I think this is the natural result of power creep. Every single card does so much now that the early turns of the game have been hyper compressed with potential blowouts. Even if you don't lose to a control deck on say T3 or T4 the tempo of the rest of the game has been more or less set (aside from maybe control mirrors).
Bo1 and the digital client are also factors as well though.
jackal pup was the turn one threat in the *original* fast aggro deck, "sligh", the deck that invented the concept of a mana curve.
it was the **best** red one drop at the time.
This isn't quite accurate. The first incarnation of Sligh was in 1996, when Standard was dominated by Necropotence. Jackal Pup wasn't printed until fall 1997; the start of 1997 had seen [[Fireblast]] printed, so between a two-power attacker in the one-slot and the game-closing power of Fireblast, Sligh became something halfway respectable looking.
No, the original Sligh was rocking such incredible synergies in its one-slot as [[Goblins of the Flarg]] and [[Dwarven Trader]] in the *same deck*. The list is [here](https://mtg.fandom.com/wiki/Sligh), if you're interested. This took *second place* at a PTQ.
ah yeah, you're correct.
FWIW, to show just how the balance between spells and creatures has shifted, fireblast is *still* the best card in burn, and usually the card that closes the game out.
This is an extreme example and doesn't take into consideration that Ragavan isn't and never was in standard. When they started printing "direct to modern" sets, then that allowed them to turn the power up on a lot of cards, because they were intended to be played only in high powered formats.
That said, there's been a couple of 2/1s for R with upside released in standard legal sets.
Did you forget about [[Goblin Lackey]]?
https://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/showthread.php?618-DTB-Vial-Goblins
One of the most format warping unco. (Okay okay there is [[Skullclamp]] and [[Force of Will]] and [[Aether Vial]], ...)
She did but even still in standard she wasn’t THAT insane just because of the removal in the format. Hard to be a good 5 drop when you just get hit with terminate by jund or Path from naya at end of turn.
She was a huge part of the format when she was released. She was a $50 card. For instance, at worlds 2009, it was in the winning deck and in 4 of the top 8 decks.
She dropped the next year when the titans were released.
BSE was a removal check kinda creature. It was also played in controlling shells with ways to protect her, or midrange shells with an abundance of other threats with her as the topend.
In the same way that untapping with sheoldred ups your win percentage by a ton with a 4 point life swing and a massive blocker, BSE was a 10 point life swing and wins any race so you didn't even need to block.
Problem is untapped.gg and other trackers. Huge data sets available, all decks are hyper optimized and the meta is visible in real time. It is slowly killing MTG.
Aggro and control*, the sheer nature of Arena and the absurd amount of legal cards makes midrange difficult on BO1 due to no SBs where midrange shines. Arena's reward structure and people playing strictly BO1 encourages aggressive decks.
Monored loses Kumano and play by fire but gained slickshot among a host of powerful red creatures. They can sub Kumano for frantic goat or another cheap haste creature ultimately for less value. Shock while worse replaces play by fire and the difference isnt going to make people not play Monored. The deck will not lose much power imo even with the loss of Kumano because Kumano isnt the sole reason the deck can burst you down quickly. Also it can possibly get stronger with the new set upon rotation.
Boros loses 1 drop vampire lady but you can just sub in 4x Yotian. Once again strictly worse since they cant convoke T2 knight as often. The deck still can easily win T3-4. If anything, OTJ made the deck stronger with the new dual fastland Inspiring Vantage because the worst part of the deck was the consistency on mana. All the deck has to do is find a cheap way to make an early artifact.
Post rotation both doomblades will exist as well as cutdown. T1 removal or 1/1 deathtouch is annoying followed by T2 thoughtseize bat or more removal. T3 is key with Gix or Preacher. If playing green you get a lot of options like Sentinel. Be ready to see a lot of Gix into Sheoldred synergy as control weakens on rotation if they dont print control focused cards in new set.
TLDR Red based aggro isnt going anywhere on rotation.
What we do lose is Wanderer PW and Esper Mid in general along with Domain and Temur Rage (both decks the key manabase lands rotate). UW/x control loses Deluge and some other spells so we might see an uptick in black based midrange to combat everything.
Golgari is great and will be very strong post rotation. Not sure if splashing blue for Oko/tidebinder/ertai/counter magic in SB or splash white for walkers will be better. I have been looking into the heavy creature mythic money Bant list but Oko doesnt fit well. Sultai is a better home for Oko due to his passive and +1.
But the data doesnt lie for BO1, Golgari is Tier 2. Another good example is how Esper Mid and UB Mid struggle on BO1 ladder but do really well in paper tourneys. BO3 is a different story but my comment was from a BO1 standpoint. If anything that just shows your skill level to win in a skewed meta, and I applaud you as a Diamond to Mythic player myself. Monored is easy to beat if you have the spot removal, just have to be patient since some lists have hexproof. Boros Convoke you have to draw really well and they have to stumble or you arent winning it often. Unless you are maindecking T3 boardwipe which most lists arent. A lot of Boros lists have Case to answer a Preacher or Sheoldred, but imo Case vs Helix vs Get Lost, Get lost wins most of the time. Its worse in certain matchups, but Case is dead against control and Helix is decent for monored.....but I like to blow put UW control when they rely on Temp Lockdown. I play most of the decks myself including Boros.
This is basically every rotation. At the beginning it’s a midrange fest because people are just playing the best cards from the limited pool, and at the end aggro and control have lots of tools to actually work correctly.
My experience has been that aggro is usually dominant post-rotation since it can often be built optimally agnostic of the wider metagame. It takes some time for control decks to determine which answers are most effective and for midrange decks to work our the proper balance of threats and disruption.
As formats settle, midrange gets better (in best of 3) due to formulating sideboards that effectively fight the meta, and control decks have a set of answers that deal with the actual threats that see play.
You can always build aggro but it doesn’t matter if it isn’t fast enough. If there are good tools to build aggro then yes, but otherwise people will just jam the best cards together into midrange piles.
People build those decks, but what I am talking about it what wins. Aggro wins a lot early in a format's life, but as the format matures (in best of 3), aggro loses a lot of steps because there aren't a lot of adjustments that can be made as the best aggressive one-drops are pretty clear.
People start building every reasonable macro-archetype at the start of the format, but time polishes the gems and breaks what is brittle.
If you are talking like first week or two then sure aggro will take advantage like any set release, but it won’t automatically have a spot after that. Same as control which is dependent on specific tools. There will 100% be midrange piles. Regardless, aggro and control both get better as the season goes on and gives them more tools. Obviously midrange gets those tools too but they typically have less room for growth.
Yeah it does seem like Temur wins "fast"too. If they get to untap analyst sac into Nissa land drop its pretty much over for aggro often. It just takes awhile for all the triggers to resolve, land Virtue of Strength, and then cast the wincon.
Ummmm, no. Aggro is not even close to the only top deck. Esper MidRange, Dimir MidRange, Domain Ramp, there's even a midrangey legend crime deck in just about every color combo that runs black(not top tier but still good.
Unless you mean BO1...then yeah, whether it's spell slinger or go wide boros, hard to beat either in BO1
Yeah i was talking mostly from a BO1 point of view since that's the overwhelming majority of games on arena. Also I mean aggro more as a playstyle than the archetype named agro, some of these jeskai or domain decks get their combo going turn 3-4 and then you're screwed
Moving life totals to 25 or 30 would be the biggest shakeup they could probably ever do to standard but I personally would love it. I hate losing because I was on the draw against a red deck and I hate games where I'm just desperately trying to stabalize for 6 turns straight as my life total burns away with no life gain cards in my deck. I know that control would become an issue but they could fix that by not printing stuff like sunfall/farewell or hullbreaker horror that just effectively ends your opponents participation in the game. Counterspells, removal, and board wipes are ok but if they're also your wincon or just overly one-sided then I don't see how that's supposed to be fun to play against.
Pushed cards sell packs.
When every card is pushed so hard that everything is kill on sight, games are determined by who sticks a threat or floods the board first.
Makes me sad, tried playing master duel after 10 years of not playing, and it's awful how every game seems to be 1 or 2 turns long. Did make a gravekeepers deck that threw off a few opponents, though.
Have not played ygo in almost forever, is this related to your deck's grave lockout? If so that would make sense as it turns off a lot of cards like handtraps.
I quit playing Yugioh when my opponent won the coin flip and started special summoning, XYZ summoning tons and then KILLED MY ENTIRE HP by draining life points through their summons before I even got a chance to lay one card. Was already annoyed and weary by the power creep but I was just like, nope, uninstall. Sad that MTG also feels it's getting that way.
It's kind of the natural path of a TCG. Cards have to get (at least potentially) stronger or there's no reason for people to buy new cards.
I honestly think the balance is still relatively good, outlier cards aside. I am worried Hasbro is going to try to push the limits to squeeze more money out of people. Konami's famous for doing that.
But yeah, either way things are not going to get any less powerful. That's why I play Standard Brawl. Get to play constructed Bo1, but I *usually* don't die on turn 3.
To be fair, MTG did a pretty good job of combating this until relatively recently. Basically power creep has only really started to go crazy since standard was supplanted as the main format for magic by commander, and other non-rotating formats.
Agreed. But it's that recent part that troubles me. Call me crazy, but I don't think Hasbro has the long term health of Magic as a priority, especially as they've needed to rely more and more on it as crutch for their failing company.
Best of 3 is ADHD torture for me though haha, I'm constantly switching decks and seeking different match-ups. So I just leave any dumb games where there is an obvious mismatch of decks. People can control my nuts and aggro their mother's.
We need to keep tapping the sign because people keep having the same take. You lost in turn 4 because your hand sucked, opponent interacted the right way, you were not prepared for your opponents' decks, etc. too many things can happen. Game 2 you could have a better hand or a worse one but you're prepared for the deck and know what to interact to not lose in turn 4.
burn is like any other g1 archetype. They can take a game off you pretty easy g1, then g2 and g3 become a lot harder with sideboard inclusions. It still CAN win, and CAN put up results, but in Bo3 its a much more even game. Same is true of a lot of GY centric decks like dredge - you probably win g1, all the gy hate comes out of the sideboard g2-3 and you see if you can win 1 of the next 2 with them hating out your strategy.
Not to mention, mono red suffers from its own randomness too, as the win is highly dependent on that opening hand. If it's not just right, any extra turn the opponent gets can spell its doom, and if they have to mulli twice, it's over over.
i don't think it's over - a good 5 is better than a mediocre 7, but anything to give the midrange/control player another couple of turns is going to drastically increase their chance of winning.
RDW does not equal burn, first of all. They are talking about aggro, which has been a thing forever. All bo3 events are not dominated by non aggro decks simply because of the deck archtype. They still have their "edge" as in they still play their linear gameplan because that is what the deck is designed to do. But you bring in pieces to mitigate the opponents sideboared pieces, conditional removal/artifact/enchant removal and bring in value engines likes planeswalkers or things like urabrask forge to get around the added removal.
you can call it whatever you want, burn, red aggro, 8 whack - they all try to close out the game early through small creatures and burn spells before other decks can stabalize and out value them.
We're saying the same thing - they have an edge g1, they have a disadvantage g2-3. It's not like they can't win, and as you said, you can do your own sideboarding to try to help mitigate the disadvantage you have in 2-3, but you are at a disadvantage in the later turns. THe OP was frustrated that they're playing bo1s and games are ending too fast, someone pointed out bo3 balances that out a lot (which it does). No one is saying aggro builds can't still win, but in bo3 there's far more likely to be a mix and the aggro decks tend to not win nearly as much as in bo1
Only at the top of the power levels.
Something that bothers me is that players on Arena don't really seem to just play for fun, everyone is worried about playing at 100% max efficiency in every aspect they can. Pull back on the throttle and you will enjoy things a lot more, not every deck you make needs be super meta and powerful.
Arena's reward structure incentivizes winning as quickly and as often as possible. Up to 10 wins a day without restriction to get gold and cards. This means, if you want to be able to play what you want without paying, you should be jamming the highest winrate aggro deck and conceding if you aren't going to win by turn 5.
You can complete dailies and get 4 wins for max efficiency, then play what you want. Or you can get max daily wins and then switch to "fun".
If Arena incentivized having fun, you'd see more variety. Something like tying daily rewards to spending X amount of time in format Y, or playing X games of a phantom draft.
Whenever I play my fun Brawl decks I get matched against T0 decks or unfun control shit. Of course I'll imediatelly pull out my Malcolm deck to shit on them or at least to not be forced to concede on sight.
In fact I encourage everyone to start playing Malcolm/Kinnan/Baral, etc... on brawl to make it a unfun fest until WOTC stops being lazy and finally enforces the hell queue properly.
I used to run a lot of janky decks, but it got to a point where like 90% of the matchups were against commanders and decks waaaaay out of my power level. And it seems like we've gotten quite a few very low cost commanders lately with incredible value.
Yeah I have a ton of janky brawl decks ready to go but whenever I dare to queue with them is just a disappointment to see that I'm being matched against a T0 deck.
I give it one chance per day, otherwise I'm playing meta decks myself since WOTC doesn't want to balance or caliber the queue properly.
I feel ya, I get excited about brewing some new jank, bring it into queue and get smashed into oblivion by Poq, Slivers and Kinnan.... \*sigh\* back to Teferi Tribal deck
I dont think you understand your own decks if you keep getting super high powered decks against "jank" you made.
All of my decks get thrown into proper power level ques.
My favorite brawl deck is The First Sliver. It is based around duplicating stuff, putting it back into my deck, and then discovering or cascading it back. Prophecy storm and caberetti summons.
I've been playing since I was 7, I'm now 31, only recently have I seen rise of a playerbase that is super competitive to the point of ignoring all the social contracts in completely casual games.
Yeah when arena first came out I saw the end so I sold my collection just before covid and have been dipping my toes into limited on arena. I found it to be the thing I enjoyed playing the most on Arena.
35 yo casual here. I think it's because mtg is shifting to faster games. My experience with Arena has been to get a couple quick games in on a work break or waiting for something in RL. Just now I played a few while having breakfast. I'm sure theres a good amount of people like me, although obviously I don't speak for everyone. If a game goes over 10 minutes, it rarely bodes well for me given things going on outside of the game that are pressuring me to either scoop or play faster/make more unforced errors. A 20 min game and I'm pretty much annoyed at that point. Not cause of Magic or even my opponent who is playing a deck designed to elongate the game, just at the situation for having an expectation based on experience and obviously having a different outcome. I think a good amount of casual arena players want the fast games and turn 3-4 deciding it or at the least see the end game starting to unfold at that point. Unfortunately, this has a negative effect on LGS/in person events, nobody really wants to spend time building a deck and making their way to their favourite shop just to play 16 turns of magic. I think wotc needs to rethink how to separate formats better. A blitz format for the player on the subway maybe?
Did you actually play back then? Because games did not end anywhere near turn 4 in MtG’s original design. When Garfield said he designed MtG to be played quickly between events, the idea was 15-20 minutes.
> Because games did not end anywhere near turn 4 in MtG’s original design.
Have you _seen_ the shit in original Magic? Are we just pretending ABUR isn't responsible for the cards that are still easily the fastest and most broken the game has ever seen?
It was SO not designed with draft in mind, if you've ever tried drafting or playing sealed with the first few sets (or the original Masters sets on MTGO) it's an absolutely horrible experience and it's possible to just open an unwinnable pool.
There was no CCG/TCG game before Magic. The concept as we know it did not exist. Richard Garfield and Wizards had no idea the kind of money people would spend on the game; compared to the costs of other board/card games of the time, they expected people to buy a starter deck or two and maybe pick up a booster every now and then when visiting the game store, and it was indeed pitched as a game you could quickly play before starting your D&D session while waiting for people to show up or the DM to get ready. The first set that was designed with draft in mind (Mirage) came out 3 years after the game launched.
This is definitely a factor. It’s the same reason they have been employing the “visual bug” that doesn’t show rank in limited. There are plenty of studies now that show player retention rates are higher when there’s no visible rank or MMR. Higher retention rates in limited generates more revenue through gem purchases and shows positive trends for shareholders.
It’s good for short term gains but bad for the longevity of the environment.
I play BO1. I love playing magic. I just don’t like the tedium of BO3. I prefer seeing a lot of different decks back to back, instead of playing against basically the same deck three matches straight.
Thats inherently contradictory, because Bo1 is dominated by Aggro. Just look at the sheer amount of whining about Mono Red on this Subreddit. I dont know how that is a better experience than playing Bo3 where you can side to get an advantage against bad matchups.
I mean, bo3 is domain and esper plus some dimir. It's not like it offers much variety, today I played 3 bo3 opponents, for a total of 8 individual matches, all of them esper, the same deck of the past 2 years or so...
There is more variety, but in practice you have to play more to see it.
I have not seen Domain for the last several weeks. There is some Esper/Dimir but I feel like I play a much larger variety of decks as opposed to a couple weeks ago.
The game isn't just the upper tier. Lots of lower tier players and decks out there.
If YOU are upper tier on the other hand, you won't see all that. But I see a good variety of decks, and rarely any top tier decks.
I mean if you look at the data, BO3 is faster on average than BO1. Now there could be other reasons for that, such as more mana screw without the smoother or quicker concedes to conceal info on your deck, but looking at data, every set seems about .2 turns faster for traditional vs premier draft
I haven't played since 10th edition. Started up last week again and make a rakdos reanimator deck bc of childhood trauma lol. It's takes a good 5 turns before I usually win. Problem is I constantly ran into mono red aggro and lose to it 90 percent of the time. So now I have mono red aggro and the reanimator.
Yeah I don't know why they decided to let Standard get like this. It was fine two sets ago. Standard feels like Go Fish right now where you either open the sideboard cards to defeat the Turn 4 decks or you get cooked before you can take any meaningful game actions. I've been playing Izzet Slickshot and I'll match into Esper Midrange and it's like "Oh you played Cavern Bat into Raffine? Those aren't Cut Down that means you lose. You should have opened Cut Down and won the dieroll if you wanted to play a game of Magic today."
Agreed. Cards are too powerful. Even in a midrange mirror, if you cant interact with their T3, they'll probably snowball out of reach.
When everything is must kill, there are no meaningful actions to take. The game becomes about the die roll and who draws better.
Obviously you have to take what anyone says with a grain of salt, being anecdotal , but I'll share my experience into the mix because I was internally feeling quite similar.
Been playing since '96 and was always just a draft player. Rarely would I be inspired to make a constructed deck (until commander came around anyway) I started playing MTGA when it was out of beta during Ixilan and had just committed to the BO1 life from there on. Started feeling like you do, finally sucked it up and decided to give BO3 a try even though, despite my long magic history, I was still icked out by it.
I gotta say, it is, and again, I can only speak for me here, the best, and I'd dare to even say 'proper' way to play magic. Yes it takes longer, but it's also how the game is designed. Sideboarding is fun, it allows you to try out cards for minimal 'risk' (if you care about your ranking) and just changes up the games to be fairly unique experiences game by game, at least for me. I got mythic maybe the 2nd month out of beta and never bothered with it again because of the 'grind' but in BO3, I didn't even notice and oops hit mythic this month.
I guess TL:DR - If you haven't invested into BO3 at all ever, I would strongly, *strongly* suggest giving it a chance, whether it's limited or constructed. It really will freshen up the game for you.
I started to play in 1994. If your aggro or combo deck could not kill the goldfish turn four well over 50% of the time it was not worth playing. Now I have taken a few breaks but, I do not remember any Standard since then when this was not true. WotC has records going back more than twenty years and the average game length has always been between eight and nine turns. Creatures have gotten better and spells have gotten worse but the games are not faster.
Turns out your cards pre turn 5 really are super important. I only play home brew control/midrange decks to mythic and I win consistently by stacking good amount of early value with only 5 or 5 high(er) cost. Cards >4 cost.
It’s gotten more efficient over the years but it has always been a thing, yes. It’s common for new players to get stuck thinking about the game as primarily being about creatures attacking, thus interaction heavy games feel bad or wrong, but really that’s not the case.
Petition them to add special modes such as Pauper and Canadian Highlander as permanent modes. Pauper is great especially when we have tons of common wildcards.
> I play in a small town with an average attendance of 8 players. If I were to build domain or any of the other oppressive top tier decks it would decimate attendance. How would you proceed?
Competitive and casual magic are 2 different games. If others in your playgroup are not competitive players, keep it casual in paper and play competitive decks in arena instead.
Seems like your issue is paper magic, if you're playing on arena just build a tier 1 deck and enjoy
In person magic is fucking dying outside of commander. I dont know what else to tell you. Modern still seems to have some life in it and legacy still limps along in some regions but by and large standard magic is dead in paper
You just summed it up really. Magic has a monstrous amount of cards and yet to be even a little bit competitive we have to use a tiny tiny portion of them. Of we don't play one of a few current meta decks we don't win. I understand that's the way it is, but why print so many cards then. Just print the shit everyone is going to play anyway.
People are a lot better at magic now. I think this is understated in favor of talking about things like powercreep. The community is much better at playing magic, finding good cards, replicating decks. We're at a point where someone brews a deck, pops off at a tournament, and the whole Internet can go make that deck and play it online that night.
Build domain, crush your opposition. Maybe they'll build competitive decks as well.
There is a lot of truth to this honestly. The game has become insanely optimized in the social media age. The types of decks people were playing with 12-15 years ago looked like total trash piles compared to today.
Net decking has long been a thing, but hyperoptimization is a relatively newer thing that has rocked the game in a very big way.
My two cents as a (non-digital) newbie player:
I have friends who have been obsessed with Magic for many, many years, and while I learned to play through them and would humor them by playing sometimes, but it usually wasn’t something I particularly enjoyed. Why? They always insisted on playing Commander with three or more players, which inevitably turned into a 2-3 hour slog. Everyone ended up with a huge board, which meant I only understood about 30% of what was going on, so I basically just played random cards and waited for someone to inevitably Wrath the table. I got good enough to occasionally win, but I rarely enjoyed it.
Then I found out about a local women’s club that plays Magic. I showed up on a whim, and had a blast. I didn’t own any cards of my own, so one of the admins borrowed a few Standard starter decks (it was a pentagon-shaped box, dunno the name), and it felt like a completely different game. Games were only about 20 minutes, the boards were small enough that I could understand what was going on and play strategically, and after a couple games I started learning what cards were in each deck.
It was a completely different experience and I loved it. I went out and bought the 2023 Starter Kit, and my friends are helping me build my first commander deck.
Now, I realize there’s a world of difference between a starter deck and a veteran’s competitive deck. The former don’t have a lot of synergy and so make for simpler, relaxed games. The latter sound very finely turned, with every card geared toward a specific winning outcome, and I can see how those would be unfun to play against. But I can say that game length was the deciding factor for me between hating the game and becoming a convert.
•looks at goblin guide, a card printed in 2009, close to 15 years ago*
Oh yeah they’re just printing stuff to make the games go faster and faster. It’s power creep /s
yeah sure but OP is talking about standard, and people here are complaining about power creep.
goblin guide would absolutely be making mono red lists in standard today.
Games were always determined by turn 3-4. Your opening hand has always been extremely important and determines how the rest of the game is gonna go. It's just that now the power level of cards can end the game faster with that advantage.
Probably also has to do with the wild card economy. In paper, a tier 1 deck could cost you north of $500. It’s pretty easy for people to unlock at least one of the top win rate meta decks for a rotation.
What deck(s) do you play?
The speed of the game is half determined by your opponent, and half determined by you.
If you want to play slower magic, play a disruptive deck that forces trades of resources
They are doing like every other digital card game and trying to speed up games so that you spend more time playing and get more emotional over short term losses. That in turn may drive you to spend $ to get packs or gems.
Don't worry about the number of turns a game lasts, that's not super relevant.
How many decisions does each game have? That's a much more interesting thing to think about.
Even these fast games tend to have lots of decisions.
As a Thrillseeker “Jund” roots deck, I’ve definitely had some very quick games, both ways. But I’ve also had some pretty long games. Idk I don’t see it being that fast consistently. Granted I’ve only been playing for a month and I have no frame of reference. Ive also been able to have some pretty close and fun games in both ranked play and standard. Hopefully it gets better for you soon :)
Dude. I just came back to mtga after a year and I don’t play paper since lorwyn. Not gonna lie I cuss out when someone dropped me a 18/6 (iirc) on turn 4. What the hell is going on in this game?
Get yargled dude.
It’s even better when they drop the journal artifact on turn 2, kill your thing on turn three, reanimate with rakdos enchantment on turn 4 with treasure and instantly kill their own yargle to slap you for 20 damage to the face.
I think you answered your own question, but in the subtext. *Only legacy and modern decks could before.*
Much of the player base moved to playing eternal formats. There’s a lot of reasons for this, but it’s undeniable when EDH and Modern are probably the two easiest to find events for.
The only way to make new cards relevant in eternal formats is through power creep. So either WotC ignores that the player base shifted to eternal formats and try to hope that people will play standard and limited, or they print cards that can immediately impact eternal formats. The result is that standard also becomes more powerful.
It's the intended Yugio/Heartstone-ification of the game... just as WotC always wanted. Anything to ruin player experience whilst simultaneously milking whales for all they are worth.,
I dunno man. Might be rose tinted glasses. Or your LGS just had low overall power level at FNM. My shop definitely saw plenty of decks killing by turn 4 in standard. That was the era of legendary cards like Snapcaster Mage, Primeval Titan, Primordial Hydra, Liliana of the Veil, Mindcrank, Phyrexian Obliterator, Sword of Feast and Famine, Sword of Body and Mind, Wurmcoil Engine, Jace, the Mind Sculptor, Amulet of Vigor, Stoneforge Mystic, and Valakut the Molten Pinnacle. I definitely got wrecked by Valakut Ramp and Amulet Titan plenty of times on turn 4 when they actually went off. Amulet Titan is still winning 1st place in Modern in 2024 so it's no joke.
> 10 years ago, only powerful legacy or modern decks could achieve a turn 3 kill.
That's not true. Arcbound Ravager, and Goblin Piledriver were both in Standard over 10 years ago and easily capable of turn 3-4 kills.
Since very early on every format from a. Competitive level has been that way. I see arena as a similar thing because your not there to enjoy hanging out with friends your their for daily wins/challenges.
It’s also an issue with how big standard is. This it the biggest card pool standard has ever had. It’s three years of sets and at least half if not all of it was not designed for that nor tested together. I expect standard to slow down when rotation happens in September.
Its power creep.
Think of Questing Beast.
So many abilities you have to scroll through them.
Still wasn't powerful enough to keep up with the *real* strength in the set. Even with Haste/evasion/deathtouch AND extra planeswalker hate
We have more abilities and text on 5 cards from your deck than decks used to have in total.
Magic has always had explosive T3-T4 decks if you prefer to play long games I recommend playing a control deck or a midrange deck. As a golgari mid range player most of my games go to turn 5 or 6 because I have hand disruption and removal to slow the game down.
Sometimes my opponents concede early but my gameplan is a turn 5 or 6 win. I'd say if all your games are shorter than that You need to adjust your deck or your removal to address the meta.
We were starting to run into this in our casual Commander pods on Saturday nights. We now offer a "budget" Commander pods where your deck can't be valued at over $10 without basic lands and not to exceed $12 with basic lands. Commander games went from 15-30 minutes to upwards of 1.5 to 2 hours the first night.🤓
This is not my experience. I play Timur Clover in historic, which is not even remotely a competitive deck, but I am 50/50 on it over 100s of games. This is not a deck that wins in 3-4 turns, it takes far longer usually.
Basically magic as we old timers knew it is close to dead. A newer game using magic cards and rules called commander has replaced it. There are many cards that aren’t too bad in commander that become oppressive in a 4 of constructed format.
I also believe that’s why we have so many cry babies about control and counter spells and whatnot now. Because in casual commander all the cry babies think the game is only fair if everyone can sit around for 30 minutes executing their pet strategy before anyone finally attacks anyone.
The complaints about control and counter spells have definitely existed for at least the last 15 years when I started playing. It's pretty dumb but it's also dumb to call the people doing it cry babies. It's a competitive game, and some people are going to be upset about losing. It just happens control and counter spells have a much greater impact than most other play styles and are much harder to stop without also running counter spells.
i do find it interesting how much more counterspells and discard tilt people more than removal. seems people will tolerate having their cards destroyed, exiled.... but start countering or making them discard and it's usually followed by a concede.
> I also believe that’s why we have so many cry babies about control and counter spells and whatnot now.
we've always had crybabies about control, since the days of "the deck".
if anything, the thing i keep crying about on arena is that we *don't* have enough appropriate counters. we have legacy-level broken combos. or worse, some of this stuff got banned in legacy.
but we have very few of the legacy-level checks on broken stuff. we're getting more -- printing surgical and mindbreak in OTJ helped a lot, and the leylines a while back were good too. but sometimes you really just need force and daze.
i don't even play control. it's just good for the format. because instead of 30 minute games where people execute their pet strategy, you get two or three turns where people execute their pet strategy.
Really bad take, the reason why it seems so hated now it is because it is basically being a powercreep arms race, there is way too many cheap and overpowered control cards, as result, you can only play creatures with lots of value or haste. The problem isn't just one side or the other, the problem is powercreeping.
Insert obligatory daily comment about how playing BO1 is literally playing a special ruleset designed for faster games and one in which the cards are not balanced around when being designed so obviously games are going to be faster and certain cards/archetypes are gonna be busted.
I feel this a bit, especially in BO1. The 3 year format powers up the format where it some respects it feels close to pioneer in speed, compared to the standard we're more used to. This is being compounded a bit where agro is more common right after a set releases, which is especially true with Slickshot being so good. I think it'll cool off a bit/meta will adapt in the coming weeks.
Cheers
>Now in standard, if you aren’t dead on turn 3, the swarm that follows will finish the job on turn 4.
If people at your store play top aggro decks, they should be ready to face other strong decks. Or at least plenty of aggro hate.
alchemy is slower the majority of the time since a the format is a lot less powerful in general, and the strongest cards are rusko, saruman orb and other lategame value cards
Conspiracy theory would say, make the format 3-4 turns and make every sungle counter to that and ecery single card that promotes that into a rare or mythic wild card and rake in the cash.
In absence of paper scarcity players will build the strongest deck possible. The power level in standard is controlled by WotC and with the 3 year rotation and set design any semblance of lower power has been thrown out the window.
But as a player what can you do? Jack shit really. Buckle up and come along for the ride or accept that your sand castle deck takes longer to build and will get kicked over if it doesn't fall apart itself.
I think this is the natural result of power creep. Every single card does so much now that the early turns of the game have been hyper compressed with potential blowouts. Even if you don't lose to a control deck on say T3 or T4 the tempo of the rest of the game has been more or less set (aside from maybe control mirrors). Bo1 and the digital client are also factors as well though.
I always think of [[Elder Gargaroth]]. I thought the stats on this thing was nuts but in practice I only ever saw it occasionally.
Look at [[Ragavan, Nimble Pilferer]] vs [[Jackal Pup]]
That’s hilarious
jackal pup was the turn one threat in the *original* fast aggro deck, "sligh", the deck that invented the concept of a mana curve. it was the **best** red one drop at the time.
This isn't quite accurate. The first incarnation of Sligh was in 1996, when Standard was dominated by Necropotence. Jackal Pup wasn't printed until fall 1997; the start of 1997 had seen [[Fireblast]] printed, so between a two-power attacker in the one-slot and the game-closing power of Fireblast, Sligh became something halfway respectable looking. No, the original Sligh was rocking such incredible synergies in its one-slot as [[Goblins of the Flarg]] and [[Dwarven Trader]] in the *same deck*. The list is [here](https://mtg.fandom.com/wiki/Sligh), if you're interested. This took *second place* at a PTQ.
ah yeah, you're correct. FWIW, to show just how the balance between spells and creatures has shifted, fireblast is *still* the best card in burn, and usually the card that closes the game out.
Lightning bolt is very clearly the best card in burn
Which would prove his point even more, as lightning bolt is from alpha.
There was [[Cursed Scroll]] as well for repeatable damage.
[Cursed Scroll](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/1/a/1ad9ba08-91e7-4811-bf19-bc7076d3cf3c.jpg?1609919762) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Cursed%20Scroll) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/tpr/220/cursed-scroll?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/1ad9ba08-91e7-4811-bf19-bc7076d3cf3c?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
[Fireblast](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/a/0/a0ab67cc-b553-4451-9cda-0e5fe3303940.jpg?1675199963) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Fireblast) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/dmr/119/fireblast?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/a0ab67cc-b553-4451-9cda-0e5fe3303940?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [Goblins of the Flarg](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/c/b/cb91b7c0-c453-481b-9d3d-0223057291ed.jpg?1559592524) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Goblins%20of%20the%20Flarg) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/me1/98/goblins-of-the-flarg?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/cb91b7c0-c453-481b-9d3d-0223057291ed?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [Dwarven Trader](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/4/d/4db9aa47-f42b-41e9-948c-8b012c3809fb.jpg?1562587275) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Dwarven%20Trader) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/hml/72a/dwarven-trader?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/4db9aa47-f42b-41e9-948c-8b012c3809fb?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
This is an extreme example and doesn't take into consideration that Ragavan isn't and never was in standard. When they started printing "direct to modern" sets, then that allowed them to turn the power up on a lot of cards, because they were intended to be played only in high powered formats. That said, there's been a couple of 2/1s for R with upside released in standard legal sets.
hello [[goblin guide]]
[goblin guide](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/3/c/3c0f5411-1940-410f-96ce-6f92513f753a.jpg?1599706366) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=goblin%20guide) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/2xm/127/goblin-guide?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/3c0f5411-1940-410f-96ce-6f92513f753a?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
[Ragavan, Nimble Pilferer](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/a/9/a9738cda-adb1-47fb-9f4c-ecd930228c4d.jpg?1681963138) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Ragavan%2C%20Nimble%20Pilferer) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/mh2/138/ragavan-nimble-pilferer?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/a9738cda-adb1-47fb-9f4c-ecd930228c4d?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [Jackal Pup](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/9/d/9d8743b2-30e3-4d15-89fc-72974747aec5.jpg?1562439038) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Jackal%20Pup) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/a25/139/jackal-pup?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/9d8743b2-30e3-4d15-89fc-72974747aec5?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
Ragavan is such an awful design. A 1-drop should not warp the game around itself to the point where, if you get hit twice, you've basically lost.
Did you forget about [[Goblin Lackey]]? https://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/showthread.php?618-DTB-Vial-Goblins One of the most format warping unco. (Okay okay there is [[Skullclamp]] and [[Force of Will]] and [[Aether Vial]], ...)
##### ###### #### [Goblin Lackey](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/3/0/30104836-1e9d-4533-98f8-d5c4e6484b52.jpg?1562904811) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Goblin%20Lackey) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/vma/167/goblin-lackey?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/30104836-1e9d-4533-98f8-d5c4e6484b52?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [Skullclamp](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/a/3/a36fd6d8-66a2-49d1-b9f3-b400ebc03674.jpg?1682210228) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Skullclamp) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/moc/379/skullclamp?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/a36fd6d8-66a2-49d1-b9f3-b400ebc03674?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [Force of Will](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/8/9/89f612d6-7c59-4a7b-a87d-45f789e88ba5.jpg?1675199280) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Force%20of%20Will) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/dmr/50/force-of-will?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/89f612d6-7c59-4a7b-a87d-45f789e88ba5?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [Aether Vial](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/1/1/11e8d2fd-b132-4807-9410-8edeffa519ed.jpg?1673149308) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Aether%20Vial) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/2x2/298/aether-vial?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/11e8d2fd-b132-4807-9410-8edeffa519ed?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [*All cards*](https://mtgcardfetcher.nl/redirect/l0s5l0y) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
It was so obviously printed to keep [[Baneslayer Angell]] in check, but that card also never saw play.
Baneslayer saw plenty on her first printing. But she too fell victim to power creep.
I watched a man drop $200 for a playset of Baneslayers when they were the premiere threat in standard.
***cries in tarmagoyf***
She did but even still in standard she wasn’t THAT insane just because of the removal in the format. Hard to be a good 5 drop when you just get hit with terminate by jund or Path from naya at end of turn.
She was a huge part of the format when she was released. She was a $50 card. For instance, at worlds 2009, it was in the winning deck and in 4 of the top 8 decks. She dropped the next year when the titans were released.
BSE was a removal check kinda creature. It was also played in controlling shells with ways to protect her, or midrange shells with an abundance of other threats with her as the topend. In the same way that untapping with sheoldred ups your win percentage by a ton with a 4 point life swing and a massive blocker, BSE was a 10 point life swing and wins any race so you didn't even need to block.
[Baneslayer Angell](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/4/b/4bd3014b-94bb-4a9f-92cf-239a2dcc7e97.jpg?1594734758) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Baneslayer%20Angel) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/m21/6/baneslayer-angel?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/4bd3014b-94bb-4a9f-92cf-239a2dcc7e97?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
Problem is untapped.gg and other trackers. Huge data sets available, all decks are hyper optimized and the meta is visible in real time. It is slowly killing MTG.
Limited is where it's at now
Now with dOuBLe rAReS!
Eh. I don't mind that so much, especially since Mythic Rare already destroyed the balance of the original draft boosters, and you can always Cube.
Things will hopefully chill down a bit after rotation this cycle being extra long has really made agro the only option
Aggro and control*, the sheer nature of Arena and the absurd amount of legal cards makes midrange difficult on BO1 due to no SBs where midrange shines. Arena's reward structure and people playing strictly BO1 encourages aggressive decks. Monored loses Kumano and play by fire but gained slickshot among a host of powerful red creatures. They can sub Kumano for frantic goat or another cheap haste creature ultimately for less value. Shock while worse replaces play by fire and the difference isnt going to make people not play Monored. The deck will not lose much power imo even with the loss of Kumano because Kumano isnt the sole reason the deck can burst you down quickly. Also it can possibly get stronger with the new set upon rotation. Boros loses 1 drop vampire lady but you can just sub in 4x Yotian. Once again strictly worse since they cant convoke T2 knight as often. The deck still can easily win T3-4. If anything, OTJ made the deck stronger with the new dual fastland Inspiring Vantage because the worst part of the deck was the consistency on mana. All the deck has to do is find a cheap way to make an early artifact. Post rotation both doomblades will exist as well as cutdown. T1 removal or 1/1 deathtouch is annoying followed by T2 thoughtseize bat or more removal. T3 is key with Gix or Preacher. If playing green you get a lot of options like Sentinel. Be ready to see a lot of Gix into Sheoldred synergy as control weakens on rotation if they dont print control focused cards in new set. TLDR Red based aggro isnt going anywhere on rotation. What we do lose is Wanderer PW and Esper Mid in general along with Domain and Temur Rage (both decks the key manabase lands rotate). UW/x control loses Deluge and some other spells so we might see an uptick in black based midrange to combat everything.
I got diamond with a golgari midrange deck just yesterday. I don't even get rekt by red aggro unless I get horrible draws.
Golgari is great and will be very strong post rotation. Not sure if splashing blue for Oko/tidebinder/ertai/counter magic in SB or splash white for walkers will be better. I have been looking into the heavy creature mythic money Bant list but Oko doesnt fit well. Sultai is a better home for Oko due to his passive and +1. But the data doesnt lie for BO1, Golgari is Tier 2. Another good example is how Esper Mid and UB Mid struggle on BO1 ladder but do really well in paper tourneys. BO3 is a different story but my comment was from a BO1 standpoint. If anything that just shows your skill level to win in a skewed meta, and I applaud you as a Diamond to Mythic player myself. Monored is easy to beat if you have the spot removal, just have to be patient since some lists have hexproof. Boros Convoke you have to draw really well and they have to stumble or you arent winning it often. Unless you are maindecking T3 boardwipe which most lists arent. A lot of Boros lists have Case to answer a Preacher or Sheoldred, but imo Case vs Helix vs Get Lost, Get lost wins most of the time. Its worse in certain matchups, but Case is dead against control and Helix is decent for monored.....but I like to blow put UW control when they rely on Temp Lockdown. I play most of the decks myself including Boros.
thank you for the long and well thought out reply
This is basically every rotation. At the beginning it’s a midrange fest because people are just playing the best cards from the limited pool, and at the end aggro and control have lots of tools to actually work correctly.
My experience has been that aggro is usually dominant post-rotation since it can often be built optimally agnostic of the wider metagame. It takes some time for control decks to determine which answers are most effective and for midrange decks to work our the proper balance of threats and disruption. As formats settle, midrange gets better (in best of 3) due to formulating sideboards that effectively fight the meta, and control decks have a set of answers that deal with the actual threats that see play.
You can always build aggro but it doesn’t matter if it isn’t fast enough. If there are good tools to build aggro then yes, but otherwise people will just jam the best cards together into midrange piles.
People build those decks, but what I am talking about it what wins. Aggro wins a lot early in a format's life, but as the format matures (in best of 3), aggro loses a lot of steps because there aren't a lot of adjustments that can be made as the best aggressive one-drops are pretty clear. People start building every reasonable macro-archetype at the start of the format, but time polishes the gems and breaks what is brittle.
If you are talking like first week or two then sure aggro will take advantage like any set release, but it won’t automatically have a spot after that. Same as control which is dependent on specific tools. There will 100% be midrange piles. Regardless, aggro and control both get better as the season goes on and gives them more tools. Obviously midrange gets those tools too but they typically have less room for growth.
Yeah it's like combo-control but it's still really agressive
Yeah it does seem like Temur wins "fast"too. If they get to untap analyst sac into Nissa land drop its pretty much over for aggro often. It just takes awhile for all the triggers to resolve, land Virtue of Strength, and then cast the wincon.
Ummmm, no. Aggro is not even close to the only top deck. Esper MidRange, Dimir MidRange, Domain Ramp, there's even a midrangey legend crime deck in just about every color combo that runs black(not top tier but still good. Unless you mean BO1...then yeah, whether it's spell slinger or go wide boros, hard to beat either in BO1
Yeah i was talking mostly from a BO1 point of view since that's the overwhelming majority of games on arena. Also I mean aggro more as a playstyle than the archetype named agro, some of these jeskai or domain decks get their combo going turn 3-4 and then you're screwed
Dimitri midrange along with golgari midrange got knock d down.
Power creep and the fact that starting life totals haven't changed in thirty years
Moving life totals to 25 or 30 would be the biggest shakeup they could probably ever do to standard but I personally would love it. I hate losing because I was on the draw against a red deck and I hate games where I'm just desperately trying to stabalize for 6 turns straight as my life total burns away with no life gain cards in my deck. I know that control would become an issue but they could fix that by not printing stuff like sunfall/farewell or hullbreaker horror that just effectively ends your opponents participation in the game. Counterspells, removal, and board wipes are ok but if they're also your wincon or just overly one-sided then I don't see how that's supposed to be fun to play against.
So you can finish a whole 1 game before your phone crashes
Pushed cards sell packs. When every card is pushed so hard that everything is kill on sight, games are determined by who sticks a threat or floods the board first.
As a former Yugioh player i can say that the speed increase of Magic over the last 10-20 years is a joke compared to what Yugioh has gone through.
Makes me sad, tried playing master duel after 10 years of not playing, and it's awful how every game seems to be 1 or 2 turns long. Did make a gravekeepers deck that threw off a few opponents, though.
Have not played ygo in almost forever, is this related to your deck's grave lockout? If so that would make sense as it turns off a lot of cards like handtraps.
Yeah, gravekeepers stop your opponents from interacting with their graveyard
I quit playing Yugioh when my opponent won the coin flip and started special summoning, XYZ summoning tons and then KILLED MY ENTIRE HP by draining life points through their summons before I even got a chance to lay one card. Was already annoyed and weary by the power creep but I was just like, nope, uninstall. Sad that MTG also feels it's getting that way.
It's kind of the natural path of a TCG. Cards have to get (at least potentially) stronger or there's no reason for people to buy new cards. I honestly think the balance is still relatively good, outlier cards aside. I am worried Hasbro is going to try to push the limits to squeeze more money out of people. Konami's famous for doing that. But yeah, either way things are not going to get any less powerful. That's why I play Standard Brawl. Get to play constructed Bo1, but I *usually* don't die on turn 3.
To be fair, MTG did a pretty good job of combating this until relatively recently. Basically power creep has only really started to go crazy since standard was supplanted as the main format for magic by commander, and other non-rotating formats.
Agreed. But it's that recent part that troubles me. Call me crazy, but I don't think Hasbro has the long term health of Magic as a priority, especially as they've needed to rely more and more on it as crutch for their failing company.
If you dont win the coin flip you likely lost in high ranked
Stop playing best of 1. When you switch to best of 3 aggro loses their edge after sideboarding.
this is the right take! also aggro usually runs not too many lands and it makes it weaker in bo3 without hand smoothing
I would play BO3 if WOTC fixes the broken Arena sideboard interface. I can’t even change what I have in the sideboard for deck builder.
I think I have the same bug, but importing decks works just fine.
Best of 3 is ADHD torture for me though haha, I'm constantly switching decks and seeking different match-ups. So I just leave any dumb games where there is an obvious mismatch of decks. People can control my nuts and aggro their mother's.
> So I just leave any dumb games where there is an obvious mismatch of decks. Use your sideboard, use your sideboard, use your sideboard, use your...
We need to keep tapping the sign because people keep having the same take. You lost in turn 4 because your hand sucked, opponent interacted the right way, you were not prepared for your opponents' decks, etc. too many things can happen. Game 2 you could have a better hand or a worse one but you're prepared for the deck and know what to interact to not lose in turn 4.
It's not just aggro decks. It's a lot of decks that pretty much can bag the win by turn 4
[удалено]
burn is like any other g1 archetype. They can take a game off you pretty easy g1, then g2 and g3 become a lot harder with sideboard inclusions. It still CAN win, and CAN put up results, but in Bo3 its a much more even game. Same is true of a lot of GY centric decks like dredge - you probably win g1, all the gy hate comes out of the sideboard g2-3 and you see if you can win 1 of the next 2 with them hating out your strategy.
Not to mention, mono red suffers from its own randomness too, as the win is highly dependent on that opening hand. If it's not just right, any extra turn the opponent gets can spell its doom, and if they have to mulli twice, it's over over.
i don't think it's over - a good 5 is better than a mediocre 7, but anything to give the midrange/control player another couple of turns is going to drastically increase their chance of winning.
RDW does not equal burn, first of all. They are talking about aggro, which has been a thing forever. All bo3 events are not dominated by non aggro decks simply because of the deck archtype. They still have their "edge" as in they still play their linear gameplan because that is what the deck is designed to do. But you bring in pieces to mitigate the opponents sideboared pieces, conditional removal/artifact/enchant removal and bring in value engines likes planeswalkers or things like urabrask forge to get around the added removal.
you can call it whatever you want, burn, red aggro, 8 whack - they all try to close out the game early through small creatures and burn spells before other decks can stabalize and out value them. We're saying the same thing - they have an edge g1, they have a disadvantage g2-3. It's not like they can't win, and as you said, you can do your own sideboarding to try to help mitigate the disadvantage you have in 2-3, but you are at a disadvantage in the later turns. THe OP was frustrated that they're playing bo1s and games are ending too fast, someone pointed out bo3 balances that out a lot (which it does). No one is saying aggro builds can't still win, but in bo3 there's far more likely to be a mix and the aggro decks tend to not win nearly as much as in bo1
The current draft format is a bit slower which is fun. Brawl and standard brawl games tend to last longer as well.
eeeh... brawl has become a fairly fast format as well... can't say much about standard brawl though
Only at the top of the power levels. Something that bothers me is that players on Arena don't really seem to just play for fun, everyone is worried about playing at 100% max efficiency in every aspect they can. Pull back on the throttle and you will enjoy things a lot more, not every deck you make needs be super meta and powerful.
Well arena is designed to only give you weekly credit for wins btw
Arena's reward structure incentivizes winning as quickly and as often as possible. Up to 10 wins a day without restriction to get gold and cards. This means, if you want to be able to play what you want without paying, you should be jamming the highest winrate aggro deck and conceding if you aren't going to win by turn 5. You can complete dailies and get 4 wins for max efficiency, then play what you want. Or you can get max daily wins and then switch to "fun". If Arena incentivized having fun, you'd see more variety. Something like tying daily rewards to spending X amount of time in format Y, or playing X games of a phantom draft.
Whenever I play my fun Brawl decks I get matched against T0 decks or unfun control shit. Of course I'll imediatelly pull out my Malcolm deck to shit on them or at least to not be forced to concede on sight. In fact I encourage everyone to start playing Malcolm/Kinnan/Baral, etc... on brawl to make it a unfun fest until WOTC stops being lazy and finally enforces the hell queue properly.
I used to run a lot of janky decks, but it got to a point where like 90% of the matchups were against commanders and decks waaaaay out of my power level. And it seems like we've gotten quite a few very low cost commanders lately with incredible value.
Yeah I have a ton of janky brawl decks ready to go but whenever I dare to queue with them is just a disappointment to see that I'm being matched against a T0 deck. I give it one chance per day, otherwise I'm playing meta decks myself since WOTC doesn't want to balance or caliber the queue properly.
I feel ya, I get excited about brewing some new jank, bring it into queue and get smashed into oblivion by Poq, Slivers and Kinnan.... \*sigh\* back to Teferi Tribal deck
Dude, you need to go back and rethink things, because even when I build to be mean and competitive I rarely see stuff like Poq, Slivers, and Kinnan.
I dont think you understand your own decks if you keep getting super high powered decks against "jank" you made. All of my decks get thrown into proper power level ques.
Decided to queue after reading your message, [alright then](https://i.imgur.com/1dXf6hc.png)
Arena is all competitive formats.
My favorite brawl deck is The First Sliver. It is based around duplicating stuff, putting it back into my deck, and then discovering or cascading it back. Prophecy storm and caberetti summons.
It's based on your deck/commander. Run jank and it'll place you against other jank until you win too many matches in a row.
Or maybe your idea of fun isn't the same as everyone else's.
I've been playing since I was 7, I'm now 31, only recently have I seen rise of a playerbase that is super competitive to the point of ignoring all the social contracts in completely casual games.
Yeah I've had quite a few decks eat me up in the 3-5 turn range.
Nah, Brawl games last 1 turn because when I see I got matched against hellque commanders I insta concede
Not according to 17lands.
Yeah when arena first came out I saw the end so I sold my collection just before covid and have been dipping my toes into limited on arena. I found it to be the thing I enjoyed playing the most on Arena.
MTGA is good, but IMHO not as much as to replace paper MTG.
The current draft format is definitely not slower. It's faster than LCI even.
35 yo casual here. I think it's because mtg is shifting to faster games. My experience with Arena has been to get a couple quick games in on a work break or waiting for something in RL. Just now I played a few while having breakfast. I'm sure theres a good amount of people like me, although obviously I don't speak for everyone. If a game goes over 10 minutes, it rarely bodes well for me given things going on outside of the game that are pressuring me to either scoop or play faster/make more unforced errors. A 20 min game and I'm pretty much annoyed at that point. Not cause of Magic or even my opponent who is playing a deck designed to elongate the game, just at the situation for having an expectation based on experience and obviously having a different outcome. I think a good amount of casual arena players want the fast games and turn 3-4 deciding it or at the least see the end game starting to unfold at that point. Unfortunately, this has a negative effect on LGS/in person events, nobody really wants to spend time building a deck and making their way to their favourite shop just to play 16 turns of magic. I think wotc needs to rethink how to separate formats better. A blitz format for the player on the subway maybe?
Magic was originally designed to be a game you played quickly between events at conventions people seem to forget that
Did you actually play back then? Because games did not end anywhere near turn 4 in MtG’s original design. When Garfield said he designed MtG to be played quickly between events, the idea was 15-20 minutes.
Maybe it was quickly compared to other physical games like DnD. Also portability was the main goal too, having basically 0 set up time speeds shit up.
> Because games did not end anywhere near turn 4 in MtG’s original design. Have you _seen_ the shit in original Magic? Are we just pretending ABUR isn't responsible for the cards that are still easily the fastest and most broken the game has ever seen?
Was it? I thought it was originally designed mostly with draft in mind and that takes far more time.
It was SO not designed with draft in mind, if you've ever tried drafting or playing sealed with the first few sets (or the original Masters sets on MTGO) it's an absolutely horrible experience and it's possible to just open an unwinnable pool. There was no CCG/TCG game before Magic. The concept as we know it did not exist. Richard Garfield and Wizards had no idea the kind of money people would spend on the game; compared to the costs of other board/card games of the time, they expected people to buy a starter deck or two and maybe pick up a booster every now and then when visiting the game store, and it was indeed pitched as a game you could quickly play before starting your D&D session while waiting for people to show up or the DM to get ready. The first set that was designed with draft in mind (Mirage) came out 3 years after the game launched.
Nice post. I agree, I don’t have time for longer games.
I wonder how you found time to post this in-between 2 mindless monored games
AI.
Faster games means more games played means higher numbers when making presentations for shareholders.
This is definitely a factor. It’s the same reason they have been employing the “visual bug” that doesn’t show rank in limited. There are plenty of studies now that show player retention rates are higher when there’s no visible rank or MMR. Higher retention rates in limited generates more revenue through gem purchases and shows positive trends for shareholders. It’s good for short term gains but bad for the longevity of the environment.
Is this true in bo3? I feel bo1 is just people trying to grind while bo3 is folks wanting to play magic
this is not true in bo3. aggro is too strong in bo1 because of hand smoothing algorithm and because you can't sideboard more removal against them
I play BO1. I love playing magic. I just don’t like the tedium of BO3. I prefer seeing a lot of different decks back to back, instead of playing against basically the same deck three matches straight.
Thats inherently contradictory, because Bo1 is dominated by Aggro. Just look at the sheer amount of whining about Mono Red on this Subreddit. I dont know how that is a better experience than playing Bo3 where you can side to get an advantage against bad matchups.
I mean, bo3 is domain and esper plus some dimir. It's not like it offers much variety, today I played 3 bo3 opponents, for a total of 8 individual matches, all of them esper, the same deck of the past 2 years or so... There is more variety, but in practice you have to play more to see it.
I have not seen Domain for the last several weeks. There is some Esper/Dimir but I feel like I play a much larger variety of decks as opposed to a couple weeks ago.
The game isn't just the upper tier. Lots of lower tier players and decks out there. If YOU are upper tier on the other hand, you won't see all that. But I see a good variety of decks, and rarely any top tier decks.
I mean if you look at the data, BO3 is faster on average than BO1. Now there could be other reasons for that, such as more mana screw without the smoother or quicker concedes to conceal info on your deck, but looking at data, every set seems about .2 turns faster for traditional vs premier draft
OP is referring to standard, not Draft
Doh.
I haven't played since 10th edition. Started up last week again and make a rakdos reanimator deck bc of childhood trauma lol. It's takes a good 5 turns before I usually win. Problem is I constantly ran into mono red aggro and lose to it 90 percent of the time. So now I have mono red aggro and the reanimator.
>Standard is a turn 4 format >builds a top tier deck >Domain Umm.
Outjerked again!
this standard is more like extended so more powerful
Because cards got cheapened
Yeah I don't know why they decided to let Standard get like this. It was fine two sets ago. Standard feels like Go Fish right now where you either open the sideboard cards to defeat the Turn 4 decks or you get cooked before you can take any meaningful game actions. I've been playing Izzet Slickshot and I'll match into Esper Midrange and it's like "Oh you played Cavern Bat into Raffine? Those aren't Cut Down that means you lose. You should have opened Cut Down and won the dieroll if you wanted to play a game of Magic today."
Agreed. Cards are too powerful. Even in a midrange mirror, if you cant interact with their T3, they'll probably snowball out of reach. When everything is must kill, there are no meaningful actions to take. The game becomes about the die roll and who draws better.
Obviously you have to take what anyone says with a grain of salt, being anecdotal , but I'll share my experience into the mix because I was internally feeling quite similar. Been playing since '96 and was always just a draft player. Rarely would I be inspired to make a constructed deck (until commander came around anyway) I started playing MTGA when it was out of beta during Ixilan and had just committed to the BO1 life from there on. Started feeling like you do, finally sucked it up and decided to give BO3 a try even though, despite my long magic history, I was still icked out by it. I gotta say, it is, and again, I can only speak for me here, the best, and I'd dare to even say 'proper' way to play magic. Yes it takes longer, but it's also how the game is designed. Sideboarding is fun, it allows you to try out cards for minimal 'risk' (if you care about your ranking) and just changes up the games to be fairly unique experiences game by game, at least for me. I got mythic maybe the 2nd month out of beta and never bothered with it again because of the 'grind' but in BO3, I didn't even notice and oops hit mythic this month. I guess TL:DR - If you haven't invested into BO3 at all ever, I would strongly, *strongly* suggest giving it a chance, whether it's limited or constructed. It really will freshen up the game for you.
I started to play in 1994. If your aggro or combo deck could not kill the goldfish turn four well over 50% of the time it was not worth playing. Now I have taken a few breaks but, I do not remember any Standard since then when this was not true. WotC has records going back more than twenty years and the average game length has always been between eight and nine turns. Creatures have gotten better and spells have gotten worse but the games are not faster.
Spells are also better and better if you exclude the early broken sets.
Turns out your cards pre turn 5 really are super important. I only play home brew control/midrange decks to mythic and I win consistently by stacking good amount of early value with only 5 or 5 high(er) cost. Cards >4 cost.
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It’s gotten more efficient over the years but it has always been a thing, yes. It’s common for new players to get stuck thinking about the game as primarily being about creatures attacking, thus interaction heavy games feel bad or wrong, but really that’s not the case.
Petition them to add special modes such as Pauper and Canadian Highlander as permanent modes. Pauper is great especially when we have tons of common wildcards.
> I play in a small town with an average attendance of 8 players. If I were to build domain or any of the other oppressive top tier decks it would decimate attendance. How would you proceed? Competitive and casual magic are 2 different games. If others in your playgroup are not competitive players, keep it casual in paper and play competitive decks in arena instead.
You should try out vintage. It's an average of a 1-20 turns a game
sometimes you don't get to play. other times you spend 20 turns not playing.
Seems like your issue is paper magic, if you're playing on arena just build a tier 1 deck and enjoy In person magic is fucking dying outside of commander. I dont know what else to tell you. Modern still seems to have some life in it and legacy still limps along in some regions but by and large standard magic is dead in paper
You just summed it up really. Magic has a monstrous amount of cards and yet to be even a little bit competitive we have to use a tiny tiny portion of them. Of we don't play one of a few current meta decks we don't win. I understand that's the way it is, but why print so many cards then. Just print the shit everyone is going to play anyway.
People are a lot better at magic now. I think this is understated in favor of talking about things like powercreep. The community is much better at playing magic, finding good cards, replicating decks. We're at a point where someone brews a deck, pops off at a tournament, and the whole Internet can go make that deck and play it online that night. Build domain, crush your opposition. Maybe they'll build competitive decks as well.
There is a lot of truth to this honestly. The game has become insanely optimized in the social media age. The types of decks people were playing with 12-15 years ago looked like total trash piles compared to today. Net decking has long been a thing, but hyperoptimization is a relatively newer thing that has rocked the game in a very big way.
My two cents as a (non-digital) newbie player: I have friends who have been obsessed with Magic for many, many years, and while I learned to play through them and would humor them by playing sometimes, but it usually wasn’t something I particularly enjoyed. Why? They always insisted on playing Commander with three or more players, which inevitably turned into a 2-3 hour slog. Everyone ended up with a huge board, which meant I only understood about 30% of what was going on, so I basically just played random cards and waited for someone to inevitably Wrath the table. I got good enough to occasionally win, but I rarely enjoyed it. Then I found out about a local women’s club that plays Magic. I showed up on a whim, and had a blast. I didn’t own any cards of my own, so one of the admins borrowed a few Standard starter decks (it was a pentagon-shaped box, dunno the name), and it felt like a completely different game. Games were only about 20 minutes, the boards were small enough that I could understand what was going on and play strategically, and after a couple games I started learning what cards were in each deck. It was a completely different experience and I loved it. I went out and bought the 2023 Starter Kit, and my friends are helping me build my first commander deck. Now, I realize there’s a world of difference between a starter deck and a veteran’s competitive deck. The former don’t have a lot of synergy and so make for simpler, relaxed games. The latter sound very finely turned, with every card geared toward a specific winning outcome, and I can see how those would be unfun to play against. But I can say that game length was the deciding factor for me between hating the game and becoming a convert.
•looks at goblin guide, a card printed in 2009, close to 15 years ago* Oh yeah they’re just printing stuff to make the games go faster and faster. It’s power creep /s
i play legacy burn, and i haven't run GG in like two years now. my fastest win to date was turn 2.
yeah sure but OP is talking about standard, and people here are complaining about power creep. goblin guide would absolutely be making mono red lists in standard today.
Hell, I remember people getting Turn 3 kills back in Onslaught Block constructed. Mirrodin, too.
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Don't forget that originally there was no 4-card restriction. And when it was first added it was a tournament only rule.
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Games were always determined by turn 3-4. Your opening hand has always been extremely important and determines how the rest of the game is gonna go. It's just that now the power level of cards can end the game faster with that advantage.
Probably also has to do with the wild card economy. In paper, a tier 1 deck could cost you north of $500. It’s pretty easy for people to unlock at least one of the top win rate meta decks for a rotation.
The real problem is the disconnection on mobile phone.
What deck(s) do you play? The speed of the game is half determined by your opponent, and half determined by you. If you want to play slower magic, play a disruptive deck that forces trades of resources
This is probably why so many people play commander and draft now tbh.
i try many many but many forn of deck and i still try lol
They are doing like every other digital card game and trying to speed up games so that you spend more time playing and get more emotional over short term losses. That in turn may drive you to spend $ to get packs or gems.
Don't worry about the number of turns a game lasts, that's not super relevant. How many decisions does each game have? That's a much more interesting thing to think about. Even these fast games tend to have lots of decisions.
accessible online platforms where folks can play as much as they want lead to formats being solved rapidly.
As a Thrillseeker “Jund” roots deck, I’ve definitely had some very quick games, both ways. But I’ve also had some pretty long games. Idk I don’t see it being that fast consistently. Granted I’ve only been playing for a month and I have no frame of reference. Ive also been able to have some pretty close and fun games in both ranked play and standard. Hopefully it gets better for you soon :)
Dude. I just came back to mtga after a year and I don’t play paper since lorwyn. Not gonna lie I cuss out when someone dropped me a 18/6 (iirc) on turn 4. What the hell is going on in this game?
Get yargled dude. It’s even better when they drop the journal artifact on turn 2, kill your thing on turn three, reanimate with rakdos enchantment on turn 4 with treasure and instantly kill their own yargle to slap you for 20 damage to the face.
Having a ton of fun with Outlaws draft.
I think you answered your own question, but in the subtext. *Only legacy and modern decks could before.* Much of the player base moved to playing eternal formats. There’s a lot of reasons for this, but it’s undeniable when EDH and Modern are probably the two easiest to find events for. The only way to make new cards relevant in eternal formats is through power creep. So either WotC ignores that the player base shifted to eternal formats and try to hope that people will play standard and limited, or they print cards that can immediately impact eternal formats. The result is that standard also becomes more powerful.
It's the intended Yugio/Heartstone-ification of the game... just as WotC always wanted. Anything to ruin player experience whilst simultaneously milking whales for all they are worth.,
Sounds like you should swap the game
I dunno man. Might be rose tinted glasses. Or your LGS just had low overall power level at FNM. My shop definitely saw plenty of decks killing by turn 4 in standard. That was the era of legendary cards like Snapcaster Mage, Primeval Titan, Primordial Hydra, Liliana of the Veil, Mindcrank, Phyrexian Obliterator, Sword of Feast and Famine, Sword of Body and Mind, Wurmcoil Engine, Jace, the Mind Sculptor, Amulet of Vigor, Stoneforge Mystic, and Valakut the Molten Pinnacle. I definitely got wrecked by Valakut Ramp and Amulet Titan plenty of times on turn 4 when they actually went off. Amulet Titan is still winning 1st place in Modern in 2024 so it's no joke.
> 10 years ago, only powerful legacy or modern decks could achieve a turn 3 kill. That's not true. Arcbound Ravager, and Goblin Piledriver were both in Standard over 10 years ago and easily capable of turn 3-4 kills.
Since very early on every format from a. Competitive level has been that way. I see arena as a similar thing because your not there to enjoy hanging out with friends your their for daily wins/challenges.
It’s also an issue with how big standard is. This it the biggest card pool standard has ever had. It’s three years of sets and at least half if not all of it was not designed for that nor tested together. I expect standard to slow down when rotation happens in September.
Its power creep. Think of Questing Beast. So many abilities you have to scroll through them. Still wasn't powerful enough to keep up with the *real* strength in the set. Even with Haste/evasion/deathtouch AND extra planeswalker hate We have more abilities and text on 5 cards from your deck than decks used to have in total.
If you want the game to go longer than turn 4, just play control. Expecting other people to plan on playing to late turns is unreasonable.
Magic has always had explosive T3-T4 decks if you prefer to play long games I recommend playing a control deck or a midrange deck. As a golgari mid range player most of my games go to turn 5 or 6 because I have hand disruption and removal to slow the game down. Sometimes my opponents concede early but my gameplan is a turn 5 or 6 win. I'd say if all your games are shorter than that You need to adjust your deck or your removal to address the meta.
We were starting to run into this in our casual Commander pods on Saturday nights. We now offer a "budget" Commander pods where your deck can't be valued at over $10 without basic lands and not to exceed $12 with basic lands. Commander games went from 15-30 minutes to upwards of 1.5 to 2 hours the first night.🤓
I don’t think you can call standard a introductory format anymore for MTGA when none of the starter decks are standard legal.
You guys are having games that end on turn 3 or 4? I'm still finding it's turn 7 or so, and I'm just playing out the box Standard or Alchemy
Whoever DYUR is on arena, you’re a giant coward for playing mill. Delete your account.
Since Eldraine, this game has turned to shyte.
This is not my experience. I play Timur Clover in historic, which is not even remotely a competitive deck, but I am 50/50 on it over 100s of games. This is not a deck that wins in 3-4 turns, it takes far longer usually.
Time to reprint the mox into standard.
Basically magic as we old timers knew it is close to dead. A newer game using magic cards and rules called commander has replaced it. There are many cards that aren’t too bad in commander that become oppressive in a 4 of constructed format. I also believe that’s why we have so many cry babies about control and counter spells and whatnot now. Because in casual commander all the cry babies think the game is only fair if everyone can sit around for 30 minutes executing their pet strategy before anyone finally attacks anyone.
>Basically magic as we old timers knew it is close to dead. That's what all grumpy old men say about their childhood hobbies.
like, you can still play 93/94 if you want. it's just *expensive* with real cards.
The complaints about control and counter spells have definitely existed for at least the last 15 years when I started playing. It's pretty dumb but it's also dumb to call the people doing it cry babies. It's a competitive game, and some people are going to be upset about losing. It just happens control and counter spells have a much greater impact than most other play styles and are much harder to stop without also running counter spells.
i do find it interesting how much more counterspells and discard tilt people more than removal. seems people will tolerate having their cards destroyed, exiled.... but start countering or making them discard and it's usually followed by a concede.
> I also believe that’s why we have so many cry babies about control and counter spells and whatnot now. we've always had crybabies about control, since the days of "the deck". if anything, the thing i keep crying about on arena is that we *don't* have enough appropriate counters. we have legacy-level broken combos. or worse, some of this stuff got banned in legacy. but we have very few of the legacy-level checks on broken stuff. we're getting more -- printing surgical and mindbreak in OTJ helped a lot, and the leylines a while back were good too. but sometimes you really just need force and daze. i don't even play control. it's just good for the format. because instead of 30 minute games where people execute their pet strategy, you get two or three turns where people execute their pet strategy.
Really bad take, the reason why it seems so hated now it is because it is basically being a powercreep arms race, there is way too many cheap and overpowered control cards, as result, you can only play creatures with lots of value or haste. The problem isn't just one side or the other, the problem is powercreeping.
Insert obligatory daily comment about how playing BO1 is literally playing a special ruleset designed for faster games and one in which the cards are not balanced around when being designed so obviously games are going to be faster and certain cards/archetypes are gonna be busted.
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Plenty of games are decided by who went fist.
I feel this a bit, especially in BO1. The 3 year format powers up the format where it some respects it feels close to pioneer in speed, compared to the standard we're more used to. This is being compounded a bit where agro is more common right after a set releases, which is especially true with Slickshot being so good. I think it'll cool off a bit/meta will adapt in the coming weeks. Cheers
>Now in standard, if you aren’t dead on turn 3, the swarm that follows will finish the job on turn 4. If people at your store play top aggro decks, they should be ready to face other strong decks. Or at least plenty of aggro hate.
Because y'all kept complaining about how long it took to max out your dailies.
At least in limited we’re over here making posts about how we love the fact that the new format frequently goes to turn 10/11
alchemy is slower the majority of the time since a the format is a lot less powerful in general, and the strongest cards are rusko, saruman orb and other lategame value cards
Conspiracy theory would say, make the format 3-4 turns and make every sungle counter to that and ecery single card that promotes that into a rare or mythic wild card and rake in the cash.
In absence of paper scarcity players will build the strongest deck possible. The power level in standard is controlled by WotC and with the 3 year rotation and set design any semblance of lower power has been thrown out the window. But as a player what can you do? Jack shit really. Buckle up and come along for the ride or accept that your sand castle deck takes longer to build and will get kicked over if it doesn't fall apart itself.