Post by goldensandslash on Mar 16, 2017 18:56:00 GMT
TL;DR: STANDARD IS DEAD AND YOU SHOULD STOP PLAYING IT
Let’s talk about the new Standard banlist.
Namely, that there were no changes in the banlist this week. If you’re unaware, there are three cards currently banned in Standard: Reflector Mage; Emrakul, the Promised End; and Smuggler’s Copter. All three were banned three months ago in January.
With this banlist also came the announcement that the banlist would receive an update every three months instead of every six, and so, three months later, we came to another banlist update. The update was that there would be no update.
Now, here’s the issue. This is the first time EVER when banning cards happened in Standard for a reason other than the format being dominated by a single deck. Back in 2011, when the last set of Standard bans happened, it was just Caw-Blade. Before that, in 2003, it was Affinity. Before that, in 1999, it was Combo Winter. And so on.
But here’s what Standard was like prior to those bannings: you had Aetherworks Marvel, Bant Aggro, Blue/White Panharmonicon, Blue/White Spirits, Delirium, Esper Aggro, Mardu Vehicles, Red/White Aggro, and Zombie Emerge. Each of those was a viable deck. I suppose Smuggler’s Copter would have gone in every deck, but that’s it. Emrakul was only in Aetherworks Marvel and Reflector Mage only in the Blue/White decks. They didn’t need a ban. And I oppose the Smuggler’s Copter ban just because I think we should try to get Limited players into Standard, so you shouldn’t ban cards that Limited players are still opening. Wait until Amonkhet before banning Copter. (I will admit that Copter needed to get banned, and it was played in literally every deck, but I just oppose the timing of the ban.)
TL;DR: There was a lot of diversity in the format. But they still banned the cards anyways! Because of that, bans in Standard no longer mean what they used to, and so people are afraid of investing into a Standard deck, when it can just end up getting banned out of nowhere. The increased number of banlist updates doesn’t help matters there either.
And now, we come to three months later, and we get no update to the banlist. No update means that this is where Wizards thinks the format should be. By comparison, three months ago, Standard was so far away from what Wizards wanted that they felt the need to ban stuff in order to fix it. Let’s take a look at what the format was like three months ago. (Note: All numbers come from MTG Goldfish.)
21.06% White-Blue Flash
20.14% Aetherworks Marvel
10.65% B/G Delirium
8.10% Mardu Vehicles
6.71% R/B Aggro
5.56% W/B Humans
3.47% U/R Dynavolt
2.78% Esper Flash
That’s a fairly diverse format. If you go to a five-round tournament, then, on average, one out of the five decks you face is Blue/White Flash, another one out of those five is Aetherworks Marvel, and you have a 50/50 chance of facing Delirium as another one of those five. And then the other two or three are a grab bag, with Mardu Vehicles and Red/Black Aggro being the most common. Fair enough. Now, let’s take a look at where we are today:
36.28% Mardu Vehicles
24.70% Four-Color Saheeli
7.01% Black-Green Energy
6.71% G/B Aggro
5.79% Temur Tower
4.57% Aetherworks Marvel
2.13% Jeskai Saheeli
2.13% R/B Aggro
Mardu Vehicles and Saheeli/Cat Combo now take up a combined 60% of the meta, with Mardu Vehicles alone taking up more than a third of it. This means that going to that same five-round tournament will now mean that three of your five matches are going to be against one of these two decks. And then another match is most likely going to be a Black/Green deck of some kind. That’s not a diverse format at all. Especially when you consider how hated Saheeli/Cat Combo is, and how frustrating it is for players who play against it.
In case you’re unaware, Cat Combo revolves around two cards: Saheeli Rai and Felidar Guardian. You use Saheeli’s -2 ability to create a token that’s a copy of Felidar Guardian, and then target Saheeli with Felidar Guardian’s “enter the battlefield” ability. This blinks Saheeli out of the game and then back into it, so the game now sees it as a new permanent that you haven’t used any loyalty abilities from yet, allowing you to repeat the process an infinite number of times, until you’ve created as many Felidar Guardians as you want. It’s incredibly not fun to play against, because it essentially just comes out of nowhere and wins the game without you being able to do anything about it. One turn, they have no creatures out, and the next turn, they have an infinite amount. With haste, by the way, so they can swing for lethal right then and there.
Meanwhile, Mardu Vehicles, the deck that relied most on abusing Smuggler’s Copter, still remains the top deck even after the ban, as it relies on the awesome new Vehicles from Aether Revolt: Heart of Kiran and Aethersphere Harvester. And I’d like to stress again that these are basically the only two decks in the format at high-level play. I mean, what’s third on the list? Temur Tower is starting to ramp up in speed, so I guess that? I mean, if you can get Dynavolt Tower to work, then that’s great, but that doesn’t even hold a candle to these two decks.
And yet, despite this format being completely broken, Wizards chose to not ban or unban any cards at this time. Want to tune in to watch the Pro Tour? Well, have fun seeing Vehicles and Cat Combo. Cause that’s literally every deck in the format at that level. Oh, sure, your local meta at FNM may be incredibly diverse, but the higher you go, the worse it gets.
Now, here’s the question: What would I do to fix this? If I had complete total unchecked power over Wizards of the Coast, how would I solve this problem? Well, the truth is: you can’t. Standard is so broken right now that it cannot be repaired.
If you ban nothing, then you admit to your customers that you are going to allow a meta with only two decks to exist untouched, and that they shouldn’t invest in a Standard deck, because they won’t enjoy the format if they do.
If you ban cards (likely Heart of Kiran; one of the two Cat Combo pieces; and Gideon, Ally of Zendikar), then you admit to your customers that you are going to be banning things more frequently now, and that they shouldn’t invest in a Standard deck, out of fear that it will be banned.
Either way: You are telling people not to invest in Standard. And that’s my entire point here: the banlist announcement three months ago made Standard a terrible format. If that announcement hadn’t happened, then we wouldn’t be in this mess of a no-win situation now. Right now, the best solution is to not play Standard, and it’s all because of that announcement.
So here’s what I would do if I were in charge of Wizards: reverse the announcement and unban these cards. If you’re only interested in helping Standard players and have no interest in converting Limited players to Standard, then you can keep Smuggler’s Copter banned. That's fine. But other than that, you need to free Emrakul and Reflector Mage. This brings Aetherworks Marvel back into the spotlight again, since it can now use Emrakul over Ulamog. It also brings back blue/white flash, and all of a sudden we go from a two-deck format to a four-deck format. Diversity is restored.
There’s just one last thing to address. All of this data that I’ve used only works if you believe that a diverse format is superior to a non-diverse format. And we have no evidence that this is what Wizards of the Coast wants. Well, you know, except for this tidbit that was included in the banlist announcement three months ago:
“We banned three cards in Standard—Smuggler's Copter; Emrakul, the Promised End; and Reflector Mage—to improve and diversify the Standard environment. These changes were driven by play data that demonstrated an imbalance in Standard as well as anecdotal evidence that players found these specific cards to limit their ability to stay competitive with creative, fun, diverse decks.” -- Wizards of the Coast, January 9 2017 Banned And Restricted Announcement
Oh, right, so you are interested in diversity, which is why you chose to ban these cards. Funny how doing that made your format less diverse.
But guess what? IT DOESN’T MATTER.
You know why? Because none of the people reading this are playing Standard right now. How do I know this? Because Standard is so incredibly unpopular right now. People would rather be playing a different format. That’s nearly universally agreed upon amongst all Magic players. And if your players don’t care about your format, then it means it’s time to move on.
Standard is dead.
Let’s talk about the new Standard banlist.
Namely, that there were no changes in the banlist this week. If you’re unaware, there are three cards currently banned in Standard: Reflector Mage; Emrakul, the Promised End; and Smuggler’s Copter. All three were banned three months ago in January.
With this banlist also came the announcement that the banlist would receive an update every three months instead of every six, and so, three months later, we came to another banlist update. The update was that there would be no update.
Now, here’s the issue. This is the first time EVER when banning cards happened in Standard for a reason other than the format being dominated by a single deck. Back in 2011, when the last set of Standard bans happened, it was just Caw-Blade. Before that, in 2003, it was Affinity. Before that, in 1999, it was Combo Winter. And so on.
But here’s what Standard was like prior to those bannings: you had Aetherworks Marvel, Bant Aggro, Blue/White Panharmonicon, Blue/White Spirits, Delirium, Esper Aggro, Mardu Vehicles, Red/White Aggro, and Zombie Emerge. Each of those was a viable deck. I suppose Smuggler’s Copter would have gone in every deck, but that’s it. Emrakul was only in Aetherworks Marvel and Reflector Mage only in the Blue/White decks. They didn’t need a ban. And I oppose the Smuggler’s Copter ban just because I think we should try to get Limited players into Standard, so you shouldn’t ban cards that Limited players are still opening. Wait until Amonkhet before banning Copter. (I will admit that Copter needed to get banned, and it was played in literally every deck, but I just oppose the timing of the ban.)
TL;DR: There was a lot of diversity in the format. But they still banned the cards anyways! Because of that, bans in Standard no longer mean what they used to, and so people are afraid of investing into a Standard deck, when it can just end up getting banned out of nowhere. The increased number of banlist updates doesn’t help matters there either.
And now, we come to three months later, and we get no update to the banlist. No update means that this is where Wizards thinks the format should be. By comparison, three months ago, Standard was so far away from what Wizards wanted that they felt the need to ban stuff in order to fix it. Let’s take a look at what the format was like three months ago. (Note: All numbers come from MTG Goldfish.)
21.06% White-Blue Flash
20.14% Aetherworks Marvel
10.65% B/G Delirium
8.10% Mardu Vehicles
6.71% R/B Aggro
5.56% W/B Humans
3.47% U/R Dynavolt
2.78% Esper Flash
That’s a fairly diverse format. If you go to a five-round tournament, then, on average, one out of the five decks you face is Blue/White Flash, another one out of those five is Aetherworks Marvel, and you have a 50/50 chance of facing Delirium as another one of those five. And then the other two or three are a grab bag, with Mardu Vehicles and Red/Black Aggro being the most common. Fair enough. Now, let’s take a look at where we are today:
36.28% Mardu Vehicles
24.70% Four-Color Saheeli
7.01% Black-Green Energy
6.71% G/B Aggro
5.79% Temur Tower
4.57% Aetherworks Marvel
2.13% Jeskai Saheeli
2.13% R/B Aggro
Mardu Vehicles and Saheeli/Cat Combo now take up a combined 60% of the meta, with Mardu Vehicles alone taking up more than a third of it. This means that going to that same five-round tournament will now mean that three of your five matches are going to be against one of these two decks. And then another match is most likely going to be a Black/Green deck of some kind. That’s not a diverse format at all. Especially when you consider how hated Saheeli/Cat Combo is, and how frustrating it is for players who play against it.
In case you’re unaware, Cat Combo revolves around two cards: Saheeli Rai and Felidar Guardian. You use Saheeli’s -2 ability to create a token that’s a copy of Felidar Guardian, and then target Saheeli with Felidar Guardian’s “enter the battlefield” ability. This blinks Saheeli out of the game and then back into it, so the game now sees it as a new permanent that you haven’t used any loyalty abilities from yet, allowing you to repeat the process an infinite number of times, until you’ve created as many Felidar Guardians as you want. It’s incredibly not fun to play against, because it essentially just comes out of nowhere and wins the game without you being able to do anything about it. One turn, they have no creatures out, and the next turn, they have an infinite amount. With haste, by the way, so they can swing for lethal right then and there.
Meanwhile, Mardu Vehicles, the deck that relied most on abusing Smuggler’s Copter, still remains the top deck even after the ban, as it relies on the awesome new Vehicles from Aether Revolt: Heart of Kiran and Aethersphere Harvester. And I’d like to stress again that these are basically the only two decks in the format at high-level play. I mean, what’s third on the list? Temur Tower is starting to ramp up in speed, so I guess that? I mean, if you can get Dynavolt Tower to work, then that’s great, but that doesn’t even hold a candle to these two decks.
And yet, despite this format being completely broken, Wizards chose to not ban or unban any cards at this time. Want to tune in to watch the Pro Tour? Well, have fun seeing Vehicles and Cat Combo. Cause that’s literally every deck in the format at that level. Oh, sure, your local meta at FNM may be incredibly diverse, but the higher you go, the worse it gets.
Now, here’s the question: What would I do to fix this? If I had complete total unchecked power over Wizards of the Coast, how would I solve this problem? Well, the truth is: you can’t. Standard is so broken right now that it cannot be repaired.
If you ban nothing, then you admit to your customers that you are going to allow a meta with only two decks to exist untouched, and that they shouldn’t invest in a Standard deck, because they won’t enjoy the format if they do.
If you ban cards (likely Heart of Kiran; one of the two Cat Combo pieces; and Gideon, Ally of Zendikar), then you admit to your customers that you are going to be banning things more frequently now, and that they shouldn’t invest in a Standard deck, out of fear that it will be banned.
Either way: You are telling people not to invest in Standard. And that’s my entire point here: the banlist announcement three months ago made Standard a terrible format. If that announcement hadn’t happened, then we wouldn’t be in this mess of a no-win situation now. Right now, the best solution is to not play Standard, and it’s all because of that announcement.
So here’s what I would do if I were in charge of Wizards: reverse the announcement and unban these cards. If you’re only interested in helping Standard players and have no interest in converting Limited players to Standard, then you can keep Smuggler’s Copter banned. That's fine. But other than that, you need to free Emrakul and Reflector Mage. This brings Aetherworks Marvel back into the spotlight again, since it can now use Emrakul over Ulamog. It also brings back blue/white flash, and all of a sudden we go from a two-deck format to a four-deck format. Diversity is restored.
There’s just one last thing to address. All of this data that I’ve used only works if you believe that a diverse format is superior to a non-diverse format. And we have no evidence that this is what Wizards of the Coast wants. Well, you know, except for this tidbit that was included in the banlist announcement three months ago:
“We banned three cards in Standard—Smuggler's Copter; Emrakul, the Promised End; and Reflector Mage—to improve and diversify the Standard environment. These changes were driven by play data that demonstrated an imbalance in Standard as well as anecdotal evidence that players found these specific cards to limit their ability to stay competitive with creative, fun, diverse decks.” -- Wizards of the Coast, January 9 2017 Banned And Restricted Announcement
Oh, right, so you are interested in diversity, which is why you chose to ban these cards. Funny how doing that made your format less diverse.
But guess what? IT DOESN’T MATTER.
You know why? Because none of the people reading this are playing Standard right now. How do I know this? Because Standard is so incredibly unpopular right now. People would rather be playing a different format. That’s nearly universally agreed upon amongst all Magic players. And if your players don’t care about your format, then it means it’s time to move on.
Standard is dead.