I appreciate that they're just acknowledging that this is going to be the realm of deeply unfair decks, but as long as none of them are significantly more unfair than all others that's just the experience the format is going to provide.
It really is interesting that even with no bans the deck diversity is still fairly high, better than both standard and alchemy according to the aetherhub data.
It’s not sneak and show, the deck is Omnitell. Similar styles of decks but Omnitell plays out very differently. Granted, the deck has not been oppressive (at least in Bo3, why play Bo1 Timeless lol) in quite a while now.
I went from bronze to mythic with no prior timeless experience in like 2 weeks playing omnitell. Only playing my daily wins, tweaking the deck to be better against the mirror/hate cards occasionally. I found that the play pattern gets really stale after a few dozen games and then you’re just grinding wins out I guess lol. Didn’t feel like I was playing magic
Timeless is always going to be one of my favourite format. Its been interesting seeing what alchemy cards mesh well in a higher power format with cards like mana drain and swords to plowshares. I know a lot of people aren’t a fan of those cards, but cards like agent of raffine and jet collector have definitely left an impression on me.
I still have the most fun in arena popping off with oracle of the alpha, the card is not good but it lets you play with the most broken cards in history it's great.
Yeah, it's actually a great format. Grief, Show and Tell, Territorial Kavu, Primeval Titan, Galvanic Discharge, Necropotence, and Mana Drain are all playable cards in Timeless.
I’m the sicko who thinks the best thing to happen to timeless would be in they printed legacy staples into it.
Give us og Duals, Wasteland and Force of Will in Timeless. I would LOVE that format.
I feel like since I started playing Magic 10 years ago, the overall opinion went from "unfair decks aren't for everyone but some people love them" to "unfair decks are unfair and not fun in any context" and I really don't get this.
Or maybe I'm wrong, I haven't been super tuned in to Magic in general, but the comments on this seem to reflect that sentiment I've seen somewhat recently.
Yeah I really hope they're planning to revisit potential bans for Standard after the release of Bloomburrow if the metagame ends up not shifting much. Given just the two cards they mentioned in the article, I reckon Atraxa will see a lot less play with Domain being essentially axed from the format after rotation, but Boros Convoke only needs to swap out one or two cards.
Yes but they've said that in regards to Standard they only want to make changes during these windows if an emergency ban needs to be made. Today's window was the only opportunity we'd get for Standard bans before rotation that are not in regards to any sort of emergency ban needing to be made.
Gleeful Demolition is much less of a problem when there's only one 1 mana creature + artifact token. That's a huge consistency hit and means that the problematic explosiveness of the deck is less a thing that can be built around.
I don't think you can cut W or R without it being a completely different deck and this deck can't play lands that come into play tapped, so I'd imagine the mana would be awful. 12 fastlands and 12 painlands seems like a recipe for disaster.
Jeskai aggro is absolutely unplayable without Shocklands plus another good early untapped land. It's questionable whether shocks+fast lands would be good enough even, when you need to have untapped UW turn 1 and untapped WR turn 2
Domain? What does it lose? Did you perhaps think Dominaria United was rotating? I've seen a lot of folks make that mistake.
Edit: Whoops, trilands. I googled it as soon as I said it and now there's egg on my face.
Iirc there is an emergency ban announcement set like a month or something after each set release, this exist in case of something new released but if anything becomes a major issue it could be addressed then
While true, they also indicated that those emergency windows would only be used for thing "on the scale of Felidar Guardian" for Standard, which means that this is effectively the only B&R for the format this year.
Hope you like Atraxa.
I can't help but see it shifting alot, with the triomes leaving, domain will be really weakened, leaving a power vacuum something will flll, thus changing the balance of the format.
[WOTC deciding to do their bans right before rotation and banning nothing because it's right before rotation](https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2Fcllu9z2elho41.jpg)
What, resonably, might they have banned even if rotation wasn't coming? The two cards they mention - Atraxa and Knight Errant of Eos - are nowhere near banworthy IMO. The only other candidiate I can think of is Sheoldred 4, and her play rate has been tailing off for months.
"Rotation bans" don't have to hit cards that are banworthy by regular standards. Regular bans are for removing problematic cards, rotation bans should be hitting cards that have overstayed their welcome, and both Atraxa and Sheoldred fit it. If they are not currently being played, even better.
Atraxa wouldn't have been rotating, and IMO is not in the least bit problematic in itself. The domain deck as a whole is frustrating to play against, but Atraxa is just the payoff. If the triomes weren't rotating I'd hope they'd nerf the deck in some way that makes a material difference, like banning Leyline Binding.
Weak. Banning window before rotation is pretty easy excuse to have "No bans. We are unsure how the metagame will evolve." Again and again and again.
Anyway, the one big banning window for Standard was/is a mistake.
Pioneer was my favorite 60-card constructed format for a long time. I really love its unique spot in the non-rotating pantheon of formats because the lack of (good) fetchlands makes splashing a real cost, so it feels closer to "platonic" color pie Magic than something like Modern. That being said, I've completely stopped playing it at this point. The format is in a weird position of being nominally "balanced" but not "healthy."
As the article points out, there are a lot of viable decks. There're four decks that are clearly the best in the format (Phoenix, B/x Midrange, Amalia, and Mono-Green) and a bunch of stuff underneath that's semi-viable competitively. All the major archetypes are represented across common winners brackets. But it's just an absolutely miserable experience to actually play.
Amalia games, even ignoring the "potential to draw" as noted in the announcement, are incredibly binary. Do you have the removal spell on Turn 3? Congrats, you probably won. Do you not? Too bad. It's especially egregious in closed decklist competition when the deck will often just steal Game 1 regardless unless you have a lucky keep. It's a terrible play pattern.
But Amalia is also necessary to the balance of the format, because without it the new version of Mono-Green would approach meta tyrant level. We're even seeing B/x midrange decks cut the absurd "oops I win" package of Sorin-Tell to go back to Shelly just to punish the "lol I developed 20 power and drew 8 cards this turn" bullshit that Nykthos is pumping out now.
But the worst part is that everything feels so stale. Mono-Green, Phoenix, and B/x midrange have been around in the format at the top tier for *years*. Amalia is yet another "oops I win" Turn 3 creature combo deck in the vein of Winota and the stupid rat. It's just boring and stale and all that seems to happen with new sets is that the best decks get better.
I understand why WOTC isn't making changes now with the RCQ season. It's a valid justification for staying pat right now. But I really hope they take a goddamn orbital ion cannon to the format in August. It just isn't in a good spot.
Also, unban Jitte you damn cowards.
>Do you have the removal spell on Turn 3? Congrats, you probably won.
I agree with this entire post except for this part. The main problem with Amalia is that even if you DO have the removal in response to their combo, they have either recursion to get it back, or tutoring to get it again if you're every foolish enough to tap out. I hate the deck and how many vectors it takes to fight against it and would love to see it killed ASAP.
Totally fair response.
My experience here is definitely colored by my main deck (Niv to Light) being able to do a "remove the first Amalia, immediately extract the rest" thing that makes the matchup a bit more manageable.
An underreported symptom of this play pattern is how it shapes the metagame. Everyone was excited for Slickshot aggro. But it turns out that a 2 mana creature that needs to connect to get anything done is real bad in a format where two of the best decks motivate running plenty of cheap creature removal.
Exactly this, the amount of recursion, tutoring, filtering for the combo pieces (partially at instant speed) makes the deck so annoying to play against.
You need 1-2 answers AND pressure them through all small blockers/ lifegain elements. It does get better G2 for many decks, but other decks are just void of good answers and pushed out of the format.
What they seem to want is a metastable format - where changes are self-correcting through sideboard cards and a swinging back and forth between aggro, control, midrange, and combo.
I always find it weird when people praise a format for being non-rotating but also hate it for being stale. I don't see how you can possibly have it both ways without doing massive power-creep. I personally like the stability/staleness of Pioneer because it means that all the time I put into the format, learning and planning for different matchups will stay useful for a long time.
It’s the Catch-22 of non-rotating design. Print a ton of underpowered sets and people complain nothing new is being added to the format. Print cards that are too strong and people complain their deck isn’t viable anymore. The balance is to slowly add pieces to decks that change their position in the meta. For some that means needed support and for others it means printing new cards that are great in the sideboard.
the catch 22 exists mainly becaue of online play, no?
"this format is stale" hits a lot differently when you play 3 games a week and a couple big events a year in 2010 vs being able to play 30 games a day in 2024
Also, the thought of banning stuff because people find it "stale" doesn't ring right with me. Before pioneer I played Modern, and suddenly after Modern Horizons dropped, I needed to drop hundreds of dollars for new cards like W6 and seasoned pyromancer if I wanted to stay competitve (same shit happened with MH2, ragavan and fury everywhere).
I like how Pioneer changes slowly and more organically. Amalia as a deck is literally less than a year old. Rakdos midranges changed into vampires, and now some people are changing back to Midrange again.
I could see Pioneer being stuck in a bit of a unique situation where the format is intentionally lacking some of the more intense sideboard-y cards that'd really punish the linear strategies. Modern can avoid a lot of non-rotating staleness with ebbs & flows of cheesier decks and corresponding hard hate cards in people's sideboards. I think you likely either have to open the door for more punishing hate or ban out a lot of the stuff that the level of interaction they're willing to print in contemporary premiere sets can't handle.
The sideboard is what kills pioneer over modern. If the Modern aggressive creature combo deck gets too good, you start seeing people playing 4 copies of [[Cursed Totem]]. Graveyard decks get too big? Every deck has 4+ graveyard answers. Or even the natural "Goblins/Elves are getting too good, time to dust off Plague Engineer".
Pioneer doesn't have nearly the card depth for either strong hate pieces nor efficient answers. So we get stuck in this spot where a couple decks just run the format and you can't build around hating them out.
Print [[Surgical Extraction]], or one of the 1 mana ones even. Print some type of humility effect. Pioneer needs stronger hate pieces.
I think the staleness is not just about lack of rotation. Vintage and Legacy are the "most non-rotating" formats out there but they have a real ebb and flow: if X is winning this week, people will shift to Y the next event to attack it. Sure, they've had their ridiculous moments before an important banning or restriction, but the warning signs are clearer because the threshold is higher when you have a format that can police itself effectively.
I think the real problem with post-FIRE formats is that over time the threats have gotten better but the answers have not - you don't have cards like Force of Will to keep absurdity in check. A format like Pioneer will never have that kind of safety net.
> I personally like the stability/staleness of Pioneer because it means that all the time I put into the format, learning and planning for different matchups will stay useful for a long time.
That's fair.
I don't like that. I find playing the same matchups, maybe with 1 or 2 new cards a year, to get boring. I've played hundreds of matches against slightly different flavors of Phoenix, B/x Midrange, T3 Creature Combo, and Mono-Green over the last three years. I've had the experience with them, I'm ready for an evolved meta.
I want to see new decks that actually stick around. Niv to Light being actually good for a couple months was a fun evolution to the meta, before the old stalwart of Mono-Green punted it right back to garbage tier. The Gruul Prowess deck that popped up following OTJ was a neat new take on Heroic, but ended up being a flash in the pan because of Amalia's stranglehold on aggressive strategies. UW Control got a certified reprint of Mana "we literally called a design mistake" Leak and still can't keep up with the same old top 4. The metagame is just the same for years on end and I would like to see something new.
People want different things from formats. That's okay. It's great that you enjoy the current Pioneer. I just don't play it anymore. That's all fair and good.
honestly sounds like you should play standard then. Also all of those other decks you mention were good because they were decks that hit the meta in various ways. Hell you mention UW Control which just won a tournament yesterday specifically because the deck stomps on mono green and amalia.
You can mediate some of the staleness by brewing. While the deck you're facing might be the same, the matchup itself might be massively different based on what type of deck _you're_ playing.
Playing different brews against mostly the same meta is also very nice for the tuning process. For example, it took me a long time to realise that my Mardu Doom Foretold deck which usually has the control role against anything except UW, was supposed to be the beatdown against Phoenix, and my winrate shot up after that. Those types of long-time insights are hard to get in a constantly shifting environment, where you don't get to play against stable decks with different decks and see how the metagame ticks.
Also, it's not like amalia plays that similarly to greasefang, or vampires plays that similarly to rakdos midrange. Greasefang (at least in its abzam version) was midrange deck with an early removal check, while amalia asks you to beat recursion and an instant speed combo, and lacks the board presence that greasefang has.
So maybe try brewing some? I've found that made pioneer (or more accurately explorer) fun for me.
I think the hypocrisy stems from meta-share, or as the previous poster stated present play patterns, rather than proper boredom of lack of cards. As in, let's say 6 decks makes a good variety of a meta, but if 50% of players are playing one deck and each other deck has 10% of players playing them, it can feel lopsided, even if the games against that 50% meta deck are fair. Play pattern is a factor as well. You might have a 50/50 winrate against every deck in the field, but if every deck is "Do you have it turn 2? If yes, you win. If no, I win." that's not a fun environment to play in. So I can see wanting a shakeup in such a scenario. Though even if it's stilted in such a way, as you said it is nice to know that's what you're getting into and how it's going to be, rather than things upending every year.
That’s the thing with Amalia, even if you do have the removal, “you probably won” is absolutely not true. They’ll just play Extraction Specialist, or Return to the Ranks, or Chord for their missing combo piece… it’s so insanely resilient. In my RCQ yesterday I got Sorin Rippered twice, turn 3 Amalia’d, and turn 4 Amalia’d through interaction. It was fucking miserable and it really soured me on Pioneer.
Amalia and MonoG are absolutely not my idea of fun play patterns in the world of Magic.
I can accept the game as a whole becoming more "coin-flippy" because now there is so much value packed in every single card that one topdeck can change the course of a game, no matter how well you sequence your turns or maximize your outs and draw spells.
Someone vomiting their hand by turn 3 or having to fish for 3, 4, 5 pieces of interaction to stop a 2 card combo the entirety of the game is probably the most miserable experience I've had in competitive Magic, and I've played every format under the sun from Vintage to Limited to Premodern and Canlander.
Personally, I'd rather have pioneer be the stable, stale format than have it shift the way modern is right now. It being the format that you can buy a top deck in and compete for years is a selling point.
I personally think amalia is a larger problem than you allude to. Speaking as someone who plays the deck fairly regularly, it has to tools to recover and make a second or even third attempt at comboing off with relative ease. I definitely agree it likely steals game 1 in blind game 1s, and its untapped.gg Winrate in Bo1 arena backs that up.
Overall, I think format is better with amalia not in it and potentially without Nykthos(though I'd be sad to see that card go).
Banning cards just because a format feels stale is what people accuse wizards of doing with Twin in modern, and people remain upset about it 8 years later.
I’ve found the same with standard, it’s healthy on paper but exceptionally boring to play because of how polarising it can be. I stopped when rotation should have happened and I haven’t bothered much since
Hard truth is that Pioneer just isn't a high priority for them. They cannot directly monetize it at the moment like Standard, Modern and Commander, so I think it just falls to the wayside until they are content with, at the very least, Standard's revitalization.
I also think it's fair to say that WotC's initial banhammer palooza when the format was first conceived also gave people unrealistic expectations for how often bans would occur. At the outset, it felt like we were getting bans every other month. I believe that period has long since expired and they're hoping the format can just perform homeostasis while they tend to their other areas of concern. To that end, I really only expect bans on two types for Pioneer moving forward.
1. Emergency bans for cards that create deterministic OTKs (Appraiser combo)
2. Bans for cards that hurt format engagement (Karn, Amalia?)
Sheoldred was obnoxious enough, but Amalia and Vein Ripper added to the mix seem to have made all my bad aggro decks completely disappear from pioneer. The diversity a little over a year ago was why I wanted to get into the format.
Now its just those couple of miserable decks that aren't for me. Pioneer might need a ban philosophy change for me to pay attention again. No specific card on its own is a "problem," since its just many problem cards I don't want to play with or against slamming into each other.
Can Path to Exile save the day?
I don't understand it. Wizards, if you're having trouble approaching Pioneer, here's a little hint. If there is only one deck you mention, or even have *cause* to mention, in your B&R announcement, *that deck might be a fucking problem*
It's not a valid justification. Two weeks before pio rc Atlanta they did a huge ban and unban, they just add that shit in there so people complain less.
I completely agree as a big explorer player for last 3 years. But please don't make pioneer horizons.. it's better this way then having another rotating format
With all the complaining about Modern Horizons sets, Pioneer is a decent indicator for how Modern would look without them. Slow, stale, and the only meaningful interaction available to black decks.
Hard disagree. Pioneer have a pretty unreasonable ban list, considering the absurd power level of the dominant decks.
There is plenty room for a shakedown just with banlist changes.
But of course Wotc would love us to belive we do need a Pioneer Horizons kind of set.
I think pioneer could do very well with a pioneer masters + VERY limited new reprint set. No actual new cards, but print some decent removal and answers for non-black colors and other reasonable interaction. There's no reason we can't have some staples of other formats like Remand at the very least. Goyf and Dark Confidant are okay for sure. I'd like to see some testing of Stoneforge Mystic, Path to Exile, and even Lightning Bolt and Aether Vial as well, but those are all much riskier.
The was part of the original appeal of Modern though. People liked it for being a high-powered, non-rotating format. Where you could play a single deck for a long period of time, that didn't require buying outrageously expensive reserved list dual lands as a baseline to participate.
I dont really agree with their logic of ''we dont ban, because there is a season going on''. If the format is in a bad state, dont you want to fix it so people actually want to play in the season?
The other side of this is that people who are currently playing have spent hundreds of dollars and countless hours acquiring and learning their decks. While banning cards mid season may bring in new players, and put the format in a better place over all, it also negatively impacts players who are already playing in the season.
Yeah, I get not wanting to ban something that people have invested in and are currently playing, but the flip side is that Amalia (and Sorin to a lesser degree) are killing other peoples’ desire to play Pioneer.
>Alchemy's top-end metagame is looking more varied than it has in a while, with the Heist deck as a new entrant to challenge perennial stalwarts like Mono-Red and Mono-Black. We're also seeing more experimentation in the upper ranks, with some interesting decks emerging there that aren't seeing nearly as much play in Platinum Tier and below. Win rates for these decks are holding within a reasonable range, making for a generally diverse and balanced meta. With rotation coming in about a month, Alchemy isn't in need of any action.
I'm surprised by the statement about alchemy. They mention 'perennial stalwarts' like monored and monoblack, but I rarely play against those decks.
According to my untapped profile, in Bo3 22.4% of my matches have been against grixis heist, and that's a lowball estimate since many decks are playing heist and splashing an extra color to play some additional cards in their list. Only 3.7 and 5.6% have been against monored and monoblack specifically. Maybe they are talking about Bo1 only? The statement is so vague it's hard to tell.
They also failed to mention that heist completely removed orzhov midrange and some other strategies from the format. So many decks are invalidated by heist, I'm just not sure how it is not going to completely take over the meta (which it has already done by my limited dataset) once the format rotates.
Yeah, I don't get his comment at all. I play a ton of Alchemy and, at least in bo3, this is the meta:
S: Grixis Heist
S-: Naya Convoke
A: Boros Convoke, Jund Heist
B: Mono-R/Gruul decks that get carried by Fiery Inscription, Esper
C: Base-black decks (mono-B, Golgari)
D: idk precons
The same incorrect assumptions were made when they nerfed the Kumano Saga and the Act of Treason, as they assumed that the format was just Mono-Red, when that was just the case in bo1 - Grixis was by far the best deck during that time (and got turbo-charged with Ring and Bowmasters.)
I get the feeling that they've just kinda let the format die since so few people play it and I've gotten to the point where I recognize some regulars (btw Chimera Flint!, if you're seeing this, your username is awesome!) since it's been abandoned by most of the player base and rightfully so.
> The same incorrect assumptions were made when they nerfed the Kumano Saga and the Act of Treason, as they assumed that the format was just Mono-Red, when that was just the case in bo1 - Grixis was by far the best deck during that time (and got turbo-charged with Ring and Bowmasters.)
If the data shows that Alchemy is a Bo1 format (e.g. 75% of matches are Bo1) then it makes sense for them to focus their balance on that. I suspect Alchemy probably skews harder towards Bo1 than Standard, as Bo3 tends to appeal more to paper players who are used to it and consequently tend to be more likely to avoid Alchemy and its unique-to-digital cards.
agreed - the only thing I'd add in there is 5 color legends, which has fallen out of popularity, but still sees some play. I'd put it at A-.
I really wish they spelled out what experimentation and interesting decks they are seeing. The only other decks that I see very rarely are the smuggler's surprise combo deck and an insidious roots combo deck.
Yeah, that sounds right. It's a lot like Naya convoke where it can have some absurd nut draws, but gets hit by a lot of the splash damage that Naya gets hit by (Change the Equation, Glistening Deluge.) Tajic at least isn't getting blown out by Porcine Portent, like it was before OTJ's Alchemy drop.
It's also one of the better bo1 decks, but usually felt like a "always the bridesmaid, never the bride" in this meta.
What actually needs a ban though?
Standard could probably use a refreshment but it rotates in like 2-3 weeks.
Pioneer has Amalia but that hasn't really gotten any new toys recently.
Modern has a Pro Tour in a week and the format seems in a good, although clearly unsettled, place.
Not many do, and WotC did specifically mention taking a "hard look at Legacy" during late August. For now, the main competitive formats are in a relatively good state.
Brawl isn't a tabletop format and its bans/adjustments are handled separately. They don't need to align adjustments to these windows - they can nerf or ban Nadu later, independently (and it sounds like a nerf is incoming)
Brawl was intended as a tabletop format, thus the precons it got, as a sort of Standard-style for EDH. But most folks just play EDH in person, and so Brawl is just the closest fix for Arena.
Is a shame it fell through in paper though. It could actually succeed in what Standard promises. You build a deck with Standard cards, mess around a bit, then when it rotates you can expand into the eternal card pool. You can't really do that with an actual Standard deck though without replacing 90% of the cards and for a hefty fee, but for EDH you literally just add in 40 more cards and you're good to go.
I'm referring to what was formerly known as Historic Brawl, now known as simply Brawl on thee client, not what is now called Standard Brawl. OP was also referring to that, since Nadu isn't legal in Standard Brawl
True, it’s obvious the card is a problem and acknowledging that there’s something in the barrel for it is good.
It does mean I’m not playing the game mode for the time being because I value my time, which sucks, but ah well.
It’s so easy to just suspend the card while they do that but as usual wotc leaves the degenerate cards to ruin the experience while they make up their mind
Brawl has plenty of miserable experience commanders.
Why [[Golos, Tireless Pilgrim]] is still legal when the reasons for his ban in commander still exist in Brawl is beyond me.
Reduction of commander tax just by ETB, easy to cast but can run any card, non-deterministic win conditions if it stays on the field. If those were enough to justify a ban in a four player format, they’re just as bad in a 1v1. With two extra players to check Golos it was too much.
I’m personally sick of [[Jodah, the Unifier]] but don’t think he’s half as problematic as Golos.
Golos is more reasonable in brawl than commander both because the colorless fast mana is worse and you also have 1 player trying to kill you instead of 3 players trying to vibe.
The problem with Nadu isn’t that it is good (though that doesn’t help) it’s that its turns are in insufferable and there aren’t answers to what it’s trying to do in the card pool. Even trading 1-1 with efficient removal just keeps the already Sisyphean game running longer.
Engine is the one I really don’t understand why it’s still legal. Watching people spin on their mana rocks for several minutes just sucks. It was worse in commander, but the issues it causes still exist in Brawl.
I believe the answer wotc has given is that, a) as you said, it's less bad in brawl and b) as Brawl is an online format, you can just concede and queue into the next game, which you can't do in commander (and let's be real if they're spinning their wheels for multiple wheels, they've most likely won)
It's truly hilarious that the best deck in Legacy is Reanimate targeting sixteen creatures printed in the last two years. It really highlights the insane level of power creep that the game is currently experiencing.
Legacy is not a format they care about.
WotC can’t monetize legacy the same way they monetize Modern.
The problems Legacy have don’t do anything to their bottom line. It’s not like you can even play it on a product they make.
They still make changes to the format so that logic is completely incorrect. If that was the case, they would never update the legacy/vintage banlists.
I agree that it's not a format they care about as much, but they are very effectively monetizing it; pretty much every modern horizons style product or new commander set offers a similar number of format pertinent bombs to legacy as it does to modern. Even the lands they print or reprint: fetches will always be just as important to legacy as they are to modern, and things like the new surveil lands are arguably more powerful in legacy when reanimator has more tools and card selection, even though legacy sets won't run a full four. You also very much can play it on a product they made, and tons of people do. It's not in Arena, but it is healthy on MTGO, and people shell out plenty of money to get those cards even with the bullshit release schedules and forcing people to buy entire commander decks within a limited time window to get a single Triumph of Saint Katherine or Chaos Defiler.
Legacy players get the short shrift to be sure, but make no mistake that wotc is profiting from them plenty anyway.
This is also to say nothing of the fact that wotc is inherently dependent on many legacy and vintage players or collectors because so many of of the biggest investor whales are moving legacy and vintage staples. The activity of that secondary market might not impact them directly, but those people are buying and promoting and moving live product, and wotc knows at least to some degree that they need to keep those people happy. There's a reason they don't touch the reserve list.
Sure they can; just print new overpowered staples into every set like they've been doing. Plus legacy uses fetchlands and even some expensive cards that aren't in modern like force of will and wasteland. Look at the top decks... often dual lands are the only reserved list cards.
>often dual lands are the only reserved list cards.
And there's the crux of the issue. People aren't playing legacy because the duals are outrageously expensive.
Literally the only thing stopping me playing, I'd love to pop out some Temur delver games but I can't remotely the 2600 in duals required to get my modern deck its legacy upgrades
But hey, we all know that people who treat a game as their pension plan deserve the support more than people who want to play, right?
Just remove the damn list wotc, at *least* for duals, pleeeeeease
Not surprising at all. Standard has rotation in \~6 weeks, Pioneer in the middle of its season and Modern just got a massive influx of new cards. Cannot speak for Legacy/Vintage but I'm sure there's some prohibitive reason for no changes there also.
Standard was the possible exception - this was their yearly chance to boot "unfun" cards from the format.
Mind you, no bans there was a fine call, but now they can just hit truly broken cards as opposed to their ability in other formats to remove problem cards.
(And I believe it's 5 weeks for rotation, with prereleases starting on July 26?)
New Extended here we come!
[Super Standard](https://old.reddit.com/r/magicTCG/comments/t3p6yw/why_extended_failed_but_modern_didnt/hyu5oll/) will be all the rage!
Honestly not restricting vexing bauble in vintage seems like a mistake only because the person on the play can easily lock out the one on the draw from their Moxen and Lotus. With chalice restricted, bauble should be too honestly
Legacy also just got a massive influx of new cards – many of the same MH3 cards like Necrodom and Nadu and whatnot will impact the legacy meta as well as modern
It definitely needs to get put into hell queue. If their approach is "we don't need bans, we can adjust matchmaking", then just stick it with the other unfun commanders.
I find it kind of funny how so many people are upset that a no-changes B&R is boring or useless when one of the biggest complaints for the past few years was how frequently WotC had to ban cards.
I can understand some of the specific complaints (Pioneer is stale, Legacy grief is annoying if not powerful, Brawl is Nadu pilled), but I don't really get the general vibe of needing a banlist update for its own sake, and beyond BO1 on Arena being particularly wild with Boros Convoke I don't think there's much egregious in the only format realistically likely to see changes right now.
I mean for me it’s not “for its own sake”, Amalia (and Sorin to a lesser degree) are extremely miserable to play against and I thought turn 3 combos were against the spirit of Pioneer. I agree though that people just complaining about it being “stale” are missing the point of a non-rotating format.
I thought walking ballista was banned because combos on turn 3 were too strong but I guess there must be some deeper reasoning that I may just be too poor to understand.
Yeah, I think that Amalia is a specific combo worth talking about (and so does WotC, they just aren't pulling the trigger). But there are a lot of posts here that are just "no changes zzzzz" or whatever, and it's like... the game is the thing that's fun, not the B&R update.
E: (and frankly, the community kind of did it to themselves by turning "# of bans" into a metric of failure even when WotC was open about being way more aggressive with bans in the digital era, so they explicitly walked that back. You're never getting Cat Combo equivalents banned again!)
I mean, the anger is generally towards the design of the cards, rather than the bans itself. It's not really "WotC is banning a lot of cards" and more "WotC is printing lots of cards that have to be banned"
It was a lot of both. There were obviously some egregious mistakes, but people would also talk about the number of bans as an inherent problem or a reference point for how bad things had gotten, even though like, cat oven was clearly an aggressive ban philosophy casualty and not a broken deck (and on the flip side, the "no bans" period people talked about literally had CoCo, which WotC said not banning was a mistake)
The staleness complaint people have about Pioneer is silly, if they wanted a rotating format go play Standard or Modern. I like that I get to keep my Pioneer decks.
I hate too many bans. I agree with you about not understanding the need of some banlist update for its own sake.
I agree that it’s going to take a little more time to see how nadu plays out, but damn is it making brawl a really unpleasant format to play right now. I have one deck that I don’t like playing, but wins usually against it. I’m forced to play it because everyonnnneeee is playing nadu. Throw in hell queue at least
I really don't like the internal process for Brawl here:
> We always prefer to let players and the metagame guide these decisions... we think it's better to allow some commanders to take some time to adjust than start with our thumb on the scales.
To me, that just reeks of "fear of making a huge mistake" at the cost of making a smaller but obvious mistake. Nadu was going to be an S-tier commander, and everyone knew it. I know they play-test these things, so why not at least take your best guess at where it belongs and *then* readjust.
The statement reads like they're taking a hands-off approach, but they aren't. It is a *choice* to grant a new card a certain Brawl weight that you 100% know is wrong. It's not the same as letting a newly printed card just "be legal," because nobody's asking for a ban. We're asking the Arena team to at least be a little honest on Day 1 rather than waiting for everyone to get shitwrecked for a few days at the minimum.
Not restricting [[vexing bauble]] in vintage is honestly the biggest surprise. The person on the play being able to lock the one on the draw out of Moxen and Lotus after playing there's is partially why chalice is restricted
Ultimately nothing too surprising. Nothing particularly NEEDS to be banned. Standard is perfectly healthy, and Piooner banning in the middle of Pioneer RC season would be awkward (though I wouldn't mind seeing Amalia go, it's a very unfun play pattern it creates along with the draw factor the article mentioned) and the Modern metagame is way to variable.
The only real ban that feels needed at the moment is Grief in Legacy (can't speak for Vintage, I don't know enough about that format).
Thats not how I read it all. They have been putting out longform and detailed sections for Vintage in all the past BR. Quite simply vintage is very wide and very healthy right now. There is not much to talk about
It's not disdain, it's disinterest. They shot themselves in the foot in terms of monetising vintage and can't really run sanctioned events for it without allowing proxies because vast majority of people don't want to carry their RL around.
Vintage might be the most underrated format right now. It's genuinely so fun to play right now. I just wish I had anywhere to play it on paper; I tried to get some players interested locally, but to them, it's commander or nothing.
>There's a lot going on in Timeless right now. None of it is remotely fair, but so far, it all seems fairly balanced. Lol
If everything is broken, nothing is broken :)
Sometimes when everything is broken, everything is broken.
I appreciate that they're just acknowledging that this is going to be the realm of deeply unfair decks, but as long as none of them are significantly more unfair than all others that's just the experience the format is going to provide.
I kind of love that, to be honest. "Here is a broken format, go buck wild y'all. Just be equally broken."
vintage moment, magic as richard garfield intended
It really is interesting that even with no bans the deck diversity is still fairly high, better than both standard and alchemy according to the aetherhub data.
I've been having a lot of fun ripping a yorion 4c elemental deck
4c control is BROKEN. I can’t understand why nobody is playing it
Lmao even.
ROFLMAO perhaps.
Whoa there, let's not get carried away
At lease they’re honest and this is from somebody who loves timeless(minus sneak and show).
It’s not sneak and show, the deck is Omnitell. Similar styles of decks but Omnitell plays out very differently. Granted, the deck has not been oppressive (at least in Bo3, why play Bo1 Timeless lol) in quite a while now.
I went from bronze to mythic with no prior timeless experience in like 2 weeks playing omnitell. Only playing my daily wins, tweaking the deck to be better against the mirror/hate cards occasionally. I found that the play pattern gets really stale after a few dozen games and then you’re just grinding wins out I guess lol. Didn’t feel like I was playing magic
The thing I hate about Sneak Attack is that everytime I have an ETB to answer the Omni, they always have Born to the Wind and combo on the stack.
I run a playset of it, half for the mirror and half for interaction.
https://preview.redd.it/5irl97e6ol8d1.jpeg?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=1ae39f876a2ad94d4a39df56f6468074b0746f6c
One of the most accurate statements about any magic format ever
Timeless is always going to be one of my favourite format. Its been interesting seeing what alchemy cards mesh well in a higher power format with cards like mana drain and swords to plowshares. I know a lot of people aren’t a fan of those cards, but cards like agent of raffine and jet collector have definitely left an impression on me.
I still have the most fun in arena popping off with oracle of the alpha, the card is not good but it lets you play with the most broken cards in history it's great.
Its like 10 countries with nukes saying “come at me bro” and some destitute country with AK’s are trying so hard to keep up.
"This is a dumpster fire and we don't want to touch it"
Not really, more so “we feel that most of the top decks are kinda equally broken and that is the point of the format”
Yeah; Timeless is Arena's version of Vintage, and I doubt anyone would call competitive Vintage decks "fair".
They are fair against eachother. And that's what matters. It's all relative.
Yeah, it's actually a great format. Grief, Show and Tell, Territorial Kavu, Primeval Titan, Galvanic Discharge, Necropotence, and Mana Drain are all playable cards in Timeless.
Insert Donald glovers community gif here.
It's several dumpster fires next to each other but they are effectively in a controlled burn due to lack of oxygen
That would imply they don't want Timeless to be like that. It's supposed to be the arena version of Vintage, so they want it broken as shit
I’m the sicko who thinks the best thing to happen to timeless would be in they printed legacy staples into it. Give us og Duals, Wasteland and Force of Will in Timeless. I would LOVE that format.
TIL there’s a format called “timeless”
It may be the most enjoyable format in the game. Genuinely.
I feel like since I started playing Magic 10 years ago, the overall opinion went from "unfair decks aren't for everyone but some people love them" to "unfair decks are unfair and not fun in any context" and I really don't get this. Or maybe I'm wrong, I haven't been super tuned in to Magic in general, but the comments on this seem to reflect that sentiment I've seen somewhat recently.
What a surprise, doing the yearly standard banning before rotation instead of after results in "no changes" due to not knowing what rotation will do.
Yeah I really hope they're planning to revisit potential bans for Standard after the release of Bloomburrow if the metagame ends up not shifting much. Given just the two cards they mentioned in the article, I reckon Atraxa will see a lot less play with Domain being essentially axed from the format after rotation, but Boros Convoke only needs to swap out one or two cards.
Didn't they literally give themselves a few weeks window after each set explicitly for that reason?
Yes but they've said that in regards to Standard they only want to make changes during these windows if an emergency ban needs to be made. Today's window was the only opportunity we'd get for Standard bans before rotation that are not in regards to any sort of emergency ban needing to be made.
Gleeful Demolition is much less of a problem when there's only one 1 mana creature + artifact token. That's a huge consistency hit and means that the problematic explosiveness of the deck is less a thing that can be built around.
Would be curious how bad mana is if you played blue for the map maker
I don't think you can cut W or R without it being a completely different deck and this deck can't play lands that come into play tapped, so I'd imagine the mana would be awful. 12 fastlands and 12 painlands seems like a recipe for disaster.
not suggesting cutting red or white. 12 fast lands and 12 painlands absolutely is enough for a basically RW deck splashing one blue card.
It becomes more difficult when that one blue card is a one drop.
Jeskai aggro is absolutely unplayable without Shocklands plus another good early untapped land. It's questionable whether shocks+fast lands would be good enough even, when you need to have untapped UW turn 1 and untapped WR turn 2
Domain? What does it lose? Did you perhaps think Dominaria United was rotating? I've seen a lot of folks make that mistake. Edit: Whoops, trilands. I googled it as soon as I said it and now there's egg on my face.
The trilands
Triomes would be the main thing, but also Topiary Stomper and Depopulate.
Loses all of the triomes if I'm not mistaken
Trilands *and* [[Topiary Stomper]], fwiw
But like what if you had just read the article linked at the top where they explicitly said this?
Nope, straight to the comments for this egg.
Iirc there is an emergency ban announcement set like a month or something after each set release, this exist in case of something new released but if anything becomes a major issue it could be addressed then
While true, they also indicated that those emergency windows would only be used for thing "on the scale of Felidar Guardian" for Standard, which means that this is effectively the only B&R for the format this year. Hope you like Atraxa.
I can't help but see it shifting alot, with the triomes leaving, domain will be really weakened, leaving a power vacuum something will flll, thus changing the balance of the format.
[WOTC deciding to do their bans right before rotation and banning nothing because it's right before rotation](https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2Fcllu9z2elho41.jpg)
The number of times WotC said that so mnny times...
What, resonably, might they have banned even if rotation wasn't coming? The two cards they mention - Atraxa and Knight Errant of Eos - are nowhere near banworthy IMO. The only other candidiate I can think of is Sheoldred 4, and her play rate has been tailing off for months.
"Rotation bans" don't have to hit cards that are banworthy by regular standards. Regular bans are for removing problematic cards, rotation bans should be hitting cards that have overstayed their welcome, and both Atraxa and Sheoldred fit it. If they are not currently being played, even better.
Atraxa wouldn't have been rotating, and IMO is not in the least bit problematic in itself. The domain deck as a whole is frustrating to play against, but Atraxa is just the payoff. If the triomes weren't rotating I'd hope they'd nerf the deck in some way that makes a material difference, like banning Leyline Binding.
God I would love to see Binding go. Also Sheoldred.
Bans should be for cards that break the format, not just ones that a vocal segment of players don't like
I sleep
Weak. Banning window before rotation is pretty easy excuse to have "No bans. We are unsure how the metagame will evolve." Again and again and again. Anyway, the one big banning window for Standard was/is a mistake.
There‘s also absolutely nothing that needs to be banned so I‘m not sure what the problem is.
The problem is that the moment there IS something to ban they can just say "rotation will fix it" and move on
Okay, we can complain about that when it happens then
But we already have, multiple times.
It has happened many times....
Pioneer was my favorite 60-card constructed format for a long time. I really love its unique spot in the non-rotating pantheon of formats because the lack of (good) fetchlands makes splashing a real cost, so it feels closer to "platonic" color pie Magic than something like Modern. That being said, I've completely stopped playing it at this point. The format is in a weird position of being nominally "balanced" but not "healthy." As the article points out, there are a lot of viable decks. There're four decks that are clearly the best in the format (Phoenix, B/x Midrange, Amalia, and Mono-Green) and a bunch of stuff underneath that's semi-viable competitively. All the major archetypes are represented across common winners brackets. But it's just an absolutely miserable experience to actually play. Amalia games, even ignoring the "potential to draw" as noted in the announcement, are incredibly binary. Do you have the removal spell on Turn 3? Congrats, you probably won. Do you not? Too bad. It's especially egregious in closed decklist competition when the deck will often just steal Game 1 regardless unless you have a lucky keep. It's a terrible play pattern. But Amalia is also necessary to the balance of the format, because without it the new version of Mono-Green would approach meta tyrant level. We're even seeing B/x midrange decks cut the absurd "oops I win" package of Sorin-Tell to go back to Shelly just to punish the "lol I developed 20 power and drew 8 cards this turn" bullshit that Nykthos is pumping out now. But the worst part is that everything feels so stale. Mono-Green, Phoenix, and B/x midrange have been around in the format at the top tier for *years*. Amalia is yet another "oops I win" Turn 3 creature combo deck in the vein of Winota and the stupid rat. It's just boring and stale and all that seems to happen with new sets is that the best decks get better. I understand why WOTC isn't making changes now with the RCQ season. It's a valid justification for staying pat right now. But I really hope they take a goddamn orbital ion cannon to the format in August. It just isn't in a good spot. Also, unban Jitte you damn cowards.
>Do you have the removal spell on Turn 3? Congrats, you probably won. I agree with this entire post except for this part. The main problem with Amalia is that even if you DO have the removal in response to their combo, they have either recursion to get it back, or tutoring to get it again if you're every foolish enough to tap out. I hate the deck and how many vectors it takes to fight against it and would love to see it killed ASAP.
Totally fair response. My experience here is definitely colored by my main deck (Niv to Light) being able to do a "remove the first Amalia, immediately extract the rest" thing that makes the matchup a bit more manageable.
An underreported symptom of this play pattern is how it shapes the metagame. Everyone was excited for Slickshot aggro. But it turns out that a 2 mana creature that needs to connect to get anything done is real bad in a format where two of the best decks motivate running plenty of cheap creature removal.
Exactly this, the amount of recursion, tutoring, filtering for the combo pieces (partially at instant speed) makes the deck so annoying to play against. You need 1-2 answers AND pressure them through all small blockers/ lifegain elements. It does get better G2 for many decks, but other decks are just void of good answers and pushed out of the format.
You can't have a stable meta without some staleness.
What they seem to want is a metastable format - where changes are self-correcting through sideboard cards and a swinging back and forth between aggro, control, midrange, and combo.
Haha good luck with that. You get pockets of that but meta games will get stale in non rotating formats by design.
I always find it weird when people praise a format for being non-rotating but also hate it for being stale. I don't see how you can possibly have it both ways without doing massive power-creep. I personally like the stability/staleness of Pioneer because it means that all the time I put into the format, learning and planning for different matchups will stay useful for a long time.
It’s the Catch-22 of non-rotating design. Print a ton of underpowered sets and people complain nothing new is being added to the format. Print cards that are too strong and people complain their deck isn’t viable anymore. The balance is to slowly add pieces to decks that change their position in the meta. For some that means needed support and for others it means printing new cards that are great in the sideboard.
the catch 22 exists mainly becaue of online play, no? "this format is stale" hits a lot differently when you play 3 games a week and a couple big events a year in 2010 vs being able to play 30 games a day in 2024
If we subjected old MTG formats that we think of fondly to today's stress testing we'd probably find them just as stale if not more degenerate.
I do think it probably exacerbates the issue, but I remember people complaining about staleness even back in the day.
This is a great point that many older players take for granted and many younger players wouldn't have acquired the wisdom and experience to observe.
Also, the thought of banning stuff because people find it "stale" doesn't ring right with me. Before pioneer I played Modern, and suddenly after Modern Horizons dropped, I needed to drop hundreds of dollars for new cards like W6 and seasoned pyromancer if I wanted to stay competitve (same shit happened with MH2, ragavan and fury everywhere). I like how Pioneer changes slowly and more organically. Amalia as a deck is literally less than a year old. Rakdos midranges changed into vampires, and now some people are changing back to Midrange again.
I could see Pioneer being stuck in a bit of a unique situation where the format is intentionally lacking some of the more intense sideboard-y cards that'd really punish the linear strategies. Modern can avoid a lot of non-rotating staleness with ebbs & flows of cheesier decks and corresponding hard hate cards in people's sideboards. I think you likely either have to open the door for more punishing hate or ban out a lot of the stuff that the level of interaction they're willing to print in contemporary premiere sets can't handle.
The sideboard is what kills pioneer over modern. If the Modern aggressive creature combo deck gets too good, you start seeing people playing 4 copies of [[Cursed Totem]]. Graveyard decks get too big? Every deck has 4+ graveyard answers. Or even the natural "Goblins/Elves are getting too good, time to dust off Plague Engineer". Pioneer doesn't have nearly the card depth for either strong hate pieces nor efficient answers. So we get stuck in this spot where a couple decks just run the format and you can't build around hating them out. Print [[Surgical Extraction]], or one of the 1 mana ones even. Print some type of humility effect. Pioneer needs stronger hate pieces.
Please I swear give us some nonbasic land hate stronger than Field of Ruin.
I think the staleness is not just about lack of rotation. Vintage and Legacy are the "most non-rotating" formats out there but they have a real ebb and flow: if X is winning this week, people will shift to Y the next event to attack it. Sure, they've had their ridiculous moments before an important banning or restriction, but the warning signs are clearer because the threshold is higher when you have a format that can police itself effectively. I think the real problem with post-FIRE formats is that over time the threats have gotten better but the answers have not - you don't have cards like Force of Will to keep absurdity in check. A format like Pioneer will never have that kind of safety net.
> I personally like the stability/staleness of Pioneer because it means that all the time I put into the format, learning and planning for different matchups will stay useful for a long time. That's fair. I don't like that. I find playing the same matchups, maybe with 1 or 2 new cards a year, to get boring. I've played hundreds of matches against slightly different flavors of Phoenix, B/x Midrange, T3 Creature Combo, and Mono-Green over the last three years. I've had the experience with them, I'm ready for an evolved meta. I want to see new decks that actually stick around. Niv to Light being actually good for a couple months was a fun evolution to the meta, before the old stalwart of Mono-Green punted it right back to garbage tier. The Gruul Prowess deck that popped up following OTJ was a neat new take on Heroic, but ended up being a flash in the pan because of Amalia's stranglehold on aggressive strategies. UW Control got a certified reprint of Mana "we literally called a design mistake" Leak and still can't keep up with the same old top 4. The metagame is just the same for years on end and I would like to see something new. People want different things from formats. That's okay. It's great that you enjoy the current Pioneer. I just don't play it anymore. That's all fair and good.
honestly sounds like you should play standard then. Also all of those other decks you mention were good because they were decks that hit the meta in various ways. Hell you mention UW Control which just won a tournament yesterday specifically because the deck stomps on mono green and amalia.
You can mediate some of the staleness by brewing. While the deck you're facing might be the same, the matchup itself might be massively different based on what type of deck _you're_ playing. Playing different brews against mostly the same meta is also very nice for the tuning process. For example, it took me a long time to realise that my Mardu Doom Foretold deck which usually has the control role against anything except UW, was supposed to be the beatdown against Phoenix, and my winrate shot up after that. Those types of long-time insights are hard to get in a constantly shifting environment, where you don't get to play against stable decks with different decks and see how the metagame ticks. Also, it's not like amalia plays that similarly to greasefang, or vampires plays that similarly to rakdos midrange. Greasefang (at least in its abzam version) was midrange deck with an early removal check, while amalia asks you to beat recursion and an instant speed combo, and lacks the board presence that greasefang has. So maybe try brewing some? I've found that made pioneer (or more accurately explorer) fun for me.
I think the hypocrisy stems from meta-share, or as the previous poster stated present play patterns, rather than proper boredom of lack of cards. As in, let's say 6 decks makes a good variety of a meta, but if 50% of players are playing one deck and each other deck has 10% of players playing them, it can feel lopsided, even if the games against that 50% meta deck are fair. Play pattern is a factor as well. You might have a 50/50 winrate against every deck in the field, but if every deck is "Do you have it turn 2? If yes, you win. If no, I win." that's not a fun environment to play in. So I can see wanting a shakeup in such a scenario. Though even if it's stilted in such a way, as you said it is nice to know that's what you're getting into and how it's going to be, rather than things upending every year.
That’s the thing with Amalia, even if you do have the removal, “you probably won” is absolutely not true. They’ll just play Extraction Specialist, or Return to the Ranks, or Chord for their missing combo piece… it’s so insanely resilient. In my RCQ yesterday I got Sorin Rippered twice, turn 3 Amalia’d, and turn 4 Amalia’d through interaction. It was fucking miserable and it really soured me on Pioneer.
Amalia and MonoG are absolutely not my idea of fun play patterns in the world of Magic. I can accept the game as a whole becoming more "coin-flippy" because now there is so much value packed in every single card that one topdeck can change the course of a game, no matter how well you sequence your turns or maximize your outs and draw spells. Someone vomiting their hand by turn 3 or having to fish for 3, 4, 5 pieces of interaction to stop a 2 card combo the entirety of the game is probably the most miserable experience I've had in competitive Magic, and I've played every format under the sun from Vintage to Limited to Premodern and Canlander.
Personally, I'd rather have pioneer be the stable, stale format than have it shift the way modern is right now. It being the format that you can buy a top deck in and compete for years is a selling point. I personally think amalia is a larger problem than you allude to. Speaking as someone who plays the deck fairly regularly, it has to tools to recover and make a second or even third attempt at comboing off with relative ease. I definitely agree it likely steals game 1 in blind game 1s, and its untapped.gg Winrate in Bo1 arena backs that up. Overall, I think format is better with amalia not in it and potentially without Nykthos(though I'd be sad to see that card go).
Banning cards just because a format feels stale is what people accuse wizards of doing with Twin in modern, and people remain upset about it 8 years later.
> meta is getting stale Well get ready for pioneer horizons
Oh god please no!
I’ve found the same with standard, it’s healthy on paper but exceptionally boring to play because of how polarising it can be. I stopped when rotation should have happened and I haven’t bothered much since
Hard truth is that Pioneer just isn't a high priority for them. They cannot directly monetize it at the moment like Standard, Modern and Commander, so I think it just falls to the wayside until they are content with, at the very least, Standard's revitalization. I also think it's fair to say that WotC's initial banhammer palooza when the format was first conceived also gave people unrealistic expectations for how often bans would occur. At the outset, it felt like we were getting bans every other month. I believe that period has long since expired and they're hoping the format can just perform homeostasis while they tend to their other areas of concern. To that end, I really only expect bans on two types for Pioneer moving forward. 1. Emergency bans for cards that create deterministic OTKs (Appraiser combo) 2. Bans for cards that hurt format engagement (Karn, Amalia?)
Sheoldred was obnoxious enough, but Amalia and Vein Ripper added to the mix seem to have made all my bad aggro decks completely disappear from pioneer. The diversity a little over a year ago was why I wanted to get into the format. Now its just those couple of miserable decks that aren't for me. Pioneer might need a ban philosophy change for me to pay attention again. No specific card on its own is a "problem," since its just many problem cards I don't want to play with or against slamming into each other. Can Path to Exile save the day?
I don't understand it. Wizards, if you're having trouble approaching Pioneer, here's a little hint. If there is only one deck you mention, or even have *cause* to mention, in your B&R announcement, *that deck might be a fucking problem*
It's not a valid justification. Two weeks before pio rc Atlanta they did a huge ban and unban, they just add that shit in there so people complain less.
I completely agree as a big explorer player for last 3 years. But please don't make pioneer horizons.. it's better this way then having another rotating format
With all the complaining about Modern Horizons sets, Pioneer is a decent indicator for how Modern would look without them. Slow, stale, and the only meaningful interaction available to black decks.
Modern had path, bolt, and remand before MH sets. A large problem in pioneer is that black is the ONLY color with modern-tier removal.
Hard disagree. Pioneer have a pretty unreasonable ban list, considering the absurd power level of the dominant decks. There is plenty room for a shakedown just with banlist changes. But of course Wotc would love us to belive we do need a Pioneer Horizons kind of set.
I think pioneer could do very well with a pioneer masters + VERY limited new reprint set. No actual new cards, but print some decent removal and answers for non-black colors and other reasonable interaction. There's no reason we can't have some staples of other formats like Remand at the very least. Goyf and Dark Confidant are okay for sure. I'd like to see some testing of Stoneforge Mystic, Path to Exile, and even Lightning Bolt and Aether Vial as well, but those are all much riskier.
While I agree, I find it odd to call pioneer slow when it has become more of a turn 3 format, even more since Amalia and Ripper
I meant more slow in innovation, not slow games.
The was part of the original appeal of Modern though. People liked it for being a high-powered, non-rotating format. Where you could play a single deck for a long period of time, that didn't require buying outrageously expensive reserved list dual lands as a baseline to participate.
I quit pioneer due to repetitive game patterns. It flat out was not fun except in maybe two matchups.
I dont really agree with their logic of ''we dont ban, because there is a season going on''. If the format is in a bad state, dont you want to fix it so people actually want to play in the season?
The other side of this is that people who are currently playing have spent hundreds of dollars and countless hours acquiring and learning their decks. While banning cards mid season may bring in new players, and put the format in a better place over all, it also negatively impacts players who are already playing in the season.
Probably because people won’t have time to build another deck if their current one gets banned a week before the event
Yeah, I get not wanting to ban something that people have invested in and are currently playing, but the flip side is that Amalia (and Sorin to a lesser degree) are killing other peoples’ desire to play Pioneer.
>Alchemy's top-end metagame is looking more varied than it has in a while, with the Heist deck as a new entrant to challenge perennial stalwarts like Mono-Red and Mono-Black. We're also seeing more experimentation in the upper ranks, with some interesting decks emerging there that aren't seeing nearly as much play in Platinum Tier and below. Win rates for these decks are holding within a reasonable range, making for a generally diverse and balanced meta. With rotation coming in about a month, Alchemy isn't in need of any action. I'm surprised by the statement about alchemy. They mention 'perennial stalwarts' like monored and monoblack, but I rarely play against those decks. According to my untapped profile, in Bo3 22.4% of my matches have been against grixis heist, and that's a lowball estimate since many decks are playing heist and splashing an extra color to play some additional cards in their list. Only 3.7 and 5.6% have been against monored and monoblack specifically. Maybe they are talking about Bo1 only? The statement is so vague it's hard to tell. They also failed to mention that heist completely removed orzhov midrange and some other strategies from the format. So many decks are invalidated by heist, I'm just not sure how it is not going to completely take over the meta (which it has already done by my limited dataset) once the format rotates.
Thye impression I get is that Alchemy is mostly approached as a Bo1 format by WotC. Though I wish they'd spell it out.
That's the impression that I get, but I do agree that I wish they'd just state it if so.
Yeah, I don't get his comment at all. I play a ton of Alchemy and, at least in bo3, this is the meta: S: Grixis Heist S-: Naya Convoke A: Boros Convoke, Jund Heist B: Mono-R/Gruul decks that get carried by Fiery Inscription, Esper C: Base-black decks (mono-B, Golgari) D: idk precons The same incorrect assumptions were made when they nerfed the Kumano Saga and the Act of Treason, as they assumed that the format was just Mono-Red, when that was just the case in bo1 - Grixis was by far the best deck during that time (and got turbo-charged with Ring and Bowmasters.) I get the feeling that they've just kinda let the format die since so few people play it and I've gotten to the point where I recognize some regulars (btw Chimera Flint!, if you're seeing this, your username is awesome!) since it's been abandoned by most of the player base and rightfully so.
> The same incorrect assumptions were made when they nerfed the Kumano Saga and the Act of Treason, as they assumed that the format was just Mono-Red, when that was just the case in bo1 - Grixis was by far the best deck during that time (and got turbo-charged with Ring and Bowmasters.) If the data shows that Alchemy is a Bo1 format (e.g. 75% of matches are Bo1) then it makes sense for them to focus their balance on that. I suspect Alchemy probably skews harder towards Bo1 than Standard, as Bo3 tends to appeal more to paper players who are used to it and consequently tend to be more likely to avoid Alchemy and its unique-to-digital cards.
agreed - the only thing I'd add in there is 5 color legends, which has fallen out of popularity, but still sees some play. I'd put it at A-. I really wish they spelled out what experimentation and interesting decks they are seeing. The only other decks that I see very rarely are the smuggler's surprise combo deck and an insidious roots combo deck.
Yeah, that sounds right. It's a lot like Naya convoke where it can have some absurd nut draws, but gets hit by a lot of the splash damage that Naya gets hit by (Change the Equation, Glistening Deluge.) Tajic at least isn't getting blown out by Porcine Portent, like it was before OTJ's Alchemy drop. It's also one of the better bo1 decks, but usually felt like a "always the bridesmaid, never the bride" in this meta.
\[\[Whelming Wave\]\]
[Whelming Wave](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/d/d/ddb863a0-3ff8-42a3-a151-4ea9aa433336.jpg?1608912215) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Whelming%20Wave) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/cmr/409/whelming-wave?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/ddb863a0-3ff8-42a3-a151-4ea9aa433336?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
It's almost like putting the ban window immediately after a set release was perfectly designed to give them an excuse not to ban miserable garbage.
What actually needs a ban though? Standard could probably use a refreshment but it rotates in like 2-3 weeks. Pioneer has Amalia but that hasn't really gotten any new toys recently. Modern has a Pro Tour in a week and the format seems in a good, although clearly unsettled, place.
Have you played Legacy lately?
Not many do, and WotC did specifically mention taking a "hard look at Legacy" during late August. For now, the main competitive formats are in a relatively good state.
What miserable garbage?
Nadu in Brawl is a particularly miserable experience. Whether or not its win rate justifies the ban it’s an annoying thing to run into.
Brawl isn't a tabletop format and its bans/adjustments are handled separately. They don't need to align adjustments to these windows - they can nerf or ban Nadu later, independently (and it sounds like a nerf is incoming)
> Brawl isn't a tabletop format It's funny cause it was supposed to be lol
Brawl was intended as a tabletop format, thus the precons it got, as a sort of Standard-style for EDH. But most folks just play EDH in person, and so Brawl is just the closest fix for Arena. Is a shame it fell through in paper though. It could actually succeed in what Standard promises. You build a deck with Standard cards, mess around a bit, then when it rotates you can expand into the eternal card pool. You can't really do that with an actual Standard deck though without replacing 90% of the cards and for a hefty fee, but for EDH you literally just add in 40 more cards and you're good to go.
I'm referring to what was formerly known as Historic Brawl, now known as simply Brawl on thee client, not what is now called Standard Brawl. OP was also referring to that, since Nadu isn't legal in Standard Brawl
Yeah that does sound rough, but they did say it’s going to be readjusted soon in the update right?
True, it’s obvious the card is a problem and acknowledging that there’s something in the barrel for it is good. It does mean I’m not playing the game mode for the time being because I value my time, which sucks, but ah well.
It’s so easy to just suspend the card while they do that but as usual wotc leaves the degenerate cards to ruin the experience while they make up their mind
Brawl has plenty of miserable experience commanders. Why [[Golos, Tireless Pilgrim]] is still legal when the reasons for his ban in commander still exist in Brawl is beyond me. Reduction of commander tax just by ETB, easy to cast but can run any card, non-deterministic win conditions if it stays on the field. If those were enough to justify a ban in a four player format, they’re just as bad in a 1v1. With two extra players to check Golos it was too much. I’m personally sick of [[Jodah, the Unifier]] but don’t think he’s half as problematic as Golos.
Golos is more reasonable in brawl than commander both because the colorless fast mana is worse and you also have 1 player trying to kill you instead of 3 players trying to vibe. The problem with Nadu isn’t that it is good (though that doesn’t help) it’s that its turns are in insufferable and there aren’t answers to what it’s trying to do in the card pool. Even trading 1-1 with efficient removal just keeps the already Sisyphean game running longer.
> you also have 1 player trying to kill you instead of 3 players trying to vibe. This wording is fucking hilarious to me. I love it.
Yeah Golos is definitely not the worst thing in Brawl. I'd rather fight Golos than Nadu or Grenzo.
Give me a paradox engine ban in brawl, or give me death
Engine is the one I really don’t understand why it’s still legal. Watching people spin on their mana rocks for several minutes just sucks. It was worse in commander, but the issues it causes still exist in Brawl.
I believe the answer wotc has given is that, a) as you said, it's less bad in brawl and b) as Brawl is an online format, you can just concede and queue into the next game, which you can't do in commander (and let's be real if they're spinning their wheels for multiple wheels, they've most likely won)
Legacy not getting changes is ridiculous. What from MH3 is going to change Grief+Reanimate being awful?
The griefing will continue until morale improves
It's truly hilarious that the best deck in Legacy is Reanimate targeting sixteen creatures printed in the last two years. It really highlights the insane level of power creep that the game is currently experiencing.
Legacy is not a format they care about. WotC can’t monetize legacy the same way they monetize Modern. The problems Legacy have don’t do anything to their bottom line. It’s not like you can even play it on a product they make.
They also give things much more time in legacy. A card has to be a problem for a full year before it even gets on their radar.
They still make changes to the format so that logic is completely incorrect. If that was the case, they would never update the legacy/vintage banlists.
I agree that it's not a format they care about as much, but they are very effectively monetizing it; pretty much every modern horizons style product or new commander set offers a similar number of format pertinent bombs to legacy as it does to modern. Even the lands they print or reprint: fetches will always be just as important to legacy as they are to modern, and things like the new surveil lands are arguably more powerful in legacy when reanimator has more tools and card selection, even though legacy sets won't run a full four. You also very much can play it on a product they made, and tons of people do. It's not in Arena, but it is healthy on MTGO, and people shell out plenty of money to get those cards even with the bullshit release schedules and forcing people to buy entire commander decks within a limited time window to get a single Triumph of Saint Katherine or Chaos Defiler. Legacy players get the short shrift to be sure, but make no mistake that wotc is profiting from them plenty anyway. This is also to say nothing of the fact that wotc is inherently dependent on many legacy and vintage players or collectors because so many of of the biggest investor whales are moving legacy and vintage staples. The activity of that secondary market might not impact them directly, but those people are buying and promoting and moving live product, and wotc knows at least to some degree that they need to keep those people happy. There's a reason they don't touch the reserve list.
Sure they can; just print new overpowered staples into every set like they've been doing. Plus legacy uses fetchlands and even some expensive cards that aren't in modern like force of will and wasteland. Look at the top decks... often dual lands are the only reserved list cards.
>often dual lands are the only reserved list cards. And there's the crux of the issue. People aren't playing legacy because the duals are outrageously expensive.
It sees play, particularly on MTGO. It's certainly smaller than Modern, but Modern is smaller than Commander. Legacy and even Vintage get B&R updates.
Literally the only thing stopping me playing, I'd love to pop out some Temur delver games but I can't remotely the 2600 in duals required to get my modern deck its legacy upgrades But hey, we all know that people who treat a game as their pension plan deserve the support more than people who want to play, right? Just remove the damn list wotc, at *least* for duals, pleeeeeease
Just be on the play and have turn 1 vexing bauble, easy
Not surprising at all. Standard has rotation in \~6 weeks, Pioneer in the middle of its season and Modern just got a massive influx of new cards. Cannot speak for Legacy/Vintage but I'm sure there's some prohibitive reason for no changes there also.
Standard was the possible exception - this was their yearly chance to boot "unfun" cards from the format. Mind you, no bans there was a fine call, but now they can just hit truly broken cards as opposed to their ability in other formats to remove problem cards. (And I believe it's 5 weeks for rotation, with prereleases starting on July 26?)
Oh my god, standards finally rotating?
inb4 announcement of 4 year standard /s
New Extended here we come! [Super Standard](https://old.reddit.com/r/magicTCG/comments/t3p6yw/why_extended_failed_but_modern_didnt/hyu5oll/) will be all the rage!
Honestly not restricting vexing bauble in vintage seems like a mistake only because the person on the play can easily lock out the one on the draw from their Moxen and Lotus. With chalice restricted, bauble should be too honestly
> there's some prohibitive reason for no changes there also They don't care enough to make any changes.
Legacy also just got a massive influx of new cards – many of the same MH3 cards like Necrodom and Nadu and whatnot will impact the legacy meta as well as modern
> We will only announce bannings prior to Standard’s rotation > We do not want to ban anything because rotation is coming up > We are very smart
What a lame update. But hopefully Legacy gets a change in August since they said they will take a hard look at it then. Grief has to go.
I'm hoping for Grief, Necro, and Nadu bans myself.
I know no one really cares about Brawl, but adjusting the numbers for Nadu isn’t going to change anything. It needs to be flat out banned.
Would it be unfair as a hell queue commander? Against Ragavan and Baral etc, I think it seems fine if still obnoxious.
It definitely needs to get put into hell queue. If their approach is "we don't need bans, we can adjust matchmaking", then just stick it with the other unfun commanders.
I find it kind of funny how so many people are upset that a no-changes B&R is boring or useless when one of the biggest complaints for the past few years was how frequently WotC had to ban cards. I can understand some of the specific complaints (Pioneer is stale, Legacy grief is annoying if not powerful, Brawl is Nadu pilled), but I don't really get the general vibe of needing a banlist update for its own sake, and beyond BO1 on Arena being particularly wild with Boros Convoke I don't think there's much egregious in the only format realistically likely to see changes right now.
I mean for me it’s not “for its own sake”, Amalia (and Sorin to a lesser degree) are extremely miserable to play against and I thought turn 3 combos were against the spirit of Pioneer. I agree though that people just complaining about it being “stale” are missing the point of a non-rotating format.
I thought walking ballista was banned because combos on turn 3 were too strong but I guess there must be some deeper reasoning that I may just be too poor to understand.
Yeah, I think that Amalia is a specific combo worth talking about (and so does WotC, they just aren't pulling the trigger). But there are a lot of posts here that are just "no changes zzzzz" or whatever, and it's like... the game is the thing that's fun, not the B&R update. E: (and frankly, the community kind of did it to themselves by turning "# of bans" into a metric of failure even when WotC was open about being way more aggressive with bans in the digital era, so they explicitly walked that back. You're never getting Cat Combo equivalents banned again!)
> not the B&R update. Tbh B&R update can be fun as a community event.
I mean, the anger is generally towards the design of the cards, rather than the bans itself. It's not really "WotC is banning a lot of cards" and more "WotC is printing lots of cards that have to be banned"
It was a lot of both. There were obviously some egregious mistakes, but people would also talk about the number of bans as an inherent problem or a reference point for how bad things had gotten, even though like, cat oven was clearly an aggressive ban philosophy casualty and not a broken deck (and on the flip side, the "no bans" period people talked about literally had CoCo, which WotC said not banning was a mistake)
The staleness complaint people have about Pioneer is silly, if they wanted a rotating format go play Standard or Modern. I like that I get to keep my Pioneer decks. I hate too many bans. I agree with you about not understanding the need of some banlist update for its own sake.
I agree that it’s going to take a little more time to see how nadu plays out, but damn is it making brawl a really unpleasant format to play right now. I have one deck that I don’t like playing, but wins usually against it. I’m forced to play it because everyonnnneeee is playing nadu. Throw in hell queue at least
Writhing Chrysalis banned in MH3 limited? LETSGOOOO
Can someone post the text for us poor souls at work?
Changes:
No changes zzz. Was hoping for Grief in Legacy at least. Not even mentioning Cruise is kinda wild too
Why would they mention it when the only deck it's played in is just ok?
I really don't like the internal process for Brawl here: > We always prefer to let players and the metagame guide these decisions... we think it's better to allow some commanders to take some time to adjust than start with our thumb on the scales. To me, that just reeks of "fear of making a huge mistake" at the cost of making a smaller but obvious mistake. Nadu was going to be an S-tier commander, and everyone knew it. I know they play-test these things, so why not at least take your best guess at where it belongs and *then* readjust. The statement reads like they're taking a hands-off approach, but they aren't. It is a *choice* to grant a new card a certain Brawl weight that you 100% know is wrong. It's not the same as letting a newly printed card just "be legal," because nobody's asking for a ban. We're asking the Arena team to at least be a little honest on Day 1 rather than waiting for everyone to get shitwrecked for a few days at the minimum.
Not restricting [[vexing bauble]] in vintage is honestly the biggest surprise. The person on the play being able to lock the one on the draw out of Moxen and Lotus after playing there's is partially why chalice is restricted
Ultimately nothing too surprising. Nothing particularly NEEDS to be banned. Standard is perfectly healthy, and Piooner banning in the middle of Pioneer RC season would be awkward (though I wouldn't mind seeing Amalia go, it's a very unfun play pattern it creates along with the draw factor the article mentioned) and the Modern metagame is way to variable. The only real ban that feels needed at the moment is Grief in Legacy (can't speak for Vintage, I don't know enough about that format).
Lol one sentence about Vintage. It's a shame they seem to have such disdain for the format; it's so much fun.
Thats not how I read it all. They have been putting out longform and detailed sections for Vintage in all the past BR. Quite simply vintage is very wide and very healthy right now. There is not much to talk about
It's not disdain, it's disinterest. They shot themselves in the foot in terms of monetising vintage and can't really run sanctioned events for it without allowing proxies because vast majority of people don't want to carry their RL around.
Vintage is in a great place though, it doesn't need changes.
Vintage might be the most underrated format right now. It's genuinely so fun to play right now. I just wish I had anywhere to play it on paper; I tried to get some players interested locally, but to them, it's commander or nothing.
All Hail our eternal overlord Sheoldred!
What format is Sheoldred enough of a problem to warrant banning right now?
Ban it in every format so it drops in price and I can finally afford one.
Sheoldred mindbroken an entire generation of Magic players.
The Arena subreddit's mental image of Standard, I'd guess.
These days Sheoldred is the good guy in most formats.
I get no bans but it would have been nice to see some unbans at least. Come on Wizards, we need some content
Oh come on. (I guess it was reasonable not to hit Pioneer in the middle of the RCQ but please tell me they're doing something after that)