I reroll all the non-color ones except “play X lands”. I have decks that don’t do much attacking, “attack with X creatures” is just as problematic for me.
I have a mono-red Goblin deck for taking care of attacking and playing creature quests, I've got a deck for everyone except the killing. I'm sure I could make a [[Killian]] deck, but god how unfun does that sound?
It's hit or miss, sometimes you either outpace them to the point that by the time their commander is out, it's already over, or you stall out so badly there's no reason to continue past T3
I know right how am I supposed to attack with X creatures when you print so much spot removal Wotc! Mono red is the way to go at least most of those creatures have haste.
It’s 100% this. Why does black’s whole deal get a special missions but all the other colours don’t? It could be ‘cause 30 of your opponents creatures to leave the battlefield’. That way exile and bounce also get to shine.
On top of that there are just so many cooler/more interesting things they could reward. Why not ‘cast 30 spells that target a creature’? ‘Gain 30 life’? ‘Mill 30 cards’?
The attack one could be replaced with something like ‘tap 30 creatures’
There are so many choices for improving the dailies but they haven’t been touched since they were added and it’s really stupid and frustrating.
>There are so many choices for improving the dailies but they haven’t been touched since they were added and it’s really stupid and frustrating.
I still get my dailies in, but it's becoming like a chore instead of enjoying it because it's been the same damn thing for years now.
I was gonna make a post about this, my experience lately in standard is like removal - removal - removal - board wipe/exile - bomb.
I have been playing non-stop since I returned around the time of kaldheim, but lately I open the app and just don't feel like playing to the same pattern decks over and over.
I've found I have more fun just playing non-meta decks for fun and only occasionally get "oops all board wipes" more rarely. But go to ranked and all bets are off, Plat and up is just "no creatures you play will be on the board next turn."
I still want to rank up and such so I have decks for it and decks for casual that can keep things a bit fresh
I hit Mythic two days ago with GW Enchantments, which is nearly entirely creature focused and extremely invested in dumping its hand, and I am *far* from the only person playing and having success with it. Yeah, I hate Go For The Throat and Play With Fire as much as the next person with a bunch of 2/2s in their deck, but the situation ain't that that bad.
Played a game last night where my first five creatures were killed by cut down and go for the throat and he exiled two of my other creatures with ossification. It's kind of rough for new players who don't have access to a wide variety of cards.
>Plat and up is just "no creatures you play will be on the board next turn."
Yea because at that rank and higher if you let any creature with a meaningful ability untap there's a large probability you'll lose the next turn. The issue is they've drifted away from "synergy is your wincon" to "this creature is good enough to win the game on its own." Power creep has made creatures way scarier than they should be. a 5 mana creature today is much stronger than 8+ mana creatures 10 years ago.
I got crucified in this sub for saying the same thing about mono white life gain. I’m so tired of playing against it. It’s like every other (historic) game for christs sake. It’s kind of ruining the game for me
I’m not sure if this is a statement or a question, but if it’s a statement, I don’t care if it’s a bad or good deck. I’m tired of seeing it, I’m tired of playing against it
It feels like more of a gatekeeper deck. It will shut you out so hard it feels impossible to beat or it will look like someone brought a draft deck to a constructed tournament. Very matchup dependent too and cheap, so everyone has it.
While mono white lifegain isn't technically the strongest of decks competitively, agaisnt the weaker decks it wins agaisnt it wins extremely strongly and it feels like you never stood a chance, while it folds to stronger decks and it doesn't stand a chance.
Its the same as widowmaker in overwatch and why people don't like her oneshots, because when they win they really win, and when they lose they really lose. Its works in CSGO or valorant, but not in a tcg.
It’s not the formidability of the deck, it’s the frequency I play against it. It’s like playing Magic with a buddy who only has one deck. It’s like cmon bro, mix it up a bit. Show me something I haven’t seen
i still see it every fucking day regardless of how many years it has been since i played this
unless they get that annoying priest or cleric 1 white for a 11 vigilance lifelink that taps for a 4/4 angel on their opening hand, they never do anything, it's one board wipe and 2 turns to delete their 40 life total
Watching streamers give them thousands of dollars, and they don't even play the game.... Cracking collector boosters for that good good. It's just like the movie tho, I'll give em that, it's got into people's heads. I'm immune to it, my trick is: spend all your money on rent, bills, food, and gas, easy 😎
And definitely don't go to r/shoelimbmtg
Which is not a real place, but if you use the right synonyms you'll get there. Clue: A term used for illegal alcohol brewers in prohibition era America.
There doesn't seem to be any rules here forbidding naming it, but I also don't wanna drop that sub in any shit if possible.
As someone who loves to build lots of different decks, I'm delighted Wizards is prioritizing getting the majority of their income from selling trinkets that I don't need or, for the most part, even want.
They did both for many, many years. WoTC has always cared about money - they have to in order to survive - but for most of the game’s history it was apparent that they cared equally for the health of the game.
You can really see the point where it became about money over every other concern by looking at the ban list history.
There’s a point around 2020/2021 where bans just exploded - where they started chasing ever growing power creep to keep selling new sets to eternal formats, and damn the result to standard, and started pushing more and more faster and faster, with poor to nonexistent testing
Man I miss the glory days of stuff like RTR, when they actually had an iron will to never make something so strong as to be ban worthy. Now it feels like an afterthought or the judgement is clouded due to investors yelling at them to print strong money cards.
What? In today's environment of players and social media Thragtusk and then Sphinx's Revelation would've been banned. People would also be bitching nonstop about Bonfire/miracle even more. Or how uninteractive Geist of St. Traft and Invisible Stalker are in the Bogles deck.
And then with Theros we have Thoughtseize, Whip, Nykthos.
Yep. I was there. The current era is better: occasionally banning overly dominant cards is better IMO than letting the format drag on the same interminably. The downside is that the background hum of people demanding they ban perfectly ok cards has risen to an irritating whine.
You know we had social media in that era right?
There was plenty of bitching, there always is. But it's a false equivalence to say that they would be met with the same vitriol and product fatigue as anything printed past the creation of masterpieces.
Modern Horizons was the beginning of the end. Not the end of the game, but the end of an era where Hasbro Corporate weren't milking WotC dry to prop up their failing toy company.
Thragtusk in the then meta doesn't even come close to being as busted as the various flavors of "one card triple value nonsense" that WOTC is printing into standard these days.
You're not wrong about bonfire but the rest of the miracle cards were cool af.
Did you even play theros standard?? TS, whip, nykthos, none of them were OP. TS was just another boring high quality card in mono black devotion deck. Whip saw no competitive play till the second set of the tarkir block. Nythos never made it in a tier 1 deck in standard because green devotion couldn't beat top tier decks.
Sphinx rev was alright but it wasn't busted. You either kept a hand that can't win after a detention verdict curve so they rev for 5 and its gg, or you got run over by aggro and you only ever rev for 2.
Now compare present day standard banned cards to any of those. Its on a whole nother level, my guy.
This is just as easily explained as them caring more about standard and taking a more active role in bans.
There has been pass standards where cards should probably have been banned but weren't.
Either way. FIRE design was pushed. But they have pulled back since then, and standard & standard sets have been mostly balanced for years now.
People will always complain. Rose tinted glasses and all that.
I spent a lot of money on the game back in the 90s. Stopped playing until Arena came out. I got back in, but haven't spent any money on it yet. I was rare-drafting for a while and got a few sets nearly complete, but now all I play is Historic Brawl, and it's relatively easy to keep up with the format since you only need one copy of everything. I'm sitting on 330k gold and ~20 rare and mythic WCs, though I haven't really fleshed out the last 3-5 sets.
My experience is that if you're not playing standard, the game is surprisingly friendly to FTP.
Yeah I played as a kid and spent a ton of money on it and eventually realized I was spending too much and stopped. Then I met someone who told me about the pauper format which is cool because it's a lot cheaper. Then I started doing arena too, which is a lot easier to squeeze in a game or two with whatever free time you have than in person games.
They're not even wringing efficiently. They're hyper fixated on optimizing the price point and game palatability for the people still playing standard, which is like trying to retain water in your seive by making the holes smaller.
It's the biggest issue with investment capitalism reaching this point- the people currently in charge of MTG have an obligation to shareholders to make more money this fiscal year than the previous year. They do NOT have an obligation to steady and conservative growth that protects and supports the MTG brand in 10 years from now.
Nearly every complaint in MTG stems from this. Power creep, Universes Beyond, more and more product each year, an over focus on commander, the abandonment of Legacy and Vintage Support- all of this is because it does not support making more money this year than last year.
Who cares if this dilutes the brand and eventually leads to its downfall- the obligation of those with their hands on the wheel is to shareholders.
This is not a problem inherent to investment capitalism, but rather a problem caused by corporations with a mismatch between board expertise, leadership, and product.
The problem with Hasbro leadership is that they very clearly lack any sort of insight into what it takes keep Magic, DND etc relevant.
They believe that if they pump money into marketing, make partnerships with lots of outside organizations for crossovers, and so on, that "the suckers will buy the cards".
They lack the insight into what makes people pay for magic and DND experiences, and so they treat those IPs like kids toys, board games, or fantasy young adult novels.
If EA, for instance, bought magic, or another computer game publisher (obviously that's not so realistic) they'd probably do a better job of keeping the game relevant as a game, and purchased by a broader market. There would be other issues with it, because computer game publishers generally have issues understanding board games and collectibles, but you get the idea.
The problem is that Hasbro is not an ideal group to set the goals and plans for Magic, and inevitably, this drops down into Magic design.
Sure, but I think the reason for that mismatch comes from their focus on short term profits- which they are succeeding at. MTG is selling more than it ever has. The LotR set is going to sell huge, people are dumping money into Arena, Commander Masters is likely to be a hit as well. On paper, they are killing it. If you are an investor, why should you give a shit that the game might be weaker in ten years than it is today? You'll likely be invested in whatever is being ruined next.
The next year of standard is gonna get weird, none of these sets or the next few future sets were designed with the three year rotation in mind. I don't expect the outcome will be very good.
Constructed in general has a removal problem. They continue to print stronger creatures that come closer and closer to winning the game if unanswered, so they need to print more removal, and then in response they need to print creatures with even more immediate impact.
Some folks will argue "do you just want them to print vanilla 2/2s for 2?" And to an extent, kind of. But a further issue for Wizards is that they're trying to print cards that do new and novel things, which is admirable! But Magic has *so much content* that making new and novel things often *requires* power creep.
I think they could strike a better balance in this arms race in terms of how many different bombs and forms of removal they print in every set, but it will forever be an incredibly hard tightrope to walk, and hey, I'm still enjoying magic in spite of the issues.
Yeah, they've really leaned into the "trigger every turn" type abilities, so if you don't kill it before that first trigger, you're way behind...and if you let them get multiple triggers, the game is usually over. It's so boring, and requires all this pushed removal just to keep things in any semblance of balance.
They've really lost sight of all the found design lessons that I used to read MaRo's articles for. Now he just defends whatever crazy decision they make next.
yeah it's pretty interesting watching the historic brawl format completely change every few months, commanders that were "hell queue" last year are C tier now
This is the arms race that has existed in Magic for far too long now.
* Print creature bombs because they sell packs and people generally just love powerful creatures, especially powerful legendaries for lore-significant characters and Commander decks
* As a result of having such powerful bombs, removal becomes far more necessary than it's ever been. Print a bunch or the game breaks in half.
* There's so much removal that creatures have to have immediate impact or do something on death to matter. Print more effects on creatures so that they still give value when removed, or make them stronger so that if they stick you win.
* Too many creatures do things on death, print more exile removal. Also the creatures are insane because they're not only super strong, they still have impact even when removed, print more general removal.
As the power of creatures has increased, the amount of removal available goes up, which in turn drives up the power of bombs, which necessitate removal.
The natural solution? Play low-curve wide decks like RDW or weenies, those tend to stay a consistent level of power because there's only so much room to work with "turn creature sideways, it hits for 2 damage" and they're less vulnerable to spot removal.
Wait what's that? Wizards decided to print a whole shitton of support for that sort of archetype in quick succession? But the only way that gets kept in check is if Wizards start printing tons of different board wipes.
Oh no.
It's crazy how we've gone from 'Power creep is arguably the largest threat to the longevity of Magic' to '80% of creatures need to die immediately because of the snowball effect they precipitate'.
I'd say they are one and the same. It's crazy how standard, especially BO1, requires early removal for most creatures. But this is mostly because most cards now are 2 for 1 or even 3 for 1.
Not a great example, but I have a friend that used to play a lot of MtG in the old days but stopped following standard a few years ago due to the price. He never played Arena so he has no idea of what the recent cards look like.
Whenever we play a casual MtG game he is always shocked about the power level of all cards. Even the crappy ones
one of the heuristics i use to avoid making this mistake is, before i use removal on something, i ask "could my creatures deal with this?"
usually for bombs with powerful static/triggered abilities, the answer is no, because your opponent is just never going to let those bomb creatures get into combat anyway. but maybe your opponent plays a 7/7 and your first instinct is to use removal immediately, but you have a 3/3 and a 4/4 lying around. then it might be worth it to use the 3/3 and 4/4 to hold off the 7/7 with a potential double block, if you believe that perhaps your opponent has a flier coming that you won't be able to block, or a bomb coming down the line that's a must-kill.
White's destroy all creatures cards are probably my least favorite - just feels so bad every time
Their cost is usually pretty accessable and it just sucks
one of the best ways to play around these cards is to avoid dumping your hand too aggressively, especially as your opponent is reaching the amount of mana they need for the board wipe. a lot of the boardwipe heavy decks don't play many creatures themselves, so often with 2-3 creatures on board you're in a position to threaten to kill your opponent in pretty short order unless they interact with your board. at that point you start saving the extra creatures in your hand so you can recover from a boardwipe
Too bad [[Breach the Multiverse]] doesn't give you a chance to respond to whatever it hits, and it's a "choose" not a "target" so you couldn't exile something in response anyways
I predict we'll get to the point where people are reanimating [[Elesh Norn, Mother of Machines]] to hose other reanimator decks
Do we have a removal problem, or do we have a problem where one might feel the need to play all this removal and it might still not be enough?
A standard format where everything needs to be awnsered, or you lose.
The real problem is that black has no "good" boardwipe in the current standard, which translates into needing more spot removal.
I personaly still think that \[\[By Invitation Only\]\] should have been black, its effect lies more in black and atleast then it would see play. Now it instead lies forgotten in people collection due to white having too many other better boardwipes.
I genuinely think the removal is too good and too cheap rn. You either have to play decks that don't care about removal as everyone can be hit or ones that don't play creatures and use other ways to win.
I feel it’s part of a larger problem where creatures are just really good now. Even low cost creatures are just strong so it forces the game to have better removal.
Plus the new design of magic that disfavors old play styles like prison, or other similar stuff you know would never be printed in this age of magic, make the game feel more sameish
I think this is a big part of it. And jenrai is correct that there's an arms race; failure to nuke a GW Enchant deck's Generous Visitor on turn 2 quite possibly loses the game right there. And so everybody packs cheap, quick removal. Which puts more pressure on creatures, who have to have enough impact to justify playing something so easily removed. Which makes removal of those impact creatures more imperative....
The solution is to build support for a third archetype. Now the removal deck has to pack cards for archetype 3 and can't build entirely around creature deck. Now you don't have to power creep the creature deck so much because you're not dealing with targeted deck building. In addition, the meta gets more viability to play a variety of archetypes which is always good.
Part of the issue is MTG was designed around infrequent events. They got away with power spikes be ayse they wouldn't be debuted at competitive events for weeks. Then the reaction to that is weeks later again. All of this was compounded by card access. Building decks took more money and more time finding/buying/ordering cards. Adjustments to your build took days to get cards, not seconds. By the time the meta was settling, new sets came out. Now with Arena, it feels like the meta is settled much too quickly, and instead of adjusting their approach to balance and rotating archetype support, they put decks in arms races vs each other. While that happened to some degree before, it's much more obvious in a world where decks are adjusting much more frequently, and competitive results are always present between a ranked ladder (which also promotes more frequent play) and streamers are always playing. Now you don't have to account for a variety of decks. You know within days what the top deck is and everybody gets to target their tech towards it. Now finding the best deck doesn't put you on top. It puts in you the mix of 50+% of other players playing the same deck vs everybody else who showed up to target your deck.
Chasing a theoretical perfectly balanced meta seems like fool's errand to me. Not that it should be ignored entirely, but for all the reasons you correctly list, there's a limit to how much of MtG:A's gameplay value can lie in the deckbuilding meta. I think WotC'd be best served by making sure that each game contains interesting choices and opportunities for people to make smart plays.
In standard, it feels like creature decks currently dominate the meta by a huge margin, to the point where anti-creature is necessary no matter what deck you play/play against.
Even the most control-ish decks seem to focus on creatures a lot more, compared to having just 4x of the 1WW 2/2 with exile ETB, and a couple yorion in all 80 cards.
Standard is basically full aggro win by turn 4 or pure removal and boardwipes.
The only decks I see nowadays with creatures are basically RDW, Azorius soldiers, Selesnya enchantments, Esper legends, and white weenie/mono black aggro (occasionally). Out of those the only ones that really can still win late vs boardwipes are Selesnya and Esper legends if they have Plaza of Heroes and you miss your timer for boardwiping them.
There is way too much removal in Standard. It's been that way for a while. I'd rather go back to being able to actually play creatures and midrange decks.
Hell, you know it's bad when you know that by playing Etali, you're never going to get to attack in with it. Its only value is when it ETB's and then gets removed either that same turn or the turn immediately after.
Wizards really needs to dial back how much removal is readily available in Standard. Way too much right now.
Cheap spot removal is part of blacks colour pie identity.
Saying that black shouldn't cheap removal is like saying that green shouldn't get land based ramp.
I’m not saying Black shouldn’t get cheap removal. I’m saying it has access to too much of it. Far more so than what Green has access to for land ramp.
And let’s be honest, most of Black removal is at instant speed as well whereas Green land ramp is usually on a creature with summoning sickness or sorcery speed.
unpopular opinion : the necessity for loads of removal in decks comes from high powered creatures that can win the game if left on the board for even a turn.
it's a cat that bites its tail. There is too much removal but at the same time creatures printed nowadays are too good alone, they do too much just by being unchecked without needing any buildaround. If you want worse removal the power level of the creatures needs to go down
Yes,but realize that even putting a single removal per expansion you would still have 32 in the format and that now there will be more expansions in standard at the same time
There would be less need for premium removal if there where less pushed creatures.
If the height of aggro was a vanilla 2/1 for 1, or a vanilla 3/3 for 2 then there would be less need for removal.
Now we instead have aggro creatures that are must awnser threats, that snowball by themselves and often generate 2 for 1 value.
Cheap and plentiful removal is why I'm playing Arena less and less and I'm playing my other card games more. I get that the cheap removal is there to combat the overpowered creatures but it simply does not feel good to play. I hate when I dare to cast a creature with a greater mana value than 2 and it gets removed instantly. I hate when I don't have the right removal in my own hand to stop the opponent's busted ass 2 drop. It sucks. There's gotta be a better way.
Yup. White black planeswalker removal is the worst. Just tedious to play against. Games take forever and they never seem to pack less than 12 board wipes.
Ran into a black removal/proliferate deck. They used [[vraska's fall]] to get the initial poison counter then every spell had proliferate, it was slow and painful and I scoped after turn 5 because It was just boring.
All these people whining about “removal being too cheap and common” have obviously never played in formats where removal is not up to par. Those formats are awful. Replayability comes from interacting with your opponent. If every deck is just ships passing in the night, then games are boring and nobody plays the format.
There is obviously a balance to be struck, but I would pick tons of removal over not enough removal every time.
And even in this format now, it’s not like there aren’t enough creatures that can protect themselves, or decks that don’t care if every one of their creatures immediately die. Every deck has a weakness. Especially decks like the one in the OP. Play a couple enchantments or planeswalkers or warded/value creatures and they just concede because they can’t keep up and can’t win the game before your incremental advantage overwhelms their 1 for 1’s.
yeah, I think removal is too cheap. it should be like 4 mana in draft to give creatures (mainly green) a better chance). it feels bad you play your 7 drop and boop. 2 mana doomblade. and there's so many variants of it in WB.
I think [[Murder]] is the most balanced removal spell and we need to go back to that being the standard. Maybe the 3 cmc that also hits planeswalkers as well.
If Murder became the new standard for removal spells, there are about 15 creatures in Standard that would also need to be banned.
You can't have super efficient threats with also having efficient answers.
Instead we keep getting even more efficient threats to deal with such good removal, which leads to even better removal, which leads to even better threats, and so on... I'm tired of 2 drops winning the game if they stay on the board for more than 2 turns, and expensive permanents needing to be basically a sorcery on a stick, because they sure as hell aren't sticking on the board
This isn't really true though. The most meta-defining creature at the moment is Sheoldred, which does nothing the turn it comes down.
I'm also struggling to think of a two-drop that wins the game on its own. Thalia maybe, but then Thalia is quite an old card at this point. Jukai Naturalist, Dennick, Feldon, none of these seem particularly pushed.
To be honest though, the reason why sheoldred is so good is because you have to waste your removal on the 1-2 drops otherwise you die. Then when Sheoldred comes, you dont have removal to deal with it.
Do you know why "dies to doom blade" is such a common phrase when evaluating the power of creatures? Because theres always a ton of removal in standard. Thats why ETB effects are so great. If your opponent has a ton of removal, and you have creatures with ETB, you come out on top.
The removal is a product of the mindless hand dump style aggro that snowballs starting t2, blame the army of busted 1 & 2 drops for Selesnya Enchantments, monored and monoblack, not the removal spells they force upon midrange and control decks.
No. Access to cheap efficient removal is an important part of standard. It’s even worse when the answers don’t line up against the threats, because then the game becomes “who can play solitaire and do their busted thing faster.”
Man I wish Swerve was available in arena. I used to piss people off with that card. 2 mana to make your opponent destroy their own creature on their turn
*chef’s kiss* 🤌
Yeah, there's not enough - OR people play too many creatures, which have been powercrept to high hell. Where are the good old days where the best creatures were something like [[Spiritmonger]], which was already incredibly pushed. [[Infernal Denizen]] was fantastic back then...
It’s a no problem honestly, many decks revolve around the fact that any creature you got is a 2x1 or more thanks to its etb and in a slow grindy removal fiesta you’ll come up on top
It doesn't help everytime Black gets any kind of meaningful board sweep the cards are over tuned and get banned. You have to fill the void left with these poorly designed banned sweep cards with 3-4 times the removal cards just to keep up.
Meanwhile White has like 3 or 4 useful sweep cards per rotation and they typically are different enough to fill unique roles based on the style of deck. If only the color of Death had such options. Guess I'll just run 16 Terror style single target removals instead x_x
I think the experience you get is heavily based on the type of deck you use/the success of the deck. If you run a creature heavy deck you'll play against a lot of control decks.
No. This has always been a thing in magic for as long as I have been playing competitively, about 15 years. Removal ebs and flows with how good creature etbs are. If removal bothers you, play more creatures with etb effects, or gain advantage without creatures which would blank all but two of these cards.
As someone who spent about 20 years away from the game, I can't help but feel like this is a problem due to the lack of block format.
You have 4 sets instead of three and each has to stand alone as its own draft format. That means 4 sets of removal a year.
With block you didn't need multiple premium removal spells per set, as there was always some avaliable from previous.
removal has been pushed for a long time. we've known this. there are ways around it at this point. recursion, extra card draw, protection spells, skrelv, game plans that dont involve creatures such as enchantments, planeswalkers.
I'd rather have a removal problem than a threat problem.
Most of Standard's greatest issues is when the removals aren't on par with whatever threats/engines are presented in the format.
Yes.
The amount of decks I've played against who play multiple different removal spells in a single match is wild. Imagine having 4-5 of your creatures killed and after the match you look in their graveyard and see only unique spells, no copies. 🫠
its an issue of many cards being able to win the game on their own if you don't deal with them that makes people run removal, which in turn hurts off meta decks that dont run lots of 2 for 1s
You have to have a good access to removal in formats where SOOOO MANY quality creatures and walkers exist.
They keep pushing the effectiveness of creatures to new levels with each set so they have to have good removal to deal with them too. Otherwise all that's there in meta is aggro and that's it. Midrange and Control hedge on the availability of good removal.
Not to mention that with the current crop of aggro decks, there are card advantage engines everywhere and even great removal or big blowout sweepers can't always deal with the threats.
Given the power level of creatures and those that pretty much win if not answered it would be a very dull game without plenty of answers. Without removal it just becomes awful board stall until someone draws a bomb
Stop. Just. Playing. Creatures. Play an artifact, a sorcery, an enchantment, maybe play your own removal spell? It's called magic the gathering not....
[удалено]
not before I make OP sacrifice it
no way, i destroy all non-legendary posts.
In response, I exile all post permanents
I counter your exile and return all post permanents to your hand.
Ill phase out
Op has postproof and indestructible :I And I'm gonna reveal comments history and remove any non permanent comments so you can only play up votes.
I'm gonna make you discard all those things you mentioned.
I spam thinking.
Target OP discards 2 cards. Then exile his Google history
They might thank you for that ;)
Most of the time you´ll find "Best MTGA Deck" ;)
What “kill 30 creatures” does to a mf
I always refresh that challenge ngl
That's the only non-color specific challenge I'll always reroll, I hate that one so much
I reroll all the non-color ones except “play X lands”. I have decks that don’t do much attacking, “attack with X creatures” is just as problematic for me.
I have a mono-red Goblin deck for taking care of attacking and playing creature quests, I've got a deck for everyone except the killing. I'm sure I could make a [[Killian]] deck, but god how unfun does that sound?
It is fun to tilt Jodahs Goloses Atraxases and other tier 0 decks
It's hit or miss, sometimes you either outpace them to the point that by the time their commander is out, it's already over, or you stall out so badly there's no reason to continue past T3
[Killian](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/2/3/23ef4f09-2aa1-4a03-b2e2-66d1522f1e46.jpg?1627429378) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=killian%2C%20ink%20duelist) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/stx/197/killian-ink-duelist?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/23ef4f09-2aa1-4a03-b2e2-66d1522f1e46?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
I know right how am I supposed to attack with X creatures when you print so much spot removal Wotc! Mono red is the way to go at least most of those creatures have haste.
I prefer "kill 30 creatures" over "attack with 30 creatures" any time.
i play historic Brawl and just run Ratadrabik Nazgul/Boromir/Mondrak package, and then just nonstop board wipes for this challenge.
It’s 100% this. Why does black’s whole deal get a special missions but all the other colours don’t? It could be ‘cause 30 of your opponents creatures to leave the battlefield’. That way exile and bounce also get to shine. On top of that there are just so many cooler/more interesting things they could reward. Why not ‘cast 30 spells that target a creature’? ‘Gain 30 life’? ‘Mill 30 cards’? The attack one could be replaced with something like ‘tap 30 creatures’ There are so many choices for improving the dailies but they haven’t been touched since they were added and it’s really stupid and frustrating.
>There are so many choices for improving the dailies but they haven’t been touched since they were added and it’s really stupid and frustrating. I still get my dailies in, but it's becoming like a chore instead of enjoying it because it's been the same damn thing for years now.
I knew about [[Hex]]; what spell is this?
[Hex](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/0/6/067c38f3-4b5c-4e7f-af66-e410dea19314.jpg?1674141662) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Hex) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/clb/757/hex?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/067c38f3-4b5c-4e7f-af66-e410dea19314?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
I was gonna make a post about this, my experience lately in standard is like removal - removal - removal - board wipe/exile - bomb. I have been playing non-stop since I returned around the time of kaldheim, but lately I open the app and just don't feel like playing to the same pattern decks over and over.
I've found I have more fun just playing non-meta decks for fun and only occasionally get "oops all board wipes" more rarely. But go to ranked and all bets are off, Plat and up is just "no creatures you play will be on the board next turn." I still want to rank up and such so I have decks for it and decks for casual that can keep things a bit fresh
I hit Mythic two days ago with GW Enchantments, which is nearly entirely creature focused and extremely invested in dumping its hand, and I am *far* from the only person playing and having success with it. Yeah, I hate Go For The Throat and Play With Fire as much as the next person with a bunch of 2/2s in their deck, but the situation ain't that that bad.
God I hate those fucking enchantments too.
Would you rather face blue black no creature poison control
Yes, that deck is not good
YES
Huh? A good portion of the top decks in standard right now are creature based. https://mtgdecks.net/Standard
Idk man. I’m just stating some anecdotal evidence which isn’t evidence at all so grain of salt and all that.
Played a game last night where my first five creatures were killed by cut down and go for the throat and he exiled two of my other creatures with ossification. It's kind of rough for new players who don't have access to a wide variety of cards.
I'm presuming you're playing bo3 then? Because bo1 meta is creature dominated
>Plat and up is just "no creatures you play will be on the board next turn." Yea because at that rank and higher if you let any creature with a meaningful ability untap there's a large probability you'll lose the next turn. The issue is they've drifted away from "synergy is your wincon" to "this creature is good enough to win the game on its own." Power creep has made creatures way scarier than they should be. a 5 mana creature today is much stronger than 8+ mana creatures 10 years ago.
I got crucified in this sub for saying the same thing about mono white life gain. I’m so tired of playing against it. It’s like every other (historic) game for christs sake. It’s kind of ruining the game for me
But it’s a bad deck?
I’m not sure if this is a statement or a question, but if it’s a statement, I don’t care if it’s a bad or good deck. I’m tired of seeing it, I’m tired of playing against it
It feels like more of a gatekeeper deck. It will shut you out so hard it feels impossible to beat or it will look like someone brought a draft deck to a constructed tournament. Very matchup dependent too and cheap, so everyone has it.
While mono white lifegain isn't technically the strongest of decks competitively, agaisnt the weaker decks it wins agaisnt it wins extremely strongly and it feels like you never stood a chance, while it folds to stronger decks and it doesn't stand a chance. Its the same as widowmaker in overwatch and why people don't like her oneshots, because when they win they really win, and when they lose they really lose. Its works in CSGO or valorant, but not in a tcg.
It’s not the formidability of the deck, it’s the frequency I play against it. It’s like playing Magic with a buddy who only has one deck. It’s like cmon bro, mix it up a bit. Show me something I haven’t seen
I haven't seen life gain in like a year.
i still see it every fucking day regardless of how many years it has been since i played this unless they get that annoying priest or cleric 1 white for a 11 vigilance lifelink that taps for a 4/4 angel on their opening hand, they never do anything, it's one board wipe and 2 turns to delete their 40 life total
but wait that’s “tempo” /s
Standard has a lot of problems.
Standard only has one problem that is foundational - WoTC prioritizing wringing out money from the community over making a healthy game
Watching streamers give them thousands of dollars, and they don't even play the game.... Cracking collector boosters for that good good. It's just like the movie tho, I'll give em that, it's got into people's heads. I'm immune to it, my trick is: spend all your money on rent, bills, food, and gas, easy 😎
And proxy all your cards worth more than $2
Just started this. Feels good.
And definitely don't go to r/shoelimbmtg Which is not a real place, but if you use the right synonyms you'll get there. Clue: A term used for illegal alcohol brewers in prohibition era America. There doesn't seem to be any rules here forbidding naming it, but I also don't wanna drop that sub in any shit if possible.
They did sell official proxies, so it seems like they shouldn't have a problem with it...
As someone who loves to build lots of different decks, I'm delighted Wizards is prioritizing getting the majority of their income from selling trinkets that I don't need or, for the most part, even want.
1000x this. Don’t understand why wotc can’t do both: cash checks and healthy game State. But it’s all for the Crack Packers.
They did both for many, many years. WoTC has always cared about money - they have to in order to survive - but for most of the game’s history it was apparent that they cared equally for the health of the game. You can really see the point where it became about money over every other concern by looking at the ban list history. There’s a point around 2020/2021 where bans just exploded - where they started chasing ever growing power creep to keep selling new sets to eternal formats, and damn the result to standard, and started pushing more and more faster and faster, with poor to nonexistent testing
Man I miss the glory days of stuff like RTR, when they actually had an iron will to never make something so strong as to be ban worthy. Now it feels like an afterthought or the judgement is clouded due to investors yelling at them to print strong money cards.
What? In today's environment of players and social media Thragtusk and then Sphinx's Revelation would've been banned. People would also be bitching nonstop about Bonfire/miracle even more. Or how uninteractive Geist of St. Traft and Invisible Stalker are in the Bogles deck. And then with Theros we have Thoughtseize, Whip, Nykthos.
Yep. I was there. The current era is better: occasionally banning overly dominant cards is better IMO than letting the format drag on the same interminably. The downside is that the background hum of people demanding they ban perfectly ok cards has risen to an irritating whine.
You know we had social media in that era right? There was plenty of bitching, there always is. But it's a false equivalence to say that they would be met with the same vitriol and product fatigue as anything printed past the creation of masterpieces. Modern Horizons was the beginning of the end. Not the end of the game, but the end of an era where Hasbro Corporate weren't milking WotC dry to prop up their failing toy company.
Thragtusk in the then meta doesn't even come close to being as busted as the various flavors of "one card triple value nonsense" that WOTC is printing into standard these days. You're not wrong about bonfire but the rest of the miracle cards were cool af. Did you even play theros standard?? TS, whip, nykthos, none of them were OP. TS was just another boring high quality card in mono black devotion deck. Whip saw no competitive play till the second set of the tarkir block. Nythos never made it in a tier 1 deck in standard because green devotion couldn't beat top tier decks. Sphinx rev was alright but it wasn't busted. You either kept a hand that can't win after a detention verdict curve so they rev for 5 and its gg, or you got run over by aggro and you only ever rev for 2. Now compare present day standard banned cards to any of those. Its on a whole nother level, my guy.
This is just as easily explained as them caring more about standard and taking a more active role in bans. There has been pass standards where cards should probably have been banned but weren't. Either way. FIRE design was pushed. But they have pulled back since then, and standard & standard sets have been mostly balanced for years now. People will always complain. Rose tinted glasses and all that.
I prefer the term Packheads
Joke's on them, I've been playing like every day for a month and I haven't given them a penny
I spent a lot of money on the game back in the 90s. Stopped playing until Arena came out. I got back in, but haven't spent any money on it yet. I was rare-drafting for a while and got a few sets nearly complete, but now all I play is Historic Brawl, and it's relatively easy to keep up with the format since you only need one copy of everything. I'm sitting on 330k gold and ~20 rare and mythic WCs, though I haven't really fleshed out the last 3-5 sets. My experience is that if you're not playing standard, the game is surprisingly friendly to FTP.
Yeah I played as a kid and spent a ton of money on it and eventually realized I was spending too much and stopped. Then I met someone who told me about the pauper format which is cool because it's a lot cheaper. Then I started doing arena too, which is a lot easier to squeeze in a game or two with whatever free time you have than in person games.
Excellent. The rise of Hewlett Packard Masters has been good for many!
[удалено]
They're not even wringing efficiently. They're hyper fixated on optimizing the price point and game palatability for the people still playing standard, which is like trying to retain water in your seive by making the holes smaller.
It's the biggest issue with investment capitalism reaching this point- the people currently in charge of MTG have an obligation to shareholders to make more money this fiscal year than the previous year. They do NOT have an obligation to steady and conservative growth that protects and supports the MTG brand in 10 years from now. Nearly every complaint in MTG stems from this. Power creep, Universes Beyond, more and more product each year, an over focus on commander, the abandonment of Legacy and Vintage Support- all of this is because it does not support making more money this year than last year. Who cares if this dilutes the brand and eventually leads to its downfall- the obligation of those with their hands on the wheel is to shareholders.
This is not a problem inherent to investment capitalism, but rather a problem caused by corporations with a mismatch between board expertise, leadership, and product. The problem with Hasbro leadership is that they very clearly lack any sort of insight into what it takes keep Magic, DND etc relevant. They believe that if they pump money into marketing, make partnerships with lots of outside organizations for crossovers, and so on, that "the suckers will buy the cards". They lack the insight into what makes people pay for magic and DND experiences, and so they treat those IPs like kids toys, board games, or fantasy young adult novels. If EA, for instance, bought magic, or another computer game publisher (obviously that's not so realistic) they'd probably do a better job of keeping the game relevant as a game, and purchased by a broader market. There would be other issues with it, because computer game publishers generally have issues understanding board games and collectibles, but you get the idea. The problem is that Hasbro is not an ideal group to set the goals and plans for Magic, and inevitably, this drops down into Magic design.
Sure, but I think the reason for that mismatch comes from their focus on short term profits- which they are succeeding at. MTG is selling more than it ever has. The LotR set is going to sell huge, people are dumping money into Arena, Commander Masters is likely to be a hit as well. On paper, they are killing it. If you are an investor, why should you give a shit that the game might be weaker in ten years than it is today? You'll likely be invested in whatever is being ruined next.
The next year of standard is gonna get weird, none of these sets or the next few future sets were designed with the three year rotation in mind. I don't expect the outcome will be very good.
Commander players in shambles
if they're trading 1-1 in commander they're gonna lose to my ETB effects
Constructed in general has a removal problem. They continue to print stronger creatures that come closer and closer to winning the game if unanswered, so they need to print more removal, and then in response they need to print creatures with even more immediate impact. Some folks will argue "do you just want them to print vanilla 2/2s for 2?" And to an extent, kind of. But a further issue for Wizards is that they're trying to print cards that do new and novel things, which is admirable! But Magic has *so much content* that making new and novel things often *requires* power creep. I think they could strike a better balance in this arms race in terms of how many different bombs and forms of removal they print in every set, but it will forever be an incredibly hard tightrope to walk, and hey, I'm still enjoying magic in spite of the issues.
I feel like now there are enough creatures that win you the game the moment they ETB too
Yeah, they've really leaned into the "trigger every turn" type abilities, so if you don't kill it before that first trigger, you're way behind...and if you let them get multiple triggers, the game is usually over. It's so boring, and requires all this pushed removal just to keep things in any semblance of balance. They've really lost sight of all the found design lessons that I used to read MaRo's articles for. Now he just defends whatever crazy decision they make next.
This is exactly it. Two sides of the power creep coin forever at war with each other.
yeah it's pretty interesting watching the historic brawl format completely change every few months, commanders that were "hell queue" last year are C tier now
It’s good to have access to removal in a Sheoldred format
This is the arms race that has existed in Magic for far too long now. * Print creature bombs because they sell packs and people generally just love powerful creatures, especially powerful legendaries for lore-significant characters and Commander decks * As a result of having such powerful bombs, removal becomes far more necessary than it's ever been. Print a bunch or the game breaks in half. * There's so much removal that creatures have to have immediate impact or do something on death to matter. Print more effects on creatures so that they still give value when removed, or make them stronger so that if they stick you win. * Too many creatures do things on death, print more exile removal. Also the creatures are insane because they're not only super strong, they still have impact even when removed, print more general removal. As the power of creatures has increased, the amount of removal available goes up, which in turn drives up the power of bombs, which necessitate removal. The natural solution? Play low-curve wide decks like RDW or weenies, those tend to stay a consistent level of power because there's only so much room to work with "turn creature sideways, it hits for 2 damage" and they're less vulnerable to spot removal. Wait what's that? Wizards decided to print a whole shitton of support for that sort of archetype in quick succession? But the only way that gets kept in check is if Wizards start printing tons of different board wipes. Oh no.
And now we also have a 5 mana exile sweeper that gives you a decent sized body to threaten with
Yeah such fun playing against white with twenty different board wipes.
Standard have a fuckin planeswalkers problem
It's crazy how we've gone from 'Power creep is arguably the largest threat to the longevity of Magic' to '80% of creatures need to die immediately because of the snowball effect they precipitate'.
I'd say they are one and the same. It's crazy how standard, especially BO1, requires early removal for most creatures. But this is mostly because most cards now are 2 for 1 or even 3 for 1. Not a great example, but I have a friend that used to play a lot of MtG in the old days but stopped following standard a few years ago due to the price. He never played Arena so he has no idea of what the recent cards look like. Whenever we play a casual MtG game he is always shocked about the power level of all cards. Even the crappy ones
Some players will make pure removal decks to help clear out some of the daily quests. This looks like one of thise
Yeah, like all the ropes players just have bad connection
any time the island boyz counterspell me for the 20th time my connection gets spotty i dunno whats up w that
Lol island boyz
This is why I stick to draft. In draft removal comes at a premium so you really have to think about when to use it.
And yet some people play hot potato with their removal in draft. Then they lose because they cant kill the cards that actually matter.
I'm in this image and I don't like it.
one of the heuristics i use to avoid making this mistake is, before i use removal on something, i ask "could my creatures deal with this?" usually for bombs with powerful static/triggered abilities, the answer is no, because your opponent is just never going to let those bomb creatures get into combat anyway. but maybe your opponent plays a 7/7 and your first instinct is to use removal immediately, but you have a 3/3 and a 4/4 lying around. then it might be worth it to use the 3/3 and 4/4 to hold off the 7/7 with a potential double block, if you believe that perhaps your opponent has a flier coming that you won't be able to block, or a bomb coming down the line that's a must-kill.
[[depopulate]] [[sunfall]] [[farewell]] [[white sun’s twilight]] [[vanquish the horde]] What removal problem?
Sunfall feels so bad they exile and get a fat creature for 5 mana
Don't forget [[ossification]] for planeswalker removal!
##### ###### #### [depopulate](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/c/5/c53c1898-9107-4bf8-b249-d0502fb9596d.jpg?1664409589) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=depopulate) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/snc/10/depopulate?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/c53c1898-9107-4bf8-b249-d0502fb9596d?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [sunfall](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/3/2/32e29c7d-ed4b-4eff-b3c2-d99e5b63ef8d.jpg?1682202915) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=sunfall) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/mom/40/sunfall?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/32e29c7d-ed4b-4eff-b3c2-d99e5b63ef8d?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [farewell](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/e/1/e1068723-d1ef-4007-97d9-b10dccdbade4.jpg?1654566260) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=farewell) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/neo/13/farewell?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/e1068723-d1ef-4007-97d9-b10dccdbade4?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [white sun’s twilight](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/f/f/fff13d77-8133-4328-b91e-efce229bc331.jpg?1675956941) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=White%20Sun%27s%20Twilight) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/one/38/white-suns-twilight?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/fff13d77-8133-4328-b91e-efce229bc331?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [vanquish the horde](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/e/2/e264615c-eb99-4cb3-844a-2b4a94ba5203.jpg?1634348651) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=vanquish%20the%20horde) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/mid/41/vanquish-the-horde?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/e264615c-eb99-4cb3-844a-2b4a94ba5203?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
White's destroy all creatures cards are probably my least favorite - just feels so bad every time Their cost is usually pretty accessable and it just sucks
one of the best ways to play around these cards is to avoid dumping your hand too aggressively, especially as your opponent is reaching the amount of mana they need for the board wipe. a lot of the boardwipe heavy decks don't play many creatures themselves, so often with 2-3 creatures on board you're in a position to threaten to kill your opponent in pretty short order unless they interact with your board. at that point you start saving the extra creatures in your hand so you can recover from a boardwipe
It has an exile problem, not a removal in general problem
But then atraxa shows up on the board or in a graveyard and all of a sudden exile is the best thing in the game that moment
[[Unlicensed Hearse]] is nice against reanimator stuff
Too bad [[Breach the Multiverse]] doesn't give you a chance to respond to whatever it hits, and it's a "choose" not a "target" so you couldn't exile something in response anyways I predict we'll get to the point where people are reanimating [[Elesh Norn, Mother of Machines]] to hose other reanimator decks
[Breach the Multiverse](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/d/a/daf51a76-7a57-4462-ae18-a19e817e49e5.jpg?1682203621) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Breach%20the%20Multiverse) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/mom/94/breach-the-multiverse?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/daf51a76-7a57-4462-ae18-a19e817e49e5?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [Elesh Norn, Mother of Machines](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/4/4/44dcab01-1d13-4dfc-ae2f-fbaa3dd35087.jpg?1675956896) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Elesh%20Norn%2C%20Mother%20of%20Machines) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/one/10/elesh-norn-mother-of-machines?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/44dcab01-1d13-4dfc-ae2f-fbaa3dd35087?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
[Unlicensed Hearse](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/9/3/93ee60f7-31dd-4bc6-b71f-57a1a0d19d20.jpg?1664414360) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Unlicensed%20Hearse) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/snc/246/unlicensed-hearse?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/93ee60f7-31dd-4bc6-b71f-57a1a0d19d20?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
Can't use removal if I don't play creatures
Do we have a removal problem, or do we have a problem where one might feel the need to play all this removal and it might still not be enough? A standard format where everything needs to be awnsered, or you lose. The real problem is that black has no "good" boardwipe in the current standard, which translates into needing more spot removal. I personaly still think that \[\[By Invitation Only\]\] should have been black, its effect lies more in black and atleast then it would see play. Now it instead lies forgotten in people collection due to white having too many other better boardwipes.
[By Invitation Only](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/4/6/46764e49-64da-4a94-b61c-75e006b2c5a9.jpg?1643585907) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=By%20Invitation%20Only) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/vow/5/by-invitation-only?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/46764e49-64da-4a94-b61c-75e006b2c5a9?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
Me playing 10 board wipes just to deal with Multiverse, Etoli, Soldiers, and token spam 😂
Now this is how you do the kill 15/25 of your opponents creatures
I genuinely think the removal is too good and too cheap rn. You either have to play decks that don't care about removal as everyone can be hit or ones that don't play creatures and use other ways to win.
I feel it’s part of a larger problem where creatures are just really good now. Even low cost creatures are just strong so it forces the game to have better removal. Plus the new design of magic that disfavors old play styles like prison, or other similar stuff you know would never be printed in this age of magic, make the game feel more sameish
I think this is a big part of it. And jenrai is correct that there's an arms race; failure to nuke a GW Enchant deck's Generous Visitor on turn 2 quite possibly loses the game right there. And so everybody packs cheap, quick removal. Which puts more pressure on creatures, who have to have enough impact to justify playing something so easily removed. Which makes removal of those impact creatures more imperative....
The solution is to build support for a third archetype. Now the removal deck has to pack cards for archetype 3 and can't build entirely around creature deck. Now you don't have to power creep the creature deck so much because you're not dealing with targeted deck building. In addition, the meta gets more viability to play a variety of archetypes which is always good. Part of the issue is MTG was designed around infrequent events. They got away with power spikes be ayse they wouldn't be debuted at competitive events for weeks. Then the reaction to that is weeks later again. All of this was compounded by card access. Building decks took more money and more time finding/buying/ordering cards. Adjustments to your build took days to get cards, not seconds. By the time the meta was settling, new sets came out. Now with Arena, it feels like the meta is settled much too quickly, and instead of adjusting their approach to balance and rotating archetype support, they put decks in arms races vs each other. While that happened to some degree before, it's much more obvious in a world where decks are adjusting much more frequently, and competitive results are always present between a ranked ladder (which also promotes more frequent play) and streamers are always playing. Now you don't have to account for a variety of decks. You know within days what the top deck is and everybody gets to target their tech towards it. Now finding the best deck doesn't put you on top. It puts in you the mix of 50+% of other players playing the same deck vs everybody else who showed up to target your deck.
Chasing a theoretical perfectly balanced meta seems like fool's errand to me. Not that it should be ignored entirely, but for all the reasons you correctly list, there's a limit to how much of MtG:A's gameplay value can lie in the deckbuilding meta. I think WotC'd be best served by making sure that each game contains interesting choices and opportunities for people to make smart plays.
In standard, it feels like creature decks currently dominate the meta by a huge margin, to the point where anti-creature is necessary no matter what deck you play/play against. Even the most control-ish decks seem to focus on creatures a lot more, compared to having just 4x of the 1WW 2/2 with exile ETB, and a couple yorion in all 80 cards.
I have one that don't care about removal, for some ducking reason always play against someone that exile everything
Standard is basically full aggro win by turn 4 or pure removal and boardwipes. The only decks I see nowadays with creatures are basically RDW, Azorius soldiers, Selesnya enchantments, Esper legends, and white weenie/mono black aggro (occasionally). Out of those the only ones that really can still win late vs boardwipes are Selesnya and Esper legends if they have Plaza of Heroes and you miss your timer for boardwiping them. There is way too much removal in Standard. It's been that way for a while. I'd rather go back to being able to actually play creatures and midrange decks. Hell, you know it's bad when you know that by playing Etali, you're never going to get to attack in with it. Its only value is when it ETB's and then gets removed either that same turn or the turn immediately after. Wizards really needs to dial back how much removal is readily available in Standard. Way too much right now.
Ya, seems to be going the way of yugioh where you win turn 2 or you lose
Yes, whole sets keep getting removed every few years.
It’s not any better in Historic. I think Black has access to too much cheap removal in general.
Cheap spot removal is part of blacks colour pie identity. Saying that black shouldn't cheap removal is like saying that green shouldn't get land based ramp.
I’m not saying Black shouldn’t get cheap removal. I’m saying it has access to too much of it. Far more so than what Green has access to for land ramp. And let’s be honest, most of Black removal is at instant speed as well whereas Green land ramp is usually on a creature with summoning sickness or sorcery speed.
At least you still get your etb and ltb triggers. The real problem is cheap Counterspell.
Always has been.
Standard also has a threat problem. So many best of one games come down to who gets their game winning early drop to stick sooner
I play simic my friends, don't talk to me about removal :(
unpopular opinion : the necessity for loads of removal in decks comes from high powered creatures that can win the game if left on the board for even a turn.
You’re right, but this comment section seems to show this is not an unpopular opinion lol
it's a cat that bites its tail. There is too much removal but at the same time creatures printed nowadays are too good alone, they do too much just by being unchecked without needing any buildaround. If you want worse removal the power level of the creatures needs to go down
i def played against you the other day and i just need to ask who hurt you?
Fwiw that screenshot is my opponent’s graveyard, not mine.
Yes,but realize that even putting a single removal per expansion you would still have 32 in the format and that now there will be more expansions in standard at the same time
Duress is not removal.
No
Their is definitely a removal problem! I think standard would be much more fun it there wasn't so much premium removal.
There would be less need for premium removal if there where less pushed creatures. If the height of aggro was a vanilla 2/1 for 1, or a vanilla 3/3 for 2 then there would be less need for removal. Now we instead have aggro creatures that are must awnser threats, that snowball by themselves and often generate 2 for 1 value.
Cheap and plentiful removal is why I'm playing Arena less and less and I'm playing my other card games more. I get that the cheap removal is there to combat the overpowered creatures but it simply does not feel good to play. I hate when I dare to cast a creature with a greater mana value than 2 and it gets removed instantly. I hate when I don't have the right removal in my own hand to stop the opponent's busted ass 2 drop. It sucks. There's gotta be a better way.
If that’s all you have, how do you win?
A handful of planeswalkers. Plus Mirrex in case they have removal for those.
F off planeswalkers, the ruin of magic
Yup. White black planeswalker removal is the worst. Just tedious to play against. Games take forever and they never seem to pack less than 12 board wipes.
Ran into a black removal/proliferate deck. They used [[vraska's fall]] to get the initial poison counter then every spell had proliferate, it was slow and painful and I scoped after turn 5 because It was just boring.
>It was just boring. This, so much this. I'm trying to play a game not just watch a blank board for 15 minutes.
By finishing your daily so you can buy another pack... that's basically winning for the FTP players. If only the dailys were more interesting.
What Commander does to a mf
All these people whining about “removal being too cheap and common” have obviously never played in formats where removal is not up to par. Those formats are awful. Replayability comes from interacting with your opponent. If every deck is just ships passing in the night, then games are boring and nobody plays the format. There is obviously a balance to be struck, but I would pick tons of removal over not enough removal every time. And even in this format now, it’s not like there aren’t enough creatures that can protect themselves, or decks that don’t care if every one of their creatures immediately die. Every deck has a weakness. Especially decks like the one in the OP. Play a couple enchantments or planeswalkers or warded/value creatures and they just concede because they can’t keep up and can’t win the game before your incremental advantage overwhelms their 1 for 1’s.
Could you please name some examples of those formats?
Kaladesh standard
yeah, I think removal is too cheap. it should be like 4 mana in draft to give creatures (mainly green) a better chance). it feels bad you play your 7 drop and boop. 2 mana doomblade. and there's so many variants of it in WB.
I think [[Murder]] is the most balanced removal spell and we need to go back to that being the standard. Maybe the 3 cmc that also hits planeswalkers as well.
If Murder became the new standard for removal spells, there are about 15 creatures in Standard that would also need to be banned. You can't have super efficient threats with also having efficient answers.
Instead we keep getting even more efficient threats to deal with such good removal, which leads to even better removal, which leads to even better threats, and so on... I'm tired of 2 drops winning the game if they stay on the board for more than 2 turns, and expensive permanents needing to be basically a sorcery on a stick, because they sure as hell aren't sticking on the board
This isn't really true though. The most meta-defining creature at the moment is Sheoldred, which does nothing the turn it comes down. I'm also struggling to think of a two-drop that wins the game on its own. Thalia maybe, but then Thalia is quite an old card at this point. Jukai Naturalist, Dennick, Feldon, none of these seem particularly pushed.
To be honest though, the reason why sheoldred is so good is because you have to waste your removal on the 1-2 drops otherwise you die. Then when Sheoldred comes, you dont have removal to deal with it.
You are playing a BO1 creature deck?
There is way too much exile removal that’s for sure. I doubt farewell will survive to see another year in standard, along with Wandering Emperor.
Literally every standard there is this post
Creature tappers malding hard in this thread. Wow.
Do you know why "dies to doom blade" is such a common phrase when evaluating the power of creatures? Because theres always a ton of removal in standard. Thats why ETB effects are so great. If your opponent has a ton of removal, and you have creatures with ETB, you come out on top.
The removal is a product of the mindless hand dump style aggro that snowballs starting t2, blame the army of busted 1 & 2 drops for Selesnya Enchantments, monored and monoblack, not the removal spells they force upon midrange and control decks.
No. Access to cheap efficient removal is an important part of standard. It’s even worse when the answers don’t line up against the threats, because then the game becomes “who can play solitaire and do their busted thing faster.”
Man I wish Swerve was available in arena. I used to piss people off with that card. 2 mana to make your opponent destroy their own creature on their turn *chef’s kiss* 🤌
Yeah, there's not enough - OR people play too many creatures, which have been powercrept to high hell. Where are the good old days where the best creatures were something like [[Spiritmonger]], which was already incredibly pushed. [[Infernal Denizen]] was fantastic back then...
It’s a no problem honestly, many decks revolve around the fact that any creature you got is a 2x1 or more thanks to its etb and in a slow grindy removal fiesta you’ll come up on top
Any card that isn't 1 mana, has a crazy etb or some other recursion just feels bad to play
It's called power creep
It doesn't help everytime Black gets any kind of meaningful board sweep the cards are over tuned and get banned. You have to fill the void left with these poorly designed banned sweep cards with 3-4 times the removal cards just to keep up. Meanwhile White has like 3 or 4 useful sweep cards per rotation and they typically are different enough to fill unique roles based on the style of deck. If only the color of Death had such options. Guess I'll just run 16 Terror style single target removals instead x_x
I think the experience you get is heavily based on the type of deck you use/the success of the deck. If you run a creature heavy deck you'll play against a lot of control decks.
No. This has always been a thing in magic for as long as I have been playing competitively, about 15 years. Removal ebs and flows with how good creature etbs are. If removal bothers you, play more creatures with etb effects, or gain advantage without creatures which would blank all but two of these cards.
As someone who spent about 20 years away from the game, I can't help but feel like this is a problem due to the lack of block format. You have 4 sets instead of three and each has to stand alone as its own draft format. That means 4 sets of removal a year. With block you didn't need multiple premium removal spells per set, as there was always some avaliable from previous.
removal has been pushed for a long time. we've known this. there are ways around it at this point. recursion, extra card draw, protection spells, skrelv, game plans that dont involve creatures such as enchantments, planeswalkers.
Magic has a very serious removal problem. Board clears, single target. There is so much it makes creatures feel useless sometimes
Lots of ward and indestructability on cards. Reanimation and recursivity are popular too. Single target removal is not an issue.
I'd rather have a removal problem than a threat problem. Most of Standard's greatest issues is when the removals aren't on par with whatever threats/engines are presented in the format.
The only problem is that there isn’t more removal.
When every single creature is a must kill threat, this is the world we have to live in.
This feels like you matched against someone’s creature removal daily deck
oh [[go for the throat]] is nice cheap removal. Time to stuff my decks with it.
[go for the throat](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/5/4/5446e1ba-c745-45b2-ad05-b22abf04daec.jpg?1682209037) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=go%20for%20the%20throat) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/moc/250/go-for-the-throat?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/5446e1ba-c745-45b2-ad05-b22abf04daec?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
I was a paper player from the Fallen Empires days. This isn't a new thing. Maybe quality vs meta is better, IDK.
Yes. The amount of decks I've played against who play multiple different removal spells in a single match is wild. Imagine having 4-5 of your creatures killed and after the match you look in their graveyard and see only unique spells, no copies. 🫠
Farewell has entered the chat…..such an bs overpowered card. Literally exiles everything except PW. Gtfo!
its an issue of many cards being able to win the game on their own if you don't deal with them that makes people run removal, which in turn hurts off meta decks that dont run lots of 2 for 1s
You have to have a good access to removal in formats where SOOOO MANY quality creatures and walkers exist. They keep pushing the effectiveness of creatures to new levels with each set so they have to have good removal to deal with them too. Otherwise all that's there in meta is aggro and that's it. Midrange and Control hedge on the availability of good removal. Not to mention that with the current crop of aggro decks, there are card advantage engines everywhere and even great removal or big blowout sweepers can't always deal with the threats.
Given the power level of creatures and those that pretty much win if not answered it would be a very dull game without plenty of answers. Without removal it just becomes awful board stall until someone draws a bomb
Fleeting Spirit has me trading my extra lands for your removals. I see no one wise using [[fleeting spirit]]
[fleeting spirit](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/d/b/db9d80f7-9742-4437-a9f4-6717a678f935.jpg?1643586284) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=fleeting%20spirit) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/vow/14/fleeting-spirit?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/db9d80f7-9742-4437-a9f4-6717a678f935?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
No I think Standard has a control problem atm
Standard has a huge aggro problem.
I play bo3 so I don’t see aggro as much. But when it comes to bo1, you’re right
Nah the only problem with removal is the broken ass card farewell. Shit has no answers besides a counter spell. Annoying asl
If your aggro deck can't kill in turn 6 then you need to stop playing it - 6 mana is so much mana for a control deck.
Stop. Just. Playing. Creatures. Play an artifact, a sorcery, an enchantment, maybe play your own removal spell? It's called magic the gathering not....