Huge props to Seth for such an extensive, well thought-out list, that was super enjoyable to listen to. It was super obvious he’d put a tonnn of time and thought into the subject and didn’t just focus on the few most obvious criteria.
The one thing that I think is a signpost of a healthy format is the gap in power between tiers of the metagame. If tier 2 decks require less skill and luck to compete with teir 1 decks and teir 3 decks less to compete with teir 2 then the format has natural diversity where skill and knowledge of the loca meta can see dark horses rise. It allows the format the space to evolve and lets diversity sprawl wide, naturally allowing cost to stay down as players have more options than just the "best" cards.
The part where you talk about format identity for Modern is on point. Years ago they did an article about the identity, which included no kills before turn 4, deck diversity, a place to play old cards - but since they deleted the article, the thread on Reddit, and you have to find it in the archives. I can link it if you want. But I think it’s intentional they haven’t come out with a statement about it in a long time! Likely because they don’t know what the format identity is, and only use it to sell pushed products.
About the diverence in skill level between 2014 and 2024. I believe that in 2024 you have to make much more choices in your games, which makes it more skill dependent. Cards have more text, tend to be more flexible, more modal, you have more tokens, more card advantage. The game has become more complex.
@@MCKICKZcongrats, you're toxic and the person everyone hates to see. I used to play Yugioh the meta is forced rotated every 3 months with them banning cards to slow down the top meta decks and then printing 3 new meta decks in the set that comes out at the same time as the banning. Modern is forced rotation every horizon set. From what iv seen Ragavan the most hated/broken card in the last year isn't even played anymore. None of the pre modern horizon 3 decks are viable to play.
I believe limited is the best skill intensive format. You maybe lucky with somethings you pull, but building a deck out of it can be hard for people. It is also usually an even playing field because everyone paid the same and open same product. Some people pull good some bad, but building the deck that wins requires skill.
Limited also requires very little investment. I play commander almost exclusively but if I want to play a competitive 1v1 experience once a month or two I don’t need to buy a deck and invest in learning a meta to compete, I can just drop $20 and look at the set on scary fall and have a fun evening of “competitive” magic
@@Lazydino59 I spent $50 one time on LGS repacks. That allows me to play both commander and non-format magic with my playgroup at no additional cost, and I can make hundreds of different decks with those cards. Limited requires spending like 30 bucks every time you want to play it. It's literally the highest cost format possible, because it's the only one that you pay per game played rather than for the cards used.
@@dontmisunderstand6041 yes but I’m comparing competitive 60 card to limited, not casual. If I want to play at fnm competitively in modern for example I need a $1k deck, standard a $200+, etc. I’m not saying doing it every week but if I want to play competitively on a non-frequent basis my choice is only limited or nothing.
@@Lazydino59 Standard is the next most expensive format after, because it's a rotating format that requires repeated investment. You don't need to spend 1000 bucks to play modern competitively. You need it to copy someone else's deck mindlessly, but that's a less competitively viable strategy than just learning how to build a deck yourself. You can buy bulk repacks from most LGSs trying to shift junk. It's usually a pretty great deal. Like I said earlier... for that $50 I got the ability to make viable legacy and modern decks. It doesn't let me play standard because my collection didn't have the cards to support making a deck. Meta refers to what is being used, not what's best to use. The meta is not more competitively viable than non-meta, and is less competitively viable than an anti-meta pick. This becomes obvious when you stop and think for a moment, because if the meta described what was best it would be impossible for metas to change outside of the literal first game played in each format.
I definitely think budget should’ve been discussed more. If my $100 pile can’t at least compete with the $500+ tier 1 decks then I’m not even going to invest. Sure my budget deck shouldn’t be stronger than an expensive deck but my skill should hopefully add some points my win percentage loses by going a “cheaper” route.
To defend WotC (which isn't something I like to do unless it's defending the card designers) on The Big Score, that was intended to be a mini-set like Aftermath, but after Aftermath's horrible reception, they adapted to the critique, and not wanting the product to go to waste, made an emergency decision to release it alongside OTJ. So it's fair enough that it wasn't ideally spaced out.
I think all three brought up good points in their discussion of what makes a format good. For me, I'm in complete agreement with Seth about the different criteria like deck diversity and etc, but I also agree with Richard about the skill check part. However, I do agree with Crim that certain archetypes can still be skill intensive and allow agency. However, there are other decks like mono red with Embercleave in the past and quite a few other decks, especially that are Midrange, both in the past and current that lack agency and are kinda autopilotish. I definitely think this has become more prevalent since the announcement of the F.I.R.E design back in 2019.
Embercleave red was massive auto pilot moments down to where you could accurately call them as the opponent. Turn 3 attack with 3 one drops drop embercleave and win.
The best formats are those that are the most player-driven and don't rely on Wizards to balance. As such, my votes are for Canadian Highlander and Curated Cubes.
Ok I thought Oracle of the Alpha was a dumb reprint... But the battle of wits call just sounds sooo funny. Im super excited to see the blink -> a ton of draw + midnight clock/trenzalore shenanigans -> I AM SO READY
I like it when the game actions I take impact the game result. And I want to be able to play something others aren't and still have some amount of agency.
The part of archetype diversity that people often forget about is how many decks in each archetype are, let's say above average. Oftentimes there's only one deck in each archetype which is good and that takes away from archetype diversity.
I loved standard when arena came out and I could play golgari midrange fungi/saproling explore.. and then the meta changed to 30+min Planeswalker control meta and I lost all interest
Specially since us who live in countries without magic conventions tend to be same folks who live in countries where shipping a secret lair box is going to be very expensive due shipping and import taxes.... I reaaaaaaaaaaaaally wish I could just go to one of the local LGS and draft this, or buy some boosters to draft with my friends :( Hope this secret lair wont cost me like 500usd else its basically the same as "this product isnt avalible to you" (and thats assumming scalpers dont buy this out of stuck like the hour it comes out)
@LookADistarction Counterpoint. The product that is specifically a unique experience and a great place for getting reprints is _not_ the product you should be making that argument about.
@@LookADistarction I havent bought a booster box in literal years. I only buy beers and snacks at my LGS cuz they profit more from those with the eventual booster every once in a while. This is the first product in years that has made me go "wow I wanna buy a box and draft it with my friends". White border and future sight border make me super nostalgic, and I love boths.
A good range of decks that play well against each other with aggro, control and midrange being represented and no deck being too strong against the others. The price of the decks being cheap to build is helpful but not a strict requirement at least to me.
The funniest thing to be doing with oracle of the alpha on arena is blinking it multiple times, but that plays pretty horribly in paper. I can see toralf’s disciple being a fun one, though, and shuffling in actual lightning bolts into the deck.
Oracle of the Alpha is fascinating, because it's actually a huge liability for you if you don't have an incredibly powerful draw engine or a bunch of tutors that can put Timetwister into your hand. If you think about it... you're adding 6 of what are effectively lands to your deck, and 3 nonlands. That ratio is terrible. And the more times you trigger the ETB, the worse your deck's ratios are going to be. You're bricking your own deck pretty hard by spamming it when you don't have ways to mitigate that downside.
I think a format is good when the games tell a story that is back and forth but ultimately makes sense. I hate it when popular decks are value trains that the opponent has trouble responding to or when certain cards (Sheoldred, Ugin, etc) make the rest of the game's story not matter.
So Crim funny enough mentioned Oko/Uro era as 'lol faceroll' Oko mirror was one of the most skill testing matchups in quite a while. Also. I would argue that overall skill matters less, in general. In essence, every deck is a scam. (Almost) Every deck has a draw that you absolutely cannot beat no matter what. You kind of just go through the motions. Opp plays a 1 drop? You use your removal spell or you will lose instantly. You kind of just play on curve and play your cards as you can.
so much of the skill at the highest level comes from the mulligan, sideboard and format knowledge when you both are playing super optimized “scam” decks
As someone who loves playing swiss army knife decks... you suck at deckbuilding if your deck gets folded by any individual card in the game. Likewise, your opponents' decks suck if you can play one card to curbstomp them. And for every case where that's not true, that's LITERALLY the point of a banlist existing at all. If every single card like that isn't banned, there's legitimately no point in banning any cards ever. Skill matters more than everything else during deckbuilding. There's relatively little skill in piloting a deck. Most of the skill in piloting a deck is in understanding what could possibly happen, and how likely it is to happen, for both you and your opponents' decks. Knowledge isn't a skill, but understanding the things that interfere with your deck's function is. All I have to know is what's bad for me, and from that I can deduce the lines, and do some quick math to estimate how likely each one is to lead to me winning.
A good format in my opinion, is one defined by easily observable and tangible metagame diversity, coupled with frequent curation of the insidious force that is combo. Of course, you will always have the best deck or decks, but ideally one would hope to see some form of the big three archetypes (aggro, midrange, control) represented at any given point in time. Simultaneously, one would also hope to see these decks capable of holding their own against self-sustaining combos. Currently, I feel only Standard tangentially satisfies this criteria. Ever since design focus has shifted to being Commander-centric, it feels like every Eternal format is steadily mutating into 'two ships' territory, where the combos are consistently gaining ground and they've become increasingly easy to assemble with an ever diminishing opportunity cost. In turn, we end up with artificially narrow metagames, where only 3-5 decks are viable at a time.
I think part of a good format is the relationship between card pool size and in-deck card diversity. When the card pool is too small players are running the staples of whatever the only card is that does a particular job. When the card pool is too large the format becomes more competitive and counterintuitively you see the same effect where players can only afford to run the best version of a particular effect. So the format becomes a catalogue of staples which end up forming the cheese and sauce 🍕 in whatever flavor of archetype the deck is based around. We see this a lot in modern, are beginning to see it more in commander with cards such as farewell or fierce guardianship which are unequivocally the best at what they do, to the point where to leave them out is to power down your deck. There's an interesting sweet spot in the middle where it's more beneficial to run high synergy cards instead of raw high power cards and i think that is a characteristic that commander still has and modern used to have (ex inkmoth nexus vs urza's saga, saga can win games with no synergy)
The easy counterexample to that is to look at Historic on Arena, which is the most diverse format in all of Magic: The Gathering. There are so many fantastically strong decks that they can't even all be counted. You run into everything. Every theme under the sun. And it's all good.
I play Naya energy in Timeless. I don't use birthing ritual, I use Break Out with Goyf and that cat that gets bigger when you have a mountain and plains + that shaman that makes a red and a green mana. Some of the draws I get with that deck are insane. It can be really brutally fast. It can go One drop, shaman into break out into shaman from the break out again into an ampted raptor and that raptor hit goyf. Timeless as a whole feels like modern but legacy came over to do a lan party. Oh yeah, a good format is one where you can play your favorite cards in some manner, yes I am a timmy, an gruul timmy I just want to go fast.
The conjuring mechanic in paper can definitely be awkward but at least for the Oracle once you “conjure” the P9 into your library it says shuffle afterwards, making it not too unrealistic to play in paper by just shuffling them into your deck
Pauper is hands down the best format. The decks are all affordable, the meta is diverse, and everything is a common so it's accessible to newer players (no insane card complexity). Every play / sequencing choice matters, and a match is usually determined by who can pilot their deck the best.
When it comes to an “evolving” metagame post rotation, I’m of the opinion that a portion of decks get a card or two or three (depending on the size of the format), but one or two decks are born (at least in Standard).
Standard, to me, is the best it’s ever been in a while. Lots of different decks and diverse gameplay. Maybe someone will crack the code soon but many archetypes feel viable right now and games are skill intensive.
Even though we dont Mull like we used to, it's still skill intensive to keep good hands and know when to Mull, especially in game 2 or 3 against certin decks a good hand might be bad.
So recently I learned about this format, 'rush', from a recent article talking about the jump of gustath's scepter. It seemed interesting because 10 life makes for quick games, and I suffer from schizophrenia. Doing anything for extended periods of time (especially late in the day) is difficult. But there's very little info on it. What few decklists I find are already outdated; if it's true some burn cards are banned. I can't tell if there's sideboards, of whatever degree. It's a hodgepodge.
Good formst list 1. Slow interactive games 5 turns at least 2. Skill based 3. Rotates often regardless of secondary market 4. Less power creep and less text in text boxes
I'm no pro, but i think the skill expression in a format lies in understading how your particular deck navigates each match up. For example, if you're playing control in standard against a discard deck you need to be selective with your counterspells because if they resolve a liliana you basically lose on the spot. But if you understand that fact about the matchup and don't let them resolve a Liliana it becomes incredibly difficult for them to win.
Question: Is there a direct correlation between decks with linear gameplans, and those decks being low agency? If, say, the gameplan of your deck always wants to get big threats into your graveyard to reanimate, or always wants to build a big board to buff, with little flexibility to do anything but that, does that result in low agency games, where the outcome is determined by whether or not you managed to accomplish your deck's goal?
my thoughts on the collector boosters in the festival in a box, is that Ixalan and WOE have the highest high rolls in their collector boosters, between the mana crypts and cavern of souls and the anime enchanting taales
I know Seth touched on it briefly but I think the only format that regularly checks the boxes that he made is Pauper. I think it's a huge shame that none of them mentioned it for possible best format right now
Dear Crim, As a long time yugioh player, I can assure you that there's plenty of interaction in the game and its faster than both modern and CEDH. I would absolutely love it if you gave yugioh a try to see how the game really is. Additionally, xyzs came out 13 years ago. We know have pendulums and links.
One thing that annoys me is that some alchemy cards can easily be printed with black border. Like Tenacius Pup and Rusko. Rusko for sure, his cunjure is almost create a token. And Forsaken Crossroads, why it have to be illegal? Is it that hard to know who was the starting player?
My guess is that it has less to do with how difficult it is to track, as much as the fact that as long as one player has a Crossroads in their deck, you always need to track it. Similar to how Day/Night is a hated mechanic not because it is difficult to track, but because you constantly have to, even if the card isn't in play.
@@rodrigodepaula4198 I mean, if you've been playing for 15-20 minutes, with no remnants of who started left, it's not necessarily easy to remember who started.
@@rodrigodepaula4198 Sorry, I didn't realize you were the authority on what is and isn't a problem to remember, my bad. My point just was that there isn't any physical evidence, like there is for the vast majority of things tracked in paper magic.
My personal measure is that I would like to play the game. I want to do the gameplay thing and make decisions, think about rules, and read cards. If I think to myself "Oh look, I lose" before getting a chance to play, I am not interested.
standard might be at its best, but there are still many gripes that I would have with that. like how black is so dominant b/c of all the efficient removal. red deck just try to explode on you with cheesy near 1 shot plays. Wtih RNG part of the game, and particular the base resources system, skill matter less, even though as much as we want it to be as spike or spike-ish.
I think the only upside of OotA in Commander is a jank Battle of Wits. Sure, you need A LOT of flicker (seriously, a lot), but the Wizard type helps a lot.
Probably the result of mostly playing best of 1 on areana and not playing ranked enough the last few months so I'm in low ranks but I haven't really enjoyed current standard mostly because about 80% of my game have been against some form of red agro or black discard and in both cases games end up feeling very nothingy. For red either they win turn 2-3 or I remove there creature then they sit there doing nothing and for black it frequently ends up with both players having an empty board and hand then just waiting to see who draws something to win the game. I'm going to keep giving it a chance because most the other decks (and admittedly some variations of red and black) have been interesting and enjoyable to play against but still its not quite there for me. Very close though
Honestly, if Modern just became the format for UB I think that's a fine identity. The omg problem is that's its still already been pushed to extreme power creep from the Horizon sets. Can we get premodern but with UB lol (except the one ring. Ban or restrict that)
Honestly would've enjoyed more concrete examples of fun formats everyone remembered. I had a weird love/hate relationship with standard around innistrad but at least there was a nice cycle of decks to go around.
I feel With Formats getting more and more Powerful, Player Agency shifts more and more to deckbuilding instead of gameplay and therefor it feels Like a decrease (which it is for nonebrewers). But people always Call for faster Games, and faster means less thinking.
Was an awesome podcast, but serious question here. Has richard made a Disa the restless deck? The man loves his goyfs so we need to see him break out the goyfs with the goyfs matter deck! add some conspiracy and maskwood nexus for more goyf fun!
Man the direct to modern sets really should have just been reprints with like ten slots devoted to new cards made to impact modern specifically. Like new sideboard tech, a specific thing for an old/underpowered archetype, but nothing directly designed to juice the top decks other than that sideboard tech. I also think they should print a standard set every now and then that is just reprints. You can take some time tested cards from past standards but mixed with the new stuff. That will really keep the power creep from getting out of control but also reduce the game bloat and power creep for other formats. Plus it’s the perfect time to reprint cards to keep things accessible. I want to see that in place of foundations.
"A well built consistent metagame will slowly be evolving, in the truest definition of the word" what we have now isn't evolution, which is a process of small things changing. It is a mutation, beyond what we can observe happening around us in nature. Whole species of deck appear, and vanish, become the apex, and then fade to obscurity
Could a super fancy shuffling machine be a desirable Magic product in 2024?? One that allows for special stuff (like Conjuring) and makes it super quick? I guess the tricky part would be eventual card damage...
Seth's List: 1. Diversity (archetype, card, deck, gameplay) I think Modern's permissive manabases make this problem worse. 2. Agency 3. Skill Intensive 4. Interactive 5. Be Balanced 6. Evolving 7. Identity Modern's identity used to be the T4 high power format. That feels like it is dead with things like Amulet Titan. 8. Well Managed 9. Accessible I think part of this point is how many cards are replaceable and the cost to acquire. I think that Mythic Rares introduced a problem here, where expensive mythics create absurd chase rares. Sheoldred, One Ring, Agatha's Soul Cauldron, Vein Ripper, Portal to Phyrexia, Cityscape Leveler, Myrel, Nissa Resurgent Animist. I think this number of $20+ mythics probably isn't good for formats when they're often 4ofs. Arena's Wildcard economy also contributes to this problem. 10. Fun to Play. --------------------------- This is a pretty good list overall, The biggest thing I saw lacking from this conversation is the idea of Release Valve sideboard cards. The design of answer cards has gotten really broad and threats have gotten stronger. The time to answer a threat before getting outvalued is very short, and when you do the answers don't recoup enough advantage. Sideboard tech cards were for the purpose of blowing out a niche but powerful strategy and they mostly don't exist anymore outside of graveyard hate. When they do exist, they aren't narrow enough to only prey upon certain strategies. Blood Moon effects for instance aren't a narrow PlanB tech card. Sideboard slots used to contribute to metagame evolution, and it keeps the landscape shifting. Graveyard decks fell out as more decks ran yard interaction. Anti-control cards crop up instead and then the yard decks come back. Consign to Memory is one of the few excellently designed sideboard tech cards they've printed. It deals with niche combo decks as well as the new influx of colorless decks. However in usual fashion, you need to be blue to run it. Veil of Summer was a bit too proactive and broad hitting 3 of the 6 'colors' of Magic decks.
big YES to Richards answer.... when you draft a fantastic deck, and just get land screwed, and loose to a newb with his random draft picks.... feels bad.
I feel the same way Richard does regarding what he called skill expression, but at the same time, I have to point out Simon Nielsen. Would he just be having like a lottery win level luck right now? But sure, I do think it is often about finding a deckbuilding edge. At the PTs, you often see teams having pretty similar results, so if everyone in a team does well, they probably made that one little deckbuilding decision better than the other teams.
Maybe it's just my more limited viewing experience with pro magic, but I feel like it is not an uncommon phenomena to see top 8'ers being teammates with multiple below 50% win rate players. So I'm not completely sold on the idea that specific techs are, say, more important than strong match up knowledge and experience. And also the ability to adapt on the spot.
@@RasmusVJS I'm not going to disagree with you, but maybe riff on this a bit: I think those little deckbuilding decisions I talked about are based on understanding the match ups. If you know that there is going to be a deck that is very popular, you have to figure out where the other teams are with it and be one step ahead of them in your deck evolution.
I played during alara/zen. Cascade jund was the definition of no skill, and people were generally very happy. Then caw blade happened. So old times are not always better times.
I always look at how hard the removal checks are each format, like how often i have to have removal on turn like 1-3. Oh didn't answer my opponents creature on turn 1 or 2 right away, guess i'll lose.
Good formats for me is when theres a good even power level distributed among cards, and too high power cards are banned (limited is the exception). Pauper is a good format.
5:30 reminder that Rusko, Clockmaker would be amazing in paper and easily doable. We have Meteorites tokens and Tarmagoyf tokens now, why not Midnight Clocks?
By that metrics, Pauper is the best Magic: the gathering format. With the exeption of a few months every now and again, pauper checks all the boxes they mentioned. -Diversity: the format is diverse in every way. Archetypes, cards and gameplay. -Agency: there are few decks you have no agency against. You have burn decks and combo decks, but you can interact with them and the sideboard hate for those is great. If a deck is too fast and consistent, a card is banned shortly after. Very closely managed -Skill intensive and interactive: in a format where there are no bombs to slam, there are a lot of micro decisions you have to go through. There are a lot of decks like faeries that are complete trash if you don't know what you are doing. Even the bombs like initiative creatures can blow up in your face. -Evolving: Pauper changes a lot for an eternal format. Sometimes too fast when sets like modern horizons come out. But even if your deck is badly positioned, you just buy the new best deck for 60 bucks and wait for the old deck to get something -Identity: the most accessible format. You can only play with commons, but some are broken (Brainstorm, dark ritual, lightning bolt, initiative, mystic remora, counterspell, affinity...). Decks of commons, but some decks still win on turn 3. -Very fun to play. People are not likely to try it, because all commons format sounds like playing with draft chaff, but that is not even close. Try it and you'll see.
The reason they oicked those collector packs is they wanted to get rid of packs that the chase cards are about to be banned, ie jeweled lotus and mana crypt. For eldraine maybe they didn't sell as much as they thought they would since eldraine was thw first set with collector boosters???
Good/bad formats are defined by the play patterns of the best in slot cards. Pioneer right now is a great example... all colors and major archetypes represented, so it should be at least reasonably "good" to some degree. And yet the format is in a mire of unlikable dreck, defined by Amalia combo kill T3, Ancestral Recall with Delve, shove into play a T3 Vein Ripper, and Nykthos for 12 mana on turn 3. Some of the most miserable play patterns you could fathom. Modern Grief/Scam, Nadu, Legacy Rescaminator... every time it is bad, the play patterns of the best cards suck.
Pioneer is the embodiment of everything we were cautioned about regarding Commander focused design: a preponderance of overly efficient, self-sustaining engines to appease the casual players, while the answers gradually become wholly inadequate because removal doesn't sell product.
In pretty much every format, too many cards are too powerful or too efficient. I think Standard still has this problem, just the card pool hasn’t reached a point yet where you can identify it as easily.
It's easy to view things in the past with rose tinted glasses. It's something we all find ourselves doing now and again. Don't get me wrong, there have been times when formats were more skill testing, but there have also been periods dominated by broken combos, luck of the draw, whoever goes first wins and non-interactive games. It's something that waxes and wanes. Don't fall into the trap that everything was better in the past. We don't need a Make Magic Great Again movement.
@@SladeWeston so the purpose of you post is to remind people that things are not absolute and that nuance exists? Surely you must be blessed with numerous iq points to figure out this profound truth. Beside, stating that magic is less skill intensive nowadays is in no way viewing the world with rose tinted glasses and that political zinger at the end is more akin to scoring cheap brownie points than actually saying something relevant. Make magic great again is probably a lot closer to what the community think about the game than what you’d like to believe. Card quality dwindling, fomo secret lair, product fatigue and fire design (I’m skipping some) are some easy to point out exemples of things that people liked better in the past.
This is something that sounds smart until you think about it for five seconds. It’s basically just gotcha whataboutery that pretends using hyper specific examples can negate broader trends. “Oh you think magic is power crept now??? Well you obviously didn’t play in Urzas block and you obviously haven’t heard of the ‘power 9’” is not the galaxy brain take you think it is.
I usually love and agree with Crim, but no, needing to stick in twelve 1-2 cost cheap removal does not solve the annoyance of slickshot decks, and if you do that you're just praying to not run into anything but aggro red...
Oracle of the alpha is "easy" to resolve. Shuffle your power 9. Then roll a percentile for each of the power 9 and place each of the power 9 in your deck, that many from the top. Sounds like a gd nightmare lol
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Huge props to Seth for such an extensive, well thought-out list, that was super enjoyable to listen to. It was super obvious he’d put a tonnn of time and thought into the subject and didn’t just focus on the few most obvious criteria.
I agree. Nice to listen to someone who clearly has thought through this throughly. Lots of work with a lot of care put into it.
Spells costing mana is what makes for good format.
Totally agree. That makes a lot sense looking at every format aside from standard right now.
The one thing that I think is a signpost of a healthy format is the gap in power between tiers of the metagame. If tier 2 decks require less skill and luck to compete with teir 1 decks and teir 3 decks less to compete with teir 2 then the format has natural diversity where skill and knowledge of the loca meta can see dark horses rise. It allows the format the space to evolve and lets diversity sprawl wide, naturally allowing cost to stay down as players have more options than just the "best" cards.
The part where you talk about format identity for Modern is on point.
Years ago they did an article about the identity, which included no kills before turn 4, deck diversity, a place to play old cards - but since they deleted the article, the thread on Reddit, and you have to find it in the archives.
I can link it if you want. But I think it’s intentional they haven’t come out with a statement about it in a long time! Likely because they don’t know what the format identity is, and only use it to sell pushed products.
Watching the cast reinvent the terms Johnny and Spike is really funny.
I would like to congratulate Richard on getting through an entire podcast without mentioning One Piece!
Definitely agree with Richard on Oracle of the Alpha. Fun card for online, but a nightmare in paper.
Mmm if it gets copied a bunch of times, then yeah
@@popo237 I would love to see some guy come with 8 sets of proxied power nine in sleeves. If that happens, you deserve to play the card lol
About the diverence in skill level between 2014 and 2024. I believe that in 2024 you have to make much more choices in your games, which makes it more skill dependent. Cards have more text, tend to be more flexible, more modal, you have more tokens, more card advantage. The game has become more complex.
Good formats don't rotate when pushed product lines force you to drop $1,000 on a new deck every year or so
No doubt.
>forced
100% not true. Get better or piss off lmao . I bet you have house rules
Did wotc twist your arm to buy ?😂
@@MCKICKZcongrats, you're toxic and the person everyone hates to see.
I used to play Yugioh the meta is forced rotated every 3 months with them banning cards to slow down the top meta decks and then printing 3 new meta decks in the set that comes out at the same time as the banning. Modern is forced rotation every horizon set. From what iv seen Ragavan the most hated/broken card in the last year isn't even played anymore. None of the pre modern horizon 3 decks are viable to play.
I believe limited is the best skill intensive format. You maybe lucky with somethings you pull, but building a deck out of it can be hard for people. It is also usually an even playing field because everyone paid the same and open same product. Some people pull good some bad, but building the deck that wins requires skill.
Limited also requires very little investment. I play commander almost exclusively but if I want to play a competitive 1v1 experience once a month or two I don’t need to buy a deck and invest in learning a meta to compete, I can just drop $20 and look at the set on scary fall and have a fun evening of “competitive” magic
@@Lazydino59 I hope Scryfall change their name to Scary Fall this Halloween.
@@Lazydino59 I spent $50 one time on LGS repacks. That allows me to play both commander and non-format magic with my playgroup at no additional cost, and I can make hundreds of different decks with those cards. Limited requires spending like 30 bucks every time you want to play it. It's literally the highest cost format possible, because it's the only one that you pay per game played rather than for the cards used.
@@dontmisunderstand6041 yes but I’m comparing competitive 60 card to limited, not casual. If I want to play at fnm competitively in modern for example I need a $1k deck, standard a $200+, etc. I’m not saying doing it every week but if I want to play competitively on a non-frequent basis my choice is only limited or nothing.
@@Lazydino59 Standard is the next most expensive format after, because it's a rotating format that requires repeated investment.
You don't need to spend 1000 bucks to play modern competitively. You need it to copy someone else's deck mindlessly, but that's a less competitively viable strategy than just learning how to build a deck yourself.
You can buy bulk repacks from most LGSs trying to shift junk. It's usually a pretty great deal. Like I said earlier... for that $50 I got the ability to make viable legacy and modern decks. It doesn't let me play standard because my collection didn't have the cards to support making a deck.
Meta refers to what is being used, not what's best to use. The meta is not more competitively viable than non-meta, and is less competitively viable than an anti-meta pick. This becomes obvious when you stop and think for a moment, because if the meta described what was best it would be impossible for metas to change outside of the literal first game played in each format.
I definitely think budget should’ve been discussed more. If my $100 pile can’t at least compete with the $500+ tier 1 decks then I’m not even going to invest. Sure my budget deck shouldn’t be stronger than an expensive deck but my skill should hopefully add some points my win percentage loses by going a “cheaper” route.
Seth's Pauper shout out made the pod cast. Then how he talked about accessibility whch Pauper is the most.
To defend WotC (which isn't something I like to do unless it's defending the card designers) on The Big Score, that was intended to be a mini-set like Aftermath, but after Aftermath's horrible reception, they adapted to the critique, and not wanting the product to go to waste, made an emergency decision to release it alongside OTJ. So it's fair enough that it wasn't ideally spaced out.
I think all three brought up good points in their discussion of what makes a format good. For me, I'm in complete agreement with Seth about the different criteria like deck diversity and etc, but I also agree with Richard about the skill check part.
However, I do agree with Crim that certain archetypes can still be skill intensive and allow agency. However, there are other decks like mono red with Embercleave in the past and quite a few other decks, especially
that are Midrange, both in the past and current that lack agency and are kinda autopilotish.
I definitely think this has become more prevalent since the announcement of the F.I.R.E design back in 2019.
Embercleave red was massive auto pilot moments down to where you could accurately call them as the opponent. Turn 3 attack with 3 one drops drop embercleave and win.
The best formats are those that are the most player-driven and don't rely on Wizards to balance. As such, my votes are for Canadian Highlander and Curated Cubes.
I think Pauper is a good format. Decks are cheap, you get to play Legacy staples, it doesn't rotate, and the metas are often very diverse.
Ok I thought Oracle of the Alpha was a dumb reprint...
But the battle of wits call just sounds sooo funny.
Im super excited to see the blink -> a ton of draw + midnight clock/trenzalore shenanigans -> I AM SO READY
I like it when the game actions I take impact the game result. And I want to be able to play something others aren't and still have some amount of agency.
The part of archetype diversity that people often forget about is how many decks in each archetype are, let's say above average. Oftentimes there's only one deck in each archetype which is good and that takes away from archetype diversity.
Which is why Seth also included "deck diversity" as a unique bullet point, rather than going straight from "archetype diversity" to "card diversity".
I love starting my work day with these boys I have no idea why 🙈🥰
Good formats usually aren’t talked about as the players are playing them. It’s just the bad and boring ones that get discussed all the time.
Haven’t watched the whole episode yet but my answer is deck diversity with the strongest decks being mid rangy
They basically said that well done 😂
Sounds like Khans format
@@JonReid01 right ! lol I feel like that is the general consensus
@@TheRedGauntlet never played that before
I loved standard when arena came out and I could play golgari midrange fungi/saproling explore.. and then the meta changed to 30+min Planeswalker control meta and I lost all interest
Mystery Booster 2 availability is a real problem! Most will NEVER get the seemingly amazing draft experience.
Specially since us who live in countries without magic conventions tend to be same folks who live in countries where shipping a secret lair box is going to be very expensive due shipping and import taxes.... I reaaaaaaaaaaaaally wish I could just go to one of the local LGS and draft this, or buy some boosters to draft with my friends :( Hope this secret lair wont cost me like 500usd else its basically the same as "this product isnt avalible to you" (and thats assumming scalpers dont buy this out of stuck like the hour it comes out)
Counterpoint.
Product fatigue and overload is real and trying to consume every magic product is unrealistic and puts unnecessary stress on you.
@LookADistarction Counterpoint. The product that is specifically a unique experience and a great place for getting reprints is _not_ the product you should be making that argument about.
@@LookADistarction I havent bought a booster box in literal years. I only buy beers and snacks at my LGS cuz they profit more from those with the eventual booster every once in a while. This is the first product in years that has made me go "wow I wanna buy a box and draft it with my friends". White border and future sight border make me super nostalgic, and I love boths.
A good range of decks that play well against each other with aggro, control and midrange being represented and no deck being too strong against the others. The price of the decks being cheap to build is helpful but not a strict requirement at least to me.
A good format let's you take a turn more than once every 30 min. Looking at you commander.
Greatest intro ever with the sarcasm. Drill a hole straight down lol!
I like that the festival in the box comes with the collector boosters because if you hold your own tournament, you can use them as prizes
The funniest thing to be doing with oracle of the alpha on arena is blinking it multiple times, but that plays pretty horribly in paper. I can see toralf’s disciple being a fun one, though, and shuffling in actual lightning bolts into the deck.
Oracle of the Alpha is fascinating, because it's actually a huge liability for you if you don't have an incredibly powerful draw engine or a bunch of tutors that can put Timetwister into your hand. If you think about it... you're adding 6 of what are effectively lands to your deck, and 3 nonlands. That ratio is terrible. And the more times you trigger the ETB, the worse your deck's ratios are going to be. You're bricking your own deck pretty hard by spamming it when you don't have ways to mitigate that downside.
I think a format is good when the games tell a story that is back and forth but ultimately makes sense. I hate it when popular decks are value trains that the opponent has trouble responding to or when certain cards (Sheoldred, Ugin, etc) make the rest of the game's story not matter.
So Crim funny enough mentioned Oko/Uro era as 'lol faceroll' Oko mirror was one of the most skill testing matchups in quite a while.
Also. I would argue that overall skill matters less, in general. In essence, every deck is a scam. (Almost) Every deck has a draw that you absolutely cannot beat no matter what. You kind of just go through the motions. Opp plays a 1 drop? You use your removal spell or you will lose instantly. You kind of just play on curve and play your cards as you can.
He mentioned Oko/Uro as pubstompy, which means that players who don’t have high skill get rolled.
so much of the skill at the highest level comes from the mulligan, sideboard and format knowledge when you both are playing super optimized “scam” decks
As someone who loves playing swiss army knife decks... you suck at deckbuilding if your deck gets folded by any individual card in the game. Likewise, your opponents' decks suck if you can play one card to curbstomp them. And for every case where that's not true, that's LITERALLY the point of a banlist existing at all. If every single card like that isn't banned, there's legitimately no point in banning any cards ever.
Skill matters more than everything else during deckbuilding. There's relatively little skill in piloting a deck. Most of the skill in piloting a deck is in understanding what could possibly happen, and how likely it is to happen, for both you and your opponents' decks. Knowledge isn't a skill, but understanding the things that interfere with your deck's function is. All I have to know is what's bad for me, and from that I can deduce the lines, and do some quick math to estimate how likely each one is to lead to me winning.
A good format in my opinion, is one defined by easily observable and tangible metagame diversity, coupled with frequent curation of the insidious force that is combo. Of course, you will always have the best deck or decks, but ideally one would hope to see some form of the big three archetypes (aggro, midrange, control) represented at any given point in time. Simultaneously, one would also hope to see these decks capable of holding their own against self-sustaining combos.
Currently, I feel only Standard tangentially satisfies this criteria. Ever since design focus has shifted to being Commander-centric, it feels like every Eternal format is steadily mutating into 'two ships' territory, where the combos are consistently gaining ground and they've become increasingly easy to assemble with an ever diminishing opportunity cost. In turn, we end up with artificially narrow metagames, where only 3-5 decks are viable at a time.
Great points across the board.
I think part of a good format is the relationship between card pool size and in-deck card diversity. When the card pool is too small players are running the staples of whatever the only card is that does a particular job. When the card pool is too large the format becomes more competitive and counterintuitively you see the same effect where players can only afford to run the best version of a particular effect. So the format becomes a catalogue of staples which end up forming the cheese and sauce 🍕 in whatever flavor of archetype the deck is based around. We see this a lot in modern, are beginning to see it more in commander with cards such as farewell or fierce guardianship which are unequivocally the best at what they do, to the point where to leave them out is to power down your deck. There's an interesting sweet spot in the middle where it's more beneficial to run high synergy cards instead of raw high power cards and i think that is a characteristic that commander still has and modern used to have (ex inkmoth nexus vs urza's saga, saga can win games with no synergy)
The easy counterexample to that is to look at Historic on Arena, which is the most diverse format in all of Magic: The Gathering. There are so many fantastically strong decks that they can't even all be counted. You run into everything. Every theme under the sun. And it's all good.
I really liked the points brought up by the couch cat 😸
I play Naya energy in Timeless. I don't use birthing ritual, I use Break Out with Goyf and that cat that gets bigger when you have a mountain and plains + that shaman that makes a red and a green mana. Some of the draws I get with that deck are insane. It can be really brutally fast. It can go One drop, shaman into break out into shaman from the break out again into an ampted raptor and that raptor hit goyf. Timeless as a whole feels like modern but legacy came over to do a lan party. Oh yeah, a good format is one where you can play your favorite cards in some manner, yes I am a timmy, an gruul timmy I just want to go fast.
The best format is going through the bulk cards at your LGS with your friend and building pauper decks out of whatever you can find.
The conjuring mechanic in paper can definitely be awkward but at least for the Oracle once you “conjure” the P9 into your library it says shuffle afterwards, making it not too unrealistic to play in paper by just shuffling them into your deck
Pauper is hands down the best format. The decks are all affordable, the meta is diverse, and everything is a common so it's accessible to newer players (no insane card complexity). Every play / sequencing choice matters, and a match is usually determined by who can pilot their deck the best.
When it comes to an “evolving” metagame post rotation, I’m of the opinion that a portion of decks get a card or two or three (depending on the size of the format), but one or two decks are born (at least in Standard).
I do agree that Pioneer really needs WotC to pay more attention to it. Or at the very least give it a group to maintain it like Pauper
Standard, to me, is the best it’s ever been in a while. Lots of different decks and diverse gameplay. Maybe someone will crack the code soon but many archetypes feel viable right now and games are skill intensive.
Even though we dont Mull like we used to, it's still skill intensive to keep good hands and know when to Mull, especially in game 2 or 3 against certin decks a good hand might be bad.
So recently I learned about this format, 'rush', from a recent article talking about the jump of gustath's scepter.
It seemed interesting because 10 life makes for quick games, and I suffer from schizophrenia. Doing anything for extended periods of time (especially late in the day) is difficult.
But there's very little info on it. What few decklists I find are already outdated; if it's true some burn cards are banned. I can't tell if there's sideboards, of whatever degree. It's a hodgepodge.
Good formst list
1. Slow interactive games 5 turns at least
2. Skill based
3. Rotates often regardless of secondary market
4. Less power creep and less text in text boxes
Also the best format is cube imo
i freaking love mtggoldfish podcast
I'm no pro, but i think the skill expression in a format lies in understading how your particular deck navigates each match up. For example, if you're playing control in standard against a discard deck you need to be selective with your counterspells because if they resolve a liliana you basically lose on the spot. But if you understand that fact about the matchup and don't let them resolve a Liliana it becomes incredibly difficult for them to win.
Question: Is there a direct correlation between decks with linear gameplans, and those decks being low agency? If, say, the gameplan of your deck always wants to get big threats into your graveyard to reanimate, or always wants to build a big board to buff, with little flexibility to do anything but that, does that result in low agency games, where the outcome is determined by whether or not you managed to accomplish your deck's goal?
Did crim say a single deck format isnt necessarily bad? Wild take.
my thoughts on the collector boosters in the festival in a box, is that Ixalan and WOE have the highest high rolls in their collector boosters, between the mana crypts and cavern of souls and the anime enchanting taales
16:37 there’s only 24 playtest cards in the whole box and 24 of each future sight and white borders. The sets basically a commander masters set.
I know Seth touched on it briefly but I think the only format that regularly checks the boxes that he made is Pauper. I think it's a huge shame that none of them mentioned it for possible best format right now
Dear Crim,
As a long time yugioh player, I can assure you that there's plenty of interaction in the game and its faster than both modern and CEDH.
I would absolutely love it if you gave yugioh a try to see how the game really is. Additionally, xyzs came out 13 years ago. We know have pendulums and links.
if you play oracle of the alpha, bring your power 9 tokens/lands... or 90!
One thing that annoys me is that some alchemy cards can easily be printed with black border. Like Tenacius Pup and Rusko.
Rusko for sure, his cunjure is almost create a token. And Forsaken Crossroads, why it have to be illegal? Is it that hard to know who was the starting player?
My guess is that it has less to do with how difficult it is to track, as much as the fact that as long as one player has a Crossroads in their deck, you always need to track it. Similar to how Day/Night is a hated mechanic not because it is difficult to track, but because you constantly have to, even if the card isn't in play.
@@RasmusVJS my dude, how can't you track who started the game? Lol.
@@rodrigodepaula4198 I mean, if you've been playing for 15-20 minutes, with no remnants of who started left, it's not necessarily easy to remember who started.
@@RasmusVJS lol, yes, it is. You just have to know if was you or not.
@@rodrigodepaula4198 Sorry, I didn't realize you were the authority on what is and isn't a problem to remember, my bad. My point just was that there isn't any physical evidence, like there is for the vast majority of things tracked in paper magic.
My personal measure is that I would like to play the game. I want to do the gameplay thing and make decisions, think about rules, and read cards. If I think to myself "Oh look, I lose" before getting a chance to play, I am not interested.
standard might be at its best, but there are still many gripes that I would have with that. like how black is so dominant b/c of all the efficient removal. red deck just try to explode on you with cheesy near 1 shot plays. Wtih RNG part of the game, and particular the base resources system, skill matter less, even though as much as we want it to be as spike or spike-ish.
I think the only upside of OotA in Commander is a jank Battle of Wits.
Sure, you need A LOT of flicker (seriously, a lot), but the Wizard type helps a lot.
Obviously the best and most balanced format is caw blade mirrors
Probably the result of mostly playing best of 1 on areana and not playing ranked enough the last few months so I'm in low ranks but I haven't really enjoyed current standard mostly because about 80% of my game have been against some form of red agro or black discard and in both cases games end up feeling very nothingy. For red either they win turn 2-3 or I remove there creature then they sit there doing nothing and for black it frequently ends up with both players having an empty board and hand then just waiting to see who draws something to win the game.
I'm going to keep giving it a chance because most the other decks (and admittedly some variations of red and black) have been interesting and enjoyable to play against but still its not quite there for me. Very close though
play bo3 it’s so much better it’s insane
Honestly, if Modern just became the format for UB I think that's a fine identity. The omg problem is that's its still already been pushed to extreme power creep from the Horizon sets. Can we get premodern but with UB lol (except the one ring. Ban or restrict that)
No mention of arena formats. Timeless? Boros energy is very strong, and is a fair deck. Thoughts?
Honestly would've enjoyed more concrete examples of fun formats everyone remembered. I had a weird love/hate relationship with standard around innistrad but at least there was a nice cycle of decks to go around.
I feel With Formats getting more and more Powerful, Player Agency shifts more and more to deckbuilding instead of gameplay and therefor it feels Like a decrease (which it is for nonebrewers).
But people always Call for faster Games, and faster means less thinking.
Was an awesome podcast, but serious question here. Has richard made a Disa the restless deck? The man loves his goyfs so we need to see him break out the goyfs with the goyfs matter deck! add some conspiracy and maskwood nexus for more goyf fun!
Man the direct to modern sets really should have just been reprints with like ten slots devoted to new cards made to impact modern specifically. Like new sideboard tech, a specific thing for an old/underpowered archetype, but nothing directly designed to juice the top decks other than that sideboard tech.
I also think they should print a standard set every now and then that is just reprints. You can take some time tested cards from past standards but mixed with the new stuff. That will really keep the power creep from getting out of control but also reduce the game bloat and power creep for other formats. Plus it’s the perfect time to reprint cards to keep things accessible. I want to see that in place of foundations.
You mean like a core set?
How does richard not remember how popular Mystery Boosters were? The prices for the first edition were absolutely insane.
It's all fun and games until your opponents copy your Oracle of the Alpha 😂😂
"A well built consistent metagame will slowly be evolving, in the truest definition of the word"
what we have now isn't evolution, which is a process of small things changing. It is a mutation, beyond what we can observe happening around us in nature. Whole species of deck appear, and vanish, become the apex, and then fade to obscurity
Could a super fancy shuffling machine be a desirable Magic product in 2024?? One that allows for special stuff (like Conjuring) and makes it super quick?
I guess the tricky part would be eventual card damage...
"Diversity is an old, old wooden ship that was used during the Civil War era."
- Ron Burgundy, Creative Director for WOTC
Seth's List:
1. Diversity (archetype, card, deck, gameplay)
I think Modern's permissive manabases make this problem worse.
2. Agency
3. Skill Intensive
4. Interactive
5. Be Balanced
6. Evolving
7. Identity
Modern's identity used to be the T4 high power format. That feels like it is dead with things like Amulet Titan.
8. Well Managed
9. Accessible
I think part of this point is how many cards are replaceable and the cost to acquire. I think that Mythic Rares introduced a problem here, where expensive mythics create absurd chase rares. Sheoldred, One Ring, Agatha's Soul Cauldron, Vein Ripper, Portal to Phyrexia, Cityscape Leveler, Myrel, Nissa Resurgent Animist. I think this number of $20+ mythics probably isn't good for formats when they're often 4ofs.
Arena's Wildcard economy also contributes to this problem.
10. Fun to Play.
---------------------------
This is a pretty good list overall,
The biggest thing I saw lacking from this conversation is the idea of Release Valve sideboard cards.
The design of answer cards has gotten really broad and threats have gotten stronger. The time to answer a threat before getting outvalued is very short, and when you do the answers don't recoup enough advantage.
Sideboard tech cards were for the purpose of blowing out a niche but powerful strategy and they mostly don't exist anymore outside of graveyard hate. When they do exist, they aren't narrow enough to only prey upon certain strategies. Blood Moon effects for instance aren't a narrow PlanB tech card.
Sideboard slots used to contribute to metagame evolution, and it keeps the landscape shifting. Graveyard decks fell out as more decks ran yard interaction. Anti-control cards crop up instead and then the yard decks come back.
Consign to Memory is one of the few excellently designed sideboard tech cards they've printed. It deals with niche combo decks as well as the new influx of colorless decks. However in usual fashion, you need to be blue to run it.
Veil of Summer was a bit too proactive and broad hitting 3 of the 6 'colors' of Magic decks.
There Pringles haven't been that bad recently. I only have one curling foil from OTG, but everything is good.
I find "Standard is good" bizarre. Boros convoke makes me pine for Ravage Affinity, because at least the silver bullets worked.
big YES to Richards answer.... when you draft a fantastic deck, and just get land screwed, and loose to a newb with his random draft picks.... feels bad.
I feel the same way Richard does regarding what he called skill expression, but at the same time, I have to point out Simon Nielsen. Would he just be having like a lottery win level luck right now? But sure, I do think it is often about finding a deckbuilding edge. At the PTs, you often see teams having pretty similar results, so if everyone in a team does well, they probably made that one little deckbuilding decision better than the other teams.
Maybe it's just my more limited viewing experience with pro magic, but I feel like it is not an uncommon phenomena to see top 8'ers being teammates with multiple below 50% win rate players. So I'm not completely sold on the idea that specific techs are, say, more important than strong match up knowledge and experience. And also the ability to adapt on the spot.
@@RasmusVJS I'm not going to disagree with you, but maybe riff on this a bit: I think those little deckbuilding decisions I talked about are based on understanding the match ups. If you know that there is going to be a deck that is very popular, you have to figure out where the other teams are with it and be one step ahead of them in your deck evolution.
I played during alara/zen. Cascade jund was the definition of no skill, and people were generally very happy. Then caw blade happened. So old times are not always better times.
Weird when I played everyone either played jund or hated it. I actually got into EDH because I was tired of playing against jund every round of fnm
I always look at how hard the removal checks are each format, like how often i have to have removal on turn like 1-3.
Oh didn't answer my opponents creature on turn 1 or 2 right away, guess i'll lose.
Good formats for me is when theres a good even power level distributed among cards, and too high power cards are banned (limited is the exception).
Pauper is a good format.
5:30 reminder that Rusko, Clockmaker would be amazing in paper and easily doable. We have Meteorites tokens and Tarmagoyf tokens now, why not Midnight Clocks?
Put Mana tithe in Standard (Foundations?) give white stack Tax
By that metrics, Pauper is the best Magic: the gathering format. With the exeption of a few months every now and again, pauper checks all the boxes they mentioned.
-Diversity: the format is diverse in every way. Archetypes, cards and gameplay.
-Agency: there are few decks you have no agency against. You have burn decks and combo decks, but you can interact with them and the sideboard hate for those is great. If a deck is too fast and consistent, a card is banned shortly after. Very closely managed
-Skill intensive and interactive: in a format where there are no bombs to slam, there are a lot of micro decisions you have to go through. There are a lot of decks like faeries that are complete trash if you don't know what you are doing. Even the bombs like initiative creatures can blow up in your face.
-Evolving: Pauper changes a lot for an eternal format. Sometimes too fast when sets like modern horizons come out. But even if your deck is badly positioned, you just buy the new best deck for 60 bucks and wait for the old deck to get something
-Identity: the most accessible format. You can only play with commons, but some are broken (Brainstorm, dark ritual, lightning bolt, initiative, mystic remora, counterspell, affinity...). Decks of commons, but some decks still win on turn 3.
-Very fun to play. People are not likely to try it, because all commons format sounds like playing with draft chaff, but that is not even close. Try it and you'll see.
The reason they oicked those collector packs is they wanted to get rid of packs that the chase cards are about to be banned, ie jeweled lotus and mana crypt. For eldraine maybe they didn't sell as much as they thought they would since eldraine was thw first set with collector boosters???
Good/bad formats are defined by the play patterns of the best in slot cards. Pioneer right now is a great example... all colors and major archetypes represented, so it should be at least reasonably "good" to some degree. And yet the format is in a mire of unlikable dreck, defined by Amalia combo kill T3, Ancestral Recall with Delve, shove into play a T3 Vein Ripper, and Nykthos for 12 mana on turn 3. Some of the most miserable play patterns you could fathom. Modern Grief/Scam, Nadu, Legacy Rescaminator... every time it is bad, the play patterns of the best cards suck.
Pioneer is the embodiment of everything we were cautioned about regarding Commander focused design: a preponderance of overly efficient, self-sustaining engines to appease the casual players, while the answers gradually become wholly inadequate because removal doesn't sell product.
In pretty much every format, too many cards are too powerful or too efficient. I think Standard still has this problem, just the card pool hasn’t reached a point yet where you can identify it as easily.
This podcast is a prime exemple of why I love Richard’s take. He is right that magic used to be more proportional to skill than luck.
It's easy to view things in the past with rose tinted glasses. It's something we all find ourselves doing now and again. Don't get me wrong, there have been times when formats were more skill testing, but there have also been periods dominated by broken combos, luck of the draw, whoever goes first wins and non-interactive games. It's something that waxes and wanes. Don't fall into the trap that everything was better in the past. We don't need a Make Magic Great Again movement.
@@SladeWeston so the purpose of you post is to remind people that things are not absolute and that nuance exists? Surely you must be blessed with numerous iq points to figure out this profound truth. Beside, stating that magic is less skill intensive nowadays is in no way viewing the world with rose tinted glasses and that political zinger at the end is more akin to scoring cheap brownie points than actually saying something relevant. Make magic great again is probably a lot closer to what the community think about the game than what you’d like to believe. Card quality dwindling, fomo secret lair, product fatigue and fire design (I’m skipping some) are some easy to point out exemples of things that people liked better in the past.
This is something that sounds smart until you think about it for five seconds. It’s basically just gotcha whataboutery that pretends using hyper specific examples can negate broader trends. “Oh you think magic is power crept now??? Well you obviously didn’t play in Urzas block and you obviously haven’t heard of the ‘power 9’” is not the galaxy brain take you think it is.
@@SladeWeston🐑
I usually love and agree with Crim, but no, needing to stick in twelve 1-2 cost cheap removal does not solve the annoyance of slickshot decks, and if you do that you're just praying to not run into anything but aggro red...
Seek doesn't shuffle conjure does
I only got the first boost cus mana crypt lol ended up pulling 2
Oracle of the alpha is "easy" to resolve. Shuffle your power 9. Then roll a percentile for each of the power 9 and place each of the power 9 in your deck, that many from the top. Sounds like a gd nightmare lol
Anyone who plays Oracle of The Alpha is going to become the biggest threat at the table
Thankfully it’s an acorn card
Standard is the best it's literally got everything
I came for the fish mail, but it gets no love...
Limited is best format, not even close
Midrange being Tier 1 requires aggro and control to be Tier 2
VINTAGE is a magic online format, it's not more expensive than modern.
Set diversity is another important factor. Modern is now dominated by MH cards from all 3 sets.
We need universes beyond : General Motors with a 2004 duck-taped Malibu with serialized alternate art!
55:20 remind me 1 year
A good format is when the best two mana black creature spell is Dark Confidant and not Orcish Bowmasters.
Cube is the best format.