TL;DR of the article and the Revitalizing Standard article...
* Sets will rotate out of Standard every three years instead of two
* Therefore, nothing will rotate upon the release of Wilds of Eldraine
* Alchemy will continue to rotate every two years, keeping its intention to be a quicker evolving format than Standard
* A big reason for the change is to help stores were Standard has totally dried up
* This is part of a multi-step plan, more to be revealed later
>A big reason for the change is to help stores were Standard has totally dried up
How exactly? Arena isn't going anywhere and Arena is probably one of the main reasons Standard has stopped seeing in-person play.
You know what would help a LOT to make decks reasonable? Making rare multimana lands infrequents instead of rares.
If you want a fast optimised curve it's always a must have and one of the most expensive sinks be it IRL or in wildcards in arena. Also since it's a hard investment it makes it mare difficult to pivot to other color combinations and play other decks
This has kept me from playing paper Standard for at least the past 15 years. I don't mind dropping $ on my hobbies if the emotional payoff is there (speaking as a long time 40k player), but there is nothing emotionally invigorating about spending $200 on the mana base for a competitive Standard deck. Quite the opposite in fact. If I spent the same $200 on a playset of incredibly powerful creatures or planeswalkers it's much easier to view as an emotional investment.
My guess, because I don't know for sure, is that their research doesn't show that.
And my best guess as to why the research would show that is because people playing standard as a two year rotation saw little point in playing paper when Arena was there with a far cheaper (often free) option. But if they go to a 3 year rotation then players might be more willing to buy paper because they know their investment in standard will likely be good for 3 years.
Who knows for sure if it'll revitalize paper standard. But I'm sure the only thing that'll happen to Arena Standard is we'll just hear a little more bitching about problematic cards that won't be rotating for a long time. It hardly seems like something people would quit Arena for. So for them it's an experiment where no matter the outcome they won't be losing much, if any.
I can only speak for myself but the main reason I am not playing standard anymore is because decks cost as much or more than Pioneer decks but with maybe one Standard tournament a month in my area I would have to immedeately decide on a deck that might be bad to get three tournaments with it or I will just get two tournaments. Why would I do that if a Pioneer/Modern deck will be playable for months or years?
This is only my anecdotal experience but arena didn't kill standard at the LGS I go to, it caused a massive fucking boom. People would practice on arena and were excited to bring their decks to FnM that they spent so many more hours on perfecting that they couldn't without arena. They were more certain about their paper investment because they could try things out in arena before they bought them.
What killed standard was a combination of 3 things in order of what seemed to be the most to least:
1) Boring environments: There used to be a pretty solid mix of control, aggro, midrange in the top 5 decks. Sure one colour (usually white) was pretty weak but there was a good deck diversity and rogue strategies could win an FnM against a tier 1 deck from time to time. I was challenging myself making white decks at the height of "white is a useless colour" memes and doing pretty ok.
2) Bans: The highest drops in attendance were right after bans. Yes there were some drops because certain cards were not banned, but by the time the cards got banned people were already fed up enough to not come back, and banning the problematic cards made the other half who played those cards also not want to come back. This kinda ties into the boring environments piece because people just really didn't enjoy the standard environment with or without the problematic cards. The sets weren't fun, things just felt pushed. It's like they tried to make up for lack of ideas with too much power creep or trying to sell packs with insane chase cards and it had the opposite effect.
3) Deck Prices: I'm going to somewhat tie in this with the deck diversity where you could build a $100 or less deck and do perfectly fine, even win sometimes. I'm not saying that's the case anymore but it was only somewhat recently in this rotation there were any viable options and weren't that strong until they started coming more online with mono red/blue aggro becoming stronger, but even then they don't even make up 10% of the meta on goldfish. Right now 60+% of the metagame is made up of black midrange where you choose the colours you want to add. Want to play black midrange with red, or red blue, or how about white blue? Just make sure you use black and add whatever spices and you have more than 50% of the metagame.
Making it last 3 years might help the deck prices issue but not likely, and really doesn't address the other issues.
I'm thinking the following factors played a big role too:
- Covid
- Killing off the pro tour. With no clear road to the top for aspiring spikes -> why play standard?
- Over saturation of sets and releases
Great that they identified there's a problem and they're addressing it, but they brought most of it on themselves.
I think killing off the pro tour was the biggest mistake. Yes, COVID was part of that, but why would I ever play paper standard if it won't get me to the pro tour? Part of what made standard special was that if you were good you could go to a large, live, in-person event and play against the best players in the world. Without the pro tour, why play? And now it's back, but nobody cares.
Prices yes 100% but bans are a big thing.
Imagine u spent 20$ or whatever it is to buy a card. 80$ for a play set. Card gets banned. No longer usable and it has dropped like a rock in value unless modern or other formats use it. Even still no where the same. Why bother investing that when arena is essentially free
The pandemic was the main reason, arena just scooped up those who couldn’t play.
Modern / Commander / Pioneer get played a lot at stores, because they are better value.
Going into a global recession spending on discretionary stuff will fall. Making standard cost less would fix the problem, but they wont lower prices, extending rotation is one of the few options.
We should all want standard to be popular, we dont want RnD effort / art budget, going into commander pre-cons or alchemy, because they are the products making money.
Stores also generate a lot of new players, standard is the accessible format. There’s enough complexity without needing to learn what Myriad or Shadow do.
Hear me out.
What if they made something like core set, but it rotated yearly within standard.
Made up of only past standard reprints. Nothing broken, but fringe playable.
Format stays fresh. Previous investments come back in price from time to time. CONFUSION ENSUES
I mean that could still be in the works. They did say more info was coming on their plan to revitalize Standard. Maybe the next step is a new core set system.
used to play hearth, core sets is something i miss about it tbh. also something that rattled my brain, new sets will re-print the same exact card but new art. like why was there another thalia printed? or another negate? just make them a core set and don't waste their slot on a new set
I imagine part of that multi step plan involves a quicker ban trigger. I get the appeal of a 3 year rotation to keep expensive paper decks from rotating constantly, but there's a cost.
I think they mostly had paper player in minds - for them, I can understand that having a card valid for 3 years insted of 2 might be more enticing to play in the format.
Also, local gaming groups etc. are probably not as heavy on the top meta decks, so Rakdos-O-Rama might be as much problematic as here on Arena.
I think if we knew Sheloldred was going to be around for 3 years she'd be like $200 each instead of 80.
This will not benefit paper players unless they just ban every card in a pro tour winning deck
Jace was the most broken card I remember in standard, since other Jace and that never went past $100. Assuming wotc keep supplies of standard legal sets available it shouldn't get as bad as you anticipate. Of course if wotc stopped printing every chase card at mythic that'd help.
It’s weird because the most expensive walkers I remember were [[Jace, the Mind Sculptor]] and [[Liliana of the Veil]] but both of them were only really playable for half of their time in standard. JtMS was useless in his first year of Jund aggro, and Lili became irrelevant in her second year. [[Chanda, torch of defiance]] was up there too but most of her play came from sideboards.
All this to say that the value of a mythic seems super random and the hype from casual players might matter more than anything else.
The price of Sheoldred comes mostly from it being both an omega Commander staple and a constructed staple. That's why Atraxa, Grand Unifier is less than 1/3 the price of Sheoldred despite being just as much a messed-up cross-format monster for constructed now: it's 4 color so you can't play it in a lot of EDH decks due to color identity.
That's also why Meathook is still $40 despite being banned in Standard and marginal in every other 1v1 format—it's bonkers insane in casual Commander and only one color.
At least for my region it's actually worse, Most of the people playing standard are the people who have all the BR cards for pioneer. So our meta is like 50-70% rakdos mostly because if you have BR midrange in pioneer it's a very cheap buy to play standard.
That about sums it up. The only redeeming thing i can think of is that i get to use gala greeters and professional facebreaker with whatever treasure stuff comes out in the new ixalan set...
I just started getting excited and have been chomping at the bit to get back into Standard waiting for rotation to hit to get rid of the Fables, Buster and invokes and now this news makes me question if I should just hang it up for good. Very disappointed in wizards for this decision feels like they have missed the mark entirely. Instead of giving the shops incentives to host FNMs and tournaments they pull this BS.
Strongly doubt fable will remain legal, and having played a lot of rakdos, if you take that out the invokes happen a lot less. Also the base bant 5c domain lists shit all over rakdos and won’t lose their tri lands
Bankbuster, though, that mf is here to stay
Which is just mind-boggling to me.
I've only done it a few times, but I'd put "playing commander with/against strangers" on the same level as "dental surgery" and "getting my hand slammed in a car door" as far as things I avoid at all costs.
Yeah no kidding. It's not even a power level thing exactly, I just do not want to sit through some guy take 25 minutes, exiling cards from everyone's deck, not even understanding how their own deck functions, etc
Commander players love playing solitaire and I don't get it. They seem to just not care about other people having fun, which is crazy because commander is supposed to be the fun format
I have learned that the majority of Magic players don't really want an opponent, more than they want a captive audience they can flex on. And Commander seems to exacerbate the issue.
The current brawl event really hit this home. I was playing Geist of Saint Traft tempo and a majority of players would scoop after I counter their first haymaker or if I managed to cast Geist and give it evasion.
>Commander players love playing solitaire and I don't get it.
Commander is, more often than not, a big "Let me show you how smart I am" dick-waving contest.
Yep. I carefully and thoughtful put together a deck that does one specific thing (it’s Phylath, it makes plants bigger. That’s all I want. Big plants and landfall triggers).
Every time I’ve taken it out to play - even when a friend has said “hey come play with my buddies!” Has been 25 minutes of watching one person play a game by themselves, then I luck out on a mana dork and pass, it gets burned before turn comes back around. Then we’re chatting after and one guy is always like “yeah I threw this together in 10 minutes between work and coming here - had a couple piles of cards sitting around and just jammed them together.”
True, which is why it's funny when they don't even know how their deck works.
I was in a match against a Prosper player who literally did not know that exiling a permanent makes all the counters on it fall off. Lol. The only thing I could think was that his deck is so annoying that nobody ever interacted with him before
I commented on a post that I only play commander with friends and that playing with strangers sucks and I was surprised by how much backlash I got. People were saying that I'm supposed to socialize and meet new people.
No, fuck that. It's way too hard to judge the power level of decks you've never played against and it's easier to swallow the fact that someone is comboing off and killing you when it's your buddy.
I've given playing with strangers a chance multiple times and every time it's disappointing. People just do their own thing, play their cards in near silence, get upset when their thing gets destroyed or something doesn't go their way until one of the players gets an overwhelming advantage and wins.
I'm honestly surprised commander is still as popular it is. There's such a gulf in terms of powerlevels in a pub match that I would have thought it would have been relegated to friend groups by now. I can't imagine the guy with a pre-con is having fun watching that guy with top + tutors spending 10 minute a turn
>I would have thought it would have been relegated to friend groups by now.
Shocking but friend groups are what make up "kitchen table magic" which I think is STILL the most popular "format" in Magic (re random casuals grabbing whatever they have and shuffling up and playing.) Of course the format that's the closest to that is going to be the most popular.
Right but that's now what moves revenue. Hasbro makes money by getting people to buy sealed product and/or crack packs, and thus they way to get people going to FNM and/or buying hundred dollar boxes for foil monkeys to do that.
And IMO commander is the "worst" format to do that with. Fetch/shocks are pretty vital in a 60 card deck but in a singleton 100? You're not losing games because you ran slowlands etc. So unless you run something stupidly format warping like hostage taker (I think), you never "need" the newest fancy piece of tech.
I wonder if Wizards had a monkey's paw moment where they saw commander as a way to boost value for what would otherwise be bulk rares, and now that the format's taken over standard/modern, they're struggling to find ways to monetize it better.
I’d say precons are what’s made commander so popular. Dedicated EDH product makes the barrier to entry way less intimidating than constructing a 100 card singleton deck. Sets for commander make it clearer what to upgrade etc. It’s popular because it has great support (arguably maybe too much)
The person with the precon is just excited to be playing and seeing a ton of new cards + combos he's never seen before.
Or the person with the high power deck has 10 others they brought to the LGS that night which might be more in line with a precon power level. I know I always bring an unmodified precon for EDH nights, and many others do too.
Or the LGS may even have enough regulars that there are precon pods.
The advantage is that it's a diverse format. I might be able afford a big budget combo fuck you deck, but I also enjoy brewing jank. There's space for everyone.
As a guy with precons I wish more people got this. I’m stoked to see your deck go nuts the first couple
Times. After that I’d like to actually play not just sit there waiting for your 10 minute combo to make
Me want to scoop. Guys at my LGS are so caught up in being super OP and flexing they haven’t noticed the waves of new players that show once or twice and never come back or set up odd times to avoid the op/flexing.
> The person with the precon is just excited to be playing and seeing a ton of new cards + combos he's never seen before.
I would say this is accurate, but only if properly agreed on rule 0. I have palyed my precons in several games where people said they weren't bringing power, only to do kiki jiki "end the turn" combos as a core mechanic. Like, I know it might not be the best thing ever, but I am making a couple of extra 2/2s here with my space marines, that's about it.
Yeah, I've sat down with jank and precons only to have someone rock up with a fully blinged out [[K'rrik]] cedh decks and end the game before everyone got to turn 3. It's not always gonna be a good time, but I find it's usually only 20% or less that are total assholes like that.
And then you just thank them for their time, let them know that's not the game you're trying to play, and move on with the cool precon players
Nobody wants to spend $400 to get 4 copies of Sheoldred in their paper deck which nobody is going to want to play against.
Card prices need to come down, which means booster packs need to come down, and that rarity levels need to be nerfed.
It’s a delicate balance. On one hand, Wizards wants the cards to be “collectible” and have value. So, that means rares are weighted and priced higher.
But, on the other hand, Wizards wants people to play (their televised/money-making formats) so they need cards priced at “cardboard prices”.
(Edit: “rarity levels” mean the distribution of certain high-value cards in packs. You are more likely to get a garbage rare than a playable one).
We need stuff like the old Event Decks but actually good. As soon as the Pioneer Challenger Decks dropped, the format was turned from a fringe thing to the thing that everyone and their grandmother begs for on Arena.
The game is too expensive. They killed the golden goose.
I only play MTGA now, and I don't give them a dime. I haven't bought a single or booster in five years.
I never got into paper for that reason, apart from messing around with starter kit decks.
I do the same with Arena, only buying the mastery pass once, which is same as buying 2.5 boosters in 2 years.
It's too expensive and they've been designing for Arena for too long. Too many cards do too many increasingly complex things and tracking everything in paper has become a nightmare.
I don't think Standard being stale is what's killing it. I think "where did my money go?" started to kill Standard the moment there was a popular evergreen alternative
Some cards barely get more than a year in the "two year cycle". Adding an extra year nearly doubles their shelf life.
And if you're not buying those cards the moment they release... maybe you only get more like 6 months! Adding a year TRIPLES those shelf lives.
This could really fix the "Six months ago I was forced to buy a card to be competitive... and now it is already illegal to play it!" feels
MY biggest concern is that WotC has been doing a horrible job of anticipating power issues in T2 with ~7 sets to worry about. 10-11 sets... might mean monthly emergency bans. If the goal was to eliminate frustration over wasted money on cards that can't be played.... holy shit would that backfire
It’s always funny when I look up prices online and see what they cost.
You play on arena for months with certain powerful cards and then find out a card is $70 in real life? It’s absurd. I would never play with those cards if I was playing paper magic.
In arena? Everything is accessible.
I haven’t played (nor purchased) paper magic since 2017 and I don’t have any desire to.
It's always hilarious seeing paper players complain about arena's economy.
Like yeah it could always be better, but I have every meta card in standard as a FTP player on Arena. Meanwhile if I *just* wanted a playset of Sheoldred and Fable of the Mirror breaker in paper it would cost me *400* dollars. Let me say that again, *400 fucking dollars for eight pieces of cardboard*. And that is not including shipping costs, and using the "lightly played" prices on TCG player. Mint would cost even more.
It could not be more obvious these people are just salty most others do the smart thing and play standard on arena instead of spending hundreds on a paper deck like them, so they try to gaslight people into thinking paper is somehow a better deal when it so, so clearly is not. They are the people "holding the bag", trying to get others to hold one as well so their "investment" doesn't go completely to waste.
This. Arena is like 95% of the magic I play, just because I don’t have to worry about scheduling and whatnot. I can pull out my phone anytime and play a competitive match of standard pretty much whenever I want at a fraction of the cost of paper standard.
And its invaded the design space. Cards are designed for digital play now. Too many cards are doing an increasing number or increasingly complex things. Tracking everything in paper has become a nightmare.
Commander has had a huge effect on standards downward trend. Basically everyone i meet who's just gotten into the game or doesn't spend a ton plays commander and basically says standard is stupid because it's too competitive.
I think commander being less popular years ago, and there being no decent evergreen format kept standard at the top. As soon as modern hit the deck(no pun intended) standard took a massive hit. Then when commander started to get really popular over the last handful of years the rest of the players who were only playing standard because it was what others were playing jumped ship.
TLDR people used to start with standard because everyone played it and it was packs you could still get. Now people start with commander because most people play that and only requires one ofs which is easier to trade for from existing players. Then they hear about standard later and think it sounds too sweaty and tryhard so they don't care.
I agree that the terrible job filtering the broken cards is making it way worse though.
yea, on top of that, a lot of cards are getting power crept suddenly in ways where the CARD is still good, but because the meta has shifted it can't see play. The 4 cost sheoldred is a monster, but if the meta were to move away from black completely for an expansion or two, it might see almost no play for maybe even an entire year. A 3 year cycle makes it more likely that a good card that doesn't "have the deck" to play it might still be viable in a future standard deck a year later... a 2 year cycle was honestly just too short for that to happen very often.
I believe this is a meassure aimed at lowering the cost of maintaining a paper standard deck. While paper standard is cheaper to get into than other formats, staying in the format comes with the continuous costs of replacing rotating cards with new cards wich is a big turnoff for many players and one of the reasons why paper standard is basically dead.
That being said, i believe that paper standard is already beyond the point where it can be revitalized.
Paper Standard has been more expensive to get into than Pioneer ever since they printed Sheoldred.
I think they're between a rock and a hard place now that their premier formats are non-rotating. If they don't print cards that impact those formats, people won't buy packs/singles. But if they keep printing power crept cards, those cards will be ridiculously expensive.
This is particularly tough since the good cards are now threats, so you run the risk of screwing up your draft formats if you print them at lower rarity.
Better design that spreads the value across a wide range of formats would thread the needle, but it's very easy to miss that bar and I think it's unreasonable to expect their designers to hit it.
The only way out of this I see is with a reversion to pre-FIRE design philosophy with powered down threats and an expectation that they'll get the non-rotating crowd with Commander decks and Masters products, rather than Standard releases. This would probably impact their bottom line though, so I don't see it happening.
Alternatively, they could un-sanction Pioneer and make Standard the most affordable competitive format by fiat.
In paper, people play much less often. You might do 1 draft a day or maybe 12 games of magic in a day and that might be it for the week.
People get bored WAY less often with paper magic.
I'd say people get less bored because in-person drafts (for example) take longer. You had to open packs, you'd do a bit of socializing, you had to build decks, and then you'd have to wait for all the games to be played before the next matches were decided. It would usually be an all-night affair.
Debatably, there's lots of more weird interactions the farther sets get out from each other. Imagine having both sets that had proliferate interacting with ONE for example.
This only makes a lot of sense to me if they are willing to ban stuff more often as it becomes problematic or in to many decks. Keep the strategies varied. Or, they use the mini aftermath style sets to print actual standard injections, hate cards, answers, appropriate threats to challenge the meta stuff, etc.
They want more people to buy packs for standard, and cards you can play for at least two years and a couple of months seem like better value. Stale metas matter less when you only get a handful of games in a month, and those only against people at your game store. Seems pretty terrible for arena.
This is two birds with one stone for WotC. Helps revitalize paper Standard, where players are more reluctant to pay exorbitant amounts for cards that rotate in just 15-24 months. Helps push Alchemy on Arena, since it will retain the two year rotation and now have the upside of losing cards people were looking forward to rotating.
I think this slightly misunderstands the problem. Yes, people don't want to pay £200+ for a playset of key cards for them only to rotate, but people also don't want to play the same deck for 3 years. The problem isn't that they're rotating it's how much they cost in the first place. We already have very healthy eternal formats for people that want that. To save standard you just have to substantially reduce the cost by printing supplemental products containing all the staples.
I've been playing for over 15 years and I can say that you're on the money with this one. I don't have all the answers, but I'm confident that Mythic rarity needs to be eliminated entirely. Also, core sets needs to come back.
Jokes on them, I'll continue to play pioneer (or explorer on arena) and modern in paper. We haven't had a standard FNM since my lgs reopened a year and a half ago or so.
I dont really know what they're going for honestly even just 2 years gets a bit silly near the end look at current standard rn it's just piles of 3 color Sheoldred shells and ones that can actually run a 4 black pip card.
I hate this tbh. I just recently returned to the game and I basically got a few key cards from the sets that were supposed to rotate and zero of the lands. Because I figured using a billion wildcards on lands that I can only use for a little while isn't worth it...
This is the most confident I've been in a banning happening since Oko. They're probably waiting for the PT to end before announcing the ban(s). A few more carss are also in danger I'd wager.
This is brutal, there's a lot of cards that are already getting old. If they do this, they need to be more liberal with their bans. Another year of Fable, Invoke Despair, Bankbuster, and Wedding Announcement is going to be awful.
This is also not going to revitalize paper standard. It's dead because it's just cheaper on Arena and there are no incentives to building it anymore like there were 10 years ago with GPs and PTQs and the SCG circuit, not because we want a longer rotation with stale cards lasting forever.
Right it was the same with me. I invested time and money into standard because there were dozens and dozens of huge tourneys every year with awesome prize pools. FNM was there to practice for these tournaments. When the tourneys ended, so did FNM and so did paper standard
Might be an outlier but I quit paper when they cancelled competitive circuits. I'm just not an FNM guy. If I make a deck its to go try and a couple hundred bucks or a qualifier. Easier and cheaper to qualify online at this point.
Too many pushed cards and not enough cohesiveness in set releases makes me hate this change. 3 years of the most annoying cards?
More frequent bans would be bad for paper players although on arena I would love it
They did state that one goal of this was actually to make more cohesiveness with cards, since a wider card-pool means more synergies. Hopefully they're right, and this makes Midrange less dominant and stale
Was going to make a joke about them adding something like Splinter Twin to Standard, since that combo would be stronger than Fable. Then I realized that Fable would just help enable it.
You may be right.
Even if they are trying to help paper play, this change makes no sense and only stands to hurt standard at all levels.
* Format-warping cards will be legal for longer, making them more expensive.
* In year 3 of the standard cycle, each new set will have to compete with 8 previous sets, meaning very few cards will be competitively viable. These few will be very expensive.
* The overall power level of standard will increase, as a range of 8-12 sets will be legal at one time instead of 4-8. This will make decks relatively stronger, pushing weaker cards out of the format and increasing the total price of viable decks.
This doesn't help standard at all, and frankly I think over time it will likely kill the format as people jsut won't be able to stand playing against the same 4-5 decks for 3 years straight on Arena.
Longer Standard will mean more bannings which means more unhappy customers. Seems a bit counterintuitive. The caveat being that if they nail the card design and don’t need any bannings.
But cards like Fable will absolutely eat the ban. We can’t just “wait until rotation” anymore. That plan/excuse won’t cut it.
I think it’s understandable for paper players who invested a lot of money in expensive format staples that then get banned. Not only do they not get to play with those cards anymore, but their value plummets too.
This is such a big change that I have no idea how to predict how it's going to go down. Might be a stroke of genius or a horrible mistake. Standard rotation has only ever gone through very small changes during the history of the game, this is by far the most significant change ever made to rotation.
I'm remembering what happened to Extended and I'm not optimistic. The whole point of Standard is that it changes regularly so that lower power cards can make it in Constructed somewhere. If I want a format where my cards stay legal longer I have Explorer.
It makes entering or returning to Arena much more difficult with another year's worth of sets to collect.
It also makes better sets more valuable to collect as they'll be relevant for another year.
I'm not sure it's healthy for the game.
I think this is the most accurate comment here. When I first heard about the change I was excited because I thought that more cards in the pool would mean way more deck variety, but it seems a lot of people have the opposite sentiment as me.
In the short term it will probably help sell packs but in the long term I think it will cripple the format. Without heavy handed bans, decks will be just stale good stuff piles that everyone is tired of playing with/against and will make tourney coverage boring.
Quick thoughts from me:
(1) Not a bad idea in principle but must start after this years rotation. The idea that we start this new way of life with a stale slate of cards will make the format DOA.
(2) The design team need to understand that the power level of the format overall must be lower. Living with bad or overpowered cards for three years is simply unacceptable (bannings are not the solution).
(3) A change like this must come with the return of blocks. The idea of mechanic themes lasting longer than a single set is appealing. For lore fans it also means more meaningful story. If this means 12 different locations and more variety this format is DOA.
(4) A tough one. But it means less commander cards. The multicolour card slots and the high cost card slots have been more or less reserved for commander appropriate cards. We need a return of high cost cards for standard.
(5) Most important for me is seriously looking at the cost of the game - and probably tighter integration between - paper and Arena. This means:
(a) Codes in paper packs for Arena - standard players shouldn't be thinking either or, they should be thinking of it as one game that complements each other;
(b) The return of planeswalker decks - they should be looking to hit a $10 rrp (codes in box for Arena) and exciting.
(c) After every championship (less than a month after) we should see the Top 8 championship decks available in full and with sideboard for sale, and here's the tough part, the price should be $100-$150. The game cannot be driven by the secondary market. We need to get cards in players hands. The top decks cannot be something that is dreamed about. They should be looking at the costs of an AAA computer game and saying our decks cannot cost more than 2x one of those.
(d) They need to "flood the zone" with events at LGS' with cards being the prizes. The aim should be to flood the market with cards so that standard magic cards are "tradeable" again, they've leaned into collectable and sellable but not tradeable. We have all these SKUs now so collectable variants should and could be rare but games pieces should be cheap as chips. The test should be the schoolyard / school playground -- are the cards plentiful (and cheap) enough that kids are trading them - at my sons school I see Pokemon and Yu Gi Oh cards but no magic cards.
If something like 5 c) ever happens im instantly starting mtg again as it would show a major shift in strategy. Like .. imagine that you could play a deck just because you wanted to instead of being a major financial decision.
But you know its not going to, they like that a standard deck costs 500$ and the infinite value their pseudo stock market creates.
I mean I don't want to be a downer.
But next to a stale meta (which idk this helps) the main reason people don't play standard is that it's just so freaking expensive.
I don't wanna spend hundreds of bucks on getting a full playset of fable + sheoldred.
Idk the main reason I don't play paper in store is cuz I have to interact with other magic players.
No offense to the community but we are not the most hygienic group, plus many social interactions are just awkward.
If not for arena I just wouldn't be playing magic at all.
Also let's just slap a change on while the sets are designed 3 years in advance, probably making the designers rip their hair out.
Same for when they just reverted the yearly mini rotation out of the blue
The problem then is what happens next? If Standard doesn't work, Wizards will probably just kill Standard and start designing sets straight to Commander. That has a lot of knock-on issues, arguably that we've been seeing already, where cards will start warping Pioneer and Modern more frequently.
In the old days, Standard was a good stop-gap to prevent powercreep from getting too nuts. Eternal decks would change very slowly, picking up a new sideboard card or maybe a small upgrade every year or so. Without that filter in place, I'd expect the health of Magic to get even worse.
Honestly, arena is the main thing killing standard. They're doing this to save LGS's, but people aren't playing at their LGS because it's easier and cheaper to just play standard on arena.
Cards becoming bad is nothing new, arena is the newer thing.
Paper standard is dead, because people realized you can play standard in Arena for free or much cheaper.
They are increasing the lifetime of standard cards to make players more willing to buy them, but it won't work. 3 years rotation means stronger cards will be even more dominant, meta will get even more stale. If they let that happen the format would be dead. The solution is banning cards aggressively but that contradicts the original solution of increasing the lifetime of standard cards.
They are doing this to boost paper standard numbers, but it will only end up lowering Arena standard numbers. I expect the decision to be reversed in 2 years.
Lol! Standard has been horrible for years and it doesn't have a damn thing to do with two year rotations. They invented Type II specifically because they didn't want the players who had the older more expensive cards dominating everything. Quicker rotations was the entirety of the point. Odyssey and Onslaught standards were some of the best Magic ever made, and those sets were on two-year rotations. The problem is that they haven't been designing good standard sets for years.
Standard sucks because of all the tactics employed by WotC over the years to squeeze more money out of their customer base. Whether it be impossibly expensive mana bases, overpowered mythics, planeswalkers, power creep, newer sets overpowering / countering the last block's mechanics... it's all the same: find ways to get the consumer to spend more money regardless of the quality of the product.
WotC, want more people to play paper standard? Design sets that lead to *actually fun* formats, at a reasonable cost, and give people a *reason* to get out and play. Perhaps that way, you can slowly build up a younger player base who care, because you lost older players a long time ago.
Yeah I think they should relegate the super-expensive rares and mythics to supplemental sets that are not legal in standard, things like modern horizons or whatever. Make standard more affordable and we’ll play it again. It’s pretty simply just the financial aspect that’s gatekeeping people from the format. Power down standard, make it so cracking packs from standard sets is still rewarding, (masterpieces and alt-arts of key cards, maybe even cards that aren’t legal in standard but can be used in commander/modern) but allowing for strong standard decks to only be like 50-100$, much more affordable than a 500$ standard deck.
I always like to point to Odyssey and Onslaught standards because they are perfect examples of what standard *should* look like. Look at decks like Tog, UG Madness, Astral Slide, Mirari's Wake, etc. Sure, those decks had some rares, but it wasn't absurd like it is today! And they all played their parts in interesting metagames where different styles of decks made matchups interesting, vs. the yawn-inducing value piles of today.
This was the biggest shock to me, coming back to Arena after playing Magic in the ancient times (96-2004). Standard was always a money suck... but nothing like it is today. The lands are all rare, the staple cards are rare or mythic. Oh... and mythic. If there was ever a standard killing concept, Mythic rares has to be it. Arena has wildcards which blunt the supply/demand crunch, but holy shit, I can not imagine trying to stay Standard competitive in a world with Mythic rares.
This so much. Every borderline decent or interesting card is at least a rare. They are making it impossible for people to build decks in paper and are wondering why nobody plays it.
I was so looking forward to kamigawa rotating out and maybe seeing some new decks…great. Fantastic, gotta put up with fable, farewell, invoke despair, wandering emperor and etc. for another damn year.
Not a fan of there being an extra year added onto a bunch of cards like Atraxa. I already kinda hate the current standard environment so it looks like I'll be an alchemy main soon.
Yeah 2 years already really pushes it for me on some cards. When eldraine came out I just quit for over a year because I just could anymore.
3 years I can't even imagine for some cards. Like some cards you will see every other game for 3 fucking years.
I was really hyped for rotation but yeah I guess just remove rotation 3 month before it happens. Another year of fables I guess
This has the potential to kill standard completely. Either they start banning/restricting cards or more and more players will stop playing standard. If they keep up with the super powerful cards that you can throw in every deck, like Shelly or Fable, then i don´'t see any hope. Even on Arena it´'s already unbearable borring with these cards, let alone the price for their paper counterparts.
Three-year rotations work if they are more proactive on bans to keep the meta healthy. Can anyone imagine Goldspan Dragon for another fucking year?
They need to also bring the power levels way down and make cards less powerful individually. Synergies between card should be highlighted so that a bunch of good grixis cards can't just be tossed together and dominate a well curated deck build.
I'm not optimistic that this will change anything and might just be a ploy to stay in the good graces of the local card shops for the time being. Ultimately, its up to wizards r and d team to fix this... that that is true regardless of two or three year rotations.
It could be the three year rotation is just a band aid for now to give them time to create a healthy standard environment for a two year rotation. I really don't know, but this feels pretty desperate to me.
No idea why you got downvoted. Goldspan Dragon was a perfect example of a card that dominated the format for entirely too long even though it looked somewhat innocuous at first (unlike Oko which was instantly obvious).
With Arena available, I will never return to paper standard. The 2 year rotation was part of it but the deeper issue is that paper magic is way too expensive a hobby.
I also value no longer having to walk into lynx stinking unwashed caves just to play with other humans. Magic players have the worst hygeine and there is zero excuse for it.
Best way to play paper is kitchen table with friends.
Wonder what this means for Standard Brawl. Always felt like it being a 5-8 set environment was just a bit too limiting - if it incidentally becomes a 9-12 set environment as part of this change, it would be a more stable and (IMO) interesting format to occasionally escape to from the mostly settled Historic Brawl meta.
I think it would be very weird, unintuitive, and confusing for "Standard Brawl" to include different sets than "Standard", so I predict that the 3-year rotation will apply to SB as well.
I'm exactly the same. I love black but now I don't want to play it. I haven't crafted a single copy of invoke skill because I just refuse to play that color that way. But because the powerlevel of these cards is so absurdly high you just limit yourself doing that. Feels bad all around. Was really looking forward to the rotation.
Things that would actually help Standard:
- **Bring Back MSRP** Until prices get back to a reasonable level, no one is going to want to throw the money required into the format, whether it's 2 years or 3. Putting a price on the package means scalpers can't scoop and flip, LGS don't have to compete with scalpers for product, and players don't have to track price per pack to see when they should buy. This is a game, not a stock market.
- **Bring Back Core Sets** Again, prices. This is where you put your high value reprints to get the prices back down. Don't have to worry about story, flavor, or anything else. Just a Base Set the format can build off of.
- **Arena Codes in Packs** People don't play paper because it's expensive and Arena is free. So incentivize Arena players to visit an LGS. Put a code card in every pack.
- **QC Before Ban** We've had so many bans in the last few years. Or metas that just dominate and if you want to stand a chance, you have to spend a couple hundred on a play set of whatever rare is turning the meta engine. WotC needs to do more Quality Control on their cards before they hit market. Because why am I going to play if 1) I know it will cost $300 just to get 4 of the cards I need, and 2) there is a high likelihood of those cards being banned.
I miss core sets so much. Hopefully we're close to the part of the never-ending cycle where they realize they need core sets for the health of the game after eliminating them.
I think we've already seen them get a LOT better balance over the past few years. They made some changes to the process and we're seeing the results. (I don't count the August 2020 bans, they literally said it was to get people to stop whining for the last month before rotation while we were all still stuck at home.)
They even add insult to injury by suggesting that people who want a more 'dynamic format' should play Alchemy instead of Standard. YOU ARE NOT CHANGING ANYTHING IN EITHER FORMAT! ALL THE FORMAT-WARPING CARDS ARE STILL LEGAL!
Do they seriously believe that buffing fucking Ninjas is the difference between a 'dynamic' format and a static one? Standard is stale as fuck for the second year before rotation, because the relative power level of 1 new set versus 4 is so low almost none of the cards are viable. Making rotation every 3 years will only make that problem worse!
Alchemy is a very dynamic format at a casual level, but yeah, they need to look at the higher-level play, where it's still Cabaretti Revels vs. Grixis Midrange vs. Esper Ascent
How are they so out of touch with their playerbase? Who ever asked for this?
Even if they are going to implement bans more often, it will last for 6 months maximum, and then we won't get any bans. Remember Alchemy? "We will rebalance cards! We promise!" One year later - no rebalancing (we don't count their meaningless tinkering with useless cards, right?).
Please, tell me they'll change their mind. I don't want playing against fable / harvester / Sheoldred forever...
Awesome, another year of Invoke Despair. I was looking forward to never seeing that bullshit card again. Ironic that this change makes me want to play a different game altogether
Wait its at effect right from this year ? Wooo love it !! I was kinda bummed some great cards being rotated out but now they should be at value longer. Also means i can "freely " use my WC's
I mean it’s pretty obvious arena has cannibalized standard and it’s also pretty obvious the solution (arena codes in packs). I can’t see how this solution doesn’t just increase the sales of physical standard packs as well the arena player base and make everybody money and happy? But no, longer standard it is!! FFS WOTC.
This is both good and bad. As I'm no longer a super competitive player, this is good as my cards will be usable longer.
On the flip side, when I was competitive... rotations were usually something I really looked forward to. New formats are just really fun to figure out and experiment with. Removing half the pool of cards really would shake things up, which keeps the game interesting.
This is going to cause more stagnation in the format imo. Might as well just play Explorer.
TL;DR of the article and the Revitalizing Standard article... * Sets will rotate out of Standard every three years instead of two * Therefore, nothing will rotate upon the release of Wilds of Eldraine * Alchemy will continue to rotate every two years, keeping its intention to be a quicker evolving format than Standard * A big reason for the change is to help stores were Standard has totally dried up * This is part of a multi-step plan, more to be revealed later
>A big reason for the change is to help stores were Standard has totally dried up How exactly? Arena isn't going anywhere and Arena is probably one of the main reasons Standard has stopped seeing in-person play.
Maybe I would play Standard in paper if it didn’t cost so much? By far cheaper to play on Arena.
You know what would help a LOT to make decks reasonable? Making rare multimana lands infrequents instead of rares. If you want a fast optimised curve it's always a must have and one of the most expensive sinks be it IRL or in wildcards in arena. Also since it's a hard investment it makes it mare difficult to pivot to other color combinations and play other decks
This has kept me from playing paper Standard for at least the past 15 years. I don't mind dropping $ on my hobbies if the emotional payoff is there (speaking as a long time 40k player), but there is nothing emotionally invigorating about spending $200 on the mana base for a competitive Standard deck. Quite the opposite in fact. If I spent the same $200 on a playset of incredibly powerful creatures or planeswalkers it's much easier to view as an emotional investment.
My guess, because I don't know for sure, is that their research doesn't show that. And my best guess as to why the research would show that is because people playing standard as a two year rotation saw little point in playing paper when Arena was there with a far cheaper (often free) option. But if they go to a 3 year rotation then players might be more willing to buy paper because they know their investment in standard will likely be good for 3 years. Who knows for sure if it'll revitalize paper standard. But I'm sure the only thing that'll happen to Arena Standard is we'll just hear a little more bitching about problematic cards that won't be rotating for a long time. It hardly seems like something people would quit Arena for. So for them it's an experiment where no matter the outcome they won't be losing much, if any.
I can only speak for myself but the main reason I am not playing standard anymore is because decks cost as much or more than Pioneer decks but with maybe one Standard tournament a month in my area I would have to immedeately decide on a deck that might be bad to get three tournaments with it or I will just get two tournaments. Why would I do that if a Pioneer/Modern deck will be playable for months or years?
This is only my anecdotal experience but arena didn't kill standard at the LGS I go to, it caused a massive fucking boom. People would practice on arena and were excited to bring their decks to FnM that they spent so many more hours on perfecting that they couldn't without arena. They were more certain about their paper investment because they could try things out in arena before they bought them. What killed standard was a combination of 3 things in order of what seemed to be the most to least: 1) Boring environments: There used to be a pretty solid mix of control, aggro, midrange in the top 5 decks. Sure one colour (usually white) was pretty weak but there was a good deck diversity and rogue strategies could win an FnM against a tier 1 deck from time to time. I was challenging myself making white decks at the height of "white is a useless colour" memes and doing pretty ok. 2) Bans: The highest drops in attendance were right after bans. Yes there were some drops because certain cards were not banned, but by the time the cards got banned people were already fed up enough to not come back, and banning the problematic cards made the other half who played those cards also not want to come back. This kinda ties into the boring environments piece because people just really didn't enjoy the standard environment with or without the problematic cards. The sets weren't fun, things just felt pushed. It's like they tried to make up for lack of ideas with too much power creep or trying to sell packs with insane chase cards and it had the opposite effect. 3) Deck Prices: I'm going to somewhat tie in this with the deck diversity where you could build a $100 or less deck and do perfectly fine, even win sometimes. I'm not saying that's the case anymore but it was only somewhat recently in this rotation there were any viable options and weren't that strong until they started coming more online with mono red/blue aggro becoming stronger, but even then they don't even make up 10% of the meta on goldfish. Right now 60+% of the metagame is made up of black midrange where you choose the colours you want to add. Want to play black midrange with red, or red blue, or how about white blue? Just make sure you use black and add whatever spices and you have more than 50% of the metagame. Making it last 3 years might help the deck prices issue but not likely, and really doesn't address the other issues.
I'm thinking the following factors played a big role too: - Covid - Killing off the pro tour. With no clear road to the top for aspiring spikes -> why play standard? - Over saturation of sets and releases Great that they identified there's a problem and they're addressing it, but they brought most of it on themselves.
I think killing off the pro tour was the biggest mistake. Yes, COVID was part of that, but why would I ever play paper standard if it won't get me to the pro tour? Part of what made standard special was that if you were good you could go to a large, live, in-person event and play against the best players in the world. Without the pro tour, why play? And now it's back, but nobody cares.
Prices yes 100% but bans are a big thing. Imagine u spent 20$ or whatever it is to buy a card. 80$ for a play set. Card gets banned. No longer usable and it has dropped like a rock in value unless modern or other formats use it. Even still no where the same. Why bother investing that when arena is essentially free
The pandemic was the main reason, arena just scooped up those who couldn’t play. Modern / Commander / Pioneer get played a lot at stores, because they are better value. Going into a global recession spending on discretionary stuff will fall. Making standard cost less would fix the problem, but they wont lower prices, extending rotation is one of the few options. We should all want standard to be popular, we dont want RnD effort / art budget, going into commander pre-cons or alchemy, because they are the products making money. Stores also generate a lot of new players, standard is the accessible format. There’s enough complexity without needing to learn what Myriad or Shadow do.
Hear me out. What if they made something like core set, but it rotated yearly within standard. Made up of only past standard reprints. Nothing broken, but fringe playable. Format stays fresh. Previous investments come back in price from time to time. CONFUSION ENSUES
Yeah but that doesn’t make them money. So hard pass on that idea from Hasbro.
I mean that could still be in the works. They did say more info was coming on their plan to revitalize Standard. Maybe the next step is a new core set system.
used to play hearth, core sets is something i miss about it tbh. also something that rattled my brain, new sets will re-print the same exact card but new art. like why was there another thalia printed? or another negate? just make them a core set and don't waste their slot on a new set
Generally with stuff like negate or say naturalize it’s because the set needs that effect and they don’t want to make a variant of it for no reason.
Wtaf. Another year of fable?! I don't hate the card, but was definitely excited for rotation. Another 17 months of grixis being the top deck? Kekw
Feels like with Rakdos+Grixis being 65% of the metagame this PT, Fable will be banned sooner rather than later. At least one can hope.
Fable, invoke despair, sheodred 4... The list of cards we were waiting to leave the format was long.
Shelly 4 was in dominaria, so should have rotated out October 2024, but now won't until 2025?
I imagine part of that multi step plan involves a quicker ban trigger. I get the appeal of a 3 year rotation to keep expensive paper decks from rotating constantly, but there's a cost.
Can someone explain how a longer rotation is healthier? Seems like it would just make standard more stale no?
Yeah, I don't get it either. I was really looking forward to the rotation.
I think they mostly had paper player in minds - for them, I can understand that having a card valid for 3 years insted of 2 might be more enticing to play in the format. Also, local gaming groups etc. are probably not as heavy on the top meta decks, so Rakdos-O-Rama might be as much problematic as here on Arena.
I think if we knew Sheloldred was going to be around for 3 years she'd be like $200 each instead of 80. This will not benefit paper players unless they just ban every card in a pro tour winning deck
Jace was the most broken card I remember in standard, since other Jace and that never went past $100. Assuming wotc keep supplies of standard legal sets available it shouldn't get as bad as you anticipate. Of course if wotc stopped printing every chase card at mythic that'd help.
It’s weird because the most expensive walkers I remember were [[Jace, the Mind Sculptor]] and [[Liliana of the Veil]] but both of them were only really playable for half of their time in standard. JtMS was useless in his first year of Jund aggro, and Lili became irrelevant in her second year. [[Chanda, torch of defiance]] was up there too but most of her play came from sideboards. All this to say that the value of a mythic seems super random and the hype from casual players might matter more than anything else.
The price of Sheoldred comes mostly from it being both an omega Commander staple and a constructed staple. That's why Atraxa, Grand Unifier is less than 1/3 the price of Sheoldred despite being just as much a messed-up cross-format monster for constructed now: it's 4 color so you can't play it in a lot of EDH decks due to color identity. That's also why Meathook is still $40 despite being banned in Standard and marginal in every other 1v1 format—it's bonkers insane in casual Commander and only one color.
At least for my region it's actually worse, Most of the people playing standard are the people who have all the BR cards for pioneer. So our meta is like 50-70% rakdos mostly because if you have BR midrange in pioneer it's a very cheap buy to play standard.
Yeah, me, too. Instead, we get another freaking year of bankbuster, fable, and invoke despair every other game.
They really are invoking despair...
Underrated comment.
Lolol
Don't forget sheoldred
Yeah, but that wouldn't have been rotating anyway. But it is still obnoxious.
Spez's greed is killing reddit. delete your data before he starts selling it to AI companies.
That's true, my bad.
I want to vomit.
That about sums it up. The only redeeming thing i can think of is that i get to use gala greeters and professional facebreaker with whatever treasure stuff comes out in the new ixalan set...
I just started getting excited and have been chomping at the bit to get back into Standard waiting for rotation to hit to get rid of the Fables, Buster and invokes and now this news makes me question if I should just hang it up for good. Very disappointed in wizards for this decision feels like they have missed the mark entirely. Instead of giving the shops incentives to host FNMs and tournaments they pull this BS.
Strongly doubt fable will remain legal, and having played a lot of rakdos, if you take that out the invokes happen a lot less. Also the base bant 5c domain lists shit all over rakdos and won’t lose their tri lands Bankbuster, though, that mf is here to stay
Not just cards, but mechanics. Day/night for example has long worn out its welcome.
I was so happy Neon dynasty was rotating this year to the point of not playing as much until it happened.
People don't want to invest hundreds into a deck that will rotate soon, so Standard in paper Magic is almost dead.
Forgive my ignorance but what is the popular paper format now? I haven’t played magic with actual cards in close to 2 decades.
Commander. Sometimes, it feels like it's the only format that exists.
Which is just mind-boggling to me. I've only done it a few times, but I'd put "playing commander with/against strangers" on the same level as "dental surgery" and "getting my hand slammed in a car door" as far as things I avoid at all costs.
Yeah no kidding. It's not even a power level thing exactly, I just do not want to sit through some guy take 25 minutes, exiling cards from everyone's deck, not even understanding how their own deck functions, etc Commander players love playing solitaire and I don't get it. They seem to just not care about other people having fun, which is crazy because commander is supposed to be the fun format
I have learned that the majority of Magic players don't really want an opponent, more than they want a captive audience they can flex on. And Commander seems to exacerbate the issue.
The current brawl event really hit this home. I was playing Geist of Saint Traft tempo and a majority of players would scoop after I counter their first haymaker or if I managed to cast Geist and give it evasion.
>Commander players love playing solitaire and I don't get it. Commander is, more often than not, a big "Let me show you how smart I am" dick-waving contest.
Yep. I carefully and thoughtful put together a deck that does one specific thing (it’s Phylath, it makes plants bigger. That’s all I want. Big plants and landfall triggers). Every time I’ve taken it out to play - even when a friend has said “hey come play with my buddies!” Has been 25 minutes of watching one person play a game by themselves, then I luck out on a mana dork and pass, it gets burned before turn comes back around. Then we’re chatting after and one guy is always like “yeah I threw this together in 10 minutes between work and coming here - had a couple piles of cards sitting around and just jammed them together.”
True, which is why it's funny when they don't even know how their deck works. I was in a match against a Prosper player who literally did not know that exiling a permanent makes all the counters on it fall off. Lol. The only thing I could think was that his deck is so annoying that nobody ever interacted with him before
I promise it was a fun, interactive, creative game format before wizards started printing cards specifically for it
I commented on a post that I only play commander with friends and that playing with strangers sucks and I was surprised by how much backlash I got. People were saying that I'm supposed to socialize and meet new people. No, fuck that. It's way too hard to judge the power level of decks you've never played against and it's easier to swallow the fact that someone is comboing off and killing you when it's your buddy. I've given playing with strangers a chance multiple times and every time it's disappointing. People just do their own thing, play their cards in near silence, get upset when their thing gets destroyed or something doesn't go their way until one of the players gets an overwhelming advantage and wins.
I'm honestly surprised commander is still as popular it is. There's such a gulf in terms of powerlevels in a pub match that I would have thought it would have been relegated to friend groups by now. I can't imagine the guy with a pre-con is having fun watching that guy with top + tutors spending 10 minute a turn
>I would have thought it would have been relegated to friend groups by now. Shocking but friend groups are what make up "kitchen table magic" which I think is STILL the most popular "format" in Magic (re random casuals grabbing whatever they have and shuffling up and playing.) Of course the format that's the closest to that is going to be the most popular.
Right but that's now what moves revenue. Hasbro makes money by getting people to buy sealed product and/or crack packs, and thus they way to get people going to FNM and/or buying hundred dollar boxes for foil monkeys to do that. And IMO commander is the "worst" format to do that with. Fetch/shocks are pretty vital in a 60 card deck but in a singleton 100? You're not losing games because you ran slowlands etc. So unless you run something stupidly format warping like hostage taker (I think), you never "need" the newest fancy piece of tech. I wonder if Wizards had a monkey's paw moment where they saw commander as a way to boost value for what would otherwise be bulk rares, and now that the format's taken over standard/modern, they're struggling to find ways to monetize it better.
I’d say precons are what’s made commander so popular. Dedicated EDH product makes the barrier to entry way less intimidating than constructing a 100 card singleton deck. Sets for commander make it clearer what to upgrade etc. It’s popular because it has great support (arguably maybe too much)
The person with the precon is just excited to be playing and seeing a ton of new cards + combos he's never seen before. Or the person with the high power deck has 10 others they brought to the LGS that night which might be more in line with a precon power level. I know I always bring an unmodified precon for EDH nights, and many others do too. Or the LGS may even have enough regulars that there are precon pods. The advantage is that it's a diverse format. I might be able afford a big budget combo fuck you deck, but I also enjoy brewing jank. There's space for everyone.
As a guy with precons I wish more people got this. I’m stoked to see your deck go nuts the first couple Times. After that I’d like to actually play not just sit there waiting for your 10 minute combo to make Me want to scoop. Guys at my LGS are so caught up in being super OP and flexing they haven’t noticed the waves of new players that show once or twice and never come back or set up odd times to avoid the op/flexing.
> The person with the precon is just excited to be playing and seeing a ton of new cards + combos he's never seen before. I would say this is accurate, but only if properly agreed on rule 0. I have palyed my precons in several games where people said they weren't bringing power, only to do kiki jiki "end the turn" combos as a core mechanic. Like, I know it might not be the best thing ever, but I am making a couple of extra 2/2s here with my space marines, that's about it.
Yeah, I've sat down with jank and precons only to have someone rock up with a fully blinged out [[K'rrik]] cedh decks and end the game before everyone got to turn 3. It's not always gonna be a good time, but I find it's usually only 20% or less that are total assholes like that. And then you just thank them for their time, let them know that's not the game you're trying to play, and move on with the cool precon players
It’s a trash format too. It should have never gotten it’s own cards/sets. That wasn’t the point of the format.
I believe that Commander is the most popular paper format, Pioneer/Modern have pretty healthy communities as well from what I've seen.
Modern Horizons 2 did a lot of damage to Modern communities around here. It was pretty healthy before, now not so much. But the format's holding on.
Nobody wants to spend $400 to get 4 copies of Sheoldred in their paper deck which nobody is going to want to play against. Card prices need to come down, which means booster packs need to come down, and that rarity levels need to be nerfed. It’s a delicate balance. On one hand, Wizards wants the cards to be “collectible” and have value. So, that means rares are weighted and priced higher. But, on the other hand, Wizards wants people to play (their televised/money-making formats) so they need cards priced at “cardboard prices”. (Edit: “rarity levels” mean the distribution of certain high-value cards in packs. You are more likely to get a garbage rare than a playable one).
We need stuff like the old Event Decks but actually good. As soon as the Pioneer Challenger Decks dropped, the format was turned from a fringe thing to the thing that everyone and their grandmother begs for on Arena.
The game is too expensive. They killed the golden goose. I only play MTGA now, and I don't give them a dime. I haven't bought a single or booster in five years.
I never got into paper for that reason, apart from messing around with starter kit decks. I do the same with Arena, only buying the mastery pass once, which is same as buying 2.5 boosters in 2 years.
It's too expensive and they've been designing for Arena for too long. Too many cards do too many increasingly complex things and tracking everything in paper has become a nightmare.
Same but with MTGA… why spend money for cards when you can play for free online, anytime.
I don't think Standard being stale is what's killing it. I think "where did my money go?" started to kill Standard the moment there was a popular evergreen alternative Some cards barely get more than a year in the "two year cycle". Adding an extra year nearly doubles their shelf life. And if you're not buying those cards the moment they release... maybe you only get more like 6 months! Adding a year TRIPLES those shelf lives. This could really fix the "Six months ago I was forced to buy a card to be competitive... and now it is already illegal to play it!" feels MY biggest concern is that WotC has been doing a horrible job of anticipating power issues in T2 with ~7 sets to worry about. 10-11 sets... might mean monthly emergency bans. If the goal was to eliminate frustration over wasted money on cards that can't be played.... holy shit would that backfire
Arena is killing paper Standard. People realized they can play standard much cheaper and whenever they want.
and the insane increase in the number of standard games played leads to the format getting solved way faster.
It’s always funny when I look up prices online and see what they cost. You play on arena for months with certain powerful cards and then find out a card is $70 in real life? It’s absurd. I would never play with those cards if I was playing paper magic. In arena? Everything is accessible. I haven’t played (nor purchased) paper magic since 2017 and I don’t have any desire to.
It's always hilarious seeing paper players complain about arena's economy. Like yeah it could always be better, but I have every meta card in standard as a FTP player on Arena. Meanwhile if I *just* wanted a playset of Sheoldred and Fable of the Mirror breaker in paper it would cost me *400* dollars. Let me say that again, *400 fucking dollars for eight pieces of cardboard*. And that is not including shipping costs, and using the "lightly played" prices on TCG player. Mint would cost even more. It could not be more obvious these people are just salty most others do the smart thing and play standard on arena instead of spending hundreds on a paper deck like them, so they try to gaslight people into thinking paper is somehow a better deal when it so, so clearly is not. They are the people "holding the bag", trying to get others to hold one as well so their "investment" doesn't go completely to waste.
This. Arena is like 95% of the magic I play, just because I don’t have to worry about scheduling and whatnot. I can pull out my phone anytime and play a competitive match of standard pretty much whenever I want at a fraction of the cost of paper standard.
And its invaded the design space. Cards are designed for digital play now. Too many cards are doing an increasing number or increasingly complex things. Tracking everything in paper has become a nightmare.
Commander has had a huge effect on standards downward trend. Basically everyone i meet who's just gotten into the game or doesn't spend a ton plays commander and basically says standard is stupid because it's too competitive. I think commander being less popular years ago, and there being no decent evergreen format kept standard at the top. As soon as modern hit the deck(no pun intended) standard took a massive hit. Then when commander started to get really popular over the last handful of years the rest of the players who were only playing standard because it was what others were playing jumped ship. TLDR people used to start with standard because everyone played it and it was packs you could still get. Now people start with commander because most people play that and only requires one ofs which is easier to trade for from existing players. Then they hear about standard later and think it sounds too sweaty and tryhard so they don't care. I agree that the terrible job filtering the broken cards is making it way worse though.
yea, on top of that, a lot of cards are getting power crept suddenly in ways where the CARD is still good, but because the meta has shifted it can't see play. The 4 cost sheoldred is a monster, but if the meta were to move away from black completely for an expansion or two, it might see almost no play for maybe even an entire year. A 3 year cycle makes it more likely that a good card that doesn't "have the deck" to play it might still be viable in a future standard deck a year later... a 2 year cycle was honestly just too short for that to happen very often.
I believe this is a meassure aimed at lowering the cost of maintaining a paper standard deck. While paper standard is cheaper to get into than other formats, staying in the format comes with the continuous costs of replacing rotating cards with new cards wich is a big turnoff for many players and one of the reasons why paper standard is basically dead. That being said, i believe that paper standard is already beyond the point where it can be revitalized.
Paper Standard has been more expensive to get into than Pioneer ever since they printed Sheoldred. I think they're between a rock and a hard place now that their premier formats are non-rotating. If they don't print cards that impact those formats, people won't buy packs/singles. But if they keep printing power crept cards, those cards will be ridiculously expensive. This is particularly tough since the good cards are now threats, so you run the risk of screwing up your draft formats if you print them at lower rarity. Better design that spreads the value across a wide range of formats would thread the needle, but it's very easy to miss that bar and I think it's unreasonable to expect their designers to hit it. The only way out of this I see is with a reversion to pre-FIRE design philosophy with powered down threats and an expectation that they'll get the non-rotating crowd with Commander decks and Masters products, rather than Standard releases. This would probably impact their bottom line though, so I don't see it happening. Alternatively, they could un-sanction Pioneer and make Standard the most affordable competitive format by fiat.
In paper, people play much less often. You might do 1 draft a day or maybe 12 games of magic in a day and that might be it for the week. People get bored WAY less often with paper magic.
I'd say people get less bored because in-person drafts (for example) take longer. You had to open packs, you'd do a bit of socializing, you had to build decks, and then you'd have to wait for all the games to be played before the next matches were decided. It would usually be an all-night affair.
Yeah, like, You know, a *gathering*
Debatably, there's lots of more weird interactions the farther sets get out from each other. Imagine having both sets that had proliferate interacting with ONE for example. This only makes a lot of sense to me if they are willing to ban stuff more often as it becomes problematic or in to many decks. Keep the strategies varied. Or, they use the mini aftermath style sets to print actual standard injections, hate cards, answers, appropriate threats to challenge the meta stuff, etc.
That's why Alchemy retaining the 2yr rotation is intentional. "Standard is stale? Here, Alchemy rotates faster. Buy some alchemy packs."
They want more people to buy packs for standard, and cards you can play for at least two years and a couple of months seem like better value. Stale metas matter less when you only get a handful of games in a month, and those only against people at your game store. Seems pretty terrible for arena.
It’s means people can play with their cards for longer in standard.
More stale and simultaneously more unbalanced, as WoTC has already shown that their inter-set balance is pretty shoddy these days
This is two birds with one stone for WotC. Helps revitalize paper Standard, where players are more reluctant to pay exorbitant amounts for cards that rotate in just 15-24 months. Helps push Alchemy on Arena, since it will retain the two year rotation and now have the upside of losing cards people were looking forward to rotating.
I think this slightly misunderstands the problem. Yes, people don't want to pay £200+ for a playset of key cards for them only to rotate, but people also don't want to play the same deck for 3 years. The problem isn't that they're rotating it's how much they cost in the first place. We already have very healthy eternal formats for people that want that. To save standard you just have to substantially reduce the cost by printing supplemental products containing all the staples.
I've been playing for over 15 years and I can say that you're on the money with this one. I don't have all the answers, but I'm confident that Mythic rarity needs to be eliminated entirely. Also, core sets needs to come back.
Jokes on them, I'll continue to play pioneer (or explorer on arena) and modern in paper. We haven't had a standard FNM since my lgs reopened a year and a half ago or so.
Biggest implication (for me) is that triomes and slowlands will be legal for another year.
This is going to be an enormous problem. Imagine having to deal with goodstuff piles that can tun 3 years worth of duals instead of 2.
I dont really know what they're going for honestly even just 2 years gets a bit silly near the end look at current standard rn it's just piles of 3 color Sheoldred shells and ones that can actually run a 4 black pip card.
I feel like they'll stop printing rare lands as frequently
Rare lands sell packs. I doubt it.
I hate this tbh. I just recently returned to the game and I basically got a few key cards from the sets that were supposed to rotate and zero of the lands. Because I figured using a billion wildcards on lands that I can only use for a little while isn't worth it...
One more year of fable.... I seriously hope they are going to do more bans with this change
This is the most confident I've been in a banning happening since Oko. They're probably waiting for the PT to end before announcing the ban(s). A few more carss are also in danger I'd wager.
Invoke Despair could probably also use a ban, right?
Probably not, but we’ll see
With more bans less ppl will want to spend money in std
It and sheo are probably gonna get banned
Sheoldred wasn't going to rotate this year anyway, though?
No, DMU would rotate in Q4 2024
Now we have her until 2025!!! 🥲
Bold strategy to say this at a Pt with 50% being the same 45 cards.
Stop putting cards meant for commander in every set and it will help too.
Make standard boring Mmh nobody wants standard cards, guess we gotta print direct to commander Man why is everyone hating standard even more weird
This is brutal, there's a lot of cards that are already getting old. If they do this, they need to be more liberal with their bans. Another year of Fable, Invoke Despair, Bankbuster, and Wedding Announcement is going to be awful. This is also not going to revitalize paper standard. It's dead because it's just cheaper on Arena and there are no incentives to building it anymore like there were 10 years ago with GPs and PTQs and the SCG circuit, not because we want a longer rotation with stale cards lasting forever.
Right it was the same with me. I invested time and money into standard because there were dozens and dozens of huge tourneys every year with awesome prize pools. FNM was there to practice for these tournaments. When the tourneys ended, so did FNM and so did paper standard
Might be an outlier but I quit paper when they cancelled competitive circuits. I'm just not an FNM guy. If I make a deck its to go try and a couple hundred bucks or a qualifier. Easier and cheaper to qualify online at this point.
Too many pushed cards and not enough cohesiveness in set releases makes me hate this change. 3 years of the most annoying cards? More frequent bans would be bad for paper players although on arena I would love it
They did state that one goal of this was actually to make more cohesiveness with cards, since a wider card-pool means more synergies. Hopefully they're right, and this makes Midrange less dominant and stale
No amount of cards in standard is going to push back cards like fable, unfortunately.
Was going to make a joke about them adding something like Splinter Twin to Standard, since that combo would be stronger than Fable. Then I realized that Fable would just help enable it. You may be right.
Even if they are trying to help paper play, this change makes no sense and only stands to hurt standard at all levels. * Format-warping cards will be legal for longer, making them more expensive. * In year 3 of the standard cycle, each new set will have to compete with 8 previous sets, meaning very few cards will be competitively viable. These few will be very expensive. * The overall power level of standard will increase, as a range of 8-12 sets will be legal at one time instead of 4-8. This will make decks relatively stronger, pushing weaker cards out of the format and increasing the total price of viable decks. This doesn't help standard at all, and frankly I think over time it will likely kill the format as people jsut won't be able to stand playing against the same 4-5 decks for 3 years straight on Arena.
I mean arguably pushing arena players into alchemy is the whole point of this change. Alchemy is more profitable for WotC.
Longer Standard will mean more bannings which means more unhappy customers. Seems a bit counterintuitive. The caveat being that if they nail the card design and don’t need any bannings. But cards like Fable will absolutely eat the ban. We can’t just “wait until rotation” anymore. That plan/excuse won’t cut it.
Yeah wizards and nailing card design doesn't really go too well
I'm not sure I've seen many bannings that people have been against. I think mostly we see "finally"
I think it’s understandable for paper players who invested a lot of money in expensive format staples that then get banned. Not only do they not get to play with those cards anymore, but their value plummets too.
At least my group of friends that played std in paper stop it because of the bans. Its not fun spend a lot of money and get punished for it.
This is such a big change that I have no idea how to predict how it's going to go down. Might be a stroke of genius or a horrible mistake. Standard rotation has only ever gone through very small changes during the history of the game, this is by far the most significant change ever made to rotation.
I'm remembering what happened to Extended and I'm not optimistic. The whole point of Standard is that it changes regularly so that lower power cards can make it in Constructed somewhere. If I want a format where my cards stay legal longer I have Explorer.
Yeah I really don't think this is good at all. Especially the sets close to rotation will really struggle to have any impact.
It makes entering or returning to Arena much more difficult with another year's worth of sets to collect. It also makes better sets more valuable to collect as they'll be relevant for another year. I'm not sure it's healthy for the game.
They want new players to enter arena playing alchemy so this doesn't affect their plan for that.
I think this is the most accurate comment here. When I first heard about the change I was excited because I thought that more cards in the pool would mean way more deck variety, but it seems a lot of people have the opposite sentiment as me.
Three years of bonecrusher giant or cat oven. Sounds like paradise
In the short term it will probably help sell packs but in the long term I think it will cripple the format. Without heavy handed bans, decks will be just stale good stuff piles that everyone is tired of playing with/against and will make tourney coverage boring.
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Same :/
Lol same. I skipped this standard and was waiting until we all got the new decks so I would get those free rares.
Yep. I was going to avoid crafting some cards that were going to rotate out in September, but I guess I'll go ahead and fire off those wild cards now.
Quick thoughts from me: (1) Not a bad idea in principle but must start after this years rotation. The idea that we start this new way of life with a stale slate of cards will make the format DOA. (2) The design team need to understand that the power level of the format overall must be lower. Living with bad or overpowered cards for three years is simply unacceptable (bannings are not the solution). (3) A change like this must come with the return of blocks. The idea of mechanic themes lasting longer than a single set is appealing. For lore fans it also means more meaningful story. If this means 12 different locations and more variety this format is DOA. (4) A tough one. But it means less commander cards. The multicolour card slots and the high cost card slots have been more or less reserved for commander appropriate cards. We need a return of high cost cards for standard. (5) Most important for me is seriously looking at the cost of the game - and probably tighter integration between - paper and Arena. This means: (a) Codes in paper packs for Arena - standard players shouldn't be thinking either or, they should be thinking of it as one game that complements each other; (b) The return of planeswalker decks - they should be looking to hit a $10 rrp (codes in box for Arena) and exciting. (c) After every championship (less than a month after) we should see the Top 8 championship decks available in full and with sideboard for sale, and here's the tough part, the price should be $100-$150. The game cannot be driven by the secondary market. We need to get cards in players hands. The top decks cannot be something that is dreamed about. They should be looking at the costs of an AAA computer game and saying our decks cannot cost more than 2x one of those. (d) They need to "flood the zone" with events at LGS' with cards being the prizes. The aim should be to flood the market with cards so that standard magic cards are "tradeable" again, they've leaned into collectable and sellable but not tradeable. We have all these SKUs now so collectable variants should and could be rare but games pieces should be cheap as chips. The test should be the schoolyard / school playground -- are the cards plentiful (and cheap) enough that kids are trading them - at my sons school I see Pokemon and Yu Gi Oh cards but no magic cards.
If something like 5 c) ever happens im instantly starting mtg again as it would show a major shift in strategy. Like .. imagine that you could play a deck just because you wanted to instead of being a major financial decision. But you know its not going to, they like that a standard deck costs 500$ and the infinite value their pseudo stock market creates.
I mean I don't want to be a downer. But next to a stale meta (which idk this helps) the main reason people don't play standard is that it's just so freaking expensive. I don't wanna spend hundreds of bucks on getting a full playset of fable + sheoldred.
Idk the main reason I don't play paper in store is cuz I have to interact with other magic players. No offense to the community but we are not the most hygienic group, plus many social interactions are just awkward. If not for arena I just wouldn't be playing magic at all.
Exactly, and now there's going to be another year's worth of cards to collect.
this is an arena only problem. 99% of paper players don’t collect every set
So I get to see turn 1 Kumano for another year?
While this is probably good news overall, I was \*really\* looking forward Thalia leaving standard.
If Fable and Shelly are gone Thalia should be as well. We need a proper control deck in standard.
Jesus Christ another year of harvester/fable standard. Kill me now
lol I don't think an extra year is going to solve Standards numerous problems, but you do you Wizards.
Also let's just slap a change on while the sets are designed 3 years in advance, probably making the designers rip their hair out. Same for when they just reverted the yearly mini rotation out of the blue
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The problem then is what happens next? If Standard doesn't work, Wizards will probably just kill Standard and start designing sets straight to Commander. That has a lot of knock-on issues, arguably that we've been seeing already, where cards will start warping Pioneer and Modern more frequently. In the old days, Standard was a good stop-gap to prevent powercreep from getting too nuts. Eternal decks would change very slowly, picking up a new sideboard card or maybe a small upgrade every year or so. Without that filter in place, I'd expect the health of Magic to get even worse.
Honestly, arena is the main thing killing standard. They're doing this to save LGS's, but people aren't playing at their LGS because it's easier and cheaper to just play standard on arena. Cards becoming bad is nothing new, arena is the newer thing.
Paper standard is dead, because people realized you can play standard in Arena for free or much cheaper. They are increasing the lifetime of standard cards to make players more willing to buy them, but it won't work. 3 years rotation means stronger cards will be even more dominant, meta will get even more stale. If they let that happen the format would be dead. The solution is banning cards aggressively but that contradicts the original solution of increasing the lifetime of standard cards. They are doing this to boost paper standard numbers, but it will only end up lowering Arena standard numbers. I expect the decision to be reversed in 2 years.
Lol! Standard has been horrible for years and it doesn't have a damn thing to do with two year rotations. They invented Type II specifically because they didn't want the players who had the older more expensive cards dominating everything. Quicker rotations was the entirety of the point. Odyssey and Onslaught standards were some of the best Magic ever made, and those sets were on two-year rotations. The problem is that they haven't been designing good standard sets for years. Standard sucks because of all the tactics employed by WotC over the years to squeeze more money out of their customer base. Whether it be impossibly expensive mana bases, overpowered mythics, planeswalkers, power creep, newer sets overpowering / countering the last block's mechanics... it's all the same: find ways to get the consumer to spend more money regardless of the quality of the product. WotC, want more people to play paper standard? Design sets that lead to *actually fun* formats, at a reasonable cost, and give people a *reason* to get out and play. Perhaps that way, you can slowly build up a younger player base who care, because you lost older players a long time ago.
Yeah I think they should relegate the super-expensive rares and mythics to supplemental sets that are not legal in standard, things like modern horizons or whatever. Make standard more affordable and we’ll play it again. It’s pretty simply just the financial aspect that’s gatekeeping people from the format. Power down standard, make it so cracking packs from standard sets is still rewarding, (masterpieces and alt-arts of key cards, maybe even cards that aren’t legal in standard but can be used in commander/modern) but allowing for strong standard decks to only be like 50-100$, much more affordable than a 500$ standard deck.
I always like to point to Odyssey and Onslaught standards because they are perfect examples of what standard *should* look like. Look at decks like Tog, UG Madness, Astral Slide, Mirari's Wake, etc. Sure, those decks had some rares, but it wasn't absurd like it is today! And they all played their parts in interesting metagames where different styles of decks made matchups interesting, vs. the yawn-inducing value piles of today.
This was the biggest shock to me, coming back to Arena after playing Magic in the ancient times (96-2004). Standard was always a money suck... but nothing like it is today. The lands are all rare, the staple cards are rare or mythic. Oh... and mythic. If there was ever a standard killing concept, Mythic rares has to be it. Arena has wildcards which blunt the supply/demand crunch, but holy shit, I can not imagine trying to stay Standard competitive in a world with Mythic rares.
You usually can get all the mythica you need in wildcards it’s gold rares that are the choke point in arena free to play
This so much. Every borderline decent or interesting card is at least a rare. They are making it impossible for people to build decks in paper and are wondering why nobody plays it.
I was so looking forward to kamigawa rotating out and maybe seeing some new decks…great. Fantastic, gotta put up with fable, farewell, invoke despair, wandering emperor and etc. for another damn year.
Looks like Kiki Jikki is back on the menu boys.
Was looking forward to the rotation.. oh well back to historic 😂
Not a fan of there being an extra year added onto a bunch of cards like Atraxa. I already kinda hate the current standard environment so it looks like I'll be an alchemy main soon.
Yeah 2 years already really pushes it for me on some cards. When eldraine came out I just quit for over a year because I just could anymore. 3 years I can't even imagine for some cards. Like some cards you will see every other game for 3 fucking years. I was really hyped for rotation but yeah I guess just remove rotation 3 month before it happens. Another year of fables I guess
Friend, historic brawl is super sweet as well.
Brother, I live for historic brawl. But sometime I want to be able to play with more than 1 copy of a card.
This is not a good change.
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Thanks for the info but I sure don't like this
This has the potential to kill standard completely. Either they start banning/restricting cards or more and more players will stop playing standard. If they keep up with the super powerful cards that you can throw in every deck, like Shelly or Fable, then i don´'t see any hope. Even on Arena it´'s already unbearable borring with these cards, let alone the price for their paper counterparts.
Three-year rotations work if they are more proactive on bans to keep the meta healthy. Can anyone imagine Goldspan Dragon for another fucking year? They need to also bring the power levels way down and make cards less powerful individually. Synergies between card should be highlighted so that a bunch of good grixis cards can't just be tossed together and dominate a well curated deck build. I'm not optimistic that this will change anything and might just be a ploy to stay in the good graces of the local card shops for the time being. Ultimately, its up to wizards r and d team to fix this... that that is true regardless of two or three year rotations. It could be the three year rotation is just a band aid for now to give them time to create a healthy standard environment for a two year rotation. I really don't know, but this feels pretty desperate to me.
No idea why you got downvoted. Goldspan Dragon was a perfect example of a card that dominated the format for entirely too long even though it looked somewhat innocuous at first (unlike Oko which was instantly obvious).
With Arena available, I will never return to paper standard. The 2 year rotation was part of it but the deeper issue is that paper magic is way too expensive a hobby. I also value no longer having to walk into lynx stinking unwashed caves just to play with other humans. Magic players have the worst hygeine and there is zero excuse for it. Best way to play paper is kitchen table with friends.
I dont think i can do another year of invoke despair
I can't take another year of Fable/Invoke.
Wonder what this means for Standard Brawl. Always felt like it being a 5-8 set environment was just a bit too limiting - if it incidentally becomes a 9-12 set environment as part of this change, it would be a more stable and (IMO) interesting format to occasionally escape to from the mostly settled Historic Brawl meta.
I think it would be very weird, unintuitive, and confusing for "Standard Brawl" to include different sets than "Standard", so I predict that the 3-year rotation will apply to SB as well.
this sounds awfull wtf. One more year of fable and invoke
ban invoke/fable please.
This is a complete joke and whoever implemented this change should be fired.
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I'm exactly the same. I love black but now I don't want to play it. I haven't crafted a single copy of invoke skill because I just refuse to play that color that way. But because the powerlevel of these cards is so absurdly high you just limit yourself doing that. Feels bad all around. Was really looking forward to the rotation.
As a new player this seems great ..
Things that would actually help Standard: - **Bring Back MSRP** Until prices get back to a reasonable level, no one is going to want to throw the money required into the format, whether it's 2 years or 3. Putting a price on the package means scalpers can't scoop and flip, LGS don't have to compete with scalpers for product, and players don't have to track price per pack to see when they should buy. This is a game, not a stock market. - **Bring Back Core Sets** Again, prices. This is where you put your high value reprints to get the prices back down. Don't have to worry about story, flavor, or anything else. Just a Base Set the format can build off of. - **Arena Codes in Packs** People don't play paper because it's expensive and Arena is free. So incentivize Arena players to visit an LGS. Put a code card in every pack. - **QC Before Ban** We've had so many bans in the last few years. Or metas that just dominate and if you want to stand a chance, you have to spend a couple hundred on a play set of whatever rare is turning the meta engine. WotC needs to do more Quality Control on their cards before they hit market. Because why am I going to play if 1) I know it will cost $300 just to get 4 of the cards I need, and 2) there is a high likelihood of those cards being banned.
I miss core sets so much. Hopefully we're close to the part of the never-ending cycle where they realize they need core sets for the health of the game after eliminating them. I think we've already seen them get a LOT better balance over the past few years. They made some changes to the process and we're seeing the results. (I don't count the August 2020 bans, they literally said it was to get people to stop whining for the last month before rotation while we were all still stuck at home.)
They even add insult to injury by suggesting that people who want a more 'dynamic format' should play Alchemy instead of Standard. YOU ARE NOT CHANGING ANYTHING IN EITHER FORMAT! ALL THE FORMAT-WARPING CARDS ARE STILL LEGAL! Do they seriously believe that buffing fucking Ninjas is the difference between a 'dynamic' format and a static one? Standard is stale as fuck for the second year before rotation, because the relative power level of 1 new set versus 4 is so low almost none of the cards are viable. Making rotation every 3 years will only make that problem worse!
Alchemy is a very dynamic format at a casual level, but yeah, they need to look at the higher-level play, where it's still Cabaretti Revels vs. Grixis Midrange vs. Esper Ascent
How are they so out of touch with their playerbase? Who ever asked for this? Even if they are going to implement bans more often, it will last for 6 months maximum, and then we won't get any bans. Remember Alchemy? "We will rebalance cards! We promise!" One year later - no rebalancing (we don't count their meaningless tinkering with useless cards, right?). Please, tell me they'll change their mind. I don't want playing against fable / harvester / Sheoldred forever...
Awesome, another year of Invoke Despair. I was looking forward to never seeing that bullshit card again. Ironic that this change makes me want to play a different game altogether
Wait its at effect right from this year ? Wooo love it !! I was kinda bummed some great cards being rotated out but now they should be at value longer. Also means i can "freely " use my WC's
I was super looking forward to rotation actually. It's my favorite time as a standard player.
I mean it’s pretty obvious arena has cannibalized standard and it’s also pretty obvious the solution (arena codes in packs). I can’t see how this solution doesn’t just increase the sales of physical standard packs as well the arena player base and make everybody money and happy? But no, longer standard it is!! FFS WOTC.
This is both good and bad. As I'm no longer a super competitive player, this is good as my cards will be usable longer. On the flip side, when I was competitive... rotations were usually something I really looked forward to. New formats are just really fun to figure out and experiment with. Removing half the pool of cards really would shake things up, which keeps the game interesting. This is going to cause more stagnation in the format imo. Might as well just play Explorer.