So WoTC has been trying to save Standard as of late, but they've been going about it the wrong way...

So WoTC has been trying to save Standard as of late, but they've been going about it the wrong way . The reason why standard has been losing popularit is because of outrageous prices. The new rotation schedule will only make prices higher, as a faster rotation will naturally attract more sketchy vendors (like the ones who destroyed the YGO community). WoTC, you know what you need to do to save Standard? STOP PRINTING MYTHIC RARES IN STANDARD SETS!

Rotation speed is irrelevant you dumb faggot. It's putting good cards at absurd rarities that kills formats and raises prices.

The fact that it rotates at all is already a turn off.

Exactly. Mythic Rares are killing Magic, not just Standard.

Yugioh is nearing death because the prices were absurd for years, so they've hit the panic button and have been reprinting everything for the past couple years as a last-ditch effort.

Rotation is the best thing about it imo, only way to stop eternal power creep. Yugioh is now unplayable and possibly broken forever

What made Oath of the Gatewatch-standard the worst standard in a decade, was the mana base allowing every deck to play 4 color good stuff, and then those good stuff cards tripled in demand.
Things that will help standard:
1: Don't rotate too often; twice a year is too much
2: Stop printing SHIT rares and print more of the good rares instead. Remember Scatter to the winds? Of course not, because it's a Cancel with odd-case upside. Not playable AT ALL outside of limited, and even in limited cancel is barely playable. And it's a rare.

>Rotation is the best thing about it imo, only way to stop eternal power creep.

Yeah this is pretty much the strongest argument for rotation, and a good one at that.

You want a cheaper standard?

Wotc needs to make more than 2 good cards in a set

I don't mind rotation and I don't mind mythics either really

I just wish Wizards would look at their sets they are making before shipping a set like Origins or SOI where there is one ebin $$$$ mythic and infinite piles of trash

I don't even care if standard gets weaker just stop printing completely imbalanced cards in a format that can't sustain that high of a power level on a card. Nobody wants to play a weak format where you have to get 4 copies of an 80 dollar+ card and then in a few months put them in your binder because they made a new shiny you need 4 of too.

Also in general make Planeswalkers more unique and print fewer of them. I'm tired of seeing every standard deck run 20 walkers, it sort of ruins their mysticism and unique typing/rules. Now they are just creatures 2.0

Mythics should be huge bombs for limited, interesting things you have to build around and EDH, not standard staples. They keep printing standard four-of cards in the mythic slot when they are only worthy of being a rare. No way should Relentless Dead be a mythic.

Mythics, instead of being mythic for limited balance, are now chase rares required to build viable standard decks.

>I'm tired of seeing every standard deck run 20 walkers

What standard deck runs even close to that amount?

Yeah, "fixing" standard is actually really simple:

1) Print powerful universal staples at common and archetype-defining cards at uncommon.

2) Print rares that are good but somewhat niche and not stronger than the lower rarity cards.

3) Print only janky Timmy and Johnny mythics with awesome flavor and mechanics but that are unlikely to see any sort of heavy play.

4) Print walkers at uncommon and rare. You added a card type to the game, it's time to integrate it. "But then they won't be special!" They aren't special and haven't been for a long time, they're everywhere you look.

That's basically it. I'd also prefer a higher power level than they've been doing but even that isn't necessary, as long as they keep the power level even and don't do blatant cash-grab shit like "1W for a common 2/1 with minor upside or W for a mythic 2/1 with multiple major upsides" they can keep it as low power as they want. It will never ever happen though, people will continue to give them all of the money in the world no matter what they print and they can always just sit back on the non-answer of "we do these things for limited" even though none of the above would make limited worse in any way. They don't need to try to fix anything, the game has enough cultural inertia to stay profitable for at least a couple more decades. Just look at the trainwreck Yugimon has become and how little it mattered. People see a brand they know and give it money.

WotC is pushing standard now in order to sell more of the crap they produce. Including playable commons and uncommon in significatn numbers in current sets means less product will need to be open. The odds of finding a specific mythic are like 1 in 100 packs. If you need playsets of those mythics, that means 400 packs. WotC likes those numbers.

The game, at this point, is only a tool they have in order to generate demand for specific cards. WotC is in the collectible business, not the gaming one.

When will you goofs realize that "fixing" Standard isn't possible without breaking Limited, the only format that's actually good.

Because that's wrong, obviously. Nothing about limited requires commons to suck and mythics to be insane relative to each other, nor does it trivialize decisions to make all cards more or less good. If anything it makes limited more rewarding when there are more viable cards, it opens up decision trees in deck-building and takes away a lot of the autopilot that can come from heavy experience with a given environment.

what is hyperbole
decks in the pro tour ran a bunch though.
nissa chandra gideon jace and obby all made appearances

Using Modern Masters 2 as an example here:

Know a card that's just "good" in draft? Tarmogoyf.

Know a card that's blatantly fucking AWFUL in draft? Daybreak Coronet.

Mox Opal isn't broken in draft, metalcraft is difficult to achieve.

Cards like Kiki Jiki, Clique, Emrakul are way worse than Ant Queen, a true draft bomb.

Fact is, wotc doesn't balance rarity in accordance to draft balance. They do it just as much according to value.

A fully powered cube can be just as fun as a Homelands draft. At some point, you should start thinking for yourself and not simply repeat what MaRo says.

Oh and Force of Will as a mythic in Eternal Masters.

What a fucking joke, an uncommon 5 mana counterspell at mythic. It's fucking AWFUL in draft.

>Homelands draft

the biggest problem for standard is that the majority of the cards printed are garbage. Only the rares and mythic rares are good, and that inflates prices. Its the reason i left standard after RTR and the problem only got worse

Tbf modern masters isn't designed for drafting, it's designed to make the inflated price cards a bit less expensive. While I'll admit I'm in a relatively small lgs, I've never even heard of someone drafting modern masters.

most places draft it, though.

almost all of MM 1 went to either people who bought boxes or drafts in the three LGSes in my area, and while I was away when MM2 came out, from what I was told it was much the same.

The main problem is that their standard playtesters are complete shit at deckbuilding, so they miss really fucking obvious decks like bant company. They literally cannot figure out "a pile of the best 3 drops plus an instant that puts two of them in play". Instead of appearance fees, they should give pro magic players a fucking job, hire them on (as employees or consultants idgaf) to playtest their shit. Then maybe we'll stop seeing shit like BR madness vamps being a terrible pushed deck while boring "drop value, turn sideways" decks trample everything.

A bunch of other editions.

Ok, so I have some (I guess) really unpopular opinions in this thread.

I'm fine with most mythics as-is. Relentless Dead at mythic is a kick to the face, sure, but most other mythics that have seen play lately have been stuff like Season's Past, which truly FEELS mythic to set up and cast, legendary creatures with bomb abilities (like Kalitas), and planeswalkers who, yeah, should probably start getting printed at rare.


But I mean standard is currently at near-peak diversity! The last major tournament had eight different decks in the Top 8, and there were at least three other decks that barely didn't make it. After the agony that was 4c-goodstuff (but mostly Rally), I'm super pumped to have what seems to be an open playing field in standard.

Also, SOI has one of the best value breakdowns of any set I've seen in a while. I think Origins might be slightly better, due to the presence of a $3 uncommon and the fact that the Jace lottery is still a thing, but SOI and Origins both have an average value per pack of about what you're paying.

How many cards in the Company deck are rares and/or mythics? Pretty much all of them, including lands.

How many in BR vampires? Drana, and maybe Olivia, who is not really that necessary or useful in the deck. Falkenrath Gorger, maybe?

There is our answer. The playtesters are doing their job just fine. The problem is they are constricted by rarity and value.

Is Homelands draft worth it?

Even if it is the worst expansion ever made, it is probably okay to draft. You are going to have an atrocious deck, but so is everybody else.

What, in your opinion, is the best draft set?

Innistrad was lots of fun. So was Ravnica.

For some fucking reason "good counterspell" is valued equally to game winning creatures in wotc's eyes

In CoCo? The best card is Reflector Mage, an uncommon, and it also normally runs playsets of duskwatch recruiter and bounding krasis

In B/R vamps, you've got Olivia's Bloodsworn, Heir of Falkenrath, Ravenous Bloodseeker, and Incorrigible Youths for uncommons.

The big problem with them is that Vamps is a deck that just jams creatures and turns them sideways, while CoCo has utility. Maybe EM will have some good cards for vampires, but honestly with how bad it is right now, and how pushed it was, it's definitely an oops deck.

weird opinion here, but I loved drafting Time Spiral.

>>Abzan Company
>>Reflector Mage

The best card is CoCo. Don't be daft. Even so, playing 12 uncommons does not refute the claim that most of the cards on that deck are rare, including the key elements.

And my point was that in BR vampires there are few rares that actually matter, and none that are part of the madness engine. Hence the deck sucks. It is not an oops. Everybody knows why UG Madness worked: cheap, reusable madness outlets, reduced costs on threats and cheap ways to refill your hand. BR Vampires has only one card that fits into that category: Heir. The designers know this, and they purposedly designed an archetype they knew was going to suck.

For what is worth, I actually play BR Vampires. I knew it was going to suck.

This is why BFZ was the single most hated block since Alara. Nearly all of the value was in the expeditions.

And guess why Alara was hated? That's right: IT INTRODUCED MYTHICS!

$50+ cards should not exist in Standard. Ever. There isn't even a point to play the format any more when you could build a top tier Legacy deck for the price of playing just 3 Standard formats.

Let's talk about Bant company. Now that deck is more expensive than Caw-Blade.

Too poor to own a playset of jace huh user :^)

Sure. I only metioned Abzan Company cause somebody else did. Tier 1 and 2 Standard decks have been piles of rares for years now. Nowadays, even mildly playable uncommons are like a UFO sighting. If we look at SOI, Duskwatch Recruiter is seeing play, but it is pretty narrow. What other uncommon could be considered something that could go in more than one deck? Where are things like Terminate, Path to Exile, Putrefy, Helix?

These days commons and uncommons are mostly used to fill out the deck. If the deck limit was set at 40 cards, they would mostly be gone from constructed play. That's bad for the game, but finger-licking good for business.

Go back to Yugioh you cancer piece of shit

>Instead of appearance fees, they should give pro magic players a fucking job, hire them on (as employees or consultants idgaf) to playtest their shit.

They literally already do this. WotC routinely hires pros to be on their development teams.

What people don't realize is that balancing something with as many moving parts as MtG is incredibly difficult, and any limited group is going to be incapable of doing a perfect job. Especially given that the designs they're working with are constantly changing, and consequences of any given change may not be readily apparent.

If course, looking at the results of the pro tour, where every single deck in the top 8 was different and distinct, I'd say they're doing a pretty decent job.

I only got to play sealed with it once in my local store before it all ran out.

Oh, and GP Utrecht but that doesn't count.

Planeswalkers don't need to be any more common than they already are. They've said many times already that they have some pretty narrow design space. And what you want could easily be replicated by enchantments. Hell, it has been with the Seiges, Landfall Retreat enchantments, and stuff like Myth Realized. Artifacts were doing what Planeswalkers have been doing for years, being a few spells on a stick. Just without some of their Ults. We're going to keep getting like more Planeswalkers at their rarity, but maybe it'd behoove you to look for what you want in different cards at lower rarities people can't directly attack and burn. Because this "solution" of yours doesn't fix a damn thing.

I don't think Conspiracy is on a fair level, so I'll say Origins.
>tfw all the timberpacks

How to save standard:
Dont.

I would never play standard because I can't afford to keep a t1 playset of bullshit on hand every time a set rotates, only for things to fall of a cliff as soon as they're rotated out of standards. The optimal way to play magic is to play edh. That way you can play the pack lottery, savor your crunchy mythics, and just straight up buy everything else that you need. Will some cards still be ludicrously expensive? Oh probably, but at least you only need one.

This Annon gets it. Have not build a standard deck since RTR/theros. Instead got into legacy and modern. Every single time I see rotation it feels so good knowing that it only got me once. I only lost $600 or so dollars on rotation.

I will never be able to understand how people keep playing standard. You cannot fix standard. It's functioning exactly as intended.

no, the set wasn't designed for limited

Magic is getting Komoney retarded with rarities. This was a huge fucking problem in Yu-gi-oh. Imo unless a card has a chance of breaking Modern meta it should never be more than $15 per at Mythic. Maybe 20 dollars if it's the best card and a win condition in and of itself. Anything higher than that should be aimed at being a modern staple or it should have a weaker (or less consistent, say, requiring delirium and 1 more mana to do the same thing) but playable version of it at rare.

If people could break into tier 2 or tier 1.5 standard at about 120 bucks for singles + sideboard FNMs would explode. Magic should embrace paper pauper format as well to give budget players a reason to be around product more.

Honestly, with the exceptions of Karn, Bitterblossom, Comet Storm, and Dark Confidant, none of the Modern Masters 2015 mythics are broken in limited.

Mythics should never be the engine of the deck, they should be win conditions or win more power cards. The only time an essential engine card should be a mythic is if its a super powerful effect like goggles - Relentless Dead is the whole reason zombie tribal even has a chance of working in Standard.

No, it is more miserable than you can imagine

You can not pay me to draft homelands

Everyone who doesn't believe rotation is a good thing REALLY needs to sit down and play yugioh for a month.

Granted, by all means dont play rotating formats if you dont like them, but it's mere existence keeps the game reasonable.

>not designed for drafting

Yes, they put all those spirits in there because they were getting too expensive.

Not defending them, honestly they shouldn't have made it for drafting at all.