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This thread is for discussion of this week's Latest Developments, which goes live Friday morning on magicthegathering.com.

This is very telling:

Aggro → Midrange → Ramp/Combo → Control/Disruptive Aggro

Note how there's no arrow pointing back towards aggro.  This is very telling when the best deck in the format for the past 4 years have been either Control or Disruptive Aggro decks, with the exception of the one year when there wasn't a single playable card for either of those archetypes.  For reference:

LOR/ALA: Faeries (Disruptive Aggro, or Control, depending on your definition)
ALA/ZEN: Jund
ZEN/SOM: Caw-Blade (Control)
SOM/ISD: Delver (Disruptive Aggro)

So I suppose that's an accurate description of the Standard metagame.  It's kind of disappointing that R&D appears to engineer the format to act in that way.

What amuses me is how he says they're very happy with how things have worked out since adopting this model...and then in the very next paragraph talks about how Stoneforge Mystic and Snapcaster have messed up these plans...

Because there have been so many Standard environments without either one of those cards, recently... It's definitely not like as soon as the first mistake rotated out (well, was banned, but whatever), they printed the second.

Aug 9, 2012 -- 9:19PM, Ertai87 wrote:

This is very telling:

Aggro → Midrange → Ramp/Combo → Control/Disruptive Aggro

Note how there's no arrow pointing back towards aggro.  This is very telling when the best deck in the format for the past 4 years have been either Control or Disruptive Aggro decks, with the exception of the one year when there wasn't a single playable card for either of those archetypes.  For reference:

LOR/ALA: Faeries (Disruptive Aggro, or Control, depending on your definition)
ALA/ZEN: Jund
ZEN/SOM: Caw-Blade (Control)
SOM/ISD: Delver (Disruptive Aggro)

So I suppose that's an accurate description of the Standard metagame.  It's kind of disappointing that R&D appears to engineer the format to act in that way.

Reading the article belies that.  He specifically says aggro is supposed to be able to exploit control.

That said, I kinda wonder how cards like Snapcaster are supposed to fit this model.  I mean, they knew very well the card was tournament viable, but they also knew the card is far too cheap and useful to not be a strong counter to aggro, so why print it like that if they're hoping for controlling decks to be anything less than dominant?

Aug 9, 2012 -- 9:27PM, carrionpigeons wrote:

Aug 9, 2012 -- 9:19PM, Ertai87 wrote:

This is very telling:

Aggro → Midrange → Ramp/Combo → Control/Disruptive Aggro

Note how there's no arrow pointing back towards aggro.  This is very telling when the best deck in the format for the past 4 years have been either Control or Disruptive Aggro decks, with the exception of the one year when there wasn't a single playable card for either of those archetypes.  For reference:

LOR/ALA: Faeries (Disruptive Aggro, or Control, depending on your definition)
ALA/ZEN: Jund
ZEN/SOM: Caw-Blade (Control)
SOM/ISD: Delver (Disruptive Aggro)

So I suppose that's an accurate description of the Standard metagame.  It's kind of disappointing that R&D appears to engineer the format to act in that way.

Reading the article belies that.  He specifically says aggro is supposed to be able to exploit control.

That said, I kinda wonder how cards like Snapcaster are supposed to fit this model.  I mean, they knew very well the card was tournament viable, but they also knew the card is far too cheap and useful to not be a strong counter to aggro, so why print it like that if they're hoping for controlling decks to be anything less than dominant?

Snapcaster doesn't really counter aggro, Restoration Angel and Blade Splicer do. Without them, Zombies has a very good matchup against delver

Aug 9, 2012 -- 9:19PM, Ertai87 wrote:

So I suppose that's an accurate description of the Standard metagame.  It's kind of disappointing that R&D appears to engineer the format to act in that way.

It's not that they make us a few decks of each category. This division has existed for a long time, and we have known how each category is supposed to act against one another. In fact, it's beneficial that the people that balance the game (among other things) know this, because, as the article says, they can print powerful things in every category, giving every one a chance (theoretically).

EDIT: What's with the messed-up colors in Grim Monolith 's picture, by the way? 

When blocking isn't a "thing," each one of your creatures is just a down-payment investment that depreciates your opponent's life total by a rate equal to its power every turn, and deck design is about nothing but figuring out what the most efficient way to do that is without losing all your guys to removal.

If blocking is ever profitable (in a two-player game, and excluding the chump-block sense where the alternative is immediate reduction to 0% Win Probability), then attacking isn't, hence ideal play would dictate that the attack never takes place. The "blocking problem", if indeed it is one, is a direct consequence of that, and nothing more.

Blocking doesn't always mean "blocking profitably". The game is more interesting when chump blocking, gang blocking and trading are possible good moves, too, as Limited as that sounds.

There's also the "aggro gambit": I lose creatures to your blocks but still get enough damage through from others to eventually win the game.

This article has been long due! I image I'll link to it often in the future.

Aug 9, 2012 -- 9:19PM, Ertai87 wrote:

This is very telling:

Aggro → Midrange → Ramp/Combo → Control/Disruptive Aggro

Note how there's no arrow pointing back towards aggro.

I think it's pretty clear from the text of the article that this was meant to be turned into a circular diagram with arrows pointing from C/DA back to Aggro.

And yes, I have to disagree with SadisticMystic's claim that an attacker would never consider it a net positive attack step if any one of their creatures gets blocked.

This is disappointing. This is really, really disappointing. As SadisticMystic pointed out above, turning the format into creatures-only DOESN'T encourage creature interaction. It turns it into one of the following:

1. I have the advantage in creatures, so I can attack without fear. If he blocks, I trade favorably; if he tries to race, I win.
2. I do not have the advantage in creatures, so I cannot attack. I'm just going to wait to drop Bomby Mythic Rare and then win.
3. I have a creature with evasion, so I'm going to attack with that and leave everything else back.
4. I am playing a heavy aggro deck like RDW, so blocking does not exist. I am going to attack every turn unless there's a really persuasive reason not to.

As you see, NONE of those involve complex combat calculations. There's no calculated risk in straight-up creature fights. You know that you're going to win or lose, barring combat tricks, which continue to get worse (no Giant Growth, depleting stores of removal, HEXPROOF EVERYWHERE). So you attack when it's advantageous, and don't when it's not. This translates to a lot of racing and stalling, and very little actual interaction.

Another problem is how important it is who goes first when creatures are involved. Here are two examples using mirrors in today's popular decks:

First, RG Aggro. Player 1 lands Huntmaster of the Fells. Player 2 lands Huntmaster of the Fells. Player 1 untaps, draws, plays a land, and passes turn. During Player 2's upkeep, Player 1's Huntmaster flips first and snipes the enemy Huntmaster, putting him in a commanding lead. This is a commonly accepted scenario for this mirror, and one in which the player who is on the play has an immense advantage.

Second, UW Delver. The player who goes second is always on the back foot in many, many ways. He's ALWAYS going to be behind in tempo, barring extreme luck. He can't make calculated decisions to hold back mana for a counterspell, because his opponent will always end up in the lead. His opponent can wait until turn 4 and then hold mana for a Restoration Angel or Mana Leak, knowing he already has the advantage in tempo. Everything goes the way of the player who plays first.

When Control and Combo are involved, it isn't this cut and dry. The cards from the Control player traditionally have more power, because they are answers rather than threats. They are able to neutralize threats for less mana, and will often generate card advantage.  This is fine, because the Control player is on the back foot for the whole game until they stabilize and land a finisher like Mahamoti Djinn: nothing more than a big body that's on-color. Combo similarly likes having more cards because it means they have more pieces of the puzzle, although it's also happy going first because then it can get the combo off earlier.

The final issue with this stupid creature metagame is the way it's being implemented: with huge, swingy creatures. A player lands a Titan, and everything's pretty much over. If you look at the best Control decks in the format, they pretty much boil down to: turn 1-3 play a couple of target removal spells and some acceleration, turn 4 play a sweeper, turn 5 or 6 drop a Titan and hope it's enough. These dumb creatures are now HOW you stabilize, not what you do ONCE you've stabilized. The reason that's inappropriate is that it makes the game much more luck-reliant. In a standard Control-Aggro matchup, Aggro just needs to get ONE creature to stick in order to win. It matters much less which creature it is. Similarly, Control needs just ONE removal spell to stabilize. It matters much less which removal spell it is. Now, it's about whether you can get the right creature AND enough land to play it. But once you do play it, the game ends. That's wildly inappropriate, because games suddenly become luck-of-the-draw. How dull. Don't get me started on Delver. Some games, it flips on turn 2 and you have a 7-turn clock starting right off the bat (more like 4 once that Runechanter's Pike gets equipped). Some games, it never flips and it's a vanilla 1/1 in a tempo deck. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

I really hope you guys at Wizards realize soon how terrible this is for the metagame. You're turning the game into Sorcery-speed, when all interaction happens at Instant-speed. You're turning it into a topdeckfest. You're turning it into Delver Goldfish, instead of the calculations of Control. It's just sad.

EDIT: Oh, I forgot about Bonfire of the Damned. You know, maybe it isn't a problem with a creature-centric metagame. Maybe it's just that R&D is terrible at making cards these days. That could be it too.

Aug 9, 2012 -- 9:19PM, Ertai87 wrote:

This is very telling:

Aggro → Midrange → Ramp/Combo → Control/Disruptive Aggro

Note how there's no arrow pointing back towards aggro.  This is very telling when the best deck in the format for the past 4 years have been either Control or Disruptive Aggro decks, with the exception of the one year when there wasn't a single playable card for either of those archetypes.  For reference:

LOR/ALA: Faeries (Disruptive Aggro, or Control, depending on your definition)
ALA/ZEN: Jund
ZEN/SOM: Caw-Blade (Control)
SOM/ISD: Delver (Disruptive Aggro)

So I suppose that's an accurate description of the Standard metagame.  It's kind of disappointing that R&D appears to engineer the format to act in that way.

I agree with you in that Aggro vs Control balance has somewhat shifted to favor Control. I think it is a direct result of R&D's decision to make better creatures. All archetypes benefitted from that, but Aggro benefitted somewhat less and Control somewhat more, resulting in that Aggro now can have three 2/2s on turn 2 more consistently, but Control can now have Blade Splicer and Restoration Angel on turns 3 and 4, which stem the bleeding much better than Wrath of God/Day of Judgment it used to rely on.

Another article showing that the people behind the game know very little about it. Look at the format that most people woudl say is the best, Modern, why is it good? Because there is aggro, combo and control.

So they've intentionally made the format worse, control is very interactive, it's the most interactive archetype, so it's worth having in the format for sure. What about Combo? How is ramp more interactive than something like Twin was? Answer is that it isn't.

You can't remove two thirds of the game and make it better.

Aug 10, 2012 -- 4:08AM, CyrusBales wrote:

Another article showing that the people behind the game know very little about it.

Pretty much.

The first environment I took very seriously was Tempest/Urza's Standard

I am disappointed that Wizards doesn't hire people who have been with the game from its birth to oversee it. There is no shortage of candidates.

As someone who was playing during Tempest/Urza's Standard, I remember that environment caused a lot of people to quit Magic, since nothing beat Academy Combo, and Academy Combo was also unfun to play with/against.

An environment that requires one to play a deck that wins by attacking is little better than one that does not permit one to win by attacking. It's about choice.

Not content to merely no longer print cards like Aether Storm or Soul Barrier , Wizards has seen fit to reach into the past and retroactively neuter Winter Orb .

I'm sure they'd be comfortable printing any of those cards on a mythic bear, though. The previous sentence was steeped in cynicism.

******************

Just so this isn't entirely destructive criticism, here is one thing I'd do to fix the situation:

Stop it with all the "When cardname attacks," triggered abilities. Just changing it to "When cardname damages a player" would:

1. Enable decks that use cards like Hermetic Study / Fire Whip / Viridian Longbow / etc. for combo.

2. Balance cards like Primeval Titan .

3. Reward successful attacks, not just attacking for its own sake.

In general, the only abilities that should trigger on attacking are those that are only meaningful in the context of the pending combat. Chasm Drake should trigger when attacking. Conundrum Sphinx should not.

Thanks, Zac - it was great to see this written out!  I think in a year or two we'll reference this article as much as MaRo's writings about how design goals have changed.

I'm thinking "Disruptive Aggro" = what we formerly called "Aggro/Control".

I agree with the categorization of combo as the deck that tries to do something orthogonal to the game to win - to move the goalposts as it were.  I don't necessarily agree with making Combo something that only fits in the ****s in the metagame, though - it seems like if everything's balanced properly, it should be OK for combo to be strong (i.e. a consistent 25% of the metagame all the time) because Control and aggro/control should still be able to keep a lid on it.

I think the trick for making Combo viable is that you can make the parts stronger, but you have to make sure there's not an over the top anti-Control element that the combo decks can play to fend off their natural enemies.  For example, Pauper combo might use Gigadrowse to shut down mono-blue control; you probably don't want to have that available in a hypothetical metagame.

I love how zac put control on his diagram but never talked about it...

To barrow a part of a movie quote.

NOT EVEN WOTC KNOWS WHAT THERE DOING!

They don't need to wreck archetypes etc, if they just balanced things out. Replacing combo with ramp seems like a really bad move.

I do wonder if they have just stated this after the fact having seen how much of an error the format is, they then claimed to have made it that may on purpose, since poor intention seems better than ignorance.

I...I have no words...*shakes head*

There are two huge problems with this setup. First,

Aggro → Midrange → Ramp/Combo → Control/Disruptive Aggro

play the same. Their strategy is to play lots of powerful creatures and attack for the win. This makes for a lot of samey decks and a lot of samey games.

The only difference is when they win, which doesn't improve matters much. The experience of running and playing the deck is virtually the same. And this is supposed to be 62.5% of the metagame (75% if you include disruptive aggro, which at least plays somewhat differently)!

Next,

Aggro → Midrange → Ramp/Combo → Control/Disruptive Aggro

is where all the fun stuff happens (note: I don't mean instant-win combo, but what Zac called combo here) and it's squeezed into a little sliver of the metagame. You have a game where there is a tremendous variety of card effects that can do all sorts of amazing things and make for all sorts of creative, interesting, and fun decks that can do all sorts of fun stuff, from getting discount wurm tokens via Aquamoeba to suddenly Bidding an entire goblin army into play to soulshifting a Tallowisp back via a sacrificed Thief of Hope so that you can get the aura you need to coming up with clever combinations of stuff to get back with Revialiark.

No wonder standard is so dull.

Do you want to make blocking matter more? The problem with blocking is that removal effects are so extraordinarily powerful that playing creatures to block with is just plain worse. Why try to negate an attacker with a wall when you can Doom Blade it for the same amount of mana? Why don't you try drastically toning down removal effects and pumping up walls instead? Why not make the best removal Nettling-Imp based effects? More Tidal Waves perhaps? Trade in Bonfire of the Damned for Wall Tokens of the Damned?

They don't need to wreck archetypes etc, if they just balanced things out. Replacing combo with ramp seems like a really bad move.

In which way is Ramp worse than combo? At worse, both ignore the opponent until they go off and they both demand either counterspells or narrow answers to combat them. Let's go back to the past: 9th, Kamigawa and Ravnica standard is widely claimed as the most diverse standard format ever, with over 10 different tier 1 decks. How many viable "combo" decks were? Just one: Heartbeat of Spring. Was it even tier 1? No, it waxed and waned as the hate cards went in and out the sideboards. Which cards did that "combo" deck played?

4 Sakura-tribe Elder
3 Kodama's Reach
4 Heartbeat of Spring
4 Early Harvest
Sometimes Rampant Groth too.

That's right: the only "combo" deck played was actually a ramp deck. People may not be aware of it, but by calling that format "best Standard ever" and the current block "the best block ever" they are sending a very clear message about combo being unfun, undeserving of a 3rd portion of the metagame and ramp being a proper replacement of it.

and fun decks that can do all sorts of fun stuff, from getting discount wurm tokens via Aquamoeba to suddenly Bidding an entire goblin army into play to soulshifting a Tallowisp back via a sacrificed Thief of Hope so that you can get the aura you need to coming up with clever combinations of stuff to get back with Revialiark.

None of those examples is actually combo: UG Madness is a tempo deck, Goblin Bidding is an aggro deck and UW Reveillark is a control deck. They only have little combo elements on them and that's what you probably like. Do you really enjoy playing with or against pure combo decks like most Storm decks, UR Splinter Twin, Dredge or Academy? I doubt it, and the majority of people get tired with combo quickly. That's why combo should exist but at about 10 % maximum of any given metagame.

Nobody is calling INN block the "best block ever." Scars was an infinitely better draft format, and it's pretty mediocre on the constructed scale.

Also... what exactly was Ghost Dad if not a combo deck? 

Aug 10, 2012 -- 2:48PM, S1AL wrote:

Nobody is calling INN block the "best block ever." Scars was an infinitely better draft format, and it's pretty mediocre on the constructed scale.

Also... what exactly was Ghost Dad if not a combo deck? 

I was under the impression it was Tempo?

Aug 10, 2012 -- 2:02PM, javert wrote:

Just one: Heartbeat of Spring. Was it even tier 1? No, it waxed and waned as the hate cards went in and out the sideboards.

Do you even have any idea what you're talking about? Heartbeat was widely considered the best deck in the format for several months.

Aug 10, 2012 -- 3:15PM, Acritter wrote:

I was under the impression it was Tempo?

It was tempo/"disruptive aggro" (to use this article's terminology) that abused an engine card in Tallowisp to generate advantage. It's always been debatable whether that makes it "part combo" or not.

Husk could also been seen as combo in the same way that Affinity could be seen as combo in that while clearly an aggressive deck it had explosive synergy-abusing kills.

Aug 10, 2012 -- 3:17PM, Nyktos wrote:

Aug 10, 2012 -- 2:02PM, javert wrote:

Just one: Heartbeat of Spring. Was it even tier 1? No, it waxed and waned as the hate cards went in and out the sideboards.

Do you even have any idea what you're talking about? Heartbeat was widely considered the best deck in the format for several months.

Aug 10, 2012 -- 3:15PM, Acritter wrote:

I was under the impression it was Tempo?

It was tempo/"disruptive aggro" (to use this article's terminology) that abused an engine card in Tallowisp to generate advantage. It's always been debatable whether that makes it "part combo" or not.

Husk could also been seen as combo in the same way that Affinity could be seen as combo in that while clearly an aggressive deck it had explosive synergy-abusing kills.

The way I always understood combo was that it spent a few turns messing around and setting up the pieces (the best combo decks took zero turns, but we tend to not really like those ones), and then get an explosive series of plays off in one turn that take the combo player from being "behind" to instantly winning the game. Tempo and aggro are focused towards taking their opponent down piecemeal, instead of that one big play. The turns where you whack your opponent with Stromkirk Noble, Stormblood Berserker, and Chandra's Phoenix are just as important as the turn you play Hellrider and swing in for 16. Even if your Hellrider gets Mana Leaked, you've still done a lot of damage and can mostly rely on the creatures you already have to keep punching in those points. The Hellrider is just icing on the cake, so to speak. Am I making sense, or just coming up with arbitrary restrictions?

No, that's more less true, but there's some grey area. What if you're spending a few turns hitting your opponent, then making an explosive series of plays that instantly win the game? That's essentially how decks like Affinity (and to a lesser extent Husk) operate, and it's effective because putting pressure on your opponent makes it harder for them to hold back and just look for their combo answers.

I'd say the main issue is: what happens if the explosive play gets turned off? Say, the Grapeshot gets hit by Mindbreak Trap, or Hellrider runs headlong into a Doom Blade. In an aggro deck, they can just sit tight on their board position and keep on racing. In a combo deck, it's instant concession. I'm sure you know how Dredge players will just concede on turn 1 if their opponent lands a Leyline of the Void. That's the difference to me between aggro with explosive plays (just like pretty much every other deck) and combo.

Aug 10, 2012 -- 3:37AM, Acritter wrote:

This is disappointing. This is really, really disappointing. As SadisticMystic pointed out above, turning the format into creatures-only DOESN'T encourage creature interaction. It turns it into one of the following:

1. I have the advantage in creatures, so I can attack without fear. If he blocks, I trade favorably; if he tries to race, I win.
2. I do not have the advantage in creatures, so I cannot attack. I'm just going to wait to drop Bomby Mythic Rare and then win.
3. I have a creature with evasion, so I'm going to attack with that and leave everything else back.
4. I am playing a heavy aggro deck like RDW, so blocking does not exist. I am going to attack every turn unless there's a really persuasive reason not to.

As you see, NONE of those involve complex combat calculations. There's no calculated risk in straight-up creature fights. You know that you're going to win or lose, barring combat tricks, which continue to get worse (no Giant Growth, depleting stores of removal, HEXPROOF EVERYWHERE). So you attack when it's advantageous, and don't when it's not. This translates to a lot of racing and stalling, and very little actual interaction.

Even beyond that, any amount of "complex calculations" loses importance as long as the combined, forward-moving efforts of the player base are able to comprehend and evaluate a given position. It's just like if you know that Fermat's Last Theorem is definitely proven, you don't have to rewrite all 130 pages, let alone understand every last step taken there, to establish a result that depends on it being true.

The final issue with this stupid creature metagame is the way it's being implemented: with huge, swingy creatures. A player lands a Titan, and everything's pretty much over. If you look at the best Control decks in the format, they pretty much boil down to: turn 1-3 play a couple of target removal spells and some acceleration, turn 4 play a sweeper, turn 5 or 6 drop a Titan and hope it's enough. These dumb creatures are now HOW you stabilize, not what you do ONCE you've stabilized. The reason that's inappropriate is that it makes the game much more luck-reliant. In a standard Control-Aggro matchup, Aggro just needs to get ONE creature to stick in order to win. It matters much less which creature it is. Similarly, Control needs just ONE removal spell to stabilize. It matters much less which removal spell it is. Now, it's about whether you can get the right creature AND enough land to play it. But once you do play it, the game ends. That's wildly inappropriate, because games suddenly become luck-of-the-draw. How dull. Don't get me started on Delver. Some games, it flips on turn 2 and you have a 7-turn clock starting right off the bat (more like 4 once that Runechanter's Pike gets equipped). Some games, it never flips and it's a vanilla 1/1 in a tempo deck. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

I really hope you guys at Wizards realize soon how terrible this is for the metagame. You're turning the game into Sorcery-speed, when all interaction happens at Instant-speed. You're turning it into a topdeckfest. You're turning it into Delver Goldfish, instead of the calculations of Control. It's just sad.

As the theory goes (which I ascribe to anyway, and I'm certainly not alone in doing so), the increased prevalence of luck in the game is a deliberate crafting on their part. The line of reasoning goes something like this:

-When Timmy plays against Spike in earlier Magic settings (let's say prior to 2005), Spike is still his same old self, figuring out which plays evaluate the best. Timmy isn't interested in such calculations, and leaves so much win equity on the table, and that's not even speaking of what he throws away in deck construction. Spike probably goes to town to the tune of about a .970 win rate.
-Timmy may not care about maximizing wins, but he's not going to stick around for 60 years in a perennial loser's role like the Washington Generals either. If he cares about "adventure" in the game but finds out that isn't a factor that weighs into success rate (represented in the game as win percentage), he's going to abandon the game and look for something else that ties into his values more closely.
-So maybe Timmy would be better off as the audience for a different activity. But Wizards wants to actively appeal to Timmy as their core audience, for a key reason. As the psychographic ruled by adventures and experiences, Timmy is the most impulsive type of player. And while Spike's focus on optimality may even extend outside the game setup, to such matters as "If I want to keep playing the game, what's the right amount of cards I should acquire from the new set, which cards are they, and what channel should I use to obtain those cards?", the pure Timmy mindset gives into the impulse and splurges--even oversplurges often. Coincidentally (or not), such spending, while it may be to his own detriment, works to the benefit of one Wizards of the Coast, a subsidiary of Hasbro, Inc. And they, like the control player who's simply inviting his opponent to overextend while sitting on a Wrath, aren't going to object to that at all.
-So if their goal is to allow Timmy to experience more success as a means of positive encouragement, kind of like the customer rewards programs you'll find at a casino, what can they do? Some of his opponents will, by the nature of their approach to the game, be able to exhibit a dominant strategy over him at any decision-making juncture that's allowed to arise. One obvious solution is to limit the number of such junctures that are allowed to exist--in other words, actively reshape the game into something that is less about the players and more about the cards. This calls for "splashy" cards that automatically create massive swings in Win Probability while being disguised as a dragon, or a giant hell-bent on rampaging all over the place, or whatnot, with their optimal lines of play dictated by nothing more than a blunt force hammer to smack your opponent over the head with, because the hammer brings the game to an end soon, and that means fewer steps on the decision tree and fewer opportunities for their valued customers to make a misplay and ruin everything.

It would be interesting to get an official answer on behalf of R&D to a thought experiment:
You have two players, each with the same pool of cards to build a deck from. Let's call one the Logical Strategy Vocalizer, a hypothetical being who understands all the information it's entitled to under the rules, and makes decisions according to which course of action provides the greatest average equity according to its internal equity tables. On the other side of the table we have Extremely Evel Knievel, a player who's had two years of experience with the game and enough fundamental strategy knowledge to get through DotP 2013, but who is ultimately driven by the game's visceral experiences that R&D talks about wanting to provide front and center. The two players play 1,000 games of Standard, taking place simultaneously in 1,000 parallel universes a la Arabian Nights--in any case, the experiment is constructed such that fatigue isn't an issue for either player. In different universes, they might build different decks from the card pool, either because an attack on an unknown metagame calls for a probabilistic weighting of archetypes, or because someone might just be in the mood to play different colors in different universes. Then the question is, how many of those 1,000 games does R&D want that E.E.K. player to be able to win? Expressed another way, what is the greatest extent to which the L.S.V.'s decision-making should be allowed to affect its win percentage?

If you ever get an answer to that (which is pretty unlikely in itself), you can run a slight modification of the thought experiment. Previously, we held card accessibility to be constant between the players. This time, we'll give the L.S.V. a budget of $50 to accumulate its card pool (and assume that card-borrowing favors are a non-factor), while EEK is willing to spend $500. Re-running the 1,000-game test under these circumstances, how many games should each player be able to win this time?

The results of those two exercises could tell a lot as far as the likely future roadmap for design. But of course, if R&D even has answers, they would be closely guarded as marketing data.

This article has set new gears to turning in my head.  I'm going to go look at my decks and see which ones fall where.  I think the best thing to remember is that these aren't boxes that you fit into but a spectrum that you fall somewhere on.  Changing a few cards can push you one direction or another quite suddenly, but usually doesn't unless they are key cards.

@SadisticMystic (not gonna quote your rather impressive wall of text for the sake of making things readable for everyone else):
Agreed. They've made it quite clear they're aiming for the lower end of the strategic spectrum. The issue is, those players never were playing in tournaments and never will. They aren't interested in competition! They just want to have fun. The biggest organized event you're gonna get your average Timmy to go to is a Prerelease. The only people who go to tournaments are the Spikes who love winning and the Johnnies who like brewing. Timmies stick to the kitchen table, where they can play casual games with one another where every card is legal. Has it occurred to WotC that the ultimate un-fun for Timmies is having the rules of the game dictate that you can't play some cards? Standard is exactly the opposite of what they want. It means they can't play that super awesome dragon they opened in a Planar Chaos pack, and instead have to grab something like Thundermaw Hellkite, which is, while very strong, not anywhere near as viscerally appealing as something like Intet, the Dreamer (you mean I can play a card for FREE?). They're trying to sell Standard to the group of people who will never buy, and in the process alienating huge swaths of their fanbase.

This is also bad for the long-term growth of the game. There are plenty of players who start out as Timmies, but as they get more in-tune with the game, they start turning into Johnnies and Spikes. They want the next stage of the game beyond the Topdeck Timmy, which is hardcore brewing and careful strategy. By going for this luck-based format, Wizards is destroying that evolution and limiting player retention. Magic becomes something that players grow out of.

The solution to this is pretty simple. Keep printing stuff like Commander, because it REALLY appeals to Timmies. Print a few splashy mythics in each block, things like the original Alara cycle. That was a really well-designed cycle, because it gave casual players a set of big cool cards and a cycle of smaller creatures that allowed them to both tutor for those cards and cheat them out. If I'd found that eight years ago, I would have gone absolutely wild over it. Something like Falkenrath Aristocrat? They're not going to spare that a second glance. Same with Lotus Cobra. Same with Bonfire. Same with Huntmaster. Timmies won't buy tournament-viable mythics, because the price is so high and because tournament-viable cards simply aren't as splashy. As for tournament-level cards, those need to be oriented towards complex strategy and decisionmaking. That way you give experienced players a game to grow into.

Of course, this will never happen. WotC seems determined to go down in flames. In a Bonfire of the Damned, perhaps.

Aug 10, 2012 -- 6:21PM, Acritter wrote:

They're trying to sell Standard to the group of people who will never buy, and in the process alienating huge swaths of their fanbase.

...

Of course, this will never happen. WotC seems determined to go down in flames. In a Bonfire of the Damned, perhaps.

Theories like this really need to account for the fact that Magic is selling better now than at pretty much any time in history, unless they want to be dismissed as lone rants.

Hello, Lawsuit.

Aug 10, 2012 -- 2:02PM, javert wrote:

None of those examples is actually combo: UG Madness is a tempo deck, Goblin Bidding is an aggro deck and UW Reveillark is a control deck. They only have little combo elements on them

Aug 10, 2012 -- 10:08AM, Incoming_Wormhole wrote:

(note: I don't mean instant-win combo, but what Zac called combo here)

Uhg! I thought I was clear: I'm using Zac's definiton of combo, which seems to be "what if we made a deck that took advantage of this 'rules text' thing?"
 
Personally, I think instant-win combo decks (the traditional definition) are fun only in theory, never in actual play. Sure I enjoy going off with an eggs deck, but I don't need a miserable opponent to do that.

I agree that an archetype system made of equal parts aggro, control, and instant-win combo has too much instant-winning in it, but surely there's a better archetype system than "Offensive Creature Deck (if it wins, does so quickly), Offensive Creature Deck (if wins, does so after a short pause), Mana Searching Deck that Becomes an Offensive Creature Deck Once it Has 6 Mana, Defensive Controlling Deck That Becomes An Offensive Creature Deck Once It Has 6 Mana, Offensive Creature Deck (with controlling elements), and Everything Else" with equal weight in each category.

Dear Zac:

How about you focus less on whatever idea you have of how the rock/paper/scissors aspects should work out, and more on the "we want a greater overall number of Constructed-viable cards, which requires us to expand the space of mana-costs that would ordinarily be considered playable" aspects? Please refer to Ravnica/Time Spiral formats. You know, BEFORE you ramped up the power level with Mythic Rares.

Doing that would more or less solve the problem itself, given that you already make a wide variety of cards for a wide variety of strategies. Some formats might end up being more aggro, others more control, others another way...but if the power level is balanced, and there's consistent variety, worrying about which strategy is going to match up well against another is no longer relevant: the format itself can determine the matchups.

Really, it would be okay to have formats again in which Centaur Courser is a playable constructed card. You can still make splashy effects like the Titans had, just don't give them uncreatively identical nigh-unkillable 6/6 bodies and/nor the bargain price of 6 mana. You can still make hyper efficient cards like Snapcaster Mage, just cost them appropriately (at 3) or make them chump blockers (1/1, like our buddy Sakura-Tribe Elder ). You can even still make undercosted, game-alteringly powerful effects, just go for narrow cards like Tempered Steel...as long as you make sure that it's not so much so that everyone is playing that build-around deck (like in Scars block).

The formats now are, admittedly, diverse, BUT: a lot of that has to do with aggressive bannings in older formats, and a lot of it has to do with there being enough super-powerful cards and/or strategies that continue to be printed in newer formats. While that's fine if you want lots of decks with a dozen mythics and a dozen $5-20 lands, it's not so fine if you truly want to see "a greater overall number of Constructed-viable cards".

Aug 10, 2012 -- 6:21PM, Acritter wrote:

@SadisticMystic (not gonna quote your rather impressive wall of text for the sake of making things readable for everyone else):
Agreed. They've made it quite clear they're aiming for the lower end of the strategic spectrum. The issue is, those players never were playing in tournaments and never will. They aren't interested in competition! They just want to have fun. The biggest organized event you're gonna get your average Timmy to go to is a Prerelease. The only people who go to tournaments are the Spikes who love winning and the Johnnies who like brewing. Timmies stick to the kitchen table, where they can play casual games with one another where every card is legal. Has it occurred to WotC that the ultimate un-fun for Timmies is having the rules of the game dictate that you can't play some cards? Standard is exactly the opposite of what they want. It means they can't play that super awesome dragon they opened in a Planar Chaos pack, and instead have to grab something like Thundermaw Hellkite, which is, while very strong, not anywhere near as viscerally appealing as something like Intet, the Dreamer (you mean I can play a card for FREE?). They're trying to sell Standard to the group of people who will never buy, and in the process alienating huge swaths of their fanbase.

This is also bad for the long-term growth of the game. There are plenty of players who start out as Timmies, but as they get more in-tune with the game, they start turning into Johnnies and Spikes. They want the next stage of the game beyond the Topdeck Timmy, which is hardcore brewing and careful strategy. By going for this luck-based format, Wizards is destroying that evolution and limiting player retention. Magic becomes something that players grow out of.

The solution to this is pretty simple. Keep printing stuff like Commander, because it REALLY appeals to Timmies. Print a few splashy mythics in each block, things like the original Alara cycle. That was a really well-designed cycle, because it gave casual players a set of big cool cards and a cycle of smaller creatures that allowed them to both tutor for those cards and cheat them out. If I'd found that eight years ago, I would have gone absolutely wild over it. Something like Falkenrath Aristocrat? They're not going to spare that a second glance. Same with Lotus Cobra. Same with Bonfire. Same with Huntmaster. Timmies won't buy tournament-viable mythics, because the price is so high and because tournament-viable cards simply aren't as splashy. As for tournament-level cards, those need to be oriented towards complex strategy and decisionmaking. That way you give experienced players a game to grow into.

Of course, this will never happen. WotC seems determined to go down in flames. In a Bonfire of the Damned, perhaps.

This is a good post and I agree with most of it.

I can't make an argument that would be better than anyone else here, so I say this:
F#+ you Zac, and anyone else at wotc who thinks som-inn standard has been good at any point. You guys have bombed hard lately, and my nerdrage is reaching its limit.

I hope Wizards actually reads our responses here and takes it seriously.

There is no truly viable combo or control in the current meta.  Don't try to make specific examples as arguments either.

If what Zac said in this article reflects Wizards' true feelings toward Standard, then the format is really doomed.

Player's want interaction in the meta game to mean that HOW I play my cards is more important than WHAT cards I have that are better than yours.  I don't want to base my wins/losses on rather or not I draw my Bonfires first, I want my wins to occur because I was patient at the right time, aggressive at the right time, or went off at the correct moment.

See what I did there?

1. Patient (Control)
2. Aggresive (Aggro)
3. Went Off (Combo)

This is why I play Naya Pod, because it gives me the best chances to truly interact with my opponent.  With a pod, I can typically find my answer to whatever my opponent is doing.  But more and more, I find myself winning simply because I hit Bonfire .  I like winning, but not just because I drew the right card at the right time; I like winning because I made the right choices and I built the deck in a manner that increases my chances of having those options.

Essentially I think that's what should go into building a deck.  In Control, you want to have options available to react to your opponent.  In Aggro, you want your curb to give you your best options early and quickly.  In Combo, you want your deck to give you the quickest and safest opportunity to "go off."

I've only been playing Magic since 2006 but this article is really disappointing.

Rather than jump into the deep end of all the semantic argueing and WOTC bashing I am going to try and address a new point.


There is always a lot of talk in articles from Wizards about the Future League.  There is enough time having passed since this was first discussed that some of the Standard formats on which decisions were made have passed into antiquity.  I would really like to see some of the decks and metagame discussion that evolved during that time.  I mean, what were the decks that the FL built for the Alara-Zendikar season?  How did they match-up against each other and how did that influence what cards saw print?


I ask this because I am a fan of Birthing Pod, which I have heard was quite the boogieman in the FL, so much so that they had to seed so much hate all through it's standard time so as to almost be unplayable until just recently.   I would really like to see how those determinations were made.

I was hoping I would see more people suggest this in this thread, but I would love to see an article discussing development's views on the top decks in Standard in the past few years, where they fall, and what that suggests about how balanced the environments were. Basically I guess trying to answer the objections of the people in this thread, or at least saying whether R&D sees them as valid.

Aug 11, 2012 -- 1:48PM, TheMOTI wrote:

I was hoping I would see more people suggest this in this thread, but I would love to see an article discussing development's views on the top decks in Standard in the past few years, where they fall, and what that suggests about how balanced the environments were. Basically I guess trying to answer the objections of the people in this thread, or at least saying whether R&D sees them as valid.

I agree

For whatever it's worth since there's a lot of negativity for seemingly bad reasons in the thread, I want to chime in and say that I for one approve of this article and Zac's suggested framework for how a metagame should be arranged.

The current Standard isn't perfect, but as long as the intent is fine, that's good because that decides how future sets are developed.  (Usual complaints: Hexproof everywhere and costed so cheaply is bad, so meh Invisible Stalker & Geist.  Part 2: Bonfire is a swingy and overpowered card that is also a mythic, for all that it fights mistake 1.  I can see how the goal is for two mistakes might cancel each other out, but meh, just do it right next time.  And also go back in time, kill Avacyn Restored, and make Innistrad 3.  But whatever.  See above, general point of this post is positive!)

This is probably the most important Magic article I've read in the last 5 years.  It's certainly high on the list.  I really enjoyed reading this one and was left wanting a follow up with more details about interactions between the "buckets."

Very, very well done, Mr. Hill.  Thank you for this one.

Aug 11, 2012 -- 7:45PM, SnowFire wrote:

For whatever it's worth since there's a lot of negativity for seemingly bad reasons in the thread, I want to chime in and say that I for one approve of this article and Zac's suggested framework for how a metagame should be arranged.

Even though I know it shouldn't since it's the Internet and all, the level of anger in this thread really did surprise me. I run a zombie deck at FNM, one that is maybe the cost of two Bonfires total, and I've been having a lot of fun and really don't feel like either Delver/Geist/Snapcaster or Bonfire is ruining the experience for me. If anything I have the hardest time against token decks but that's another story entirely.

The aim is to make the game much higher variance, which is a bad thing as skill should be rewarded more than drawing the right cards at the right time.

Yes, working out combat maths is a VERY important skill and having this become more relevant IS interesting. But I feel too much of the game has paid the price in order for this to happen.

A lot of players on this forum have only seen one combo deck ever in standard or even none. Yes, there is the current elves deck, but making lots of guys and overrun-ing isn't exactly a combo really.

There have been lots of combo decks over the years that people forget about it, it's not just storm and academy and dredge. Although there's been a lot of different storm decks, dragon, brain freeze, goblin storm, perilous storm, swath storm, TPS etc.

Other combo decks that people forget about, Heartbeat(has been mentioned though), Elves, Sanity Grinding, Juniper Order-Redcap, Painters-backlash, Reveillark(some build were more control, some more combo orientated, especially the WUR builds), Pyro Ascension, Twin, Dredgevine, Time Sieve, Polymorph, Owling Mine, Swans(both builds), Turbo Smog, Quillspike, Pickles, Reanimator, Blink Touch, Project X(Rav-TSP), Enduring Renewal, Hulk(several versions), Fercundity Goblins, Eggs, Gifts Combo, Tooth and Nail, Belcher, KCI, Intruder Alarm......

Need I go on? A lot of these decks were highly interactive, some of them weren't that great, but they all saw some place at decent events, some moreso than others. Do we really want to lose this from standard?

Out of all the angry nerd geezer rants on this forum, almost everyone is missing the huge elephant in the room: The current iteration of Magic: the Gathering is selling better than ever. You all think WotC is destroying the game, yet it's doing better than ever.

Record sales and an extremely diverse standard metagame (a combo deck got second in scg buffalo) tells me tha WotC knows what they're doing, and the rest of you are just old geezers afraid of change.

Aug 12, 2012 -- 3:59PM, TVboyCanti wrote:

Out of all the angry nerd geezer rants on this forum, almost everyone is missing the huge elephant in the room: The current iteration of Magic: the Gathering is selling better than ever. You all think WotC is destroying the game, yet it's doing better than ever. Record sales and an extremely diverse standard metagame (a combo deck got second in scg buffalo) tells me tha WotC knows what they're doing, and the rest of you are just old geezers afraid of change.

I suppose you've never heard of short-term profitability at the cost of long-term growth before? The reason it's doing well is because they haven't quite managed to alienate the entire old guard yet. Things like the Mythic-to-win format get tons of sales short-term because people need to open more packs to get the cards for tournament-worthy decks, but they're going to eventually kill off the game. My prediction: we'll see a crash in sales after RtR fails to deliver. Let's see if I'm right.

Cyrus,
There is also still Heartless Combo in Standard.  While not up to par with many you mentioned, I think a turn 3 win combo is still worth making the list.

I've been playing since Ice Age/4th Edition and I believe the game is better than ever.  This article illustrates a big reason why.

True story.

Aug 12, 2012 -- 5:40PM, Acritter wrote:

Aug 12, 2012 -- 3:59PM, TVboyCanti wrote:

Out of all the angry nerd geezer rants on this forum, almost everyone is missing the huge elephant in the room: The current iteration of Magic: the Gathering is selling better than ever. You all think WotC is destroying the game, yet it's doing better than ever. Record sales and an extremely diverse standard metagame (a combo deck got second in scg buffalo) tells me tha WotC knows what they're doing, and the rest of you are just old geezers afraid of change.

I suppose you've never heard of short-term profitability at the cost of long-term growth before? The reason it's doing well is because they haven't quite managed to alienate the entire old guard yet. Things like the Mythic-to-win format get tons of sales short-term because people need to open more packs to get the cards for tournament-worthy decks, but they're going to eventually kill off the game. My prediction: we'll see a crash in sales after RtR fails to deliver. Let's see if I'm right.

Why then? It's been doing well under this model for the past 3 or 4 years, how long is "short term" anyway?

Aug 12, 2012 -- 8:25PM, Magic_Pancake wrote:

Aug 12, 2012 -- 5:40PM, Acritter wrote:

Aug 12, 2012 -- 3:59PM, TVboyCanti wrote:

Out of all the angry nerd geezer rants on this forum, almost everyone is missing the huge elephant in the room: The current iteration of Magic: the Gathering is selling better than ever. You all think WotC is destroying the game, yet it's doing better than ever. Record sales and an extremely diverse standard metagame (a combo deck got second in scg buffalo) tells me tha WotC knows what they're doing, and the rest of you are just old geezers afraid of change.

I suppose you've never heard of short-term profitability at the cost of long-term growth before? The reason it's doing well is because they haven't quite managed to alienate the entire old guard yet. Things like the Mythic-to-win format get tons of sales short-term because people need to open more packs to get the cards for tournament-worthy decks, but they're going to eventually kill off the game. My prediction: we'll see a crash in sales after RtR fails to deliver. Let's see if I'm right.

Why then? It's been doing well under this model for the past 3 or 4 years, how long is "short term" anyway?

It's only doing good because its marketability has increased, creating a larger growing playerbase than that which are leaving - the older playerbase.

Older plays have every reason to be upset because Wizards is turning its back on them for the sake of profit.  Of course, I don't necessarily blame Wizards for this because they are a business and they can choose which route they follow however they please; but the older players still have every right to gripe.

Aug 12, 2012 -- 3:59PM, TVboyCanti wrote:

The current iteration of Magic: the Gathering is selling better than ever. You all think WotC is destroying the game, yet it's doing better than ever.

Justin Beiber continues to outsell Beethoven, yet many people would dispute that he creates "better" music.

As SadisticMystic pointed out earlier, Magic's makers have two goals:

1. Create the most enjoyable experience for Magic players.

2. Create ever-increasing profit for their parent company, Hasbro.

Most of the time, these two goals tend to the same direction. It is unlikely that either would be served by printing an entire block of Grizzly Bears, for example.

When the two goals conflict, though, as in the case of mythic rarity, simplifying the game/metagame to attract neophytes, or disregarding game balance to print cards like Snapcaster Mage, I am reminded of a passage from the Fool's Tome :

"No servant can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon."

Aug 12, 2012 -- 11:51PM, maestrogrande wrote:

Aug 12, 2012 -- 3:59PM, TVboyCanti wrote:

The current iteration of Magic: the Gathering is selling better than ever. You all think WotC is destroying the game, yet it's doing better than ever.

Justin Beiber continues to outsell Beethoven, yet many people would dispute that he creates "better" music.

As SadisticMystic pointed out earlier, Magic's makers have two goals:

1. Create the most enjoyable experience for Magic players.

2. Create ever-increasing profit for their parent company, Hasbro.

Most of the time, these two goals tend to the same direction. It is unlikely that either would be served by printing an entire block of Grizzly Bears, for example.

When the two goals conflict, though, as in the case of mythic rarity, simplifying the game/metagame to attract neophytes, or disregarding game balance to print cards like Snapcaster Mage, I am reminded of a passage from the Fool's Tome :

"No servant can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon."

Actually, with that one those two do not conflict. Those neophytes have the most enjoyable experience with a simplified game, so here you're just incorrect.
You are correct of course about mythic rarity and other things that have those at odds.

Does anyone think that list of combo decks I posted is a bad thing? That having decks like those in the format would massively harm things? Or would having a control deck being more viable ruin the entire format? Not at all. We have a record number of new players, and when people start, they like a slower learning curve, but as time goes on, people want more, but if the game continues down this new direction, that won't be avaliable. We'll just end up with lots of board stalls until someone draws a bonfire.

Also, what format do most people consider the most fun and most balanced/diverse/exciting? Everyone I talk to says modern, which is rife with combo, aggro and control, as well as ramp and disruptive aggro etc.

So yeah, it turns out we don't need to cut away a load of playstyles and decks etc, we can have them all and things will be fine.

Aug 13, 2012 -- 3:37AM, CyrusBales wrote:

Also, what format do most people consider the most fun and most balanced/diverse/exciting? Everyone I talk to says modern, which is rife with combo, aggro and control, as well as ramp and disruptive aggro etc.

Except the people you talk to are not an accurate representation of the player base at large and thus not a good group to extrapolate from.

Aug 13, 2012 -- 6:24AM, TobyornotToby wrote:

Aug 13, 2012 -- 3:37AM, CyrusBales wrote:

Also, what format do most people consider the most fun and most balanced/diverse/exciting? Everyone I talk to says modern, which is rife with combo, aggro and control, as well as ramp and disruptive aggro etc.

Except the people you talk to are not an accurate representation of the player base at large and thus not a good group to extrapolate from.

Pretty much everyone on these forums bangs on about how bad standard is and how good modern is as well. In terms of the people I know, that's the entire of the UK magic scene(in terms of PT, PTQ and GP'ers, which is a reasonable sample).

Aug 13, 2012 -- 6:56AM, CyrusBales wrote:

Aug 13, 2012 -- 6:24AM, TobyornotToby wrote:

Aug 13, 2012 -- 3:37AM, CyrusBales wrote:

Also, what format do most people consider the most fun and most balanced/diverse/exciting? Everyone I talk to says modern, which is rife with combo, aggro and control, as well as ramp and disruptive aggro etc.

Except the people you talk to are not an accurate representation of the player base at large and thus not a good group to extrapolate from.

Pretty much everyone on these forums bangs on about how bad standard is and how good modern is as well. In terms of the people I know, that's the entire of the UK magic scene(in terms of PT, PTQ and GP'ers, which is a reasonable sample).

It is not. The majority of magic players do not play in PTQs or GPs. The mindset of a PTQer might be different than the mindset of a person who only has a DCI number for prereleases.

Online forums aren't a good sample either. The players who frequent Magic sites online are, whether they're competitive or casual, the more invested players. Time Spiral block for example, is universally beloved by the online community, yet it bombed. This means there simply is a huge mass of Magic players that is invisible for us more invested, competitive players.
 

New releases, card pools and formats however, effectively almost exclusviely the people who go to tournaments.

When you play casually, you don't have to abide by the limitations of formats, and casual players are very unlikely to play against effective combo decks since they often require a noticable investment in singles and gettig the deck. And the point the casual player is building a net deck from a PT etc is the point they have stopped becoming a casual player anyway.

Aug 13, 2012 -- 7:26AM, CyrusBales wrote:

New releases, card pools and formats however, effectively almost exclusviely the people who go to tournaments.

When you play casually, you don't have to abide by the limitations of formats, and casual players are very unlikely to play against effective combo decks since they often require a noticable investment in singles and gettig the deck. And the point the casual player is building a net deck from a PT etc is the point they have stopped becoming a casual player anyway.

This. New players and casual players are completely unaffected by the tournament scene. The tournament scene is something that players can grow into if they are so inclined. Designing cards for non-competitive players is easy: just put a few splashy effects on a card and price it at 7 mana plus.  It's possible to appeal to these people without hurting any metagames. Again, look at the Shards of Alara mythic creature cycle. That's absolutely perfect for appealing to the new and casual. Wizards is instead trying to push them into the tournament scene when those casual players don't WANT to be competitive. It's very possible to appeal to both casual players and competitive players, but WotC has become so hellbent on the former that they're completely ignoring the latter. This article is just a formal "eff you" to anyone who wants to play a serious strategic game.

As I wrote earlier in the thread, Standard is the antithesis of "fun" for your average casual player. By its very nature it only appeals to Spikes and Johnnies. That's why this article is so wrongheaded in so many ways.

It has to be noted, Combat maths and creature decks are a good, important and viable strategy that isn't always "herp derp". However when all of the potential strategies are very similar versions on that theme, that is when you have a problem.

And if you make the format all about those casual favourites of atatckign with monsters, it then makes the monsters that are cool too expensive and prices out those casual players from what they want. It always used to be the case where a lot of the competitive cards weren't wanted by the casual crowd, but thesedays, what timmy doesn't want to slam down a huntmaster?

Aug 13, 2012 -- 7:26AM, CyrusBales wrote:

New releases, card pools and formats however, effectively almost exclusviely the people who go to tournaments.

When you play casually, you don't have to abide by the limitations of formats, and casual players are very unlikely to play against effective combo decks since they often require a noticable investment in singles and gettig the deck. And the point the casual player is building a net deck from a PT etc is the point they have stopped becoming a casual player anyway.

Okay, I'm not talking about the casual-only crowd, I'm talking about the FNM crowd. For those who play tournaments, there are also a whole lot of gradations.

Aug 13, 2012 -- 8:11AM, Acritter wrote:

This. New players and casual players are completely unaffected by the tournament scene. The tournament scene is something that players can grow into if they are so inclined. Designing cards for non-competitive players is easy: just put a few splashy effects on a card and price it at 7 mana plus.  It's possible to appeal to these people without hurting any metagames. Again, look at the Shards of Alara mythic creature cycle. That's absolutely perfect for appealing to the new and casual. Wizards is instead trying to push them into the tournament scene when those casual players don't WANT to be competitive. It's very possible to appeal to both casual players and competitive players, but WotC has become so hellbent on the former that they're completely ignoring the latter. This article is just a formal "eff you" to anyone who wants to play a serious strategic game.

As I wrote earlier in the thread, Standard is the antithesis of "fun" for your average casual player. By its very nature it only appeals to Spikes and Johnnies. That's why this article is so wrongheaded in so many ways.

Bolded part not true. In the past, the tournament scene only appealed to a niche group, but the group that wanted to play tournaments was bigger than this niche. So Wizards changed the competitive metagame to appeal to this larger group of people that were interested in competitive magic, but not in the way it used to be.

Aug 13, 2012 -- 8:11AM, Acritter wrote:

As I wrote earlier in the thread, Standard is the antithesis of "fun" for your average casual player. By its very nature it only appeals to Spikes and Johnnies. That's why this article is so wrongheaded in so many ways.

Casual does not equal Timmy. There are competitive Timmies, and casual Spikes and Johnnies.

Casual also does not equal "Kitchen Table Magic". Many people play at FNM to have fun, not to earn enough Planeswalker Points (or whatever) to qualify for more competitive Magic.

Ok, at FNM, you're going to get a large percentage running Net decks and archetypes. If the casual FNM'er goes with his mono Myr deck, he's going to fail to get prizes. If he's fine with being beaten, it doesn't matter if he's gettign Delver'ed out of the game, Prime Time crushing, having all their guys killed before facing down a titan or somebody Dredging their library and making a crap ton of zombies.

The point is, the casual FNM'er is going to lose a lot regardless of what's in the metagame, it's an unfortuante issue of budget, since they killed the competitive budget decks of old(which seems at odds with promoting newer players), they end up having to buy  lot of spike cards to compete. It doesn't matter if the field is aggro-combo-control or aggro-midrange-ramp-tempo, if their deck is bad they will be losing regardless. The threshold of competitive decks is higher now, and with the power creep it means it's much less forgiving to those with budget decks.

Another point is that combo's REALLY appeal to the casual FNM crowd. Many people at FNM's run the infinite Myr combo just to try and go off once that evening. It happenend when Quillspike was around, and many people always run janky uncompetitive three card combo's(or four card) at FNM. They adore the crazy interactions. Rarely do they try control, I've admit that, but pulling off something and being able to say "attack for 99999" or "make a billion guys", or "mill your whole deck" etc is amazing fun for these casual FNM'ers.

So how exactly does having a field of more than just creatures hurt the casual Kitchen table or FNM'er? The answer is that it doesn't.

 What does hurt these players?
1) High money thresholds to gain any kind of prize or win at FNM. Back in TSP you could run a very cheap pauper deck and come out with a positive record, impossible now.
2) Having a format dictated by creatures. This means that the less casual people will always have better creatures and you have no fun by just playing strictly worse cards.
3) Having less strategies in the game. With less different lines of play, they will feel like they have been beaten over and over by effectively the same thing. But with some combo, occaisionally they'll fizzle and let you sneak a win etc. Or a control deck might not be ready for the weird card you are running since they are more tuned to the metagame.


So please, someone tell me how having aggro, combo, control, tempo, ramp and midrange is worse than having just aggro, midrange, ramp and tempo?

Aug 13, 2012 -- 3:30PM, CyrusBales wrote:

The point is, the casual FNM'er is going to lose a lot regardless of what's in the metagame, it's an unfortuante issue of budget, since they killed the competitive budget decks of old(which seems at odds with promoting newer players), they end up having to buy  lot of spike cards to compete. It doesn't matter if the field is aggro-combo-control or aggro-midrange-ramp-tempo, if their deck is bad they will be losing regardless. The threshold of competitive decks is higher now, and with the power creep it means it's much less forgiving to those with budget decks.

I agree with this. Between Mythic Rares and New World Order they've amped up the cost of building a competitive deck, which is directly at odds with their goal to acquire more players.

But that doesn't have much of anything to do with their new "Aggro, Tempo, Mid-range, Ramp" policy. I don't like how they're pushing creatures so much, but I dislike it because they're consistently pushing them into 'overpowered' territory, not because they're making creatures matter more. Although I would still like for all-spell decks to be viable (just not the only viable deck around).

Aug 13, 2012 -- 3:30PM, CyrusBales wrote:

Ok, at FNM, you're going to get a large percentage running Net decks and archetypes. If the casual FNM'er goes with his mono Myr deck, he's going to fail to get prizes. If he's fine with being beaten, it doesn't matter if he's gettign Delver'ed out of the game, Prime Time crushing, having all their guys killed before facing down a titan or somebody Dredging their library and making a crap ton of zombies.

...

So please, someone tell me how having aggro, combo, control, tempo, ramp and midrange is worse than having just aggro, midrange, ramp and tempo?

I think the assumption you're making is wrong.  There are some types of decks that are more fun to lose to than others, because at least you feel like you "had a chance."  This feeling is probably greatest for ramp and midrange decks, because you spend the maximum fraction of the game doing things that matter for the outcome.  Against an extremely aggressive deck, a weaker deck may never get the time to play its key spells, whereas against a dedicated control deck, any deck that hasn't already won will spend most of the game unable to make progress yet not dead.  Combo decks are extremely diverse, so player reactions to them will vary, but I suspect that it's not much fun if you lose without quite understanding what happened, or if it felt like the other player was abusing the rules.

That said, Zac explained that they try to include control and occasionally combo archetypes in the Standard metagame.  Both of these types of decks are certainly played (and competitive) right now.

Aug 13, 2012 -- 3:30PM, CyrusBales wrote:

Ok, at FNM, you're going to get a large percentage running Net decks and archetypes. If the casual FNM'er goes with his mono Myr deck, he's going to fail to get prizes. If he's fine with being beaten, it doesn't matter if he's gettign Delver'ed out of the game, Prime Time crushing, having all their guys killed before facing down a titan or somebody Dredging their library and making a crap ton of zombies.

The point is, the casual FNM'er is going to lose a lot regardless of what's in the metagame, it's an unfortuante issue of budget, since they killed the competitive budget decks of old(which seems at odds with promoting newer players), they end up having to buy  lot of spike cards to compete. It doesn't matter if the field is aggro-combo-control or aggro-midrange-ramp-tempo, if their deck is bad they will be losing regardless. The threshold of competitive decks is higher now, and with the power creep it means it's much less forgiving to those with budget decks.

Another point is that combo's REALLY appeal to the casual FNM crowd. Many people at FNM's run the infinite Myr combo just to try and go off once that evening. It happenend when Quillspike was around, and many people always run janky uncompetitive three card combo's(or four card) at FNM. They adore the crazy interactions. Rarely do they try control, I've admit that, but pulling off something and being able to say "attack for 99999" or "make a billion guys", or "mill your whole deck" etc is amazing fun for these casual FNM'ers.

So how exactly does having a field of more than just creatures hurt the casual Kitchen table or FNM'er? The answer is that it doesn't.

 What does hurt these players?
1) High money thresholds to gain any kind of prize or win at FNM. Back in TSP you could run a very cheap pauper deck and come out with a positive record, impossible now.
2) Having a format dictated by creatures. This means that the less casual people will always have better creatures and you have no fun by just playing strictly worse cards.
3) Having less strategies in the game. With less different lines of play, they will feel like they have been beaten over and over by effectively the same thing. But with some combo, occaisionally they'll fizzle and let you sneak a win etc. Or a control deck might not be ready for the weird card you are running since they are more tuned to the metagame.


So please, someone tell me how having aggro, combo, control, tempo, ramp and midrange is worse than having just aggro, midrange, ramp and tempo?

As others have said, for a lot of players its more important to what they lose than that they lose. 
As others also have said, control decks are viable. What wizards is careful not to bring back is the draw-go style of control with a bunch of counterspells.
So what is missing is combo decks. Perhaps it could be a good move for Wizards to plant more tier 3 combos in standard, just making sure they never get really competitive.

Aug 14, 2012 -- 1:34AM, TobyornotToby wrote:

So what is missing is combo decks. Perhaps it could be a good move for Wizards to plant more tier 3 combos in standard, just making sure they never get really competitive.

I think even competitive combo decks exist right now.  Not counting mono-Green poison (which has combo-ish elements, but is mainly an aggro deck) and some of the zombie lists with Blood Artist + Killing Wave , there are elf combo decks (using Soul of the Harvest as an engine), Heartless Summoning / Havengul Lich decks, and decks that make infinite mana with Deadeye Navigator , Gilded Lotus , and Zealous Conscripts or Deceiver Exarch .  Dedicated reanimator decks are also basically combo.  There are probably other combo decks that I'm either forgetting or haven't heard of.

No one combo deck can take too much of the metagame, since an important attribute of combo decks is that they are easy to hate out (when they're not, Magic at the tournament level can stop feeling like "Magic").  However, all of the decks I just listed have seen some success at high level events.

Elves is the only "combo" deck that is playable, the others are entriely for casual players. Which brings me back to my point, casual players love combo.

Also, hwo much to casual players care how they lose? If they just keep getting beaten in the exact same way via superior creatures, they'll get bored fast and see the only way of competiting is spending more money and never really learn anything.

If you play a five round FNM as a casual player, and you lose five time to people with better creatures than you, then you've not come on since the start of the night. However, if you lose to 3 creature decks, a control deck and a combo deck, you begin to see it's not just about who has the best creatures and there are other ways to play the game. Combo decks are often a very good way of newer players learning more complex rules and how the stack and triggers work.

In the new wizards model of what the metagame looks like, a bad deck will pretty much always lose to any of those archtypes. A version of Ramp will no longer have it's positive match ups and the same goes for other archetypes. At least with a more diverse field of strategies, sometimes deck just won't be able to cope with the angle of attack, but in a world of creatures, all the competitive decks are equipped to respond to them, making a casual FNM struggle to get off the bottom of the pile.

Combo decks are probably the most popular archetype amongst casual FNM level players, since they love to be able to pull of somethign impressive regardless of it's reliability. If they pick up an aggro deck, they literally just have a worse version of the competitive deck that is smashing them down, so they tend to think "I can't build X, Y, or Z" so I'll try something else, until they either get bored of losing, or drop money to build one of those net decks and have the superior creatures. If they have a competitive combo to build upto, they can choose a different path.

Again I ask, how is is bad to have more options for all players including these newer players to choose from?

Aug 13, 2012 -- 10:38PM, fractal wrote:

That said, Zac explained that they try to include control and occasionally combo archetypes in the Standard metagame.  Both of these types of decks are certainly played (and competitive) right now.

Can I have a puff of what you're smoking?

Because I fail to see where any Control or Combo decks are being played on the tournament level right now, save for ONE Elf-Wave deck that we saw two weeks ago.  The only other "Combo" decks are Havengul Heartless and the Gilded Lotus/Deciever Exarch/Deadeye Navigator deck that nobody plays.

Solar Flare isn't control, and you're more likely to have a sighting of bigfoot before seeing Mono-Black control played with any significance (sorry Niche).

Of the Control or Combo decks that are actually played, please show me where any of them aside from Kurt Crane's have had any success on a tournament level.

Wait, what archetype is Solar Flare then?

Wait, since when do "casual players love combo" and since when is combo "the most popular archetype among casual FNM level players"?

Aug 14, 2012 -- 12:47PM, TobyornotToby wrote:

Wait, what archetype is Solar Flare then?

Well on tournament lists it's been called Esper Midrange more than anything.

Are they the same deck? They both overlap with a few cards, but I thought Esper Midrange was the current deck that uses things like Blade Splicer, while Solar Flare was the deck that was popular about 3/4 year ago that didn't play that much midrange stuff.

Aug 14, 2012 -- 5:30AM, Georg51 wrote:

Aug 13, 2012 -- 10:38PM, fractal wrote:

That said, Zac explained that they try to include control and occasionally combo archetypes in the Standard metagame.  Both of these types of decks are certainly played (and competitive) right now.

Can I have a puff of what you're smoking?

Because I fail to see where any Control or Combo decks are being played on the tournament level right now, save for ONE Elf-Wave deck that we saw two weeks ago.  The only other "Combo" decks are Havengul Heartless and the Gilded Lotus/Deciever Exarch/Deadeye Navigator deck that nobody plays.

Solar Flare isn't control, and you're more likely to have a sighting of bigfoot before seeing Mono-Black control played with any significance (sorry Niche).

Of the Control or Combo decks that are actually played, please show me where any of them aside from Kurt Crane's have had any success on a tournament level.

I played against (and lost to) a Grixis control deck at the Oakland World Magic Cup Qualifier when we were both 3-1, and a U/B Tezzeret, Agent of Bolas control deck at a recent local PTQ also when we were both 3-1 (so both decks were 4-1 after the respective matches).  I also saw one or two mono-Black lists that looked controlling in the top 8 at a (different) recent nearby PTQ.  Sure, this is anecdotal evidence, but my point is that these decks are being played and they are competitive.  They probably have trouble against Delver because aggro-control is historically a terrible matchup for control, but as Delver becomes a smaller slice of the metagame, their odds improve.

As far as combo goes, Reanimator/Frites is also a type of combo deck, and it has seen intermittent success over the past several months.

I've also seen various control and combo lists played at my local store.  If you're concerned about newer players getting to see these sorts of archetypes, you can rest easy - they are.  I admit that I haven't seen a Havengul Lich or Gilded Lotus combo deck at my store, yet.

Solar Flare is midrangey, it aims to stick bigger threats than it's opponents and remove their early game to get the game sown up.

The Casual FNM'ers loving combo is from my own personal experience, the people who are trying to run HEartless decks, and Deadeye Navigator combo's etc are those casual FNM'ers. Those decks ONLY exist in a casual FNM context. Who doesn't see casual FNM'ers trying to pull off some weird interaction just once at an FNM?

Frites is kind of combo-y I suppose, however it is still creature based, as are the other "combo's" in standard, meaning it fails to all the same cards that are being used throughout the competitive decks.



I'm not saying make combo and control back to being over 60% of the field, but having greater options for newer players and older players can't be a bad thing. When combo's are balanced it's fine. If we had top tables of control, combo and various creature decks, it would give newer players much more to aspire to and find different routes to victory.

I'm currently teaching my girlfriends little brother how to play magic, so I built him three decks, aggro, combo and control. He says they are much more interesting to play with than the decks him and his mates usually run which tend to be durdly then drop a bomb, or board stall into a bomb.

Aug 10, 2012 -- 4:21PM, SadisticMystic wrote:

Aug 10, 2012 -- 3:37AM, Acritter wrote:

This is disappointing. This is really, really disappointing. As SadisticMystic pointed out above, turning the format into creatures-only DOESN'T encourage creature interaction. It turns it into one of the following:

1. I have the advantage in creatures, so I can attack without fear. If he blocks, I trade favorably; if he tries to race, I win.
2. I do not have the advantage in creatures, so I cannot attack. I'm just going to wait to drop Bomby Mythic Rare and then win.
3. I have a creature with evasion, so I'm going to attack with that and leave everything else back.
4. I am playing a heavy aggro deck like RDW, so blocking does not exist. I am going to attack every turn unless there's a really persuasive reason not to.

As you see, NONE of those involve complex combat calculations. There's no calculated risk in straight-up creature fights. You know that you're going to win or lose, barring combat tricks, which continue to get worse (no Giant Growth, depleting stores of removal, HEXPROOF EVERYWHERE). So you attack when it's advantageous, and don't when it's not. This translates to a lot of racing and stalling, and very little actual interaction.

Even beyond that, any amount of "complex calculations" loses importance as long as the combined, forward-moving efforts of the player base are able to comprehend and evaluate a given position. It's just like if you know that Fermat's Last Theorem is definitely proven, you don't have to rewrite all 130 pages, let alone understand every last step taken there, to establish a result that depends on it being true.

The final issue with this stupid creature metagame is the way it's being implemented: with huge, swingy creatures. A player lands a Titan, and everything's pretty much over. If you look at the best Control decks in the format, they pretty much boil down to: turn 1-3 play a couple of target removal spells and some acceleration, turn 4 play a sweeper, turn 5 or 6 drop a Titan and hope it's enough. These dumb creatures are now HOW you stabilize, not what you do ONCE you've stabilized. The reason that's inappropriate is that it makes the game much more luck-reliant. In a standard Control-Aggro matchup, Aggro just needs to get ONE creature to stick in order to win. It matters much less which creature it is. Similarly, Control needs just ONE removal spell to stabilize. It matters much less which removal spell it is. Now, it's about whether you can get the right creature AND enough land to play it. But once you do play it, the game ends. That's wildly inappropriate, because games suddenly become luck-of-the-draw. How dull. Don't get me started on Delver. Some games, it flips on turn 2 and you have a 7-turn clock starting right off the bat (more like 4 once that Runechanter's Pike gets equipped). Some games, it never flips and it's a vanilla 1/1 in a tempo deck. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

I really hope you guys at Wizards realize soon how terrible this is for the metagame. You're turning the game into Sorcery-speed, when all interaction happens at Instant-speed. You're turning it into a topdeckfest. You're turning it into Delver Goldfish, instead of the calculations of Control. It's just sad.

As the theory goes (which I ascribe to anyway, and I'm certainly not alone in doing so), the increased prevalence of luck in the game is a deliberate crafting on their part. The line of reasoning goes something like this:

-When Timmy plays against Spike in earlier Magic settings (let's say prior to 2005), Spike is still his same old self, figuring out which plays evaluate the best. Timmy isn't interested in such calculations, and leaves so much win equity on the table, and that's not even speaking of what he throws away in deck construction. Spike probably goes to town to the tune of about a .970 win rate.
-Timmy may not care about maximizing wins, but he's not going to stick around for 60 years in a perennial loser's role like the Washington Generals either. If he cares about "adventure" in the game but finds out that isn't a factor that weighs into success rate (represented in the game as win percentage), he's going to abandon the game and look for something else that ties into his values more closely.
-So maybe Timmy would be better off as the audience for a different activity. But Wizards wants to actively appeal to Timmy as their core audience, for a key reason. As the psychographic ruled by adventures and experiences, Timmy is the most impulsive type of player. And while Spike's focus on optimality may even extend outside the game setup, to such matters as "If I want to keep playing the game, what's the right amount of cards I should acquire from the new set, which cards are they, and what channel should I use to obtain those cards?", the pure Timmy mindset gives into the impulse and splurges--even oversplurges often. Coincidentally (or not), such spending, while it may be to his own detriment, works to the benefit of one Wizards of the Coast, a subsidiary of Hasbro, Inc. And they, like the control player who's simply inviting his opponent to overextend while sitting on a Wrath, aren't going to object to that at all.
-So if their goal is to allow Timmy to experience more success as a means of positive encouragement, kind of like the customer rewards programs you'll find at a casino, what can they do? Some of his opponents will, by the nature of their approach to the game, be able to exhibit a dominant strategy over him at any decision-making juncture that's allowed to arise. One obvious solution is to limit the number of such junctures that are allowed to exist--in other words, actively reshape the game into something that is less about the players and more about the cards. This calls for "splashy" cards that automatically create massive swings in Win Probability while being disguised as a dragon, or a giant hell-bent on rampaging all over the place, or whatnot, with their optimal lines of play dictated by nothing more than a blunt force hammer to smack your opponent over the head with, because the hammer brings the game to an end soon, and that means fewer steps on the decision tree and fewer opportunities for their valued customers to make a misplay and ruin everything.

It would be interesting to get an official answer on behalf of R&D to a thought experiment:
You have two players, each with the same pool of cards to build a deck from. Let's call one the Logical Strategy Vocalizer, a hypothetical being who understands all the information it's entitled to under the rules, and makes decisions according to which course of action provides the greatest average equity according to its internal equity tables. On the other side of the table we have Extremely Evel Knievel, a player who's had two years of experience with the game and enough fundamental strategy knowledge to get through DotP 2013, but who is ultimately driven by the game's visceral experiences that R&D talks about wanting to provide front and center. The two players play 1,000 games of Standard, taking place simultaneously in 1,000 parallel universes a la Arabian Nights--in any case, the experiment is constructed such that fatigue isn't an issue for either player. In different universes, they might build different decks from the card pool, either because an attack on an unknown metagame calls for a probabilistic weighting of archetypes, or because someone might just be in the mood to play different colors in different universes. Then the question is, how many of those 1,000 games does R&D want that E.E.K. player to be able to win? Expressed another way, what is the greatest extent to which the L.S.V.'s decision-making should be allowed to affect its win percentage?

If you ever get an answer to that (which is pretty unlikely in itself), you can run a slight modification of the thought experiment. Previously, we held card accessibility to be constant between the players. This time, we'll give the L.S.V. a budget of $50 to accumulate its card pool (and assume that card-borrowing favors are a non-factor), while EEK is willing to spend $500. Re-running the 1,000-game test under these circumstances, how many games should each player be able to win this time?

The results of those two exercises could tell a lot as far as the likely future roadmap for design. But of course, if R&D even has answers, they would be closely guarded as marketing data.

Excellent post. I also am very curious about how much of a skill factor MtG should require in the mind of the developers. I'm sure that many of them who have been competitive players in the past (like Zach) would like to see the skill factor go up but with the limitations they've placed on themselves shown in the article it is probably difficult. In addition they are likely aware as you pointed out that the more mediocre players who stand a chance of winning games consistently the more customers they'll be able to keep.

Unfortunately the balance of money and wins based on the products that R&D has given us over the past 2 years means that I haven't been buying cards. It's probably best for Magic as a whole but I certainly can't keep up. I'm going to see if I can flesh out a modern deck with the cards I have and leave standard for the rich kids.