MTG standard thread

>tfw one modern deck and the rest is pauper and edh

>Playin?
GW servo's and WU auras
>Brewin?
Locust god control
>Hating?
Anything with the scarab god

>with the added sneaky jewery of all the cards in them that are worth money rotating

That's not even bad desu. 30-50 dollarydoos for six months of being able to play at FNM is a fair price to pay, and it doesn't screw over sale of Ixalan product, which is where LGS's and Wizards are getting their money. The only people it fucks over are online sellers like TCGplayer that were hoarding hundreds of chandras. 30 dollars for six months of (((fun)) without expecting to sell the cards you open, since you'll be using them until rotation, is right what you should expect. All cards need to find an end-user eventually and these decks are intended to go into the hands of players who will use them.

So standard really is this impopular...

I mean sets rotate giving way to new deck ideas. You get new cards every 3 months to play around with. It isn't as deep and overpowered as modern or any other format, which can both be an upside and a downside.
So Veeky Forums how come?

>So Veeky Forums how come?
Because I'd rather find a deck that I love in an eternal format and buy in once. Yes, buying into Modern and Legacy was painful, but my decks will essentially never rotate or die minus getting unlucky with a ban; There will never be a day that a Storm variant isn't viable in Legacy or a BGx deck isn't playable in Modern. The biggest kicker of them all is that it's not that expensive to start playing eternal formats, Legacy burn is reasonably competitive and can be built for ~$300, which is about the price of a upper end standard deck. There is really no reason to play standard unless it's all that's available, you are buying into a format that by designed forces you to buy in over and over again by tanking any value you had at rotation, and fuck that noise.

My lgs still has people playing standard, but my interest in the format waned completly. Im hoping they turn a new leaf with dominaria.

>Playin?
RB Pirates aggro
>Brewin?
UG Merfolk explore + Ghalta
>Hatin?
My playgroup having $50 cards

>So Veeky Forums how come?
Keep in mind I actually play standard, but I stick to casual play with a few college buddies for two reasons:
The price tag on keeping up with the format is the first one. Buying a few cards to create a total jank deck that's exclusively designed for play with your friends is OK to me, but as soon as you want to get into the competitive side (understand LONG TERM, as in over YEARS) you will have to dish out thousandS. Whereas in other formats you can pump a few hundred into staples you like and build around them for way less over time. In addition to that, most standard cards are really bad in terms of mid to long term investments: they lose so much value over so little time that I can't bring myself to lose a third of what I paid three months ago just because WotC came out with a new set.
Second reason is the playerbase and it's mentality. I mainly play Modern, where people are a little bit older in general and therefore (most of the time) actually know what the fuck they're doing. Most standard players in our area are 16 to 20 year olds that bought their first booster pack at the last release and put half their allowance into a 200 buck netdeck they found after googling an archetype for 10 minutes. Standard (to me) is basically the "gateway drug" to "more mature" formats. This could be only my area though, never been outside it.

>playing
UB Flying Pirates
>brewing
nothing atm, thinking about Vamps.
>hating
Glorybringer and Phoenix

>Playin?
WU Auras, only deck I've enjoyed for a while
>Brewin?
Jace token explosion, probably Bant for Oath of Ajani to make them bigger without targeting them
>Hatin?
Boardwipe Tribal that is a thing at my local store

i'm fairly sure the chandra will have decent value after the rotation changes anyway. it's a pretty good and unique for red in EDH

I just sold off my Hazoret deck after a few weeks with the format. I just don't seem much fun in the format, but I hope Dominaria turns things around. Standard has always interested in me because I feel like it's on the cutting edge of the game based on older, actual good sets, but I guess I just picked the wrong format for my first.

Are you me? The only thing I won't let go of is my edh deck.

How do you play the same deck over and over?
I get sick of playing the same thing (and against the same things) after one or two months.
I'd lose all interest in magic if I had a singular deck and was forced to play against Tron et all forever.

I also just can't accept buying staple cards that are north of $50 each - and there are so many cards that cost $200+ for a playset. It's obscene.

If trying to get ahold of decent fakes wasn't such a pain in the ass, I'd probably give modern a whirl since it's popular at my LGS. Otherwise, there's no way in hell I'm dumping several hundred dollars on a deck that may or may not perform and I may or may not enjoy playing.

Been thinking about selling off my Standard stuff and buying into it online. I'd keep around my Modern deck and drive the 25 minutes to the LGS 2x a week, but going 3-4x a week just doesn't interest me anymore. The any time leagues would be great, and the Standard locally is waning hard.

I will never understand the appeal of EDH.

I'll probably play some Standard Showdown for a few months with the precons but mainly just waiting for Kaladesh to rotate or for Dominaria to make Merfolk real.

There are people who find casual mtg more enjoyable than competitive

I want to get into Standard in October post-rotation. Can anyone list the XLN/RIX staples I should pick up now? I'm thinking we get more checklands or better in M19 so probably holding off on those

Why would you want to buy cards now to play in the Fall? What's a staple now could very well be useless in two sets and what isn't a staple now could become one.
I guess Jadelight Ranger and that Phoenix are two options, but their price should come down over time. Carnage Tyrant is $20 for some reason, who the fuck knows why. Decent against control decks, and UB control looks to be gaining popularity.
Vraska's contempt is spiking in price.

Can't really think of anything else. Just look at standard decklists/breakdowns and see what cards are used most often.

Rekindling Phoenix is great but they might ban it for retarded reasons and it's also unconscionably expensive. Same goes for Jadelight Ranger. Vraska's Contempt.

Then I'd say Legion's Landing, Lightning Strike is probably red's best post-rotation generic kill spell. Duress is wonderful. Moment of Craving will probably remain useful. If you're even remotely interested in a tribal deck, Radiant Destiny is real good and it's cheap enough that you can drop dollars for a playset if you feel like it.

Then I guess there's Twilight Prophet, Ravenous Chupacabra. Settle the Wreckage. Spell Pierce, maybe?

I'd recommend getting the new merfolk lord and the merfolk that give's a +1/+1 counter to another merfolk everytime a new merfolk is dropped in game.

Tribal merfolk might be a big thing post-rotation and the aggro decks lose most of their main pieces like the Khenras and the Glorybringer.

I think there's certain cards that have a good chance of being format staples that will spike. Isn't it possible that they push Allies or something similar in the next three sets, especially Dominaria, putting Unclaimed Territory under serious demand (and not as an iffy 5-8x Cavern in modern humans)

If you're right that just makes getting Unclaimed Territory now a great call

Unclaimed Territory is under serious demand for ANY budget tribal deck, hell even non-budget ones.

Yes. Buying land in MTg is the same as buying land in real life. Almost always a good deal.

>Playin?
Red Dick Wins ($20 edition)
>Brewin?
BUG control. I drafted a Vraska and a Carnage Tyrant that I want to use in something and I'm tired of aggro. Really should make it into either BG midrange or BU control
>Hatin?
The fact that my local meta is nothing but tribal shitters turning their creatures sideways
>Question for the thread
Would like some good vigilance/first strike/haste creatures so I can brew a Path of Mettle deck. I liked renown as a mechanic in Origins, would like to see it again

>Playin?
Mono-White Vampire/Monument
>Brewin?
Nothing. Objective good guy Torrezon deck is perfect.
>Hatin?
Kaladesh still exists.

Renown is only interesting to me if the creature has some evasiveness to actually trigger it. If I have to use another card to connect to get the renown, the renown better be FUCKING great.

You guys think MTG is fucked if Dominaria is not well-received?

Rivals turned out pretty good after Ixalan was a bit of a disappointment and Standard post-bannings looks stable so we might be in the clear if they don't screw up and print something broken.

They've survived shitty sets before. It will hurt more because the hype is astronomical, but economically WotC can survive like a decade of decline. The worst you can say about them right now is they're stagnating

>if they don't screw up
>Wizards

>don't screw up and print something broken
>In a format where ramunap ruins is broken
Good luck with that

Ruins wasn't broken it was just the thing that gave monored too much late game gas.

People just have this idea in their heads that a card is either busted or completely fine and there's no in-between or cases where a card might not be fine under very specific circumstances.

That's what happens when you give lands damage abilities without proper land interaction/destruction.

But we can't interact directly with lands anymore, that's NO GOOD!

>5 Mana shock is too good after turn 5
>A card that allows you to win after 5 turns for investing 4 Mana and sacrificing a land is too powerful for standard.
Calm down maro

>5 mana shock
It's a land. It costs you nothing to include in your deck. It turns your extra lands that you don't need into more shocks.

Veeky Forums consistently underrates utility lands and it's fucking hilarious

Yep. They totally could've just left RR alone and while Standard wouldn't be quite wide open, we'd still have a decent format with RDW that's competitive but not broken. They just wanted to make standard a good watch for streams

Yeah that's why every deck autoincluded 4 of RR, right? It was the most used card of it's meta because it could go in every deck without any problem!

>he plays standard
it's literally the cuck format come to EDH or legacy/cube.

Yup, this board's reputation for being terrible at Magic is well-earned.

Playing interesting decks.
Having fun.

>Singleton Vintage, Vintage Light, or Vintage: The Draft

RR would be the undisputed best deck with Energy gone. It trashed the rest of the meta even more than Energy, but Energy also trashed it.

Decks like UB control shit on Monored even when it had the ruins.

In their own data they suggested that other decks would run sideboard hate and be competitive. They just didn't want the preboard surrenders to hurt the game's image

>Playin?
R/B pirate aggro
>Brewin?
Boros with a sub-theme ascend
>Hatin?
UB control, like everyone else.

>Playing interesting decks.
>Craw wurm decks
>Interesting
Lol

I'm trying to brew an Esper control list because why not, and because I just want to use Azor, but every time I sit down to go through the cards and fine tune, I'm just pulled to UB being a strictly-better and more consistent option, which doesn't work for me since I have a single gearhulk and no scarab gods.

I'm thinking about Esper mid-range, but I fall into the same problem of "This deck needs Scarab God," anything else in the five mana spot is just a worse option.

Fuck me if I'm going to dump $30 per card on something that'll drop to $3 on rotation, though.

>How do you play the same deck over and over?
How do you deal with having to abandon a deck before you have time to master it?

>I'd lose all interest in magic if I had a singular deck and was forced to play against Tron et all forever.
Yeah, all there is in modern is Tron, Burn, Lantern, Jeskai Control, UW Control, Titan Breach, Titan Shift, Temur Scapeshift, Bogles, Infect, 5C Humans, Jund, Abzan, Death's Shadow, Death and Taxes, Fish, Hollow One, Dredge, Affinity, Living End, Ad Nauseam, and Eggs. Who wants to play in such a limited meta?

>I also just can't accept buying staple cards that are north of $50 each - and there are so many cards that cost $200+ for a playset. It's obscene.
I can't stand having to buy a new deck every rotation/banning.

>Every EDH deck is CrawWurm.dec
Lol

If you want to play esper, you could try a gifts deck.

All the inferior cards get better when they become a 4/4 zombie for potentially zero.

Gift decks were typically in a decent position when energy and monored were all they had to worry about, but now that there's a lot more control running around it tends to fall on its ass hard.

I don't think there's enough of a payoff to make dabbling into white worth it. Azor is pretty mediocre all things considered. Last time I played Esper, it was a deck using Sorin and Geearhulks as the finishers.

So how long will these decks be playable? I'm thinking about counters or vehicles one but I'm gonna have only about $15-20 to upgrade it so I'm not sure if there is a point of getting one desu

My guy. You thought about using Refuse // for izzet shenanigains?

Nobody plays standard around me anymore.
I remember the days of 20 people FNMs during Return to Ravnica. Now a standard FNM hasn't fired in months here.

I have a side Izzet pirate brew where I considered it, but considering the meta currently the cost for the first part is extremely high, the aftermath part though is a good card.

To be fair, there's no point in going to a FNM to get a shiny token. Let's see if the numbers grow again when they offer proper promos again.

Standard Showdown is better buck for your money because you at least can get a booster with a guaranteed foil rare card, at least.

I've had good luck with the Showdown packs. LGS charges $4 to enter and there's usually only 4-6 of us, so it's not hard to play some silly jank and still walk away with cards.
Since they started doing the Showdown stuff I've probably pulled $200-250 in value out of them.

WotC really needs some proper LGS support. Have promos people want instead of fucking tokens and bulk shit no one ever in their right mind would use. Have good promos of popular uncommons and commons. Fatal push was a great example - bring back promos for shit like Path to Exile, Lightning Bolt, Aether Vial, etc. Don't pull any faggoty 'hurr durr upshift to mythic so it can't be a promo' bullshit, either.

Or just print rare promos and shit, too.

Because WotC keeps fucking with rotation, pretty much every card in those decks will rotate out with the Fall 2018 set. So, since they're being released in April, they'll be good for what, 6-7 months?

Nobody plays because BFZ brought back Eldrazi, which no one wanted and was otherwise a pretty mediocre set, and continued collected company's dominance. No one liked that shit.
Then came SOI and EMN and not much changed except WG tokens became a thing for a while, then BG delirium became a thing and that led to the first of many banwaves. With shit getting banned left and right, no one wanted to buy into a deck because everything remotely good was viewed as being bannable.
Saheeli.
Energy winter.
I think Standard is finally back on track to be decent again, but the damage is done. People who left for Modern aren't going to return. Their only real hope is to bring in new faces, which their marketing and PR is doing a fucking shit job of it.

Refuse could be some spice to use against the growing number of UB control decks.

Might get the RWB and GB challenger deck, depends on what's spoiled for Dominaria.

Both her and hazoret see modern play. Chandra more so. That’s the best bang for your buck in the long term.
The counters deck has some okay value with fatal push and ballista and a lot of cards that are decent for casual/commander
Second sun deck would be better long term value if it at least had search for azcanta, but that’s the shitty thing about transform cards.
Vehicals is probably okay, I honestly don’t remember the whole list but I remember it was a pretty strong precon for standard.

What modern deck uses Hazoret? I see her as a one-of in some mardu pyromancer decks.

Fatal Push and Ballista have much more use in modern than Chandra or Hazoret.

Fatal Push is basically the new bolt and Ballista is making bank in Affinity decks that use ravager.

>counter deck has a lot of cards that are decent for commander
>I just bought the Markov pre-con few weeks ago
Vehicles deck looks fun to play but it brings no good cards to my vampire deck. Shame, would be nice to get a pre-con with cards usable in my other pre-con - mtg is never wallet-friendly enough tho

>Playin'
WB Vamps
>Brewin'
UW Monunment jank
>Hatin'
UB/Grixis Control

So with a september rotation, which challenger deck would be the most fun to expand and play outside the standard? I mean, we won't get many vehicles-focused cards anytime soon, right?

Well, we tought we wouldn't get many in Ixalan, and then they added ships.

Dominaria had some ship during the phyrexian war. Also Core Set 2019 can add whatever cards they want.

The ships are all hot garbage.

Honestly, the mono red deck is probably the best bet.

I'm not saying they aren't. I'm saying vehicles aren't dead just yet.

Copter is getting some play in modern and kiran was strong as hell for several months.

>Playin?
RG/Naya-Monster or MonoRed
>Brewin?
Maybe UW-Drake & waiting for the first Dominaria spoilers.
>Hatin?
UB/Grixis Control

>How do you play the same deck over and over?
My main deck is TES in Legacy, which is often complicated and hard to play, but very rewarding at the same time. Mastery of decks like TES/ANT/DDFT takes a long time and it's not uncommon to win in strange ways. For instance, a few weeks ago I won a game by using Brainstorm+Gitaxian Probe to hide Infernal Tutor on the top of my deck and crack the 3 Lion's Eye Diamonds for mana. Play was:
3x LED, 1 Swamp, 1 Island on the field, Brainstorm, Dark Ritual, Ponder In Hand. Cast Brainstorm, draw Infernal Tutor, Polluted Delta, Gitaxian Probe, put back Polluted Delta and Infernal with Infernal on top. Cast Dark Ritual, floating BBB, cast Gitaxian Probe for 2 life, in response crack 3x LED for BBBRRRUUU discarding Ponder - floating BBBBBBRRRUUU, Probe resolves draw Infernal Tutor, Cast Infernal Tutor Hellbent - floating BBBBRRRUUU, grab Ad Nausem and cast it - floating BBRRU, draw a million cards and eventually cast Burning Wish to get Tendrills of Agony for Lethal.

Point is that mastery of eternal decks takes a long time and there's lots of tuning and testing that you can do. Yes you're playing the same deck a lot, but it's generally a deck you love and you're playing it in a format where there's an insane amount of complexity, which makes games very interesting, even if it's a matchup you've played 50 times.

>I'd lose all interest in magic if I had a singular deck and was forced to play against Tron et all forever.
Same here, It's why I'm a legacy fag

>I also just can't accept buying staple cards that are north of $50 each - and there are so many cards that cost $200+ for a playset. It's obscene.
My only suggestion is slowly trade into staples, buying into an eternal format is more of a marathon than a race. Look through your old cards, trade them for staples and put the money you would have spent on standard towards eternal stuff; You'd be surprised how quick you can get in.

Shadowed Caravel is hot and I'll not have you say anything against it.

nobody on tg has ever played a competitive game of magic, no fnm is not competitive, its all casual

why would anyone play this shit of a format? why do people still give money to WotC by the most shitty product they have done in years?

I want some pump spells. I've been meaning to brew mono green stompy, but I don't know how deep I should play into a dinosaur subtheme and it feels like some dinos are inflated right now and I also don't know how I feel about possibly splashing red for the haste enabling Regisaur Alpha
Like the curve of Rhonas into Ripjaw into Gearhulk seems too girthy to deny. I could sell my mardu GPG deck, which works better than it should be for being knockoff Esper, but I don't know about selling something that works.

>their best/arguably only good product is their worst
That honestly makes you sound more like a WotC apologist than almost anything else you could say.

Honestly? I draft a fair bit instead of cracking prize packs, and I enjoy playing with the current cards, since I know some will never see play anywhere else.

I had this discussion with the owner of my lgs, so there are a few points to consider.

1. Rotation. People have pointed this out already so I don't need to go over this.

2. Staleness. When I first started, I got into RTR, then Theros, then Khans etc. Every time a new set arrived, a new deck would appear. You would still have the staples like black devotion and such for the time they were around, but something new and interesting would come along with every new set.

Kaladesh came out, gave us energy and while it was fun within the set itself, it has warped the format beyond repair. BFZ was boring as fuck, what decks did you play? Oh aggro on all sides. Great...

Not only that, but the El Drazi, in their first set of Zendikar felt imposing, felt world ending. Here they just felt like they were the villain of the week.

Shadows was just more of the same under different names and then Kaladesh was a bright spark for all of two seconds as energy created three decks. Amonkhet added in Second Sun decks. So you only have realistically four competitive decks to play.

There's no innovation, no fringe fun that can actually see competitive play.

Abzan mid-range, Mardu aggro, Sultai control, Jeskai-Tempo, Temur-Ramp added in with Black Devotion, White Weenies etc. Along with some accidental infinite mill. Yes there were powerful cards, maybe some op cards, but every deck had access to their own op cards which made it fun and interesting.

3. The toxic community. This does go for Modern at my lgs sadly as a lot of the players who play modern also play standard and it's just so cliquey, there's no real friendship and at times when I play people it's as if they can't be bothered with someone that they see who is beneath them. Just no sportsmanship whatsoever. That and we have heard players turned judges actually threaten to use their judge powers in ways they shouldn't.

The store employees told them where to go on that front, so that was good.

This format just feels so unenjoyable. I should be having a blast, I'm a huge reanimatorfag and GPG should be checking off every box, but it's just not a fun experience. I've been performing great at every tournament but nothing leaves me satisfied, even when I'm dicking them with two 7/7 angel of inventions.

pptqs and gps my dude

The problem my LGS has right now is the latest MtG products sucks right now. Many mtg players cancelled their preorder of Iconic and now Masters 25 and owner still has 15 booster boxes in his storage. Nobody want to buy it nor even draft it.
Challengers decks might help to our dying standard FNM (we have around 8-10 standard players and no new player since fucking Theros).

>no new players since Theros
can't believe that shit. Khans and Ixalan did bring a couple of new players in my LGS.

Where in the fuck did you get that scan? It seems impossible finding high-resolution images of magic cards.

scryfall my man.

I just found this shit. God damn that'd make my proxy decks easier to print off. Now I just need to find a half-decent .psd file again.

found in another thread, really makes you think

tappedout.net/mtg-decks/07-03-18-VKw-mono-green-stompy/
I tried brewing and this is what I came up with. I don't know if I'll go through with it, but it seems fun on a goldfish. My main concern is how it's gonna beat scarab god decks because there are no real answers to any of the gods in green and how much lifegain I'll have to put in the side for RDW.

I miss elvish mystic so much. 2 drop dorks feel so lame, even if it's a conditional 3/3.

Struggle // Survive is a potential answer to Scarab God in green.

I'd like to pick up the UW Approach deck myself, even though its probably the worst value wise. Looks pretty fun.
Any suggestions for budget upgrades for modern? Or is that not a good idea?

Take out a small car loan.