..PRICE...say you want to play Valakut..go pick up the entire deck for ~$400...if you want to buy CAW Blade..~$400, not including anything outside of Jace, so while both are ALOT of money, the ease and cost of building a Valakut deck are far superior to building a CAW deck or anything with Blue in it, thanks to Jace. In essence, Jace ruined the ability to play an whole color(if you don't have Jace) because you will feel that your deck could be better with it, but perhaps can't afford it. Hurry up Innistrad..
Nice to see you hopping into teh Commander arena. I'm surpised you passed up Well of Lost Dreams for W draw. With life gain in the deck, it can come in handy - it's less threatening than Mind's Eye and tends to stick around. With Venser's Journal or Diamond Mine it just becomes sick. I've found that even something as simple as the Shrine or a Warden really help things along too.
I've been playing Copmmander a while now on MTGO and as far as power levels, etc - I don't think it's as much about how strong a deck is, or even spoecific interactions. It's playing things that prevent the other players from playing their deck. Nobody wants to sit through Winter Orb - Yosei or stare at a Linvala or Iona unable to play a card. Just like body wants to watch somebody recast Palinchron 18 times on High Tide for Inf mana and play Time stretch for inf turns. A strong interaction that can be broken is hated less than a weak interaction that prevents people from playing. Storm Cauldron, even without a lock combo draws more hate, from what I've seen, than say Mind's Eye. though I would argue that Mind's Eye is stronger as a single card - Storm Cauldron just affects teh other players more and, therefore, draws the hate faster.
Just my 20 yen
HK
Sir, I mentioned the designers of it's context, I think that means that I mean that jace is not the problem by himself. if aggro were too good right now Koth might be a $75 card, that would also be a problem, there are more facets to this to be scrutinized than just saying that Jace is not the original source of Jace being too good, which by itself is a meta analysis of a meta situation, Jace was originally "not a problem" because BB elf was too good, chicken egg, Jace is dumb, staple mythics are dumb, stagnant formats are dumb, WOTC not taking appropriate action to ensure the enjoyment of the game by their customers is short sighted and Ostrich-like.
Uhm, I'm going to same thing once again: If you want to hate a card, then the card you should hate is not Jace but Valakut. Aggro is Jace's natural hate. Jace is so strong now because Aggro is so weak at the moment. Let us all realize this first.
LE
PS: And yes, Jace is broken!
Edit: I just looked at the decklists above in the article and there are eight Control decks, one midrange deck and only one (as in ONE!) true Aggro deck there. This IS the problem. And this problem is NOT Jace's fault. That's all I'm saying.
Its not responsible for all the bad things, a number of overpowered cards are, titans, stoneforge, jace, gideon, mana leak, hawks, (valakut isnt really that big an issue without prime titan) jace is just the worst offender and one of the worst ever because he's a mythic (mythic staples in gen are problems) from a small set not opened that much comparatively. BB elf was a problem card but a cheap problem card at least. I don't blame the card I blame the people who designed it and it's context, there are no hate cards for jace, and none of NPH is a reasonable answer. you need something like an artifact for 2 mana that when it etb draw a card, shroud, cannot be countered. planeswalkers cost 1 more to play, their abilities cost an additional 2 mana to activate. Something that hurts either player playing one to reduce the desire to play walkers in general so you dont just play the answer with jace vs other jaces ect. not rocket science to design hate cards, hate cards are format insurance, something gets too good the hate cards go into everyone's sb's and the card gets played less. Without that insurance much like our economic system, when the environment fails prediction, you wind up with a bankrupt environment, if you refuse to respond to that failure after the fact you have to live through a depression. (where the wealthy do fine as it happens)
When WOTC themselves admit that they underestimated the influence and power of a card we can safely assume it was mistake. And I agree, past Standards have not been nearly as broken as the ones with JTMS. That said,I agree about Stoneforge Mystic being Format Defining. Without it I do not think, things would be so locked in. With several good equipment in Standard (the swords for example), Mystic gives the top decks unassailability and JTMS locks it down.
BTW Ranth can get a little hot wordwise but I think he means well. His point is, this format more than Standard even is just not available to the masses in general. You have to start somewhere in Legacy and build up to Classic. Whether you can innovate or not is to some extent a matter of skill and creativity even though the smaller tighter field makes it harder to do so successfully. But as each new set comes a long that becomes less true. So I say keep thinking about it and keep observing.
I for one will never be in a position to do what MMogg has done for instance but I respect the way he has done it. Puts the hobbit in our Hobby for sure. :P
It's totally incredible how many people believe that Jace is the reason of all the bad things in Standard right now. I really don't understand this way of thinking to be honest. Jace was legal last year too and as far as I remember no one was complaining about him, but everyone was throwing rocks at Bloodbraid Elf and the Jund deck she was played in (Bloodbraid Elf into Blightning was the biggest issue of the Magic community when Jace was also legal in the format).
Anyway, do you really want to blame a card? Fine, blame Valakut then. Because of that card, Aggro doesn't have a chance in the meta and Aggro is the best answer to Jace. A four mana planeswalker that can only bounce back a creature or brainstorm once before dying isn't a big deal for Aggro. But a repeatable 3 damage off of a land, is (thank you Primeval Titan, we love you too!).
So basically Valakut killed Aggro and Jace killed the Valakut. That simple.
So please let's calm down a bit. Standard was annoying when Fae was the best deck and everything else was Tier-2. Standard was also boring when everybody was playing Jund mirror games all day long. Nothing has changed now. Names and cards change but the situation is still the same. There is one big bad boy, two or three decks that can compete with it and anything else is Tier-2.
This year we complain about Jace. Next year it will be something else. I'd say get used to this.
LE
PS: None of the things I said changes the fact that Jace is broken. He never should have had that brainstorming ability. Remove it from him and he'll become a nice and totally balanced planeswalker. Having said that, it's not his fault that Standard nowadays is so stale. Believe me, not much will change next year.
And so annoying. This is the main reason I don't play standard and sell JTMS as soon as I open one. It's, of course, my personal opinion but to me playing mirror match after mirror match in a tournament is just boring and not fun at all.
I'd surely be BUG or Valakut anyway because I like that style of play better, but still. To be completely fair, my favorite playstyle is RB vampires, but it's just not as competitive as the above mentioned decks.
I'm just waiting for the moment JTMS rotates out to see what's in store for the future.
Correct me if I'm wrong but by the end of the year many of the current standard staples will rotate out. I can't wait to see what new decks are waiting without that great blue whale in them; Hopefully aggro will rise again.
Just wondering why BUG here is running 7 non-jace boom booms instead of the 9 Ive seen RUG plays, Liliana seems weak in a world of squad hawks as well, but maybe its sweet in certain matchups, just not seeing where. Seems like BUG could be very good, not sure where red beats blue in the RUG decks, lightning bolt is good of course, maybe just being able to pop jace for 1 mana is supreme game 1, dunno.
Well first off i agree with you that beast with in is not so hot in legacy, but i firmly believe it will change the face of green in classic and vintage.
You also said that the degeneracy of classic prohibits brewing. This is true to an extent but not absolute, otherwise something like my hott mess deck from whiffy's lunch box 48 would not have been even a little viable.
yes the formats degenerate but your brew will be as well. and with shop and oath doing the best the metagame has a huge target that even a blind guy could hit if he brewed appropriatly.
Glad you like audio magic, makes our job easier