General Color matters / devotion
- Thread starter CML
- Start date
FlowerSunRain
Contributor
Ephara is already pretty sweet if you can support it. I mean, with flash/tappable token maker/instant speed blink you can potentially net two extra cards, which in turn you can use to get a beatstick. Its pretty nice.
CML
Contributor
making quite a "splash" over here. i dunno if throwing assemble the legion and sorin into an otherwise black-as-wesley-snipes deck was "viable" here before Gray Merchant, but people seem to do it a lot more now. i guess i'd argue that "splashing" has such a high opportunity cost in Cube (you gotta pick up a bunch of sources of your splash color for relatively few spells) that supporting it with devotion is nice. the makeup of the Funsies Land Draft (some fixing, some Urborgs / Volrath's Strongholds) is also aimed at achieving this. plus the devotion decks are fun as fuck to play with and against and to draft as well, somewhat surprisingly.
so if our cubes naturally encourage 3-color decks, with the occasional 4-color deck (and no 5-color decks), 1-color devotion and 2-color devotion should cover every possible design gap. that's mainly what i'm excited about for this set
Two-color devotion decks seem indeed much more natural, and since the gods will have two "devotion count" in their casting cost, getting them online shouldn't really require many more permanents than the monocolor variants.
I don't know that "1-color decks" are really a design gap that needs to be filled though.
I don't know that "1-color decks" are really a design gap that needs to be filled though.
the last 3-0 deck in my cube illustrates a 2-color deck w/ devotion pretty well
ub gravecrawler
CML
Contributor
(feel free to rip off the following as an article, it's grown into too much of a real post)
Sure, for Grim Monolith cubes (thank you, Lucas -- nb: this is also true for your generic 'draft' format) the 1c/2c decks already taking up nearly the entire design space, but this isn't so much because they're 'supported' so much as the 3c+ decks are actively discouraged, due to bad mana. I've made the comparison of today's Standard to a stock-list Cube -- boring decks, small card pool, low power level, linear strategies, dull games -- but the defining similarity is the lack of good fixing in either, which again punishes anyone playing 3+ colors, maybe even 2+ colors; in Standard, too many games are lost to color-screw or CIPT lands that way, and the opportunity cost of not jamming 4 Nykthos or 4 Mutavault is way too high, which is why I'm skeptical that Ephara, Mogis, Xenagos, and the rest of the cycle are going to solve any problems: between Standard and Modern and Legacy and Cube, this has never been the way to go about incentivizing multi-color decks. Multicolor decks are supported mainly by strong fixing. People didn't splash Cloudthresher in their Cruel Ultimatum + Runed Halo decks because they had to; they did it because they could, and the opportunity cost thereof was basically zero. Standard's domination by U, R, and especially B has only a little to do with the Devotion spells, and much to do with the mana. Assuming there is to be no 'two-color Nykthos' in BNG, this will continue to be true. We all know what CIPT lands do to a Cube format, and with Cube being at least a little slower than every Constructed format by its very nature, the effect on Standard is grossly magnified. The metagame consists of 'RDW' and its foils and can support very little else.
Obviously we don't want this in Cube, so we have 20 fetches and 20-30 fetchable duals and voila, we've solved a dozen problems at once. Good mana is by far the most important design component of Riptide Cubes. I've written several times about the '4c-good-stuff fallacy,' which (to the novitiates) states that the typical MTGS imbecile will argue against stronger fixing by saying that '4c value midrange will just be the best deck,' which is not true and will never be true. However! I think I've figured out why WotC designed Standard this way. You see, sometimes 3c value midrange is the best deck. WotC has been worried about this since the yearlong reign of Alara-era Jund, and at various points over the last few years, the best decks have been "Gxx Birthing Pod" or "Bonfire - Huntmaster Jund." They've attempted to fix this problem by worsening the fixing, but it is both useless and obvious to remark that today's Mono-Black Devotion deck plays indistinguishably from both miserable Jund lists. When Jason writes that games of Magic, up to a certain point, achieve greater complexity from a higher power level, he could be both praising the brilliance of our Cubes' fine, fine manabases, and slurring the current Standard format, whose power level is chiefly limited by the poverty of the fixing -- though the spells are still pretty good, Standard decks are at their very lowest power level since Ravnica-Time Spiral.
In my Cube, the GWx or GRx midrange decks have been strong for a long time, in a way comparable to Naya Pod or Jund. So what do we do? All of the above suggests not that we should nerf the fixing, which results in bad Cubes or bad Cube-like environments. A healthier metagame can be brought about by instead buffing the decks that stick largely to a single color. I've said it before, and I'll say it again: Devotion is a fun mechanic with a great deal of play to it; it complicates drafting, makes more attractive the land-draft picks like Nykthos and Urborg, and encourages designers to tie their multi- and mono-colored sections together with hybrid mana, which just makes every draft format a lot better (incidentally, hybrid and devotion were the big themes of Eventide, the best set ever). One-color devotion has greatly ramped the diversity of the kinds of decks people draft over here, and I anticipate two-color devotion will have a similar, if smaller effect. Devotion has never been the problem with Standard, just like Goblin Guide and Geralf's Messenger aren't the problem with the Modo Cube. The problem is the mana.
i suspect at least partially wotc knew and wanted things to be the way they are in standard, they wanted devotion to be the centerpiece of the format. the gods are supposed to be splashy effects and they wanted to force decks w/ the gods to exist. its all a part of their strategy of changing the focus and gameplay over standard seasons even if at some points the game will be effectively worse for many players
CML, great post. So great I had to register on this forum just to have a conversation with you.
I see that you put in much effort into this post, so it's only fair I put as much in the response. First I would like to go ahead and say, I'm awful at drafting, I'm awful at seeing those interactions (which I believe is the edge in drafts, because more of the magic population knows how to make goodstuff.dec); I was introduced to this forum, which I feel has a lot of magic in general theory, more so than so called competitive magic forums out there. Cube making is some theoretical magic, good design require good understanding of the game, balance, interaction, etc.
You talked about color availability being a huge factor in cube draft, which I absolutely agree with you. Higher number of color should of course be somewhat discouraged, because you have access to more cards; well you have may have access to a similar size, because lower number of colors can cast spells that have high color demands, but fuck it. Just turns out the math (which I should do some simulations for a more comprehensive study than http://www.channelfireball.com/arti...do-you-need-to-consistently-cast-your-spells/ sorry frank, it's not good enough) is that given a certain the usual number of lands in a deck, going 2 colors isnt greedy, it's merely getting the your bang for your buck. You maximize your card pool while maintaining the consistency to cast your spells.
Going from 2 to 3, that's where our attention should be.
On the subject of standard though, I disagree with you on many points.
1. "I've made the comparison of today's Standard to a stock-list Cube -- boring decks, small card pool, low power level, linear strategies, dull games -- but the defining similarity is the lack of good fixing in either"
To be fair, every standard of the first set after rotation is going to see boring decks, small card pool, low power level (I'm not sure what you mean by linear strategies), dull games. Do you remember when boros reckoner was tearing everything apart because lack of good removal? I dont think it's a fair criticism of the current standard. Good fixing is an issue, but it's not the primary issue. Decks like jund and necra midrange arent losing because they cant cast their spells (well, to reason, I dont think it's good design if a 3 color deck can cast a spell needing triple of any 1 color consistently), they're losing because.... well it's a long story, but basically internal interactions of the devotion decks are producing value way more than the 3 color goodstuff.dec, no similar consistent internal interaction exist (that we know of) in the shards or wedges (any version of them). So devotion decks are just killing all parts of the interaction spectrum based on shards or wedges (even a good bit of the guilds). So it's not just the color fixing, it's this particular strategy of monocolor of devotion mechanics interaction is just putting out way more value (in a combo manner) than decks that are not following that strategy.
2. "in Standard, too many games are lost to color-screw or CIPT lands that way, and the opportunity cost of not jamming 4 Nykthos or 4 Mutavault is way too high"
Mutavault (due to math) auto not good in 3 color decks. There are 2 color decks that tops in the current meta, and mutavault in those are decent. Some of the guilds are auto not good due to the above stated reasons: not enough power, not enough goodstuffcards, not enough whatever, etc. (GW actually just loses cus lifebane zombie... not that the deck would easily top if lifebane zombie wasnt in this standard, way to kick someone in the balls while they're down) Activision Blizzard said they didnt want shard/wedge color decks to be too rampant; it just sounded from what you've said that guilds are just as bad as shards/wedges, which is not true. There are some guild decks out there that are doing fine, and they can certainly make it easier for them without giving shards/wedges too much that they kill everyone like the last standard (jund, american, junk, you know how it went). It's still my formal opinion that the issue is primarily card pool.
3. "Multicolor decks are supported mainly by strong fixing"
True, but the math says the fixing isnt as big of a deal (for guilds). It needs both good fixing and good cards (through bigger card pool)
4. "Standard's domination by U, R, and especially B has only a little to do with the Devotion spells, and much to do with the mana. Assuming there is to be no 'two-color Nykthos' in BNG, this will continue to be true. "
I suppose we just have to agree to disagree here.
5. "You see, sometimes 3c value midrange is the best deck. WotC has been worried about this since the yearlong reign of Alara-era Jund, and at various points over the last few years, the best decks have been "Gxx Birthing Pod" or "Bonfire - Huntmaster Jund." They've attempted to fix this problem by worsening the fixing, but it is both useless and obvious to remark that today's Mono-Black Devotion deck plays indistinguishably from both miserable Jund lists."
Monoblack devotion and most of the most powerful versions of jund are generally keep away midrange. Activision Blizzard doesnt want the domination of shards/wedges, and I supposed they overdid it, because now it's the domination of monocolor decks and some guilds (barely, a good portion of those guild decks are only splashing taking out some cards of the monocolor decks like BW keep away midrange (say hi to blood baron for me) or the green leaning or red leaning GW devotion decks, etc). I dont think it was ever their intention to hold back an entire portion of the resource management strategy spectrum. You see monoblack devotion play similar to jund keep away midrange, because they follow similar strategies, but they only wanted shards/wedges to stop dominating, not to hold back a strategy. So they achieved it, shit overachieved it.
(with the utter most respect)
I see that you put in much effort into this post, so it's only fair I put as much in the response. First I would like to go ahead and say, I'm awful at drafting, I'm awful at seeing those interactions (which I believe is the edge in drafts, because more of the magic population knows how to make goodstuff.dec); I was introduced to this forum, which I feel has a lot of magic in general theory, more so than so called competitive magic forums out there. Cube making is some theoretical magic, good design require good understanding of the game, balance, interaction, etc.
You talked about color availability being a huge factor in cube draft, which I absolutely agree with you. Higher number of color should of course be somewhat discouraged, because you have access to more cards; well you have may have access to a similar size, because lower number of colors can cast spells that have high color demands, but fuck it. Just turns out the math (which I should do some simulations for a more comprehensive study than http://www.channelfireball.com/arti...do-you-need-to-consistently-cast-your-spells/ sorry frank, it's not good enough) is that given a certain the usual number of lands in a deck, going 2 colors isnt greedy, it's merely getting the your bang for your buck. You maximize your card pool while maintaining the consistency to cast your spells.
Going from 2 to 3, that's where our attention should be.
On the subject of standard though, I disagree with you on many points.
1. "I've made the comparison of today's Standard to a stock-list Cube -- boring decks, small card pool, low power level, linear strategies, dull games -- but the defining similarity is the lack of good fixing in either"
To be fair, every standard of the first set after rotation is going to see boring decks, small card pool, low power level (I'm not sure what you mean by linear strategies), dull games. Do you remember when boros reckoner was tearing everything apart because lack of good removal? I dont think it's a fair criticism of the current standard. Good fixing is an issue, but it's not the primary issue. Decks like jund and necra midrange arent losing because they cant cast their spells (well, to reason, I dont think it's good design if a 3 color deck can cast a spell needing triple of any 1 color consistently), they're losing because.... well it's a long story, but basically internal interactions of the devotion decks are producing value way more than the 3 color goodstuff.dec, no similar consistent internal interaction exist (that we know of) in the shards or wedges (any version of them). So devotion decks are just killing all parts of the interaction spectrum based on shards or wedges (even a good bit of the guilds). So it's not just the color fixing, it's this particular strategy of monocolor of devotion mechanics interaction is just putting out way more value (in a combo manner) than decks that are not following that strategy.
2. "in Standard, too many games are lost to color-screw or CIPT lands that way, and the opportunity cost of not jamming 4 Nykthos or 4 Mutavault is way too high"
Mutavault (due to math) auto not good in 3 color decks. There are 2 color decks that tops in the current meta, and mutavault in those are decent. Some of the guilds are auto not good due to the above stated reasons: not enough power, not enough goodstuffcards, not enough whatever, etc. (GW actually just loses cus lifebane zombie... not that the deck would easily top if lifebane zombie wasnt in this standard, way to kick someone in the balls while they're down) Activision Blizzard said they didnt want shard/wedge color decks to be too rampant; it just sounded from what you've said that guilds are just as bad as shards/wedges, which is not true. There are some guild decks out there that are doing fine, and they can certainly make it easier for them without giving shards/wedges too much that they kill everyone like the last standard (jund, american, junk, you know how it went). It's still my formal opinion that the issue is primarily card pool.
3. "Multicolor decks are supported mainly by strong fixing"
True, but the math says the fixing isnt as big of a deal (for guilds). It needs both good fixing and good cards (through bigger card pool)
4. "Standard's domination by U, R, and especially B has only a little to do with the Devotion spells, and much to do with the mana. Assuming there is to be no 'two-color Nykthos' in BNG, this will continue to be true. "
I suppose we just have to agree to disagree here.
5. "You see, sometimes 3c value midrange is the best deck. WotC has been worried about this since the yearlong reign of Alara-era Jund, and at various points over the last few years, the best decks have been "Gxx Birthing Pod" or "Bonfire - Huntmaster Jund." They've attempted to fix this problem by worsening the fixing, but it is both useless and obvious to remark that today's Mono-Black Devotion deck plays indistinguishably from both miserable Jund lists."
Monoblack devotion and most of the most powerful versions of jund are generally keep away midrange. Activision Blizzard doesnt want the domination of shards/wedges, and I supposed they overdid it, because now it's the domination of monocolor decks and some guilds (barely, a good portion of those guild decks are only splashing taking out some cards of the monocolor decks like BW keep away midrange (say hi to blood baron for me) or the green leaning or red leaning GW devotion decks, etc). I dont think it was ever their intention to hold back an entire portion of the resource management strategy spectrum. You see monoblack devotion play similar to jund keep away midrange, because they follow similar strategies, but they only wanted shards/wedges to stop dominating, not to hold back a strategy. So they achieved it, shit overachieved it.
(with the utter most respect)
Without enough data to actually back this up, I'm going to disagree here.
I think the most important design component of Riptide Cubes is, you know, actual design, rather than jamming power/good cards/bad cards/cards with $property. In a lot of instances this leads to incredible fixing being available, because that hits the cubes' owners' sweet spot for power level etc. If the kind of power level you want is casual three colour with the occasional 4/5 colour deck, then yes, you need pretty hefty fixing. I personally prefer the idea of generally two colour decks, with the occasional sweet mono deck, or the dual colour with splash, or genuine three colour via aggressive drafting of fixing; this much the same way that I prefer singleton and no custom cards.
The actual thing that seems to link our designs is actually thinking about what our goals are, thinking about whether they're good goals, figuring out if we can actually support them while avoiding parasitic mechanics, trying to find overlapping theme cards and so on. Most other cubes start out with the goal of, say, 450 unpowered artifact theme, and stick all the 'good cube cards' in, and then sit there wondering what to do next. We start out with 'well I want to build around scuttlemutt so we want colour matters, counters matters would be neat, domain slots in naturally with colour matters; counters and colours leads towards a heavy shadowmoor presence, so we might want to pick up some tribal' and so on and so forth. We've not even looked at card count yet, or 'poweredness', and yet we already know this will be a more riptide-y cube, even if the fixing is less good than the big name cubes.
Also, on your "4c midrange is the best deck"; clearly that's not true. With perfect fixing (ie: utopia basics all up ins), the best deck will be the best 25 cards regardless of colours plus a stack of land. Every choice you make about how sub-perfect your fixing is narrows the best deck until you end up with no fixing at all and there are 5 best decks. Somewhere in the middle there's enough fixing to reliably allow 2-3-4 colour decks, depending on how much you value fixing-to-allow-better-cards vs better cards, which is probably the sweet spot. I consciously aim for 1.5-2.5 colour decks with normal values of land picks, but I'm sure you could jam something a bit more aggressive if you're willing to take the fixing to run more higher quality stuff (but my high quality stuff isn't that much higher quality than baseline, also deliberately. I dislike bombs).
Also, I think the current standard is a side effect of mono-devotion being good for constructed, and some of the guilds from RtR being garbage for constructed. The UB god will have to be reeeeally good to make a UB standard deck viable.
I mean, you know, a UB deck that isn't acctually mono-colour but running UB hybrids and UB scry lands just for the scry. Because what.
I mean, you know, a UB deck that isn't acctually mono-colour but running UB hybrids and UB scry lands just for the scry. Because what.
So, some points:
I run what is (arguably) the highest density of fixing of any cube, as well as the most flexible, and even I sometimes get forced into playing two-color or mostly monocolor decks if others are aggressively taking fixing. Further, it's less of a pure spectrum, and it's important to realize how your specific fixing affects various archetypes. Double fetchlands are fast, flexible, and probably the greatest enabler of two-color aggro decks out of any design decision.
I wrote about it in the Poison Principle article, but one of the largest benefits of something like double fetchlands is not that you get to play more colors, but that you have more room to maneuver while drafting. If two players go for monored in the MODO cube they're both a bit fucked downstream without a paddle.
I run what is (arguably) the highest density of fixing of any cube, as well as the most flexible, and even I sometimes get forced into playing two-color or mostly monocolor decks if others are aggressively taking fixing. Further, it's less of a pure spectrum, and it's important to realize how your specific fixing affects various archetypes. Double fetchlands are fast, flexible, and probably the greatest enabler of two-color aggro decks out of any design decision.
I wrote about it in the Poison Principle article, but one of the largest benefits of something like double fetchlands is not that you get to play more colors, but that you have more room to maneuver while drafting. If two players go for monored in the MODO cube they're both a bit fucked downstream without a paddle.
I'd argue that's a skill in drafting to spot when monored is free or not and not to get tunnel-vision-y. Also, with enough overlapping themes (haha, modo cube) you should be able to recover a bit better.
Yeah, but if Red aggro is VIABLE and Rakdos or Boros aggro are NOT VIABLE due to the quality of fixing, then your only recourse is to just abandon ship to another archetype, if you started in it and realize you're getting cut. Not that there's not skill in that, but I don't think it's a super great dynamic. There's skill in drafting any format ever made, and I'm a little hesitant to use that as a justification.
I guess competing demand and competing opportunity are two sides of the same coin.
CML
Contributor
I'm so glad this kind of thing goes on here. This is obviously the best Magic forum on the web. Though I hear The Source used to be like this for Legacy, my experience of visiting the Merfolk thread there is that the two people who posted in the last month both were slavering over Thassa, along with the occasional Monet amongst the macaroni art by Greg Hatch. Anyway, I want to talk about why I disagree with a number of these points and hammer out some kind of argument, if not consensus, on What Ails Standard before steering the thread more towards more general questions like 'What are the implications for Cube design?'
My screed is that this Standard format is qualitatively different from other Standard formats, mainly due to the mana. I agree that other small Standards are the right comparisons, since the card pool is barely half the card pool in September, but my experience of last year's format was far better:
2012: When we flew down to L.A. to play the SCG Invitational, after I'd qualified with a kind of 'rough-draft' Standard deck, we spent a good week tweaking and testing a new list of our own device, since the meta had (kind of) adapted to the mono-Red deck and we felt a dumb G/W deck feat. Wolfir Silverheart and Silverblade Paladin would be better-positioned against UWR, specifically Izzet Staticaster and Augur of Bolas. Though I went 2-2 because I am a terrible pilot, my other 'general manager' went 7-1 in Standard, only missing a cash because Maverick was not a great thing to play at Deathrite's big coming-out party. (Its stale position led to a lot of lame jokes in the vein of 'G/W Conformist.')
2013: The 'general manager' thought a great deal about not coming to Vegas because of his distaste for the format; eventually finding that he liked the Red devotion deck, we all flew down and shuffled around a few slots, since we'd dismissed out-of-hand most of our own deck-building ideas, and then didn't do too great (I punted a match) while a friend went 8-0 and t8'ed with a similar list.
Though small Standard does always have a small card pool, with fewer reasonable replacements for spells (especially since Wizards shies away from the challenge of creating an original set with a healthy proportion of playables), it also usually has enough scope for innovation that the shallowness and the newness 'cancel out' enough for the format to be bearable for most, if not all, of its four and a half month lifespan. The kind of meta evolution present in RTR Standard ('We should play G/W to beat Staticaster' or even the revelation that 'Mayor of Avabruck is awesome in Humans,' which earned my general manager a t16 in the Open) is continuous in healthy formats, and though Standard, being so subject to new releases, and having an uncritical player base, can undoubtedly be more ill-crafted than Modern or Legacy, the other small Standard formats I've experienced have been more like RTR Standard than Theros Standard. In ISD Standard, the Delver decks took quite some time to develop, and a quick glance at the TCGplayer database for that format's decks (the site is a terrific resource, if no longer a purveyor of good MTG content) shows that people were playing stuff like Wolf Run Ramp, 4c Control, Esper Control, Haunted Humans, Bant Pod, Naya Pod, Frites, Tempered Township, UB Control ... though not all of these decks were 'tier 1' (if the tier system is useful, which I don't think it is), there were more strong contenders than there are today, and most of them had undergone a great deal of change since the infancy of the format.
This is not the case with Theros Standard. Though having a small-Standard PT must have somewhat accelerated the format's staling (even if ISD Standard's Worlds was close enough), the commonly accepted 'best decks' are pretty close to what we saw there. Blue Devotion has shuffled some slots. Red Devotion usually splashes White instead of Green. Black Devotion is on the Pack Rat plan. U/W Control has cropped up and B/R Control has died, but neither are or were particularly good. There's an occasional performance from Brad Nelson's Naya or Matt Costa's Jund, but for the most part it's just U, B, and R. The meta percentages for Modo available via the excellent site mtggoldfish show B at 20%, U at 12%, and R at 9%, which is staggeringly high. The thought that we'd design and develop a meta-slaughtering deck for the Invitational this year was absurd, since the PT had nearly 'killed the format' in the same way it always kills Block Constructed -- a 7-1 performance was possible, it'd just take extraordinary luck (and skill) with one of the already-discovered best decks, which Thea happily found. Outbuilding people and outplaying people like we did in 2012 just wasn't going to happen. Why?
1. The fixing. Historically fixing has looked like:
THS -- 10 shocks and 5 temples
RTR -- 5 shocks and 10 buddy lands
ISD -- 10 buddy lands and 5 fast-lands
SOM -- 5 fast-lands, 5 fetches, 5 WWK manlands
ZEN and before to LOR -- some large amount of the following: Alara tri-lands, filters, Reflecting Pool, Vivids, tribal lands
Theros is the most restrictive by a wide margin! Additionally, all the aggro decks have to be mono-colored, both for Mutavault and the Temples CIPT (you can put all the CIPT fixing you want in Cube and it still won't make aggro good enough). If you don't believe formats are extraordinarily sensitive to this kind of thing, note that Junk Reanimator became popular in Standard only after GTC, which saw the game-breaking printing of ... Godless Shrine. The shift in the meta was also part of this, but remember that UWR got significantly better with primarily Steam Vents and so on. Anecdotally, the power level of the cards is pretty low for the last few years but the power level of the fixing is lower with respect to a longer period. With the power creep of spells, especially creatures, but all lands printed now (well, except ZEN fetches) just worse than ABU duals, this makes sense -- casuals don't care too much about lands, and Wizards is far more likely to nerf them than spells to calibrate formats.
2. The games. The games in Standard are world-historically terrible. The experience of playing a three-color deck is similar to the article I wrote on DGR draft some time ago -- too many auto-losses due to mana -- though once we eliminate that variable, I strongly agree with you that issues do remain. The games are very, very draw-dependent, and the aspect that punishes the three-color decks for missing a color is analogous to the one that punishes a CIPT land, a missed land-drop, or just not having the answer for Pack Rat. Devotion can lead to slippery slope, but, eh, not always. 'Does he have Supreme Verdict?' is the median of how interesting the games are, though, mercifully, when you do screw up you tend to die swiftly enough that you can go do something else ...
3. The stale meta that results. So if pure aggro has to be one color (or one color splashing for another -- note how a lack of fixing ensures that the two-color aggro decks will mostly be splashing and not true 2-color), this restricts the number and quality of aggro decks considerably; also consider how mono-Blue devotion wins most every aggro mirror. Black is well-positioned to beat Blue and quite bad against other possible aggro decks. I'd argue that the midrange decks like Naya Control, R/w Devotion, and G/r Monsters are its worst matchups, though they're not that bad. It's not too hard to imagine a design where the mana is good enough for non-U aggro and 2-3-color midrange to be enough of a 'thing' that the format is deeper and richer, as Black is good because it doesn't have to beat those phantom aggro decks and is better against Sphinx's Revelation + Supreme Verdict control than the other midrange decks. Why? Because it's not too dependent on devotion. The B/w versions don't even play Gray Merchant!
This throws into question your idea of devotion generating value; the value in Black is generated chiefly by Underworld Connections. You might agree with my idea that the format has very few 187 abilities because of all the 187's from last year contributing to the 'rise of the Shards and Wedges' (Snapcaster, Thragtusk, Augur of Bolas, and the ETB of ETBs, Restoration Angel), but I'd also argue that cutting all of those out hasn't helped at all; the format is still totally dependent on ETB creatures, there's just fewer of them, and they count mana symbols (Master of Waves, Gray Merchant of Asphodel, Fanatic of Mogis). Between these and Thassa, I generalize that Devotion just wants to end the game on the spot; Constructed devotion is an aggressive mechanic. And these spells are not too functionally different from their predecessors; as a 3-drop resilient to removal, Thassa does a passable Geralf's Messenger; as a 4-drop that ends the game in a hurry, Master of Waves is kinda Falkenrath Aristocrat; as a 4-drop that depends on other creatures, Fanatic is Hellrider. These spells have been around for a while; Standard formats aren't too different in their spells; the big difference is that there are fewer ways of combining them. There are a ton of issues with this Standard format -- the protection-from cycle, the self-loathing cycle of Gainsay and friends -- but the three-color decks are better against these for obvious reasons (is there any card since Bonfire more inbred than Blood Baron of Vizkopa?? HOW THE FUCK CAN ANYONE THINK THAT A CARD WITH PROTECTION FROM ITS OWN COLORS IS GOOD DESIGN??) 'Buy land,' I guess, 'they're not making it anymore.'
For Cube, this raises these questions:
-- How much fixing?
-- If devotion is an aggro mechanic, how to best balance it with the other aggro strategies? How to make it do other things? (Sample answer: make better fixing so 3-color aggro is better -- but if you take this too far, what if the lands get poison-principley?)
-- How do we mitigate devotion's issues with 'slippery slope'? Where exactly between limited and constructed devotion does Cube devotion lie? How are we going to design around that?
-- With most of us getting at most a draft per week, how resilient to format 'staleness' do we need to make our Cubes?
-- Your questions here!
One last one of my own: with your familiarity with Activision Blizzard's intentions, I have to ask if you also live here? If so, wanna get drunk and draft?
My screed is that this Standard format is qualitatively different from other Standard formats, mainly due to the mana. I agree that other small Standards are the right comparisons, since the card pool is barely half the card pool in September, but my experience of last year's format was far better:
2012: When we flew down to L.A. to play the SCG Invitational, after I'd qualified with a kind of 'rough-draft' Standard deck, we spent a good week tweaking and testing a new list of our own device, since the meta had (kind of) adapted to the mono-Red deck and we felt a dumb G/W deck feat. Wolfir Silverheart and Silverblade Paladin would be better-positioned against UWR, specifically Izzet Staticaster and Augur of Bolas. Though I went 2-2 because I am a terrible pilot, my other 'general manager' went 7-1 in Standard, only missing a cash because Maverick was not a great thing to play at Deathrite's big coming-out party. (Its stale position led to a lot of lame jokes in the vein of 'G/W Conformist.')
2013: The 'general manager' thought a great deal about not coming to Vegas because of his distaste for the format; eventually finding that he liked the Red devotion deck, we all flew down and shuffled around a few slots, since we'd dismissed out-of-hand most of our own deck-building ideas, and then didn't do too great (I punted a match) while a friend went 8-0 and t8'ed with a similar list.
Though small Standard does always have a small card pool, with fewer reasonable replacements for spells (especially since Wizards shies away from the challenge of creating an original set with a healthy proportion of playables), it also usually has enough scope for innovation that the shallowness and the newness 'cancel out' enough for the format to be bearable for most, if not all, of its four and a half month lifespan. The kind of meta evolution present in RTR Standard ('We should play G/W to beat Staticaster' or even the revelation that 'Mayor of Avabruck is awesome in Humans,' which earned my general manager a t16 in the Open) is continuous in healthy formats, and though Standard, being so subject to new releases, and having an uncritical player base, can undoubtedly be more ill-crafted than Modern or Legacy, the other small Standard formats I've experienced have been more like RTR Standard than Theros Standard. In ISD Standard, the Delver decks took quite some time to develop, and a quick glance at the TCGplayer database for that format's decks (the site is a terrific resource, if no longer a purveyor of good MTG content) shows that people were playing stuff like Wolf Run Ramp, 4c Control, Esper Control, Haunted Humans, Bant Pod, Naya Pod, Frites, Tempered Township, UB Control ... though not all of these decks were 'tier 1' (if the tier system is useful, which I don't think it is), there were more strong contenders than there are today, and most of them had undergone a great deal of change since the infancy of the format.
This is not the case with Theros Standard. Though having a small-Standard PT must have somewhat accelerated the format's staling (even if ISD Standard's Worlds was close enough), the commonly accepted 'best decks' are pretty close to what we saw there. Blue Devotion has shuffled some slots. Red Devotion usually splashes White instead of Green. Black Devotion is on the Pack Rat plan. U/W Control has cropped up and B/R Control has died, but neither are or were particularly good. There's an occasional performance from Brad Nelson's Naya or Matt Costa's Jund, but for the most part it's just U, B, and R. The meta percentages for Modo available via the excellent site mtggoldfish show B at 20%, U at 12%, and R at 9%, which is staggeringly high. The thought that we'd design and develop a meta-slaughtering deck for the Invitational this year was absurd, since the PT had nearly 'killed the format' in the same way it always kills Block Constructed -- a 7-1 performance was possible, it'd just take extraordinary luck (and skill) with one of the already-discovered best decks, which Thea happily found. Outbuilding people and outplaying people like we did in 2012 just wasn't going to happen. Why?
1. The fixing. Historically fixing has looked like:
THS -- 10 shocks and 5 temples
RTR -- 5 shocks and 10 buddy lands
ISD -- 10 buddy lands and 5 fast-lands
SOM -- 5 fast-lands, 5 fetches, 5 WWK manlands
ZEN and before to LOR -- some large amount of the following: Alara tri-lands, filters, Reflecting Pool, Vivids, tribal lands
Theros is the most restrictive by a wide margin! Additionally, all the aggro decks have to be mono-colored, both for Mutavault and the Temples CIPT (you can put all the CIPT fixing you want in Cube and it still won't make aggro good enough). If you don't believe formats are extraordinarily sensitive to this kind of thing, note that Junk Reanimator became popular in Standard only after GTC, which saw the game-breaking printing of ... Godless Shrine. The shift in the meta was also part of this, but remember that UWR got significantly better with primarily Steam Vents and so on. Anecdotally, the power level of the cards is pretty low for the last few years but the power level of the fixing is lower with respect to a longer period. With the power creep of spells, especially creatures, but all lands printed now (well, except ZEN fetches) just worse than ABU duals, this makes sense -- casuals don't care too much about lands, and Wizards is far more likely to nerf them than spells to calibrate formats.
2. The games. The games in Standard are world-historically terrible. The experience of playing a three-color deck is similar to the article I wrote on DGR draft some time ago -- too many auto-losses due to mana -- though once we eliminate that variable, I strongly agree with you that issues do remain. The games are very, very draw-dependent, and the aspect that punishes the three-color decks for missing a color is analogous to the one that punishes a CIPT land, a missed land-drop, or just not having the answer for Pack Rat. Devotion can lead to slippery slope, but, eh, not always. 'Does he have Supreme Verdict?' is the median of how interesting the games are, though, mercifully, when you do screw up you tend to die swiftly enough that you can go do something else ...
3. The stale meta that results. So if pure aggro has to be one color (or one color splashing for another -- note how a lack of fixing ensures that the two-color aggro decks will mostly be splashing and not true 2-color), this restricts the number and quality of aggro decks considerably; also consider how mono-Blue devotion wins most every aggro mirror. Black is well-positioned to beat Blue and quite bad against other possible aggro decks. I'd argue that the midrange decks like Naya Control, R/w Devotion, and G/r Monsters are its worst matchups, though they're not that bad. It's not too hard to imagine a design where the mana is good enough for non-U aggro and 2-3-color midrange to be enough of a 'thing' that the format is deeper and richer, as Black is good because it doesn't have to beat those phantom aggro decks and is better against Sphinx's Revelation + Supreme Verdict control than the other midrange decks. Why? Because it's not too dependent on devotion. The B/w versions don't even play Gray Merchant!
This throws into question your idea of devotion generating value; the value in Black is generated chiefly by Underworld Connections. You might agree with my idea that the format has very few 187 abilities because of all the 187's from last year contributing to the 'rise of the Shards and Wedges' (Snapcaster, Thragtusk, Augur of Bolas, and the ETB of ETBs, Restoration Angel), but I'd also argue that cutting all of those out hasn't helped at all; the format is still totally dependent on ETB creatures, there's just fewer of them, and they count mana symbols (Master of Waves, Gray Merchant of Asphodel, Fanatic of Mogis). Between these and Thassa, I generalize that Devotion just wants to end the game on the spot; Constructed devotion is an aggressive mechanic. And these spells are not too functionally different from their predecessors; as a 3-drop resilient to removal, Thassa does a passable Geralf's Messenger; as a 4-drop that ends the game in a hurry, Master of Waves is kinda Falkenrath Aristocrat; as a 4-drop that depends on other creatures, Fanatic is Hellrider. These spells have been around for a while; Standard formats aren't too different in their spells; the big difference is that there are fewer ways of combining them. There are a ton of issues with this Standard format -- the protection-from cycle, the self-loathing cycle of Gainsay and friends -- but the three-color decks are better against these for obvious reasons (is there any card since Bonfire more inbred than Blood Baron of Vizkopa?? HOW THE FUCK CAN ANYONE THINK THAT A CARD WITH PROTECTION FROM ITS OWN COLORS IS GOOD DESIGN??) 'Buy land,' I guess, 'they're not making it anymore.'
For Cube, this raises these questions:
-- How much fixing?
-- If devotion is an aggro mechanic, how to best balance it with the other aggro strategies? How to make it do other things? (Sample answer: make better fixing so 3-color aggro is better -- but if you take this too far, what if the lands get poison-principley?)
-- How do we mitigate devotion's issues with 'slippery slope'? Where exactly between limited and constructed devotion does Cube devotion lie? How are we going to design around that?
-- With most of us getting at most a draft per week, how resilient to format 'staleness' do we need to make our Cubes?
-- Your questions here!
One last one of my own: with your familiarity with Activision Blizzard's intentions, I have to ask if you also live here? If so, wanna get drunk and draft?
I'm not going to outright disagree with your position on fixing, but the incentives to actually be two colour aren't great either; this may improve with the 2 colour gods. I mean, lets run RW agro! Do we really want to curve-top with aurelia, the warleader at 6 mana? Compared to either devotion deck? Whereas we can stick reckoner in either devotion deck and he'll do his thing, plus do devotion. Is there anything that battalions that's worth building for in constructed? Sure the fixing means that it's an even worse idea to do than normal at the moment, but I don't think that tells the whole story.
Certainly there was way better fixing back in the day (and I started playing in Invasion block, which had rubbish lands but great fixing if you wanted to play 5c green), especially around Ravnica through Alara. On the other hand, how much of that was the multicolour cards were good enough and how much was the fixing was good enough.
Disclaimer: I am not a huge constructed person, and mana bases with no basics are offensive to me; I'd be the guy rogue decking every blood moon every tournament if I did play.
Certainly there was way better fixing back in the day (and I started playing in Invasion block, which had rubbish lands but great fixing if you wanted to play 5c green), especially around Ravnica through Alara. On the other hand, how much of that was the multicolour cards were good enough and how much was the fixing was good enough.
Disclaimer: I am not a huge constructed person, and mana bases with no basics are offensive to me; I'd be the guy rogue decking every blood moon every tournament if I did play.
Dom Harvey
Contributor
If you think manabases are bad in Standard atm, think back to SOM-ISD Standard where allied colours had buddy lands + fastlands (passable most of the time, still not great; even in UW Delver with Ponder/Probe/Thought Scour, hitting your secondary colour was difficult sometimes) and enemy colours had only fastlands, making splashing virtually impossible. That format was completely miserable, and the restrictive mana was a big reason.
I'm surprised devotion has caused this much fuss tbh, even if you don't want to go as far with it as I do it's a nice subtheme that presents players with interesting and strong incentives at the cost of ~6 slots in the entire Cube.
I'm surprised devotion has caused this much fuss tbh, even if you don't want to go as far with it as I do it's a nice subtheme that presents players with interesting and strong incentives at the cost of ~6 slots in the entire Cube.
This will be my last post (at least about standard, and possibly overall, because I realized my contributions, none, to a mtg cube website is very lacking. I originally got on here just to talk to folks here, the level of knowledge, understanding of both theory and practice of magic, is disturbingly low else where. You see and hear people that want to get better, but they not only do not want to learn (improve and/or expand their theoretical understanding) or do they want to play better (improve and/or expand their practical understanding). It was a good fresh change.
I will comment on the posts above me by various different posters. I think I scared away Anotak, whom I actually know in real life; wonderful player.
To Changling Bob,
"Also, on your "4c midrange is the best deck"; clearly that's not true."
The logic is with higher number of available colors (access and low/no chance of color screwed), you have access to more colors, thus your options of goodstuffcards and cross color interactions are way better due just the access of cards. With no fear of color issues, you have the freedom to pick up the best value (from cards' internal value and from interactions). That combined with the fact that the drafting process (just due to its nature) makes interactions less reliable, makes constructions of goodstuff.dec more of a solid? path to take.
You could do storm in MM right? but most people dont, because while if you achieve a consistently powerful storm deck in MM, you pretty much lol at everyone. While it's still my belief that if you see and just pick up good cards and watch out for simple consistent powerful interactions, you just beat everyone in draft, most people just play goodstuff.dec. This is what's meant by 4c midrange is the best deck, because you got access to a bigger pool of cards, you max your chance of drafting goodstuffcards plus simple consistent powerful interaction cards to work with those goodstuffcards, so you just beat everyone.
Obviously this is not taking in account in interactions that are monocolor, lower color combinations or monoartifact in nature, and if those decks have happened to have the best values, best interactions, of course those will be the best. Sorry that was really long of a comment.
"The UB god will have to be reeeeally good to make a UB standard deck viable."
About Splashes... Cus there are people that do splashes deviating from the top monocolor devotion decks, some of those splashes have its advantages, but apparently (and I dont know this for sure, but not many splashes are topping, so I assume it's like this) the monocolor strategy is just more desirable; I suppose the advantages of splash guilds are not enough over disadvantages when compared to the monocolor versions.
Good example is the gruul variant of red devotion, which runs domri and xenagos walker, those actually makes you feel bad for playing fanatic of mogsi. Or maybe dimir variant of either blue or black devotion, which may run far/away, and apparently that doesnt fit too well in either devotion decks, so whatever right? fuck it just go mono. The guild gods will change that tho, I believe, because I BELIEVE!!!!! No, they're on average better than the monocolor gods in my opinion, so... I was trying out Xenagos god, and he's decent.
to CML,
I should clarify some stuff before I continue.
-What I mean by value (which when you say value, it could mean PCA (physical card advantage) in my book), I mean if you can assign a number (which I believe you can) based on the manner/quality of the effects of a card and the quantity of the effect of a card, that number is the value of a card (which varies depending on the situation), like far the opponent attacking's attacking god and away cause their 3 devotion creature to be sac'd, that's massive value, which is a big number; if you far the opponents' attacking gravecrawler and away cause their bloodghast to be sac'd, then their MP2, they play a land and the gravecrawler again.... not as good, so not as big of a number. PCA is related also to value of course.
-The standard devotion decks are not just synergy/combo decks, they're also tempo (blue) or keep away midrange (black). Blue is monoblue weenie tempo, which without the devotion part would... not be too great, but they do have a strategy to win without the (??) combo. It's just that the devotion part pushes the decks over the edge. For black, pack rat works with muta, underworld and nightvail right? Underworld has a downside that you need to pay 1 life per card draw. Merchant solves that problem, you can afford to pay 6+ life for 6 extra life, cus merchant will come out and gain it back. It's these little parts that all work together that makes the deck super stupid.
Now all the parts by themselves can still function, underworld without pack rat is okay, pack rat without muta is okay, etc. So you cant even shut down half the interactions happening in black, the devotion part is also pretty silly, you're at 10 life, they're at 2, they have 2 underworld out, play merchant, all of a sudden you're losing.
To be fair though, a deck like jund in the last standard also had cute little pieces like that. Like wolf run plus nighthawk, wolf run plus tusk or huntmaster (cus they can kill the tusk, but the token can easily be a huge threat next turn), etc. But that wasnt the primary focus of the deck, it was the deck played super value cards and fucking won.
The devotion decks are more focused on the interaction portions (so much that they would play 4 frostburn weird).
1. " 'tier 1' (if the tier system is useful, which I don't think it is)"
Well, this is gonna be like 2 pages of a response, so maybe another day.
2. "though Standard, being so subject to new releases, and having an uncritical player base, can undoubtedly be more ill-crafted than Modern or Legacy"
Man dont get me started about modern, Wizard did that to themselves.
3. "The fixing. Historically fixing has looked like:
THS -- 10 shocks and 5 temples
RTR -- 5 shocks and 10 buddy lands
ISD -- 10 buddy lands and 5 fast-lands
SOM -- 5 fast-lands, 5 fetches, 5 WWK manlands
ZEN and before to LOR -- some large amount of the following: Alara tri-lands, filters, Reflecting Pool, Vivids, tribal lands"
To be fair, you should include guildgates.... but no, you're right, the color fixing is bad (and they intended it to be bad) this time around, but because guild deck fixing is fine, and you still dont see those much of the time, I want to argue that it has more to do with card choices in the card pool, which is related to another of your points.
4. "I agree that other small Standards are the right comparisons, since the card pool is barely half the card pool in September, but my experience of last year's format was far better"
I agree with you (and I'm not a good judge of that, because I wasnt as serious about magic last year; was mainly fucking around with junk tokens), but to be fair, you werent arguing that decks are awful due to bad fixing and small card pool/bad quality of card choices; you were arguing it was just the fixing, and that's not right. Size/quality of choices ARE issues, which I think we will see better stuff in this next set (but then again, it really can only get better and not worse right?). Shards/wedges may work if super value stuff gets printed or as 2 splashes centered on 1 color; guild (both splashes and probably even-distribution) decks will get a good shot. Look man, I just want better and more top decks (which is one thing I hated about the last standard, shard/wedge midrange just killed everything)
Like on top of the fact that you cant play arbor colossus in jund to kill dick demon, when you play reaper of the wild, your opponent just says, "k", but when they play nightvail spec, they just PCA till you lose. But even the rock isnt super good, and that's just 2 colors, the fixing (with the scry part) makes it not a problem, but you still dont see the rock anywhere... and when you do, it's not the rock, it's just black devotion splash green for certain cards... there are way less incentive to play multicolor cards like reaper, domri, xenagos walker, etc.
5. "'Does he have Supreme Verdict?' is the median of how interesting the games are, though, mercifully, when you do screw up you tend to die swiftly enough that you can go do something else ..."
I hear you. It's strange, despite the fact that aggro slowed down, aggro just long hair dont care through super verdict, I do wish there are more board wipes, which they did print for black, so... I liked that, I wanted damnation... oh well. Verdict is also way less useful against monoblack, you would think verdict would put an end to monoblue... but nope, sucks huh?
6. "So if pure aggro has to be one color (or one color splashing for another -- note how a lack of fixing ensures that the two-color aggro decks will mostly be splashing and not true 2-color), this restricts the number and quality of aggro decks considerably"
I think there are some rakdos (like even-distribution) aggro, but yeah mostly just splashes. The need to play muta does make the fixing more problematic, but I believe the card pool size and choices and the meta is the big problem; like what I said before, we may have to just agree to disagree.
7. "Between these and Thassa, I generalize that Devotion just wants to end the game on the spot; Constructed devotion is an aggressive mechanic. And these spells are not too functionally different from their predecessors; as a 3-drop resilient to removal, Thassa does a passable Geralf's Messenger; as a 4-drop that ends the game in a hurry, Master of Waves is kinda Falkenrath Aristocrat; as a 4-drop that depends on other creatures, Fanatic is Hellrider."
I agree that devotion is a mechanic that generates a lot of value at once (may it be master of waves, merchant, fanatic or any of the gods turning on), and yes that does end the game right there a lot of the times, but certainly they're not all going with a rushdown strategy, especially not mono black. Monored is big red, which is a rushdown midrange deck, it plays a midrange curve putting down early pressure, and tries to finish the game around midgame, this is not like aggro, which doesnt event want to get to midgame, they just go go go until you die.
The analogy you drawn arent very good. Thassa doesnt actually do anything by herself, and her task isnt to rush you down, shes there to scry, make sure you the damage gets through through her unblockable ability, but that deck can win at late game without the devotion going off, because you cant stop the unblockable sustained damage.
Fanatic is not hellrider... hellrider can generate significant value by himself, fanatic without devotion and no haste, forget it.
8. "There are a ton of issues with this Standard format -- the protection-from cycle, the self-loathing cycle of Gainsay and friends -- but the three-color decks are better against these for obvious reasons (is there any card since Bonfire more inbred thanBlood Baron of Vizkopa?? HOW THE FUCK CAN ANYONE THINK THAT A CARD WITH PROTECTION FROM ITS OWN COLORS IS GOOD DESIGN??)"
Well said! I didnt think about this in terms of the self protect, which does make some unintended issues, like a tempo deck just randomly counterspell your shit when you're playing esper.
Sorry for making such a long post again, I swear this will be the last time. Thanks for letting me humor you.
I will comment on the posts above me by various different posters. I think I scared away Anotak, whom I actually know in real life; wonderful player.
To Changling Bob,
"Also, on your "4c midrange is the best deck"; clearly that's not true."
The logic is with higher number of available colors (access and low/no chance of color screwed), you have access to more colors, thus your options of goodstuffcards and cross color interactions are way better due just the access of cards. With no fear of color issues, you have the freedom to pick up the best value (from cards' internal value and from interactions). That combined with the fact that the drafting process (just due to its nature) makes interactions less reliable, makes constructions of goodstuff.dec more of a solid? path to take.
You could do storm in MM right? but most people dont, because while if you achieve a consistently powerful storm deck in MM, you pretty much lol at everyone. While it's still my belief that if you see and just pick up good cards and watch out for simple consistent powerful interactions, you just beat everyone in draft, most people just play goodstuff.dec. This is what's meant by 4c midrange is the best deck, because you got access to a bigger pool of cards, you max your chance of drafting goodstuffcards plus simple consistent powerful interaction cards to work with those goodstuffcards, so you just beat everyone.
Obviously this is not taking in account in interactions that are monocolor, lower color combinations or monoartifact in nature, and if those decks have happened to have the best values, best interactions, of course those will be the best. Sorry that was really long of a comment.
"The UB god will have to be reeeeally good to make a UB standard deck viable."
About Splashes... Cus there are people that do splashes deviating from the top monocolor devotion decks, some of those splashes have its advantages, but apparently (and I dont know this for sure, but not many splashes are topping, so I assume it's like this) the monocolor strategy is just more desirable; I suppose the advantages of splash guilds are not enough over disadvantages when compared to the monocolor versions.
Good example is the gruul variant of red devotion, which runs domri and xenagos walker, those actually makes you feel bad for playing fanatic of mogsi. Or maybe dimir variant of either blue or black devotion, which may run far/away, and apparently that doesnt fit too well in either devotion decks, so whatever right? fuck it just go mono. The guild gods will change that tho, I believe, because I BELIEVE!!!!! No, they're on average better than the monocolor gods in my opinion, so... I was trying out Xenagos god, and he's decent.
to CML,
I should clarify some stuff before I continue.
-What I mean by value (which when you say value, it could mean PCA (physical card advantage) in my book), I mean if you can assign a number (which I believe you can) based on the manner/quality of the effects of a card and the quantity of the effect of a card, that number is the value of a card (which varies depending on the situation), like far the opponent attacking's attacking god and away cause their 3 devotion creature to be sac'd, that's massive value, which is a big number; if you far the opponents' attacking gravecrawler and away cause their bloodghast to be sac'd, then their MP2, they play a land and the gravecrawler again.... not as good, so not as big of a number. PCA is related also to value of course.
-The standard devotion decks are not just synergy/combo decks, they're also tempo (blue) or keep away midrange (black). Blue is monoblue weenie tempo, which without the devotion part would... not be too great, but they do have a strategy to win without the (??) combo. It's just that the devotion part pushes the decks over the edge. For black, pack rat works with muta, underworld and nightvail right? Underworld has a downside that you need to pay 1 life per card draw. Merchant solves that problem, you can afford to pay 6+ life for 6 extra life, cus merchant will come out and gain it back. It's these little parts that all work together that makes the deck super stupid.
Now all the parts by themselves can still function, underworld without pack rat is okay, pack rat without muta is okay, etc. So you cant even shut down half the interactions happening in black, the devotion part is also pretty silly, you're at 10 life, they're at 2, they have 2 underworld out, play merchant, all of a sudden you're losing.
To be fair though, a deck like jund in the last standard also had cute little pieces like that. Like wolf run plus nighthawk, wolf run plus tusk or huntmaster (cus they can kill the tusk, but the token can easily be a huge threat next turn), etc. But that wasnt the primary focus of the deck, it was the deck played super value cards and fucking won.
The devotion decks are more focused on the interaction portions (so much that they would play 4 frostburn weird).
1. " 'tier 1' (if the tier system is useful, which I don't think it is)"
Well, this is gonna be like 2 pages of a response, so maybe another day.
2. "though Standard, being so subject to new releases, and having an uncritical player base, can undoubtedly be more ill-crafted than Modern or Legacy"
Man dont get me started about modern, Wizard did that to themselves.
3. "The fixing. Historically fixing has looked like:
THS -- 10 shocks and 5 temples
RTR -- 5 shocks and 10 buddy lands
ISD -- 10 buddy lands and 5 fast-lands
SOM -- 5 fast-lands, 5 fetches, 5 WWK manlands
ZEN and before to LOR -- some large amount of the following: Alara tri-lands, filters, Reflecting Pool, Vivids, tribal lands"
To be fair, you should include guildgates.... but no, you're right, the color fixing is bad (and they intended it to be bad) this time around, but because guild deck fixing is fine, and you still dont see those much of the time, I want to argue that it has more to do with card choices in the card pool, which is related to another of your points.
4. "I agree that other small Standards are the right comparisons, since the card pool is barely half the card pool in September, but my experience of last year's format was far better"
I agree with you (and I'm not a good judge of that, because I wasnt as serious about magic last year; was mainly fucking around with junk tokens), but to be fair, you werent arguing that decks are awful due to bad fixing and small card pool/bad quality of card choices; you were arguing it was just the fixing, and that's not right. Size/quality of choices ARE issues, which I think we will see better stuff in this next set (but then again, it really can only get better and not worse right?). Shards/wedges may work if super value stuff gets printed or as 2 splashes centered on 1 color; guild (both splashes and probably even-distribution) decks will get a good shot. Look man, I just want better and more top decks (which is one thing I hated about the last standard, shard/wedge midrange just killed everything)
Like on top of the fact that you cant play arbor colossus in jund to kill dick demon, when you play reaper of the wild, your opponent just says, "k", but when they play nightvail spec, they just PCA till you lose. But even the rock isnt super good, and that's just 2 colors, the fixing (with the scry part) makes it not a problem, but you still dont see the rock anywhere... and when you do, it's not the rock, it's just black devotion splash green for certain cards... there are way less incentive to play multicolor cards like reaper, domri, xenagos walker, etc.
5. "'Does he have Supreme Verdict?' is the median of how interesting the games are, though, mercifully, when you do screw up you tend to die swiftly enough that you can go do something else ..."
I hear you. It's strange, despite the fact that aggro slowed down, aggro just long hair dont care through super verdict, I do wish there are more board wipes, which they did print for black, so... I liked that, I wanted damnation... oh well. Verdict is also way less useful against monoblack, you would think verdict would put an end to monoblue... but nope, sucks huh?
6. "So if pure aggro has to be one color (or one color splashing for another -- note how a lack of fixing ensures that the two-color aggro decks will mostly be splashing and not true 2-color), this restricts the number and quality of aggro decks considerably"
I think there are some rakdos (like even-distribution) aggro, but yeah mostly just splashes. The need to play muta does make the fixing more problematic, but I believe the card pool size and choices and the meta is the big problem; like what I said before, we may have to just agree to disagree.
7. "Between these and Thassa, I generalize that Devotion just wants to end the game on the spot; Constructed devotion is an aggressive mechanic. And these spells are not too functionally different from their predecessors; as a 3-drop resilient to removal, Thassa does a passable Geralf's Messenger; as a 4-drop that ends the game in a hurry, Master of Waves is kinda Falkenrath Aristocrat; as a 4-drop that depends on other creatures, Fanatic is Hellrider."
I agree that devotion is a mechanic that generates a lot of value at once (may it be master of waves, merchant, fanatic or any of the gods turning on), and yes that does end the game right there a lot of the times, but certainly they're not all going with a rushdown strategy, especially not mono black. Monored is big red, which is a rushdown midrange deck, it plays a midrange curve putting down early pressure, and tries to finish the game around midgame, this is not like aggro, which doesnt event want to get to midgame, they just go go go until you die.
The analogy you drawn arent very good. Thassa doesnt actually do anything by herself, and her task isnt to rush you down, shes there to scry, make sure you the damage gets through through her unblockable ability, but that deck can win at late game without the devotion going off, because you cant stop the unblockable sustained damage.
Fanatic is not hellrider... hellrider can generate significant value by himself, fanatic without devotion and no haste, forget it.
8. "There are a ton of issues with this Standard format -- the protection-from cycle, the self-loathing cycle of Gainsay and friends -- but the three-color decks are better against these for obvious reasons (is there any card since Bonfire more inbred thanBlood Baron of Vizkopa?? HOW THE FUCK CAN ANYONE THINK THAT A CARD WITH PROTECTION FROM ITS OWN COLORS IS GOOD DESIGN??)"
Well said! I didnt think about this in terms of the self protect, which does make some unintended issues, like a tempo deck just randomly counterspell your shit when you're playing esper.
Sorry for making such a long post again, I swear this will be the last time. Thanks for letting me humor you.
Reading the mana rocks thread made me go on a hunt through gatherer. The border posts eg veinfire borderpost seem like they would be really good with devotion! For the relevant gods, the on colour border posts mean you only need 3 more devotion which seems good.
Response post is up, thank you for letting me humor yall!
Holy, what!
http://www.wizards.com/magic/magazi...eventcoverage/journeyintonyx14ptq/0111moncton
Holy, what!
http://www.wizards.com/magic/magazi...eventcoverage/journeyintonyx14ptq/0111moncton
Bump now that the block is over. Any new thoughts?
Gods are largely miserable as devotion-matters cards. If they're "active" they're likely win-more. There are a few cards with good effects that happen to have "devotion" as the keyword, but they are relatively few and far between. The mechanic itself has merit as a way to encourage heavily playing one color or giving value to hybrid cards, I just don't think they gave us quite enough.
There are 33 cards with devotion. Minus the 15 gods there are 18. Here they are:
There are just so few cards across AMERICA that it just doesn't seem worth trying to push devotion for them. Black has some real spice, green has some OK stuff but I feel it's too weak. Only fanatic and Gary actually directly kill your opponent with no interaction. Nykthos has actually been an interesting tool to help decks reach their big drops without needing to play rocks or ramp.
Even in an environment designed to push them I would hesitate to play the vast majority of these cards. Unless I knew disciple of phenax was the closest I was getting to thoughtseize. Or something.
There are 33 cards with devotion. Minus the 15 gods there are 18. Here they are:
There are just so few cards across AMERICA that it just doesn't seem worth trying to push devotion for them. Black has some real spice, green has some OK stuff but I feel it's too weak. Only fanatic and Gary actually directly kill your opponent with no interaction. Nykthos has actually been an interesting tool to help decks reach their big drops without needing to play rocks or ramp.
Even in an environment designed to push them I would hesitate to play the vast majority of these cards. Unless I knew disciple of phenax was the closest I was getting to thoughtseize. Or something.
Cool read guys. I'll give my 2 cents (although with how disconnected I am from standard at this point, is more like 2 pesos... if that even).
I certainly agree with the general sentiment that bad fixing leads to a bad meta. By the same token, I also think there is value in moderation (at least in cube) since you don't want fixing to be so easy that you don't have to make any real choices during draft. And for what it's worth, I love the design concept behind devotion. Giving incentive to run mono or two color decks IMO is a great thing, especially for limited style play like cube. And I also think hybrid mana cards (while also improving drafts in general) tie in nicely with that design. So I'm a big fan personally. I hope Wizards continues to develop this in future blocks. I wish they had done even more with it this block (at least in a way that was easier to port into cube), but I'll take what I can get.
If you want my opinion, the biggest issue with constructed (in general, not necessarily current standard) is the "4 of" rule. Because that allows people to assemble very consistent decks that can exploit the inevitable weaknesses of the card pool. And make no mistake, weaknesses are inevitable. I don't care how well you design a set, there are always going to be powerful things that can be exploited. You simply can't get around it. And the "4 of" rule only magnifies the situation. I've said it before and I'll say it again, I just don't see the appeal of the format. It's why I like cube because it avoids that almost entirely. In limited, you just have more room for error (i.e. creativity). If all you have is one copy of a card (and maybe a handful of cards with multiple copies), you just can't as easily exploit degenerate things. Which again IMO is a good thing. It helps to hide inherent flaws in the game.
Ranting a bit more on the "4 of" rule... I've never researched it, but I'd bet good money that Richard Garfield came up with the "4 of" rule because he needed a way to pad decks in the beginning. Because when the game first came into existence, there weren't 30,000 cards. There were 300 or whatever was in alpha. If you couldn't play 4 of each card in a deck, you'd have only been able to assemble like 20 decks or something (there would have been very limited variety). The "4 of" rule was there out of necessity, not because it's a magical number that means anything. It's just a nice number that divides into 60 well. And 20 years later, we are still clinging to that number for some reason. IMO, you'd INSTANTLY make every version of constructed better by changing the "4 of" rule to a "3 of" rule. It would effectively neuter exploits and it would make more fringe decks playable (especially ones that focused on general synergy and/or block mechanics versus your typical constructed deck that just runs the most powerful cards).
Honestly, that change seems like a "no-brainer" evolution to me. But I was never one to follow all the rules. If I see something in a game that doesn't work well, I have no problem changing it even if the change would be sacrilegious to the purists. If it makes the game better, I don't personally care what the original designer intended. Just as an example, whenever we play trivial pursuit, we play that you can move any number of spaces up to what you roll on the die. It greatly speeds the game up. You can still get shafted and roll a "1" and not get on a pie every time though, so there's still a reason to roll the die. It just wastes less of your time in the process.
I certainly agree with the general sentiment that bad fixing leads to a bad meta. By the same token, I also think there is value in moderation (at least in cube) since you don't want fixing to be so easy that you don't have to make any real choices during draft. And for what it's worth, I love the design concept behind devotion. Giving incentive to run mono or two color decks IMO is a great thing, especially for limited style play like cube. And I also think hybrid mana cards (while also improving drafts in general) tie in nicely with that design. So I'm a big fan personally. I hope Wizards continues to develop this in future blocks. I wish they had done even more with it this block (at least in a way that was easier to port into cube), but I'll take what I can get.
If you want my opinion, the biggest issue with constructed (in general, not necessarily current standard) is the "4 of" rule. Because that allows people to assemble very consistent decks that can exploit the inevitable weaknesses of the card pool. And make no mistake, weaknesses are inevitable. I don't care how well you design a set, there are always going to be powerful things that can be exploited. You simply can't get around it. And the "4 of" rule only magnifies the situation. I've said it before and I'll say it again, I just don't see the appeal of the format. It's why I like cube because it avoids that almost entirely. In limited, you just have more room for error (i.e. creativity). If all you have is one copy of a card (and maybe a handful of cards with multiple copies), you just can't as easily exploit degenerate things. Which again IMO is a good thing. It helps to hide inherent flaws in the game.
Ranting a bit more on the "4 of" rule... I've never researched it, but I'd bet good money that Richard Garfield came up with the "4 of" rule because he needed a way to pad decks in the beginning. Because when the game first came into existence, there weren't 30,000 cards. There were 300 or whatever was in alpha. If you couldn't play 4 of each card in a deck, you'd have only been able to assemble like 20 decks or something (there would have been very limited variety). The "4 of" rule was there out of necessity, not because it's a magical number that means anything. It's just a nice number that divides into 60 well. And 20 years later, we are still clinging to that number for some reason. IMO, you'd INSTANTLY make every version of constructed better by changing the "4 of" rule to a "3 of" rule. It would effectively neuter exploits and it would make more fringe decks playable (especially ones that focused on general synergy and/or block mechanics versus your typical constructed deck that just runs the most powerful cards).
Honestly, that change seems like a "no-brainer" evolution to me. But I was never one to follow all the rules. If I see something in a game that doesn't work well, I have no problem changing it even if the change would be sacrilegious to the purists. If it makes the game better, I don't personally care what the original designer intended. Just as an example, whenever we play trivial pursuit, we play that you can move any number of spaces up to what you roll on the die. It greatly speeds the game up. You can still get shafted and roll a "1" and not get on a pie every time though, so there's still a reason to roll the die. It just wastes less of your time in the process.