Being a permanent by no means inherently saves something from the dishonor of being card disadvantage. Sometimes Black Lotus is worse than Gitaxian Probe. What Black Lotus and these cards have in common, other than the fact that Lotus generates three mana and these cards cost three mana, is that they are tempo plays. Black Lotus, like Dark Ritual, is a spell that converts a card into mana. The rate on Lotus, 3 mana from no mana, without consuming a land drop, is a tempo play of unparalleled magnitude. You can cast Jace on the first turn of a game. The mana boost is accelerating you to turn four for the cost of a card. Spend one card, get three turns worth of land drops. Play your Jace or Lodestone and hope the investment was worth it.
These enchantments are quite similar. They are spells that convert cards into mana. They buy you more turns to play the game. On each of those turns you get to untap and play a land. You also get to draw a card, but your opponent draws a card in each of the extra turns first, and, not having played the enchantment, is already a card ahead, assuming you didn't kill any actual creatures with the Propaganda or Token Plague. So the future stream of cards in the form of your draw is cancelled out by your opponents draws. But you get all that mana, just like with Lotus. You could just as well play a sufficiently powerful lifegain spell. It would have a similar effect, although the tempo effectiveness of these enchantments likely exceeds any lifegain spell at a similar cost, save Stoneforge into Batterskull.
The problem is that, unlike Lotus, the tempo promised can sometimes be denied. Sometimes Propaganda can be evaded by more mana. Sometimes the plagues do nothing against a flipped Delver that continues to swing. Sometimes the opponent just untaps and plays Wear on your three mana enchantment, then swings for close to lethal.
The real flaw with all these cards can be illuminated by asking, why not play Toxic Deluge? Deluge costs the same, is far more versatile, is even playable main deck, and creates card advantage and tempo. The reason is twofold.
Firstly, enchantment pilots want not just to answer all creatures on board, they want to answer all creatures in the library. They want a strategic trump. Like Extract or Surgical Extraction, that trump costs a whole card. Against poorly designed decks, such a trump is often worthwhile. Against most decks, it's not. Secondly, such pilots want to be free of the burden of doing something with the time they bought. Toxic Deluge only works if you win before they rebuild their board. Deluge requires you to win the game. The enchantments ask no such task of their pilots. They don't require any extra work. Take all the time you need. Lazy as we are, this is why we are attracted to such effects.
Regarding Mentor:
Mentor is suffering from role misassignment. Prowess as a mechanic generates value from pilots playing as many spells as possible in their first main phase, thereby incentivizing poor sequencing. I see what are becoming canonical examples all the time. Tapping lands to play Mentor, then playing a non-blue Mox to generate a token. Tapping out to play Mentor, and then Gushing. Playing Mentor before Probing or Preordaining. Unfortunately, strictly sequencing spells alongside Mentor frequently turns the card into a 3-mana Pyromancer. It is an awkward aggro-control card, and I think you are quite right as viewing it in a combo light. That is more or less how it is played in its Midrange shells. But really, truly, deep down, it's a fatty. A Vintage fatty, through and through, but a fatty, stompy beatdown card all the way. As the old line goes, "The last fatty you can't deal with is the one that kills you." If I have a deck with three Mentors, the first two will not be the last one.
Cards like Propaganda, Ghostly Prison, Illness in the Ranks, and Engineered Plague are permanents, so saying that you're losing card advantage by playing them is sort of misleading. I understand that the tokens are generated as a by-product of playing other cards, so if you were to use a fire and ice to kill two tokens, that would be different.
With some of the enchantments, once they are resolved, most delver and mentor decks have no way to combat them, and the game gets harder for them to win.
I understand that in a vacuum, those types of cards aren't the ones you want to be playing. They're narrow and reactive in a lot of ways, but if they negate all present and future tokens, then I'll take the hit of one card. Besides, what about the virtual card advantage caused by negating all future Young Pyromancers, their tokens, or Mentors/Monks? That is harder to quantify, but it's worth something.
The online metagame, and the overall impression I get from people is that Monastery Mentor is slowly falling out of favor. It's true that the Delver/YP shell is much more streamlined, and that gives it an edge sometimes. I personally enjoy playing Mentor much more, because it makes me feel like I'm playing a combo deck.
Alhammarret's Archive with Brainstorm, draw 6 replace 2 :)
Flameshadow Conjuring is a very strong effect.
There are a lot of Johnny possibilities in this set: Demonic Pact/Puca's Mischief; Tainted Remedy/Any life gain spell like congregate or butcher's glee even; Day's Undoing and Dark Petition.
I view it more so as the person across from you lays their hand on the table so everyone can see. Then if you even look at the cards they put face up on the table you are going to get yelled at and called a cheater.
I am not sure if the client should be alerting you they are streaming. Also I know that the advice is not always good advice. Though I have seen plenty of times where they get good advice on something they didn't see or think about. The thing I would like to see stopped is the bullying by the streamers of people who might be watching them. These streamers are trying to get some kind of fame and also many are getting money from sponsors, adds, donations, subscribers, free streamer only events, free cards, and so on. I have seen Worth give free cards to streamers he likes.
I enjoy watching streams. The only valid argument I have heard is that if they get enough people "ghosting" they will not stream anymore. Though this can be overcome with delays and hiding their hands which I have seen both happen. So its only slightly valid.
The video does a lot better job of answering the question that that poorly written article does. Do men make more? On the whole, yes. Does that scream discrimination? No. Watch the video, it's really good at explaining the dynamics of male earning vs. female earning.
I sure hope Gush isn't restricted without Lodestone, because it seems like Shops just becomes super dominant without Gush. And frankly I don't want to be spending $150-200 to play with Griselbrands instead. Gush is fair and not dominant and I think saying it should be restrict is just wrong.
Mentor decks will survive anyway but not at tier 1.
I felt bad about calling the judge in that round, and I felt worse when I checked out your articles and realized how much prep you had put in for the tournament! Trust me, I did NOT think you were a bad player. In fact, I made a very similar mistake the next day during the Super Sunday Series. I won game 1 of round 1 against Mardu Dragons (one of my worse matchups), and I was very excited to have a shot, but then I looked down at the result slip during sideboarding and realized I had sat at the wrong table. I was able to laugh that one off, partially because it seemed like a bit of karmic justice!
In fact, I think it's a great point speaking to the theme of your series: making the switch to paper is TOUGH! My first few competitive events in paper Magic were horrible compared to my relative wealth of online experience. There are just so many minor things you have to constantly attend to, and the only solution is lots and lots of practice. I found it was much easier once I was able to start taking it easy on myself for making these kinds of minor errors.
Anyway, I'm very happy to hear you have more time with Princess Buttercup. I will give my own cat, Professor Morgan Buckles, some extra hugs tonight just so she knows I appreciate her.
Hope to see you soon at another tournament!
Edit: Almost forgot, but http://www.decklist.org/ is a helpful tool to have your decklist printed ahead of time, and you can always just scribble stuff out if you need last minute changes.
Oh it does now. It's not in their interested to stop streaming as it promotes de game freely. To be honest, I think people streaming are actually putting themselves at a disadvantage (even without ghosting). Sure, sometimes there is good advice in the middle of crappy advice and some ammount of times, the streamers catch it. But deviding your attention between the game and the chat, makes you more distracted and it's easier to mess up or misclick.
That doesn't change the fact that they are still getting outside assistance and for some plays they can actually stop for a bit and ask the chat.
The difference between streaming and ghosting is that streaming helps Wizards with free publicity and ghosting can cause streamers to be unhappy or quit, it can stop some people from becoming streamers and it can also affect viewers.
For any big streamer it's very easy to come out ahead. Even if they fail every event they play, the donations and sponsors more than make up for it, so even losing several matches to ghosting doesn't stop streaming from being great for them.
You're right that red has suffered in that it's removal hasn't really scaled well with the increased quality of creatures, I'd argue that the dropoff for black has been much more steep. Going from regularly expecting cards like Terror, Dark Banishing, Expunge etc. at common to cards like Disfigure, Defeat, Throttle, Asphyxiate, Victim of Night etc.
IMO the dropoff here is steeper. I think the fact that the good uncommon Black removal (Go For The Throat, Doom Blade, Ultimate Price, etc.) are often considered to be among the top uncommons in the set speaks to the extreme difference between the old style common Black removal and the new style.
I seriously don't understand many parts of your text. You say "ghosting should be banned" but on the other hand you say "One vs. many is not." and streaming players are the ones playing with many vs one.
I can answer some parts of it: there will never be a tournament where everyone is ghosting. That is not how Magic works and there's no way they'll ever make something like that. And there's also no way to ever know if anyone is ghosting. Even if they created their own streaming site (not worth it) and people had to connect the streaming with their mtgo account (they would lose many viewers who don't have mtgo), people could always be watching with another account.
And you simply can't ban something you can't control in the least.
You make a lot of really good comments here, and I can't go through and point out everything that was good, but I wanted to reply re: Red.
I think that red has actually suffered the most from this change in removal. You made the argument that red has always had removal with restrictions, but the difference is that red has scaled worse than any of the other colors relative to the creatures that we face. Shock used to be a top tier common; now it probably wouldn't crack the top ten, just because it is so limited in the things that it can hit.
For sure it's a design philosophy. I had known that WotC was trying to nerf removal over time, but I found it fascinating to see how that played out in the numbers.
My position is that ghosting gives the player receiving additional information from the crowd an advantage, and their opponent gains no advantages.
Any good player has the experience to recognize and ignore bad advice and pay attention to good advice.
Is it an unfair advantage? Have you ever played against THAT GUY and his three friends all at once at FNM? I have, and I haven't enjoyed the experience, especially when one of the friends decides to stop the game for a strategy pow-wow.
So I am of the opinion ghosting should be banned, unless you offer a tournament where everyone is ghosting, or as part of the tournament description, ghosting is explicitly allowed. When two teams of people play against each other, its fine. One vs. many is not.
The only way I'd be OK with ghosting is if you get a notification your opponent is doing so, which also automatically reveals their hand. Then information asymmetry would no longer be an issue. The extra advantage of advice would be mitigated by the advantage the non-ghosting player(s) would receive from keeping their hands hidden while knowing the hands of their opponents.
Looking at the data you provide, this is more than a trend. This is a design philosophy. Creatures are becoming more powerful for the cost while removal is becoming more expensive. Creatures are providing more value (even acting as removal in some cases), while removal rarely does anything additional besides damage or life gain.
When I first started playing Magic in the mid 1990s, all I wanted to do was drop bombs and swing for damage. As control and card advantage became a thing, it took me a while to understand how those aspects affected the game. At a certain point I thought I understood it, but then stopped playing Magic. I returned to the game recently (with a few flings off and on between) and once again wanted to drop bombs and swing for damage. I relearned about control and card advantage over the course of the first three months back, but didn't really use those aspects well.
Point being, new and returning players to Magic can't jump right in and play control strategies. They can play creatures. Wizards knows that if they unleash true 4 mana wraths and one mana removal, new players will turn away from the game very quickly. They have to allow the creature players to have some shot at winning.
One time about 3 months into my return I was playing a black removal based deck against another player online. My deck wasn't even that good, but every threat he dropped, I removed. He yelled at me in chat saying I wasn't playing the game right, and that having 5 removal spells (over the course of like 10 turns) was trolling, and that I had to play a creature or he was going to quit. He really was upset that everything he played got dead before he could use it.
I tried to explain that I had creatures in my deck, but hadn't drawn one yet, and that removing his dudes was a legitimate strategy that he was going to face all the time. I can't repeat what he said after that.
Point is, Wizards has gradually tightened up the ratio of removal to creatures and tilted the cost gradually to allow 'fair' decks and creature based strategies to exist at all levels of play. What we as players lose in cheap removal, we gain in the growth of popularity of this game. I think Wizards is for the most part getting it right. I just played in GP Providence and the number of players at that 'smaller' Grand Prix was mind boggling.
At some point the trend will level off. For the most part, it already has. 4 mana seems to be the default for unconditional 1 for 1 removal, 3 if there's a double black requirement. Wraths cost 5, usually with a double color cost. I think that's the sweet spot and it will stay there for a long time. There may be some powerful exceptions here and there that they toss in to mix it up (there's one in Origins that I predict will shift the balance of power --- Languish).
1. It might be instructive to look at the types of cards that benefit the most and lose the most from the increasing scarcity of reliable removal. It seems to me that pump effects and bounce effects have gained in standing while basically any spell that doesn't immediately impact the board has lost a lot of playability.
In some ways this is a good thing. A certain subset of the playerbase loves nothing more than to put fat pants on a weenie and go to town, and that strategy was barely ever viable in older draft formats. Now it tends to be a staple of some formats (Theros ordeals, Innistrad Travel Preparations, etc.) One result of this is that bounce (which is still an effective way of dealing with these types of lines) has become more effective relative to removal (which often has difficulty removing pumped up creatures due to conditionality).
On the other hand, the difficulty in stifling early pressure has made durdling much more difficult. Again, for some this is a good thing. That said, putting together sweet combos that don't have an immediate payoff is MUCH harder now, which a different set of players I'm sure dislikes.
To me, I find this shift to be a bit stifling. While I like the fact that auras are an actual thing now, formats that feature powerful and aggressive pump strategies feel extremely swingy and volatile to me. Often times the game will hinge on one play, sometimes as early as turn two, where if you have the answer you are extremely likely to win the game and if you don't you are almost guaranteed to lose. One drop into ordeal in Theros is a perfect example of this. If you happen to draw an answer right away you probably win and if you don't you're going to have a very hard time coming back.
2. While control strategies were perhaps too dominant in most past draft formats, I'd argue that the reduction in the quality of removal (along with other changes such as worse card draw) has made true control strategies very difficult to pull off. It's much more difficult now to keep up with faster strategies when you not only need to draw enough removal but you need to draw the correct spells to match your opponent's threats. Even then, you are likely to run dry and end up with a bad "Last Fatty" problem. Essentially you need a top end that can reliably and unconditionally put the game away, and that means a bomb rare or more likely mythic. Sometimes it can happen but often times it just doesn't work out. Note that there are some formats where this is less true because the format is both slow and there are very powerful lategame cards at common (eg: triple Khans Sultai with Treasure Cruise). In contrast, I think you can sit down at any draft table in almost any format and a viable aggro (or at the very least offensive midrange) archetype will be available. Consider MM2015 -- essentially every archetype in that format is either aggro or midrange with the sole exception of 4-5 color which is sometimes midrange and sometimes true control.
I completely agree that older formats tilted too heavily toward control, but I think the pendulum has swung too far in the other direction for the most part. I'd like to see formats where control, aggro, attrition, and midrange are all legitimate strategies.
3. The most troubling effect of the changes to removal is, in my opinion, the disruption of the color pie. Black in particular has suffered, while Blue, White, and Green have all improved their standing. Red I think hasn't changed much as its removal has always been of the conditional variety with the added benefit of also providing reach to help offset this. Now, most cheap Black removal is barely distinguishable (and sometimes actually worse) than White, Green, or even Blue removal. In Rise of the Eldrazi, for example, Narcolepsy was arguably a better removal spell than any of Black's commons in the context of the format. In MM15 Black has Nameless Inversion, Grim Affliction, and Bone Splinters while White has Sunlance and Arrest. Black has arguably the better suite here but it's darn close.
Most of the time Black receives an expensive, unconditional removal spell at common and a couple of good offerings at uncommon or rare. The expensive option only really works if the format is slow, and the uncommon/rare cards do a great job of making sure Black's identity is secure in constructed but to a pretty bad job of securing it in limited.
I agree with you. I think the correct official position should be staying neutral. Everyone should be free to do it but it shouldn't be encouraged or made easier by saying when your opp is streaming. Just like searching for your opp's past decks, it should be something that you get rewarded for actually taking the time to look it up.
The first thing that came to my mind when you described the paper magic equivalent of ghosting was that there is different way of looking at it. A person streaming is the one actively broadcasting the information. The paper magic equivalent is a person choosing to play with their hand revealed as well as thinking out loud about possible plays, spell sequences, combat math, etc. I suppose this analogy breaks down because the ghost is stuck at the table but not required to call up the stream.
We can take the same approach to this that you did regarding outside assistance "...is what streaming is all about." Streaming is about putting yourself on display to the public, which includes the opponent. It's like the scouting article that went up on cfb recently which is paper magics parallel of looking up user names to aid mulligan decisions.
At the end of the day I see no reason why streamers should be shielded from possible disadvantages but allowed the advantages even if they are tenuous because I don't really view ghosting as a form of cheating. To me the idea that hands are private information is gone once you freely choose to reveal it to anyone and everyone that might be interested in knowing it.
I could see it being played, but not as a four-of. The only cool thing about it is the beatdown it can deliver. But not being able to tap or untap lands with it is why I think Exarch and Pestermite are better.
I watched the video. I remain skeptical as to the assumptions made and as to its neutrality. This does not need to be a zero sum game in any case.
Being a permanent by no means inherently saves something from the dishonor of being card disadvantage. Sometimes Black Lotus is worse than Gitaxian Probe. What Black Lotus and these cards have in common, other than the fact that Lotus generates three mana and these cards cost three mana, is that they are tempo plays. Black Lotus, like Dark Ritual, is a spell that converts a card into mana. The rate on Lotus, 3 mana from no mana, without consuming a land drop, is a tempo play of unparalleled magnitude. You can cast Jace on the first turn of a game. The mana boost is accelerating you to turn four for the cost of a card. Spend one card, get three turns worth of land drops. Play your Jace or Lodestone and hope the investment was worth it.
These enchantments are quite similar. They are spells that convert cards into mana. They buy you more turns to play the game. On each of those turns you get to untap and play a land. You also get to draw a card, but your opponent draws a card in each of the extra turns first, and, not having played the enchantment, is already a card ahead, assuming you didn't kill any actual creatures with the Propaganda or Token Plague. So the future stream of cards in the form of your draw is cancelled out by your opponents draws. But you get all that mana, just like with Lotus. You could just as well play a sufficiently powerful lifegain spell. It would have a similar effect, although the tempo effectiveness of these enchantments likely exceeds any lifegain spell at a similar cost, save Stoneforge into Batterskull.
The problem is that, unlike Lotus, the tempo promised can sometimes be denied. Sometimes Propaganda can be evaded by more mana. Sometimes the plagues do nothing against a flipped Delver that continues to swing. Sometimes the opponent just untaps and plays Wear on your three mana enchantment, then swings for close to lethal.
The real flaw with all these cards can be illuminated by asking, why not play Toxic Deluge? Deluge costs the same, is far more versatile, is even playable main deck, and creates card advantage and tempo. The reason is twofold.
Firstly, enchantment pilots want not just to answer all creatures on board, they want to answer all creatures in the library. They want a strategic trump. Like Extract or Surgical Extraction, that trump costs a whole card. Against poorly designed decks, such a trump is often worthwhile. Against most decks, it's not. Secondly, such pilots want to be free of the burden of doing something with the time they bought. Toxic Deluge only works if you win before they rebuild their board. Deluge requires you to win the game. The enchantments ask no such task of their pilots. They don't require any extra work. Take all the time you need. Lazy as we are, this is why we are attracted to such effects.
Regarding Mentor:
Mentor is suffering from role misassignment. Prowess as a mechanic generates value from pilots playing as many spells as possible in their first main phase, thereby incentivizing poor sequencing. I see what are becoming canonical examples all the time. Tapping lands to play Mentor, then playing a non-blue Mox to generate a token. Tapping out to play Mentor, and then Gushing. Playing Mentor before Probing or Preordaining. Unfortunately, strictly sequencing spells alongside Mentor frequently turns the card into a 3-mana Pyromancer. It is an awkward aggro-control card, and I think you are quite right as viewing it in a combo light. That is more or less how it is played in its Midrange shells. But really, truly, deep down, it's a fatty. A Vintage fatty, through and through, but a fatty, stompy beatdown card all the way. As the old line goes, "The last fatty you can't deal with is the one that kills you." If I have a deck with three Mentors, the first two will not be the last one.
Cards like Propaganda, Ghostly Prison, Illness in the Ranks, and Engineered Plague are permanents, so saying that you're losing card advantage by playing them is sort of misleading. I understand that the tokens are generated as a by-product of playing other cards, so if you were to use a fire and ice to kill two tokens, that would be different.
With some of the enchantments, once they are resolved, most delver and mentor decks have no way to combat them, and the game gets harder for them to win.
I understand that in a vacuum, those types of cards aren't the ones you want to be playing. They're narrow and reactive in a lot of ways, but if they negate all present and future tokens, then I'll take the hit of one card. Besides, what about the virtual card advantage caused by negating all future Young Pyromancers, their tokens, or Mentors/Monks? That is harder to quantify, but it's worth something.
The online metagame, and the overall impression I get from people is that Monastery Mentor is slowly falling out of favor. It's true that the Delver/YP shell is much more streamlined, and that gives it an edge sometimes. I personally enjoy playing Mentor much more, because it makes me feel like I'm playing a combo deck.
Alhammarret's Archive with Brainstorm, draw 6 replace 2 :)
Flameshadow Conjuring is a very strong effect.
There are a lot of Johnny possibilities in this set: Demonic Pact/Puca's Mischief; Tainted Remedy/Any life gain spell like congregate or butcher's glee even; Day's Undoing and Dark Petition.
Lodestone's restriction would be more or less unprecedented; no creature has been on the list since Ali From Cairo was unrestricted in 1996.
I agree with you both that Gush shouldn't be restricted and probably won't be.
I view it more so as the person across from you lays their hand on the table so everyone can see. Then if you even look at the cards they put face up on the table you are going to get yelled at and called a cheater.
I am not sure if the client should be alerting you they are streaming. Also I know that the advice is not always good advice. Though I have seen plenty of times where they get good advice on something they didn't see or think about. The thing I would like to see stopped is the bullying by the streamers of people who might be watching them. These streamers are trying to get some kind of fame and also many are getting money from sponsors, adds, donations, subscribers, free streamer only events, free cards, and so on. I have seen Worth give free cards to streamers he likes.
I enjoy watching streams. The only valid argument I have heard is that if they get enough people "ghosting" they will not stream anymore. Though this can be overcome with delays and hiding their hands which I have seen both happen. So its only slightly valid.
The video does a lot better job of answering the question that that poorly written article does. Do men make more? On the whole, yes. Does that scream discrimination? No. Watch the video, it's really good at explaining the dynamics of male earning vs. female earning.
I sure hope Gush isn't restricted without Lodestone, because it seems like Shops just becomes super dominant without Gush. And frankly I don't want to be spending $150-200 to play with Griselbrands instead. Gush is fair and not dominant and I think saying it should be restrict is just wrong.
Mentor decks will survive anyway but not at tier 1.
Hey Chris!
I felt bad about calling the judge in that round, and I felt worse when I checked out your articles and realized how much prep you had put in for the tournament! Trust me, I did NOT think you were a bad player. In fact, I made a very similar mistake the next day during the Super Sunday Series. I won game 1 of round 1 against Mardu Dragons (one of my worse matchups), and I was very excited to have a shot, but then I looked down at the result slip during sideboarding and realized I had sat at the wrong table. I was able to laugh that one off, partially because it seemed like a bit of karmic justice!
In fact, I think it's a great point speaking to the theme of your series: making the switch to paper is TOUGH! My first few competitive events in paper Magic were horrible compared to my relative wealth of online experience. There are just so many minor things you have to constantly attend to, and the only solution is lots and lots of practice. I found it was much easier once I was able to start taking it easy on myself for making these kinds of minor errors.
Anyway, I'm very happy to hear you have more time with Princess Buttercup. I will give my own cat, Professor Morgan Buckles, some extra hugs tonight just so she knows I appreciate her.
Hope to see you soon at another tournament!
Edit: Almost forgot, but http://www.decklist.org/ is a helpful tool to have your decklist printed ahead of time, and you can always just scribble stuff out if you need last minute changes.
Note: This was written two weeks ago, and I think my projections were decently borne out by the NYSE
I like the idea that if you are streaming, the client automatically reveals your hand to your opponent.
It would immediately inform that person that their opponent "may" be getting extra opinions, and be a subtle "penalty" for that extra help.
The logic is sound since, by streaming, you are freely offering this information to everyone.
Oh it does now. It's not in their interested to stop streaming as it promotes de game freely. To be honest, I think people streaming are actually putting themselves at a disadvantage (even without ghosting). Sure, sometimes there is good advice in the middle of crappy advice and some ammount of times, the streamers catch it. But deviding your attention between the game and the chat, makes you more distracted and it's easier to mess up or misclick.
That doesn't change the fact that they are still getting outside assistance and for some plays they can actually stop for a bit and ask the chat.
The difference between streaming and ghosting is that streaming helps Wizards with free publicity and ghosting can cause streamers to be unhappy or quit, it can stop some people from becoming streamers and it can also affect viewers.
For any big streamer it's very easy to come out ahead. Even if they fail every event they play, the donations and sponsors more than make up for it, so even losing several matches to ghosting doesn't stop streaming from being great for them.
If you replace ghosting with streaming then the text makes sense.
Thanks, I appreciate it.
You're right that red has suffered in that it's removal hasn't really scaled well with the increased quality of creatures, I'd argue that the dropoff for black has been much more steep. Going from regularly expecting cards like Terror, Dark Banishing, Expunge etc. at common to cards like Disfigure, Defeat, Throttle, Asphyxiate, Victim of Night etc.
IMO the dropoff here is steeper. I think the fact that the good uncommon Black removal (Go For The Throat, Doom Blade, Ultimate Price, etc.) are often considered to be among the top uncommons in the set speaks to the extreme difference between the old style common Black removal and the new style.
I seriously don't understand many parts of your text. You say "ghosting should be banned" but on the other hand you say "One vs. many is not." and streaming players are the ones playing with many vs one.
I can answer some parts of it: there will never be a tournament where everyone is ghosting. That is not how Magic works and there's no way they'll ever make something like that. And there's also no way to ever know if anyone is ghosting. Even if they created their own streaming site (not worth it) and people had to connect the streaming with their mtgo account (they would lose many viewers who don't have mtgo), people could always be watching with another account.
And you simply can't ban something you can't control in the least.
You make a lot of really good comments here, and I can't go through and point out everything that was good, but I wanted to reply re: Red.
I think that red has actually suffered the most from this change in removal. You made the argument that red has always had removal with restrictions, but the difference is that red has scaled worse than any of the other colors relative to the creatures that we face. Shock used to be a top tier common; now it probably wouldn't crack the top ten, just because it is so limited in the things that it can hit.
For sure it's a design philosophy. I had known that WotC was trying to nerf removal over time, but I found it fascinating to see how that played out in the numbers.
My position is that ghosting gives the player receiving additional information from the crowd an advantage, and their opponent gains no advantages.
Any good player has the experience to recognize and ignore bad advice and pay attention to good advice.
Is it an unfair advantage? Have you ever played against THAT GUY and his three friends all at once at FNM? I have, and I haven't enjoyed the experience, especially when one of the friends decides to stop the game for a strategy pow-wow.
So I am of the opinion ghosting should be banned, unless you offer a tournament where everyone is ghosting, or as part of the tournament description, ghosting is explicitly allowed. When two teams of people play against each other, its fine. One vs. many is not.
The only way I'd be OK with ghosting is if you get a notification your opponent is doing so, which also automatically reveals their hand. Then information asymmetry would no longer be an issue. The extra advantage of advice would be mitigated by the advantage the non-ghosting player(s) would receive from keeping their hands hidden while knowing the hands of their opponents.
Looking at the data you provide, this is more than a trend. This is a design philosophy. Creatures are becoming more powerful for the cost while removal is becoming more expensive. Creatures are providing more value (even acting as removal in some cases), while removal rarely does anything additional besides damage or life gain.
When I first started playing Magic in the mid 1990s, all I wanted to do was drop bombs and swing for damage. As control and card advantage became a thing, it took me a while to understand how those aspects affected the game. At a certain point I thought I understood it, but then stopped playing Magic. I returned to the game recently (with a few flings off and on between) and once again wanted to drop bombs and swing for damage. I relearned about control and card advantage over the course of the first three months back, but didn't really use those aspects well.
Point being, new and returning players to Magic can't jump right in and play control strategies. They can play creatures. Wizards knows that if they unleash true 4 mana wraths and one mana removal, new players will turn away from the game very quickly. They have to allow the creature players to have some shot at winning.
One time about 3 months into my return I was playing a black removal based deck against another player online. My deck wasn't even that good, but every threat he dropped, I removed. He yelled at me in chat saying I wasn't playing the game right, and that having 5 removal spells (over the course of like 10 turns) was trolling, and that I had to play a creature or he was going to quit. He really was upset that everything he played got dead before he could use it.
I tried to explain that I had creatures in my deck, but hadn't drawn one yet, and that removing his dudes was a legitimate strategy that he was going to face all the time. I can't repeat what he said after that.
Point is, Wizards has gradually tightened up the ratio of removal to creatures and tilted the cost gradually to allow 'fair' decks and creature based strategies to exist at all levels of play. What we as players lose in cheap removal, we gain in the growth of popularity of this game. I think Wizards is for the most part getting it right. I just played in GP Providence and the number of players at that 'smaller' Grand Prix was mind boggling.
At some point the trend will level off. For the most part, it already has. 4 mana seems to be the default for unconditional 1 for 1 removal, 3 if there's a double black requirement. Wraths cost 5, usually with a double color cost. I think that's the sweet spot and it will stay there for a long time. There may be some powerful exceptions here and there that they toss in to mix it up (there's one in Origins that I predict will shift the balance of power --- Languish).
Good stuff!
Great article, as always!
A few thoughts:
1. It might be instructive to look at the types of cards that benefit the most and lose the most from the increasing scarcity of reliable removal. It seems to me that pump effects and bounce effects have gained in standing while basically any spell that doesn't immediately impact the board has lost a lot of playability.
In some ways this is a good thing. A certain subset of the playerbase loves nothing more than to put fat pants on a weenie and go to town, and that strategy was barely ever viable in older draft formats. Now it tends to be a staple of some formats (Theros ordeals, Innistrad Travel Preparations, etc.) One result of this is that bounce (which is still an effective way of dealing with these types of lines) has become more effective relative to removal (which often has difficulty removing pumped up creatures due to conditionality).
On the other hand, the difficulty in stifling early pressure has made durdling much more difficult. Again, for some this is a good thing. That said, putting together sweet combos that don't have an immediate payoff is MUCH harder now, which a different set of players I'm sure dislikes.
To me, I find this shift to be a bit stifling. While I like the fact that auras are an actual thing now, formats that feature powerful and aggressive pump strategies feel extremely swingy and volatile to me. Often times the game will hinge on one play, sometimes as early as turn two, where if you have the answer you are extremely likely to win the game and if you don't you are almost guaranteed to lose. One drop into ordeal in Theros is a perfect example of this. If you happen to draw an answer right away you probably win and if you don't you're going to have a very hard time coming back.
2. While control strategies were perhaps too dominant in most past draft formats, I'd argue that the reduction in the quality of removal (along with other changes such as worse card draw) has made true control strategies very difficult to pull off. It's much more difficult now to keep up with faster strategies when you not only need to draw enough removal but you need to draw the correct spells to match your opponent's threats. Even then, you are likely to run dry and end up with a bad "Last Fatty" problem. Essentially you need a top end that can reliably and unconditionally put the game away, and that means a bomb rare or more likely mythic. Sometimes it can happen but often times it just doesn't work out. Note that there are some formats where this is less true because the format is both slow and there are very powerful lategame cards at common (eg: triple Khans Sultai with Treasure Cruise). In contrast, I think you can sit down at any draft table in almost any format and a viable aggro (or at the very least offensive midrange) archetype will be available. Consider MM2015 -- essentially every archetype in that format is either aggro or midrange with the sole exception of 4-5 color which is sometimes midrange and sometimes true control.
I completely agree that older formats tilted too heavily toward control, but I think the pendulum has swung too far in the other direction for the most part. I'd like to see formats where control, aggro, attrition, and midrange are all legitimate strategies.
3. The most troubling effect of the changes to removal is, in my opinion, the disruption of the color pie. Black in particular has suffered, while Blue, White, and Green have all improved their standing. Red I think hasn't changed much as its removal has always been of the conditional variety with the added benefit of also providing reach to help offset this. Now, most cheap Black removal is barely distinguishable (and sometimes actually worse) than White, Green, or even Blue removal. In Rise of the Eldrazi, for example, Narcolepsy was arguably a better removal spell than any of Black's commons in the context of the format. In MM15 Black has Nameless Inversion, Grim Affliction, and Bone Splinters while White has Sunlance and Arrest. Black has arguably the better suite here but it's darn close.
Most of the time Black receives an expensive, unconditional removal spell at common and a couple of good offerings at uncommon or rare. The expensive option only really works if the format is slow, and the uncommon/rare cards do a great job of making sure Black's identity is secure in constructed but to a pretty bad job of securing it in limited.
What exactly is Black's color pie in limited now?
I agree with you. I think the correct official position should be staying neutral. Everyone should be free to do it but it shouldn't be encouraged or made easier by saying when your opp is streaming. Just like searching for your opp's past decks, it should be something that you get rewarded for actually taking the time to look it up.
The first thing that came to my mind when you described the paper magic equivalent of ghosting was that there is different way of looking at it. A person streaming is the one actively broadcasting the information. The paper magic equivalent is a person choosing to play with their hand revealed as well as thinking out loud about possible plays, spell sequences, combat math, etc. I suppose this analogy breaks down because the ghost is stuck at the table but not required to call up the stream.
We can take the same approach to this that you did regarding outside assistance "...is what streaming is all about." Streaming is about putting yourself on display to the public, which includes the opponent. It's like the scouting article that went up on cfb recently which is paper magics parallel of looking up user names to aid mulligan decisions.
At the end of the day I see no reason why streamers should be shielded from possible disadvantages but allowed the advantages even if they are tenuous because I don't really view ghosting as a form of cheating. To me the idea that hands are private information is gone once you freely choose to reveal it to anyone and everyone that might be interested in knowing it.
If nothing else than under the principle that unenforceable laws weaken the statute book.
Yes. It sounds like we agree. And I get your point(s) from above as well.
I could see it being played, but not as a four-of. The only cool thing about it is the beatdown it can deliver. But not being able to tap or untap lands with it is why I think Exarch and Pestermite are better.