Magic The Gathering

[Haramburger]

The ONLY time when MTG is actually GOOD
The first two weeks after a set drops before the meta is sealed again, and only if you go to a actual tourney using a deck you didn't copy
The first month after a set drops doing drafts

Hearthstone in a nutshell, though the single player content is fun in short bursts when you're on a losing streak or to cool down.

 

[Hack for crack]

Hearthstone in a nutshell, though the single player content is fun in short bursts when you're on a losing streak or to cool down.

You need to have a room temp IQ to get any mental stimulation from Hearthstone

 

[Rich Evans Ayypologist]

The quality of commander depends wholly on your playgroup, really. If you're with sweats, it sucks. But I've intentionally dismantled most of my "powerful" decks in favor of fun ones that encourage interaction and politics, like Vazi and Parnesse. The game is so much more enjoyable when you don't have people playing one-dimensional solitaire at each other in a room.

Standard's deckbuilding always sucks because there hasn't really been much of an ability to make rogue decks for a long while - the meta is usually so pushed and so imbalanced because the design team is retarded that you really cannot go down to tier 2 and expect any trickiness. Limited has generally been alright, though. New Capenna's sins with white being too pushed didn't even make it unplayable per se.

Modern has been fucked since MH2. Modern content is fucking boring and nigh-unwatchable. Pioneer is... eh, it needs more time to brew, but I'll take it over modern. Legacy / Vintage are still great to watch.

Of course, Limited/Cube are the best ways to play the game, pretty straight-up. Commander I prefer for the social fun it involves, but if I just want a challenging game that requires some thought, legacy-vintage cube is right there and always good.

 

[MightyMorphin'Willbender]

Why oh why kicker and poison counter is back again.

Kicker is just kinda boring.
Poison counters are one of multiple reasons Commander is so gay.

I also don't understand the huge boner the designers seem to have for vehicles and equipment.
Suppose I should be glad there's no more energy counters.

 

[Rich Evans Ayypologist]

Kicker is back in every single set in some form or another really, so I don't mind it. It usually makes limited more interesting

But card design like that is sadly still in fucking vogue. Everything is so stupidly pushed - why is that a 4/4? Why is it 4 mana? A solid body that is often a +1, requires no setup, and gives you two semi-useful pseudo-anthems seems like it would either be 5 cmc or a 3/4 or 4/3 or -something-. The new Sheoldred is similarly pushed as shit statwise.

In and of itself it's not necessarily an issue, because neither of these cards are good enough for the competitive field by their nature - but it makes limited revolve more around cracking bombs, and it makes whatever does break through competitively shit like Goldspan Dragon. I hate the design philosophy they've latched onto since Eldraine of "just push everything, no drawbacks"

I also don't understand the huge boner the designers seem to have for vehicles and equipment.

commander. half of the legends look so stupidly impractical in anything but that format, which has never once needed and not particularly well benefitted from wizards insisting on giving it more and more attention

 

[Girl Named Sandoz]

I hate the design philosophy they've latched onto since Eldraine of "just push everything, no drawbacks"

FIRE go brrr

standard will always be shit, modern has been shit for a long time (when are they going to ban the monkey and elementals), and legacy/vintage cost a million dollars
pauper is still good and will always be relatively safe from this because there's only so much they can do with commons. i highly recommend anyone to check it out if you want a new format to play. it's also cheap af, competitive meta decks are around $40 or less and you can build fun jank for under $20 easily.

 

[Oddjob OTP]

Standard's deckbuilding always sucks because there hasn't really been much of an ability to make rogue decks for a long while - the meta is usually so pushed and so imbalanced because the design team is retarded that you really cannot go down to tier 2 and expect any trickiness. Limited has generally been alright, though. New Capenna's sins with white being too pushed didn't even make it unplayable per se.

I dunno, I did fuck off to explorer (sort of settling on Izzet Gearhulk Creativity and sometimes Azban Humans) but the standard I've played since New Caprenna is mostly Grixis Vampires and Azorious Heroic and they both are tier 2 (or so) and still feel pretty solid against most of the meta game. And they can be surprisingly cute decks sometimes.

I'd say the problem is more that good cards find themselves in every deck so most decks end up feeling like good thing piles in your favorite colors and not cohesive decks. Like the "you picked white" starter pack being Lumarch Aspirant, Brutal Cathar, and Skyclave Apparition, pick at least 8 of 12. It's not even so much that those cards are pushed (though they are) it's that there are very few synergies, themes, or tribes that are good enough for anything but limited. For example I think I saw my first blitz card other then Tenacious Underdog in explorer today, a Ziatora's Envoy in a jund food deck. And he was good! He blitzed out while I had shields down, found a Mayhem Devil, sacced himself and killed my lumarch aspirant. But even a good card won't work if you have to put in a bunch of shitty cards to have any synergy at all around him in standard.

 

[Rich Evans Ayypologist]

will always be relatively safe from this because there's only so much they can do with commons.

Didn't UR delver start exploding because they downshifted Swiftspear from uncommon to common?

Mayhem Devil,

then that weren't no standard deck. Explorer and Pioneer have a little more variety to them, and could shape up into fine formats if wotc doesn't sleep on shit like inverter-oracle again (and, inexplicably, refuse to ban the actually problematic card rather than the cool-ass one)

Grixis Vampires and Azorious Heroic and they both are tier 2 (or so) and still feel pretty solid against most of the meta game.

So the thing is, when you play the T2 decks against each other, it's actually pretty fun - and if you make a really whacky deck, like I had one built around exploiting Body Launderer, it's a lot of fun and really wide open.

And then you look at breakdowns like this one. That metagame is almost as bad as the one there was from before Epiphany was banned, and it's for a lot of the exact same damn cards.

 

[Danny.exe]

Didn't UR delver start exploding because they downshifted Swiftspear from uncommon to common?

Mono-Red Kiln Fiend did. Hit up to 20% of the meta at one point, if not more.
I've had some success running it in UR though, along with Izzet Charm.

 

[Oddjob OTP]

then that weren't no standard deck. Explorer and Pioneer have a little more variety to them, and could shape up into fine formats if wotc doesn't sleep on shit like inverter-oracle again (and, inexplicably, refuse to ban the actually problematic card rather than the cool-ass one)

That's my point, there's no good payoffs to sacrifice in standard because WotC balances most of it's color themes in sets on limited power level and when they actually produce cards good enough to see play outside of standard like Ledger Shredder it's basically a surprise to everyone.

So the thing is, when you play the T2 decks against each other, it's actually pretty fun - and if you make a really whacky deck, like I had one built around exploiting Body Launderer, it's a lot of fun and really wide open.

And then you look at breakdowns like this one. That metagame is almost as bad as the one there was from before Epiphany was banned, and it's for a lot of the exact same damn cards.

Nowhere near as bad. Black actually plays creatures above 1 cmc and red actually plays creatures other then Goldspan Dragon. Standard was pretty much just mono white aggro, mono green aggro, mono black control and izzet turns and/or dragons. I still say that they should have banned Lier and Hullbreak Horror instead of Epiphany though. The only really bad thing about current standard other then everything being a good things pile that makes games all feel the same is that midrange is still pretty weak.

Also in cool reprint news:


Liliana of the Veil is back and in standard soon™

 

[Ebonic Tutor]

Also in cool reprint news:
View attachment 3617573

Liliana of the Veil is back and in standard soon™

Significant lack of tiddy... but I do kinda like the alt art.

 

[Reaper King]

Seems like some of the new card in the Dominaria set are going to be bringing Phyrexian stuff back. While I don't mind infect counters, they are fun to play with. There's even a card that'll let you pay a phyrexian mana instead of blue for blue spell you want to cast. Can't see that being taken advantage of.

 

[Rich Evans Ayypologist]

Standard was pretty much just mono white aggro, mono green aggro, mono black control and izzet turns and/or dragons.

So the snapshot at that time (between Crimson Vow release and January) was like 30% mono-G, 20% Izzet Dragons, 15% other-izzet, 10% monowhite. You step into the room and 75% of the competitive decks are already set in stone. The current one isn't quite so bad, but it's still like 50% of the meta being defined by 3 or so top-tier decks; the fact that Esper only has the 10% showing is surprising, given that it's absurdly strong, but that may be because it has more recent cards and thus requires more wildcards.

As to Alrund's, eh, I think it's worth hitting that card over Lier or any of them. I can make you discard Lier. Foretell was really the issue with Epiphany, since otherwise it would've done what most extra turn spells do - not a whole lot.

There's even a card that'll let you pay a phyrexian mana instead of blue for blue spell you want to cast.

That one's actually pretty fine, since it's only for blue permanent spells, it's only one blue pip, and it in and of itself requires you to run blue. Issues with the old phyrexian symbols were that Wizards was fucking stupid and decided that they should both let you speed the card out and remove any and all mana costs associated with it. Gitaxian Probe has to have been designed by someone who just never played the game before or something; I can't find any other explanation for that stupid card.

 

[Flexo]

Dominaria United teaser posted.

 

[Ebonic Tutor]

Dominaria United release notes leaked

 

[Retink]

I've been listening to some of the Dominaria United lore and it really sucks. They decided to make the Phyrexians a threat by making them generically powerful and one of those enemies that just pulls shit out of their ass for occasion, when what made Phyrexia interesting in the past was that they weren't actually that strong, they just had a shit ton of resources and were always experimenting. Their negators weren't just super powerful liquid metal shapeshifters, they were actually pretty straight forward but they constantly showed up with new weapons and had to be hunted down because if they returned to where they came from and basically provided their results the tech would be incorporated into future negators.

I'm also not a fan that they just have shapeshifters now that pop in and replace whole societies. They had sleepers and shapeshifters in the past, but they generally used corruption and bribery instead of just bodysnatching in the past. Volrath, Davol, and the goblins of Mercadia weren't just replaced, they all joined because they liked what the Phyrexians were selling, and even Gix was made out to be a revolutionary who just ended up being happy to be a gestapo when his allied faction won.

I'm just tired of all media getting this treatment where they take interesting villains who are more complex and just an industrial threat and turning them into some kind of boring all powerful super villain who just can do anything all the time. I'm also just annoyed by all the member berries, because revisiting Dominaria is fun, but they don't need to bring back random characters that died or make the same characters but with different names because they're descendants of those characters. That's just shit writing.

 

[Logistical Nightmare]

This is feeling like war of the spark all over again but without any of the story set up (what little there was). I’m actually digging the concept of the phyrexian’s slowly completing the main planeswalkers we know and care about, but it feels rushed to do it this way. I would have preferred if they’d taken a few more sets to flesh the goals out, maybe give us a bit more behind the scenes stuff that isn’t buried in story articles. Can’t believe I long for the days of Ixalan’s storyline.

 

[Ebonic Tutor]

This is feeling like war of the spark all over again but without any of the story set up (what little there was). I’m actually digging the concept of the phyrexian’s slowly completing the main planeswalkers we know and care about, but it feels rushed to do it this way. I would have preferred if they’d taken a few more sets to flesh the goals out, maybe give us a bit more behind the scenes stuff that isn’t buried in story articles. Can’t believe I long for the days of Ixalan’s storyline.

I long for the days of Ravager Affinity standard (like original OG standard affinity, and damage was on the stack. So you could do dumb shit involving Ravager and your other dudes. Like hit em with a 4/4 myr enforcer and then sac him and get the +1/+1 counter added before the Ravagers damage got added.)

Also, you had Skullclamp, cause why not.

You'd be fighting guys trying to Tooth and Nail (using tron of course, cause it was in that standard) and plop Kiki-Jiki and Darksteel Colossus out on you, copy him swing for 11. Next turn swing for 22.

It was dumb, but in a much simpler way.

They did eventually ban skull clamp, then ravager and everything else associated with the deck almost in standard. If you held onto it for a while though it became useful again in Modern to a degree, mostly the ravagers but there were a few other things.

 

[Girl Named Sandoz]

I long for the days of Ravager Affinity standard (like original OG standard affinity, and damage was on the stack. So you could do dumb shit involving Ravager and your other dudes. Like hit em with a 4/4 myr enforcer and then sac him and get the +1/+1 counter added before the Ravagers damage got added.)

Also, you had Skullclamp, cause why not.

You'd be fighting guys trying to Tooth and Nail (using tron of course, cause it was in that standard) and plop Kiki-Jiki and Darksteel Colossus out on you, copy him swing for 11. Next turn swing for 22.

It was dumb, but in a much simpler way.

They did eventually ban skull clamp, then ravager and everything else associated with the deck almost in standard. If you held onto it for a while though it became useful again in Modern to a degree, mostly the ravagers but there were a few other things.

i've honestly never understood why so many people dislike higher power level standard
one of my favorite times in magic was war/eldraine/theros standard. yeah uro was pretty broken but even crazy jank could be competitive because of the overall power level

 

[Ebonic Tutor]

i've honestly never understood why so many people dislike higher power level standard
one of my favorite times in magic was war/eldraine/theros standard. yeah uro was pretty broken but even crazy jank could be competitive because of the overall power levelView attachment 3622208

God I got Uro/Oko mixed up... I didn't like Uro in modern much either tbf.

Oko was miserable in Modern / Legacy cause everybody ran him and it just became running elk food/baubles at people til somebody fucked up or possibly combo'd with Urza in the case of modern.