This is exactly how I feel about standard. Well put. Hopefully, the format will become more diverse and less about who has the fastest hand.

I feel the same way about Standard now. I swear I remember a few months ago someone on the official MTG site touting how they were going to “slow down the format”. When is that going to happen exactly? After we lose Wrath and gain Ball Lightning and Lightning Bolt, the format’s just going to be even faster, and it has already sped up considerably even in the past few months.

I’m also with you on enjoying Urzatron and Solar Flare a lot more than decks these days. Decks that took a few early turns to set up and then could recover from whatever early damage was dealt to them often had victories that meant something. There’s little interaction between decks now, and there will be even less when M10 hits and everyone and their dog are dying to show off the Bloodbraid Elf/Ball Lightning decks they (and everyone else) “came up with on their own”.

Or they’ll be playing token decks, completely unhindered by Wrath and all but immune from Volcanic Fallout and Infest thanks to the overwhelming amount of mass-pumping effects.

This is going to be a very sad format for a while until Zendikar hopefully brings us some good tools to make a deck that can recover from a two-drop swinging away for four damage a turn.

Oh something i forgot… the play where the new rules makes the good players play not possible seems wrong… it sounds more like the “good” player is a shady mofo who needs to be watched. That play was completely and utterly illegal and theres no way it can work how he wants it to… No matter how he words it he gets wrecked by the pump spells there..

This is the same thing Randy Buehler said about the format in his response to the M10 rules changes. Randy pointed to this <a href=”http://thethinkinggamer.com/2009/06/10/threats-to-magic-2.aspx”title=”here” as a much larger threat to the game than the new combat changes.

This is also the same reason the pros in Hawaii seemed to all hate the format. In the interviews with some of the players on The Magic Show the comment was made that they’d never heard so many people apologizing for their win.

I totally understand this. I played a lot of Alara block constructed on MODO, and I usually played control decks, and never in my Magic playing career have I ever been so afraid of an empty board on my opponent’s side. Not even in Mirrodin block. I’d look at my board, and almost automatically subtract six(3 from Bloodbraid, 3 more from getting Blightning’d) when considering what to do. I just don’t know anymore.

“Continuing the trend, I’ll take this one step further and add a clarification to the stack.”

Rumor is that clarification will no longer use the stack in M11.

I don’t think the speed of the creatures in standard is the real problem, they aren’t worse than turn 3 hasted Blastoderms or any number of Affinity shenanigans, the problem is that because of the power creep in creatures players can put a lot of potential damage on the board without investing the number of cards they would have in the past. Who would have thought there would be a time when Lightning Bolt would not only be reprinted, but also be too weak to kill the best threats in Standard?

Board sweeping effects used to help control decks win the game. Now you need them just to try and stay even. I love creatures, I love creature combat which is why limited is so much fun, but the creatures they are printing are so dangerous that the game is starting to have the VS system feel where if you miss your curve drop you’re so far behind it’s nearly impossible to come back.

@ProdigalT: I agree with the comment about Elder Mastery. That’s fair. And I think by and Large limited is fine, it’s just the potential for being blown out seems quite great to me. If you don’t have an effective two drop followed by a three drop it’s very hard to keep up, if at all. Unless of course you happen to have another swingy card, like Martial Coup, or Bit Blast, or similar. Anyway, I love Alara draft as much as anyone. I’ve done two already today which is about par for the course, but the thing is I always feel like my losses are much more frustrating than other formats and stem from not being able to adequately “play” Magic.

For example two matches just today. One I had Zombie Outlander, 2 Darklit Gargoyle, and a Wall of Denial. My opponent was at 5 with all green dudes and no fliers. I win next turn. He plays Defiler of Souls. I can’t come back and lose. My hand was Master Transmuter and Cloudheath Drake as well.

Another game I stabilize at four and and have four power to swing with. He’s at seven or so. He draws…Absorb Vis.

Now the latter game doesn’t even seem relevant to the argument, and maybe I’m just venting there, but I just get the feeling sometimes that there are too many topdecks in this format that can turn a game someone has actually worked hard to win, into one that the player who played poorly can. Just my two cents though.

Excellent article Frank.

I’m generally in agreement with your thoughts on standard. Attempting to come back into a format is difficult when 2 drops attack for 4 and 4 drops attack for 3 while spurting out Boggart Ram-Gangs. Not to mention a combo deck in which every card is a combo piece. I’ve skipped out on PTQs because the thought of enduring 8+ rounds of the format is simply unbearable.

However, players help to create formats. “If I were playing Reveillark and I didn’t draw one of the, say, two Paths the deck runs, I’d have to wait until turn four to wrath.” The best possible way to alleviate this dilemma is to…not run two Paths. I played a seemingly subpar list of Reveillark the other week that was much more tuned to be aggro decks (4 Paths, 4 Wall of Denial, 4 Wall of Reverence, even Unmakes) and the deck performed surprisingly well. Even if a format appears to be stale, consider the number of unexpected decks and cards that pop up and perform extremely well at PTs (Swans, Extended Elves, Knollstorm, Sonic Boom, etc). It requires a lot of creative thinking and testing to find a niche in the format and take full advantage of it, but I think there may be plenty of good cards in the current format that aren’t going to be even tested because the general consensus is that it’s not a constructed worthy card. Sometimes, in my opinion, even being unexpected can accommodate for the fact that the card isn’t quite as powerful.

I really enjoyed the article, looking forward to more in the future.

@ JaGo: I remember when you and I were like the only two in our group who were like, “I think this guy is going to be really solid,” in reference to Putrid Leech. Well, look how that turned out.

@Frank Lepore:

I also remember you saying Enlisted Wurm was good, and me not believing you.

Then again, I DO remember you saying Nulltread Gargantuan is good.

I saw the reply where the author claimed he missed Solar Flare and the decks of that time and I just couln’t belive what I was reading. To me, that is like the worst Magic ever. Watching 2 Solar Flare decks (or similar deck) going at each other was like watching two stiff dinosaurs going at each other. The games usually ended beacuse one side drew a little more gas the other and/or one side won the Persecute fight. Normaly a true attrition war, which is terrible if you ask me. And to me, that is not a good example of interaction.

Interaction has a cost. The more interactive cards you play usually means that your deck isn’t very proactive. And that is the nature of the game, it’s better (in general) to be proactive than reactive.

THere is a little trick here, that u havent understood. I will tell u what it is.

The power-leveled spells are all Multicolored or have intense mana restrictions. Take cryptic Command for example. 3 Blue. In the older days, 3 blue , would categorize a spell to a Mono Blue deck. Playing Doran , on 3rd turn or even more turn 2 , would require extreme luck or Birds of Paradise. Casting Putrid Leech and then Boggart ram Gang would require , either painlands or more mana. The nasty thing in this format is the diverse mana base. Same goes to Cruel Ultimatum. Just try to built these decks without the manabase from Lorwyn. This is why in Alara Block, many players felt that the mana base was clunky. They were not used to Sacrifice anything in order to built their decks and play their multicolored spells

Think about 5cb the 1st edition. This deck splashed Cryptic Command as its only blue spell. Now how absurd is this? This is why R&D is trying to fix this. This is why Forsythe told in one of his interviews that the interaction bettween Vivid Lands and Reflecting Pool should be gone. Vivid Lands in particular.

As a player that re-started in Alara block and has no lands from Lorwyn, i can tell you that my powerful spells from Alara (Rhox War Monk for example) often come 1-2 turns slower than they should. Putrid Leech in block? There were many ocassions that u are stuck with taplands and Borderposts. I actually use Rupture spire. Sure i play the powerful Leech but 30% of the time this occurs in turn 3. The Rare lands form M10 enhance this interaction.

To sum it up , playing powerful, colored intensive spells should come at a cost. After Vivid Lands and filter lands disappear, that will be the case. Im expecting your comments then.

@Balthazar - The point is that those decks, along side aggressive Red, RG, RW, BW, etc decks were viable not so long ago. You could also play other, non Tron, non-Solar Flare control decks, if that was your thing.Now, those slow, grinding control decks are more or less unplayable (I guess Lark gets some love in that category). It’s irrelevant that you don’t like those decks, or that I hate hate hate WW as a strategy. The point is that in a healthy, enjoyable format, both should be reasonable options.

I would normally say that I trust R&D here, but every Block rotation over the past few years (since Kamigawa left us, I’d say) has made T2 worse. Time Spiral was worse than Kamigawa, Lorwyn/Shadowmoor was worse than Ravnica…Actually, Alara could be every bit as good as Time Spiral, or better. Lorwyn/Shadowmoor just really wreck things for me, though. Makes it hard to tell. I really do hope they can right this ship, though.

Man Frankie, your group is terrible if you and only one other person touted Putrid Leech. All five of our crew said nothing short of “This guy is f’ing nuts!!!” when we saw Leech spoiled.

While I don’t disagree with your statements on power creep and their effect on standard — and to a lesser extent, limited — I feel that Magic is a constantly evolving, ever-changing game that will one day soon have the formart re-emerge into something more interactive and overall enjoyable. I feel this power creep to ultra-efficient creatures is just Magic’s way of getting newer and more casual players into the mix, and it will only be temporary.

I have the exact same feelings regarding Standard, although I am still optimistic because we get rotations every year, and with the new Core Set policy, new Core Sets every year. If taking out Wrath of God turns out to be a mistake on par with say, putting Necropotence in 5th Edition, we only need to wait one year rather than 2 to get it back.

::crosses fingers that Zendikar will be Masques v3.0::

“::crosses fingers that Zendikar will be Masques v3.0::”

Minus Rishadan Port of course.

DAKON
(The power-leveled spells are all Multicolored or have intense mana restrictions. Take cryptic Command for example. 3 Blue. In the older days, 3 blue , would categorize a spell to a Mono Blue deck. Playing Doran , on 3rd turn or even more turn 2 , would require extreme luck or Birds of Paradise. Casting Putrid Leech and then Boggart ram Gang would require , either painlands or more mana. The nasty thing in this format is the diverse mana base. Same goes to Cruel Ultimatum. Just try to built these decks without the manabase from Lorwyn.
Think about 5cb the 1st edition. This deck splashed Cryptic Command as its only blue spell. Now how absurd is this? This is why R&D is trying to fix this. This is why Forsythe told in one of his interviews that the interaction bettween Vivid Lands and Reflecting Pool should be gone. Vivid Lands in particular.)

This is what I was thinking.
The problem is not the power level of the cards but the fact that you can play them in any deck in any combination of colors losing nothing.
They are balancing card effects and mana costs just like they have been doing all this years but we never got all the colors open. The dont know what they are doing.
Colors should mean that you must choose the best cards in each color and add sub optimal cards to complete the deck.

There are good players who netdeck and there are good players that build their own decks, the ones that netdeck to the top32 won’t see the value of leech until it shows up in top 8 decklists. Regardless, if they do well at professional events, they are solid players. I would also say it is a little odd to come into the comments and say someone’s play group is awful based on one anecdote that is easily explained.

The combat thing on the other hand, doesn’t change with the M10 rules, why would you want to play colossal might after damage stacks? I also don’t see the merit that damage stacking has here. Even a newer player can understand that he’d rather give a creature +4 power and trample before damage stacks.

@Gabriel

I agree with you 100% and it’s one of the main reasons that I am FOR the M10 rules changes. Combat right now at FNMs or any casual tournament is messy for the exact reason that was expressed in the original example. When you are playing a weaker player who might do something like play 2 pump spells at the same time, you are tempted to tilt things in your favor. I see it happen all the time where a more seasoned player will say “Stack damage?” when a newer player doesn’t really know what that means. They will say “ok” and then play their card as if their creature hadn’t taken damage. The seasoned player knows these “suggestions” work in their favor most of the time and it is shady.

@JaGo

Don’t worry, given enough time and enough failed life experiences you too will have the knowledge to judge people you don’t know.

I didn’t mean to start out an all-out flame war here with my initial comments. Frank’s all to familiar with my playful ribbing, I do that to break the ice.

Let’s all just focus on the article and what it’s all about. I still stand by my feelings on my follow-up paragraph I generally agree with the comments Frank has made in his op-ed, and I think it was well written and concise. We’re all here playing Magic for the long haul, we’ll get through this aggressive stretch together and be playing in a format where control rules the day again before too long I bet. If not there’s always other formats to play until Wizards makes up their minds.

As soon as the format slows down the Magic community will complain about the format being too slow, we’re always good for that.

Standard isn’t really that fast. Compare the speed of modern standard decks to, say, Kamigawa-Ravnica Boros with their eight one mana 2/2s and absurd burn suites. The reason that Standard isn’t fun is not because aggressive decks are better than controlling ones, but that creatures are better than spells. Part of the reason that this is a problem is that creatures are less interactive than spells. Complicated board states aren’t so much an interesting strategic question as an irritating math problem.

The other part of the problem is that Wizards has found that the best way to improve the strength of creatures relative to spells is to make them harder to interact with. Kitchen Finks, Bloodbraid Elf, Cloudgoat Ranger, Ranger of Eos, and the other creatures that dominate standard are next to impossible to interact with positively individually. When you consider that you can expect to see every one of them in any large tournament, you realize it’s probably better to give up on trying to interact and just hope that your plan is better than theirs.

Of course, it’s not that much better when spells are much better than creatures. I don’t think that anyone is honestly wishing that they could play against Buehler blue again. But Wizards definitely pushed the pendulum too far with the current standard.

All that said, give it time. Lightning Bolt and Doom Blade are already evidence that Wizards is starting to push towards solid spells again. Let Lorwyn rotate and give us a mana leak in Zendikar and we’ll be most of the way there. In the mean time, draft a bunch to ease the pain.

“After this was declared, the Colossus player played double Colossal Might on the Colossus – which should not be said five times fast – without stopping to ask for responses or pass priority. It was at this point that his opponent said to him, ‘After first strike damage, kill it before the Colossal Might resolves?’”

How is that even slightly okay? As the situation is described, the Colossus player is in the declare blockers step. Without passing priority, that player casts Might, then again without passing priority, casts Might. Then, curiously, the Swans player singlehandedly stacks and resolves first strike damage, without permission, and does it before the two spells on the stack can resolve.

Perhaps you’ve taken some poetic license here. However, going by what you have described, and taking as correct the implication that this player is experienced at the tournament level - given their guilty reaction on being observed, they likely knew exactly what they had just done. I certainly would have taken that player aside for discussion. It’s possible that the Swans player should have been disqualified for cheating.

@Frank Lepore: Ok, now I see what you meant: The old rules would give unfair players more opportunities to cheat. Well, I don’t think those rules were made for that, but if they even help in these cases, why not? (I agree with David Zimet, such behavior should be answered with measures taken by a judge.)

@Gabriel: “[...] under M10 rules you have to play your pump spells before damage is dealt otherwise you don’t have a chance to play them [...]“. That’s right, but the non-first-strike creature deals its damage in the regular combat damage step, so the last chance to pump it would be the first strike combat damage step (e. g. when you want to wait and see whether it is likely that it survives that step). Unless Wizards changes the concept of two separate combat steps, of course.

We already use the new rules for a while now (in casual game), and I like them. It is true that the more experienced players who used combat damage stack “tricks” got used to them and now have to relearn and accept things. However, these tricks not only gave them an advantage over players who just seem to be resistant to understanding rules details. They could also hardly be justified with common sense. In future, a creature in combat has to take damage if it wants to hit the other one (the principle of “stand and deliver”), or, in other words: you have to decide whether to use a special ability or to let the creature participate in combat until the end (which can be fatal). You just can’t have it all.

Mario (Germany)

/agree with article

Shards block is my most disliked block in recent memory… lots of cool card, but for both limited and constructed it is unending frustration. I hope they bring things back to an RGD or LLM style of play, at least for limited.

Has Magic Lost Its Way?…

Your story has been summoned to the battlefield - Trackback from MTGBattlefield…

The format is not too fast in my estimation. The vast majority of the most powerful creatures are 3 and 4 drops and 1 really good two drop. The best removal in the format is Path to Exile and Terminate and Terror, i.e. pretty cheap on the curve. Just a matter of deck design and strategy. I feel like standard has a lot of options right now and is really interesting. I also feel like the best decks in the format are still able to be designed. I don’t think the riddle has been solved, if you will.

Frank, I completely agree with you on all points

I didnt love the new rules for magic combat, but im starting to grow ok with it….sometimes it will actually make you think MORE, not less, like when to pop sakura or mog fanatic…since you cant get the same effect you once were able to

Also, due to 2010 core set, we are only going to get faster (lightning bolt, ball lightning, Honor of the Pure, Harms way) I already have been playtesting a mono white deck that does turn 5 goldfish, massively resilient in creature confrontations (aka if one of my guys is blocked, it wont die) and has some minor disruption to boot…and thats only using 2 Lorywin block cards….so it will be easily sustainable in post rotation too

This all does seem quite daunting…there is a reason I had to take a break during my first 2 years at college…I cant keep up, both in cost and in time required….When the power of cards becomes exponentially stronger each set, how am I supposed to take a good deck from 3 months ago, and have ANY shot at all in even the local FNM? I dont…I have to go spend 100’s of hours playtesting and lots of money I dont have, just to have a shot at a local tournament…so I do completely understand yours and the Warp World player’s POV here

Keep up the good work on these articles..I very much enjoy reading them

I have to disagree on the first point. You can still cast spells between first strike and regular damage. And more to the point, you can still be slimy and try to confuse your opponent into accepting something other than what he actually did.

@Alex A: You’re wrong. As before, there will be an additional combat damage step when creatures with first strike or double strike are involved. As before, players get priority within each of those steps, and the steps only end when all players pass while stack is empty. The only difference is, with the new rules, the combat damage already has been dealt (and not only been assigned) when players get priority.

The comprehensive rules have been published now, read it here: http://www.wizards.com/magic/comprules/MagicCompRules_20090708.txt (rule 510.4 + 510.5).

@Mooncalf: Please read my comment of “July 2, 2009 | 6:09 am”, then Frank Lepore’s comment of “July 2, 2009 | 1:19 pm”, then “David Zimet | July 2, 2009 | 9:13 pm” and “Mario Haßler | July 3, 2009 | 4:41 am”.

I agree with a certain amount of this, particularly the cascade mechanic, but not so much the examples.

I mean if revillark is only going to run 2 path to exile, then it is going to get stomped as a control deck it has to react to the format, so it should be running 3-4 path, 4 mind stone to accelerate to 4 drops (wrath, sower etc) and finks to ensure it gets to the mid-late game where its card advantage will win. Control decks always have to adapt, if revillark (pre-M10) is built well it can take down aggro all day long.

In the Doran example you mention how they got the nut draw and won, but if the control deck had early interactions like path or, again, finks they could have held on. In the next game the Doran deck loses, you pass this off as mana screw, but this is not a fair assessment. Doran plays very powerful cards with accordingly restrictive costs, this stretches its mana base and makes it more susceptible to awkward draws, mana screw and for opponents to wreck them by wasting their bop or taking out a land. Therefore the greater power as seen in the first game nut draw is balanced by the mana restrictions (I am not claiming it is perfect though).

This has some interesting points, and I’d recommend that you scope out Randy Buehler’s blog post, which has some similarities. I would point out, however, that the problem that was presented with the Colossus (of many kinds) was only artificially solved by the rule changes. The true issue was a more experienced player trying to d*ck move his way out of a situation his deck can’t cope with. For example, when I used to play Upheaval-Tog years ago: an R/B Scuta player has some untapped lands and cards and I cast Upheaval and float 3. We bounce things back and I put Teeth down. He says, “Terminate.” He says that he announced floating the mana (which was untrue). I said that he hadn’t announced it or I would have cast Nightscape Familiar with Lapse backup (which was true). To solve the issue, I call over a judge who has no choice but to believe him about the mana. I ask him when he played Terminate. He said at the end of my 2nd main. I reminded him that I played my spells first main. The judge had no way to agree with him, so he ended up taking mana burn for 2 and losing. This whole episode was not a function of the rules, but rather utilizing a lack of clarity. I feel as though your example is assigning “new vs. old” rules values to the situation when it isn’t about them. It’s just about a player using rules to punish someone (justly, as I believe I did, or unjustly like the guy from your store.)

Sorry for the wall of text, but I have to address something else: There are other formats. You say, “Call me old fashioned but I don’t want either player to be on a three turn clock in all of their games.” That’s a standard combo-on-combo clock for a Vintage game one. I feel as though you are old-fashioned in that you value spells over creatures, but perhaps not old-fashioned enough to recall a turn three Birds/Instill/Stasis or turn one Dark Rit/Necro. I’m not trying to be a jerk, but I am trying to register my disagreements. The other formats are either ones of the past or those of the present; Legacy is entirely defined by the nature of its spells. For example, Natural Order is much more important than the Progenitus it finds, and the Force of Will that counters it is far more important than the Trygon Predator it pitches. I’ve stopped playing Standard for the very same reasons that you are concerned about it. The next Extended season should hopefully reflect a dominance of countermagic and skill-intensive play like you seem to hope for, with Faeries, Tron, Dredge, Scepter, and maybe even fun decks like Eggs making a show. This has historically been true, like the Extended format at the time of Ravnica’s release. The PT LA top 8 featured two Tog and a Scepter-Chant beating Boros and Madness when Boros decks were constantly winning standard events.

To quote the Hitchiker’s Guide: “Don’t Panic.”