"p... please play Standard, guys"

Why would I play Standard when I can play Modern instead?

It’s real, Wizards decided the best way to solve the problem that players don’t like the current FNM promos was to do away with it completely, as opposed to, you know, making FNM promos players actually wanted.

Oh wow, a $15 card. Like I really give a shit

where's the fucking harm in wotc just handing out foil fetches at fnm anyway? it doesn't cost them anything

Something something secondary market something something collectors

Costs them card equity if they hand out too many.

it cost the secondary market

Theres two type of people that buy packs
Casual table kitchen people and those that buy on the secondary market like SCG
The first type doesnt care about foil or whatever, and the big guy on the secondary market hate when they have to lower prices due to additional supply.

So they axed the promo to please everybody.

>So they axed the promo to please everybody.
And ended up pleasing no one

That's just an incentive to play like 8 drafts in a day for me.

Standard only exists so that wizards can make money. They have enough money, fuck them. If im going to spend my money on cards its going to be in the resell market, and not being forced into buying 300$ of new cards EVERY GODDAMN YEAR, or twice a year now! Magic has been going downhill since fucking WASTE (APTLY NAMED BTW) anyway. If your hardcore play legacy, if you just want to play real magic play modern, and if you like fun play commander.

they dont care as long as they sell their cards and promote degeneracy

I would consider it if the current sets contained more than one card that doesn't lose all it's value and playability after cycling out.

>Modern masters is great but costs thrice the price of a normal packs because jews
>Commander has been consistently the best Wizards product for years
>Legacy gets ??????
>Standard has been consistently trash for years
>Let's make it even worse, even though we NEED it to make money

So what? WotC has absolutely no reason to care about the secondary market
Except of course for that delicious money that I know CFB and SCG siphon to wizards

After kitchen table, the big guys on the 2ndary market are their largest client.

If they truly didnt cared about the 2ndary market they would actually agressively reprint valuable cards.

WotC does have reason to care about the secondary market. Sticking a card that costs $40 on the secondary market into a supplemental set will help sell it a lot more than sticking a card that only costs $1.

PREACH IT HONEY!

This only happened due to a change in how standard rotated.
And yes it sucked shit because energy was a fucking joke.

> go to FNM once in a while
> get cool foil usable in a variety of decks
> go to FNM now
> get to choose one of three shitty tokens that I won't get to use once the current nu-tribes rotate out

Yeah, where's my fucking Marit Lage token. No one fucking cares about treasure, vampire or zombie tokens.

Even Full art foil lands would be a better incentive. Shit doesn't even affect secondary market jews

... Pretty sure I had a suit like that for my Guildwars 1 Necro..

>not even new art tokens

Because there are a ton of shops and secondary market sheisters that would just ebay valuable promos instead of passing them out at fnm. Same reason they never make sealed products too good, players would never see them unless they paid scalpers first.

Remember these?
Remember when wotc didn't cater everything to the New Player Experience(tm)?

>Wizards claims all their cards are pretty much worth the same except by rarity, but plz guys dont ask about secondary market thats not the point of the game, and we dont care :^)
>does something in response to secondary market
Figures

>WotC has absolutely no reason to care about the secondary market except for the reason they do

Call them when players can ever give them as much money as someone like those big stores or Rudylike people do. They matter more than players.

when I play this and search for a ravnica biland, should I pay the cost to put it on the field?

That is a bullshit excuse that preys on players who are too stupid to know what is going on - an ignorance Wizards fosters.

If Wizards didn't fucking change shit all the time, players would know exactly what to expect at an FNM or prerelease experience and call shitty stores out for their shit. There aren't "tonnes" of shops being shitbags but there are tonnes of ignorant players. If they set a benchmark minimum for prizes and maybe one or two set prizing structures we would be fucking good. Because shit changes pretty much every four fucking months the average new player doesn't know what to expect anymore. Prereleases should have remained Sealed, none of this stupid bullshit novelty crap they've been pushing.

In my opinion the reason they dumbed down promos is because they're angry that good players are showing up to "casual" events. And for some fucking reason they think good players are a net-negative impact on a community - and they have zero fucking evidence to show that. Wizards has done zero work to discern whether that guy who often wins at FNM and prereleases is a toxic piece of shit or not. Well now the crack-addicts, good or bad, are gone Wizards because there's no incentive for them to show up.

Depends if you have a play or not. Or if you’re playing Death’s Shadow

MTG won't be around in a few years anyway.

I'll play standard, but only secondhand singles pauper.

This shit better not get meme'd into reality because of WOTC fuck ups.

COME ON DOMINARA IT'S ALL ON YOU!!!!

With they're staff it's a possibility.

Even if Magic lives another 10 years, this is a once a year promo. It'd take 6 years for the ones that matter, the $30+ ones, to get promos and WotC can't keep shit consistent for two fucking years.
There won't be a full set of Nationals fetchlands because
>WotC gets sold
>WotC stops making fetchlands as Nats promos two years in
>WotC stops having Nats promos at all
>WotC stops having Nats
>Seattle gets nuked by NKorea
>All of the above

Yes.
No, I got here after NWO.

If they were to make the game not oppressively expensive, I would come back.

God I hope Seattle gets Nuked. Get this fucker off the face of the earth for good.

Fucking hell, is that Maro?

Yes.

This fag right here and the pedo shit is why I play YuGiOh again.

Reminder that Melissa del Toro has watched the Patrick Sullivan rant about Chupacabra. There is hope.

You know what they say: two see the same Maro.

I mean, what they are even supposed to do? It's always been the case that the creatures that give the most value when they inevitably get removed were usually the best. It's why the old adage "dies to doom blade" is even a thing.

They need to stop printing good creatures with powerful ETBs, that's all. That way players need to sculpt the game into a point where their big dumb creature is safe from cheap removal, ideally through presenting multiple options to players, some of which are better now, and better later. Aetherling is an excellent example of how a control deck should be winning games; you need to commit into playing it, but by this point you should be safe to drop it because you have 8 lands so it's safe from removal. Right now control is a piss take because your game winning threat has flash so you don't need to worry about committing in your main phase, you can just hold up counters or mass draw spells.

The game needs risk and reward again.

Yes, I watched the video. And the issue isn't just good etb triggers, but anything that lets you do something with the creature even if it gets immediately shot down the next time the opponent gets a chance. The red deck in standard being all haste is another side effect of this. But the premise is flawed from the beginning. Competitive players are not going to play things unless that don't get value when they die unless the rate is absurd, such as in the example given of Baneslayer Angel, which faced much stronger removal during its time in standard than equivalent threats these days do. Mulldrifters are just better than Baneslayers.

Also fuck you Aetherling is a baneslayer but it's completely not an example to Sullivan's point. His entire point is creatures have no risk now. Aetherling is good explicitly because there was 0 risk in playing it, other than yes needing to cast it with mana open, but it was in control shell anyway, which was primarily otherwise composed of mulldrifters. The amount of mana needed to cast your thing to make it live is irrelevant to the point being made, which is there's no moment of holding your breathing to find whether they have it or don't. You don't care because your creature is safe or you got value out of it or it will give you value if they kill it.

>In my opinion the reason they dumbed down promos is because they're angry that good players are showing up to "casual" events.

Not much of an opinion when WotC straight up said that that was the case and why they changed FNM promos. They want FNM to be shitbrews only not real decks.

>Aetherling is a zero risk creature
>Besides how it's an 8 mana creature

I think it's very true. The way WotC handles its players (prospective players) is to coddle them and be as non-threatening as possible. If a new player gets his shit stomped by a decent player behind a T1 deck because he's been lied to and told his Planeswalker deck is "FNM ready," he's probably not going to keep playing much longer.

Man I remember buying the black Avacyn Restored event deck and taking games off people.

I had a massive gap in when I've played - Started in 6th, stopped at Shards of Alara, started again at ENM - so my experience has been any kind of WotC precon is horseshit.
Though really, it doesn't have to be that way. Budget options are possible, but they have to be consistent decks with plentiful 4-ofs and other such. Every precon deck is just a fucking smattering of one and two-ofs.

Clearly, WOTC should make better intro decks that teaches the importance of a mana curve and consistency in having multiple copies of a card in a deck.

The video was about they made creatures have no risk. Aertherling has no risk, especially when your deck is built to be able to cast it safely, i.e. a control shell. The reason this matter is because the complaint is specifically that creatures have gotten so brainless to cast. The issue isn't because creatures aren't expensive enough or because there's too much etb triggers, the issue is there is no risk assessment when playing them because they all survive or otherwise make value no matter what the opponent does. Aetherling falls under this category of a creature that had no risk to be cast, otherwise it would not have been played as a control finisher. Was playing a Siege Rhino a risk because you needed to build a deck that could reliably get at least 3 colors of mana when unless you worked to get it, most decks on their own can only support maybe 2? That's not how it works.

Precons have to be fast aggressive decks. The difference in card quality becomes more and more apparent the longer a game goes. This is why the planeswalker decks are fucking trash, they're a bunch of overcosted cards with no coherent strategy that make a big deal about planeswalkers at the cost of making them lose every single fucking game of standard they play.

Aetherling's risk is that it's a big mana sorcery speed play. It just seemed safe because Supreme Verdict and Sphincter's Revelation made the deck kind of dumb.

Yeah, it was a good control deck shell. Doesn't change the point though. Like I said, if conditions couldn't be made to make it a safe play they would have used a different wincon. Aetherling IS a baneslayer, but it wasn't about baneslayers versus mulldrifters.

Ironically Arena literally tells you how much of a little shit you are through their ranking system.

Arena is a good example of their 'we don't want good players' mentality. Why else would they restrict deck building so much?

The WR Event Deck from Innistrad/RtR standard could compete with real decks, so hoarders bought them all to prevent little Timmy from winning.
Or that's what WotC thinks.

Go on

But all it does is exacerbate the problem. Good players will make better decks from their shitty card pool than bad players, and so they'll go up the ranks and win more cards to make their decks better while Timmy remains at the bottom getting one free pack a week because he can't win shit.

I wouldn't be surprised if WotC literally gives god accounts to their shills to snipe well-performing players and keep them from winning too much tho.

>Boros: Rally and Rout
Yo this deck looks awesome. You said it actually performed back in the day?

I thought the deck from this time was the Selesnya deck which had swagtusk.

>Deck Building Restrictions
>Specifically designed to tell good players to stop winning
I am confused, please explain.

That's on purpose because it feels bad to open a pack and get a useless 5th copy so people won't buy packs if they start with 4 ofs

It's more or less impossible to make a real constructed deck unless you're willing to pony up a few hundred dollars for a *chance* to make a deck.

>khans fetch
fucking jews
can't they do anything right

Er... no. As far as I know that's not a factor. The reason there's so many singletons and two-ofs is so there's a lot of variety when the decks are played. They assume players will play multiple games with these and they want new players to see new cards for as many games as is reasonable, to make it the experience exciting for as long as possible.

They're coming out with Challenger decks that take advantage of their new shorter development cycle based on actually constructed deck tournament results that will contain multiple mythics and rares and presumably have a consistant card base as well. How many of an individual rare or mythic, well... we don't know yet.

Also, it makes harder to do anything consistently so there's more variance in wins and losses

Yes it was an FNM hero and if you could complete the sets of Clifftop Retreats and rare humans (which were all $1 cards except Thalia at $2-3) you could compete with Tier 1 decks.

At a $30 MSRP, the Challenger decks are still going to be hot garbage. WotC may try to pretend they don't care about the secondary market, but they simply can't put more than one or two good rares in it or else people will open those instead of boosters.

Like, looking at the prices of Rivals and Ix, the absolute cheapest I could make some kind of deck that could maybe win at FNM (assuming a more casual, T1.5/T2-oriented crowd) is about $50.

There's no deck building restrictions. You'll be given 20 boosters (5 commons, 2 uncommons, 1 rare/mythic) of each Standard set and build your deck. Then if you win or complete challenges you get gold to buy more boosters, right now the economy is set so you can get 2-5 boosters a week. There is no trading and dusting works so that you get loot points whenever you would open the 5th copy of a card you already own a playset of at 4% per common, 6% per uncommon, 8% per rare/mythic. Once you hace 100% loot points you get a set of "wild cards" (1 common, 1 uncommon, 1 rare, 1 mythic) you can trade for any card of the same rarity.

It's been calculated that it'll take you 5 months of daily playing with NO LOSES to build any current Tier 1 deck. And of course, if you don't win often you either pay a shitload of money for boosters or you'll never get there.

Yeah who knows on how much they'll be able to deliver. They don't want to fuck with prices usually, but the real money is in older cards, maybe they're okay with tanking standard prices? Maybe instead of masterpieces, they're going to use challenger decks to force standard prices down?

A guy can dream I guess.

Your question answers itself.

If they really wanted to bring down standard prices, they'd stop making 90% of each set awful draft cards.

That's really and truly and genuinely for draft purposes to maintain an even power level.

Ixalan is still apparently not a good draft set but still.

This is why NWO is a mistake.
You could build UG Madness for $30 during ODY-ONS Standard because it was mostly commons and uncommons. You could build Vampire Tribal for $45 during ALA-ZEN Standard because it was mostly commons and uncommons. You could build WU Heroic for $40 during RTR-THS Standard because it was mostly commons and uncommons.

You can't build even half a current Standard Tier 1.5 deck right now for $30 because all decks are all rares and mythics. They need to stop that shit. Vraska's Contempt should have been an uncommon, Fatal Push should have been a common in a large set, and they really need to start making the landbases uncommons or they will never be able to make a competitive precon that doesn't get immediatelly gutted by hoarders and resellers.

All arguments about card power levels in regards to drafts are made invalid by the existence of cube drafts.

Cueb drafts can be designed for whatever audience your cube is for. Compare something like the MTGO vintage cube versus Adam Styborski's pauper cube (and not the pauper cube because of the rarity, but because of he designs it). Wizards has to make all of its sets closer to Styb's cube more than the vintage cube

At a really high level, sure, but for people like me, who are fucking awful at draft, it winds up coming down to whoever gets the bomb rare or solid uncommon(s).
Ixalan was a bad set, supposedly, because once you bought into an archetype there was no turning back, no matter how shit the cards were. And, from what I've read, you had to pick pretty early to avoid getting a pile of useless shit.
The downsides to tribal-focused sets. Supposedly rivals isn't as bad because there are more options in each color and removal is a lot better.
But yeah, when there's 10-15 decent (or even good) cards in a set, you have to open a lot of boxes to get playsets. It's the main reason why I think Arena is destined to go the same route as the other shitty iterations before it - you can't just fucking buy what you want and sit down to play some fucking magic with the same deck you'd want to bring to FNM or a PPTQ or whatever the fuck.
Whenever there's a played common in standard it feels like WotC made a mistake - ie Thraben Inspector and to an extent, Sacred Cat. I guess Shock is a common, but I'm willing to bet there were people in dev that wanted to make it uncommon.
A cube needs to be built by someone who really understands the game or else it's going to be a pile of shit.

The best draft enviroment they've designed in the past 5 years contained Brainstorm, Daze, Counterspell, Swords to Plowshares, Innocent Blood, Chain Lightning, Cabal Therapy, Nimble Mongoose, Price of Progress, Force of Will, Vampiric Tutor, Jace the Mind-Sculptor, Mana Crypt, Wasteland, Mother of Runes, Deathrite Shaman, Vindicate, etc.

Cards don't need to be shit to make a good draft, cards need to be shit so that Starcitygames has to open 110 packs for every one of the dozens of Jace Vryn's Prodigy they presold.

Eternal Masters is not a normal Magic set. It's specifically intended for high level players. Same thing as this

They can call me when the secondary market strangles their game to death with exorbitant prices.

NOOOOOOO! Don't you understand?! MaRo said Swords to Plowshares was a 10 on the Storm scale! THAT MEANS THEY CAN NEVER EVER REPRINT IT IN A STANDARD SET!

god i fucking hate these people who think MaRo's fucking blogatog answers is the end-all be-all of game design.

>A cube needs to be built by someone who really understands the game or else it's going to be a pile of shit.
So you agree with me that when a draft format has been properly designed that power level is irrelevant?

It's actually much better nowadays that it was even two-three years ago.

Uhhhh excuse you the prices on Magic cards will just go up and up forever. That's why they call it a "bubble" sweetie. It just floats up higher into the air forever.

How do you figure that from what he said? Things like Eternal Masters or most cubes are specifically focused on Magic's strongest cards. Not every new standard set should need to make cards at that level every single set release. Cubes and Eternal Masters are also higher complexity which isn't necessarily related to power level but yeah.

You misunderstand me. It's not that I want every set to be crazy power level, it's just that the argument that standard sets must contain bulk unplayable commons and uncommons because of draft is a ridiculous and completely false argument.