Looking back into Magic

We have been discussing the game a fair bit lately and I have been looking into it again, this time with another eyes and a lot of experience in my back.


And looking back makes me feel like a grognard. Even though I started playing during Kamigawa I have always looked at older sets and played exclusively in Extended. I like Magic when it has a certain crazyness to it, when cards are a bit unfair in a sense and even though I played Tooth and Nail I always sneered at Standard, which to me has always lacked a bit of an edge.

And outside of Legacy, I feel the game is a bit like that now. It's better designed, it's more balanced but dammit, it lacks the crazyness it had before, now things seem underpriced or overcosted but they are not as intrinsically dangerous as older cards were. Modern decks kill in three turns, which is insanely fast, but they do it through good solid cards not by crazy rule-bending. I don't know, everything is more specific, more intended which is both good and bad in a sense. (Though 3 turn kills in Modern is pretty fucked up).

Anyways, how come there's so much Blue hate lately? I browsed some forums and it was everywhere, which surprises me when the best counterspell most players will see is Dissipate or Cancel.


Oh, well, I don't really care, there's always Legacy if I want to come back. Meanwhile I got the idea of making some good old classic decks and pitting them against other with my friends, nothing overly serious and more accesible than cube or draft. And playing classic Necropotence and Post-bannings Trix is just a lot of fun if you ask me!

Thoughts?

Blue hate latlely? Bah! As long as there's been Blue there's been hate for it. I guess it's because in the hands of an experienced player Blue is the color that brings out the Rat-Bastard in all of us. It's just fun to look your opponent in the eye and say, "No".

It's been about a year and a half since I got back into MtG after a 10 year break. What finally gave me and my friends the push we needed to dust off our old cards was EDH. That one format for us was everything we love about Magic. Crazy combos, knever knowing what would hit the table next and huge deck design space. Of course I went deeper down the rabbit hole and got into MtG full hog with playing Standard and drafting but EDH is why I play. Any winnings I pull in go to our collective card pool to help fuel EDH insanity.

I can see that for older players, myself included, Standard feels like a "diet" version of the game we love to play. Sure the toys are newer but you feel resticted at times and unable to cut loose. It's a good format but one that has new player friendlieness in mind. For someone like me or any other vet with a lage pool of older cards, EDH and Legacy is the way to go. Wizards is pushing Modern now but its not nearly as robust/healthy as Legacy. I'd expect to see a lot of cards added to new sets over the next couple of years that will make no sense whatsoever unless you realize they are intended to "fix" modern. Case in point, the Ash Zealot in Return to Ravnica.

-Will

I'm not a big Standard guy, but anyone who thinks Standard doesn't get crazy in it's own way needs to watch these videos (or look at the decklist and start dreaming):

www.channelfireball.com/articles/channel...mnidoor-daily-event/

Modern has problems, but I wouldn't say that "not enough craziness" is part of it; combo decks are dominating, other than boring old Jund. I'm a Legacy guy because I've got the cards and it's better, but if I were advising someone brand new right now about a competitive constructed format to get into, I'd point them toward Modern; they appear VERY dedicated to supporting it.

People ALWAYS complain that Blue is too powerful. AND that it's too weak. Simultaneously. Historically, of course, it is by far the most powerful.

I,m too stupid to play Blue properly

I'm working on a nice blue mill deck. It's slow going. Fun as shit though.

What I mean is that you don't have cards like Stasis, Mind's Desire or Rofellos. Things like Infect and modern combo aren't really crazy, just powerful and in the case of Infect perhaps a bit dumb too.

I have been goldfishing Trix and man, is this deck fun to play. Shame Wizards decided to crap on all combos that don't read "Storm" by printing both Extirpate and Krosan Grip, sigh. But I saw a Legacy deck with Horn of Greed so I still can forgive the game for ruining my shitty combos

Black Barney wrote: I,m too stupid to play Blue properly

What I can't really play is Aggro. Too subtle for my combo mind, I guess.


PD: I have never seen so many people complain about Cancel and Mana Leak in my life. Fuckin' Cancel and Mana Leak gentlemen. That's what I don't get about the recent Blue hate. FoW? Brainstorm? Counterspell? Sure, I can see that. But really, Mana Leak? Mind = Blown.

Erik, Aggro is fun to play if you drink and play Magic. You can still make zero mistakes even if you're totally smashed

I honestly do think aggro decks require just as much skill as control decks, there is no *way* you're making zero mistakes while smashed. Aggro decks do require less stamina, however, over the course of a tournament, because you get to take nice breaks in between matches thanks to the short games. But for sure, even stuff like mono-red decks have plenty of depth to them, and it's fun to watch a GOOD red player play one, unlike yes, the majority of players who play them thinking they can shut their brain off.

I dunno, I played a Blue illusion aggro deck and played Red Deck Wins and didn't feel like I was being presented with ANY decision points in my matches.

I definately think there are smart decks and dumb decks. In the CCG game I played the most, LOTR, we had the same thing and I remember one deck being called Stupid Swarm cuz it was so easy to play.

Blue decks are for closet Eurogamers.


GET IN THE RED ZONE AND FIGHT ME YOU PUSSY~!

Playing any deck at the top level requires an immense amount of concentration. I am reminded of Jamie Wakefield's "mistake die" that he used each game to track his errors. Every mental lapse or non-optimal play, he incremented this die. I don't think he ever had a game where he didn't bump it at least once.

I like that they have tuned counter spells down, it was the right thing to do. Every game of MAGIC I played turned on whether or not they had {U}{U} up. My grip of decent 4cc spells would have to wait for the right moment or confluence of factors before being meaningful to avoid the tempo loss of them paying 2 mana plus a card to "kill" it. This waiting, of course, represented a tempo loss in and of itself, and skewed the game. Moving that potent effect to 3cc opened up the game, by allowing other colors to play better tempo threats without as large a risk, also compelling Control to look for some alternate effects to control the board and its threats. Effectively, Draw-Go as an archetype was targeted and eliminated by Development. Ironic, given Randy Buehler's stature at WotC.

I bet I would enjoy Modern immensely if it were cheaper to play. But the expense is just enormous--that's why I got out. I had the makings of a decent Legacy Fish deck, but I only ever played 5Color, which was very popular in the Midwest. For example, I don't think I ever saw EDH played, even though I knew it existed. If you had cards like that, you played 5C with them.

If they ever figure things out and make real Magic Online available on the Mac platform, I could be in trouble. But until then, the Siren's Call is easy to Subdue(l).

20 black lotuses and 20 plague rats or get the fuck out.

jeb wrote: I like that they have tuned counter spells down, it was the right thing to do. Every game of MAGIC I played turned on whether or not they had {U}{U} up.

You know, I've thought about it and I think the difference is all in the quality of disruption. Back in the day, (or in Legacy) you had to protect your beaters and keep them on the table, the deal were not the creatures themselves but what was protecting them. Now creatures are more disruptive on themselves and there's no Swords to Plowshares, Force of Will or Wasteland to screw them over.

If you think about it, even Goblins and Red Deck Wins were more known for their disruption than for their creatures and damage.


I used to think that Magic wasn't specially deep until I started to notice that the same people won over and over. There had to be some skill there and after checking out some videos my knowledge of the game skyrocketted. It's all in the fundamentals, knowing how to mulligan and how to use cantrips are barely given any attention and they are more important than the hate in your sideboard.

Talking about hate, why is Wizards so obsessed with annihilating graveyard strategies? I can't believe they still don't think Tormod and Extirpate was enough XD


Anyways, if that Tax/Rack deck I saw becomes viable, I may consider going back, even if it's just for tournaments. I have too much free time.

They have to quell graveyard strategies because they are asymmetric. The game largely turns on the ability to draw cards. More cards = more threats = more chance of winning. So cantrip cards always have to be juiced in CC to make up for the bonus threat. Any deck that lets you peruse your graveyard is immensely powerful, because it expands your hand size to hand size + size of library. And this is not to mention ridiculous cards like Tarmogoyf. I think it took Yawgmoth's Will for them to realize this. The effect is incredibly powerful, and access to it is usually not shared, as it is with say Howling Mine or equivalent.

The reason they keep printing brutal graveyard hate is that, amazingly, it's NOT enough...not even close! Specifically, it's not enough for Legacy or Vintage to keep Dredge permanently down. I never played Dredge all that much, but Storm, which I love and have played, is the same way: they keep printing new anti-Storm cards, people flip out and declare "storm is dead", and then it ends up *not mattering at all*. Part of the "problem" (really, it's what makes them fun) is that both of those decks have various ways of fighting through hate, and their better pilots have a lot of experience with that (in fact, I'd argue that's what MAKES you a better pilot). What is kind of a genuine problem, though, is that sideboard slots are tight: a lot of Vintage writers have said that in order to be genuinely prepared to combat Dredge, you need to be devoting HALF of your sideboard to it. That's insane! Even if that were effective, and Dredge just stopped winning completely...then people would lessen sideboard cards, etc. Legacy is similar, but in some ways is even more problematic: in Legacy the metagame is SO huge that you can't possibly devote a bunch of sideboard slots to a single matchup. That Grafdigger's Cage card, though, attempted to solve this problem by also addressing other strategies (like Natural Order, Green Sun's Zenith, Oath of Druids); I still don't think it's been all that effective, though.