Magic: the Gathering |OT| Outlaws of Thunder Junction - Duel at the Oko Corral
- Thread starter SigmasonicX
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Oh I thought this was a different one than the one they showed a week or so ago. Okay, it's just the one terrible one.
OP
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FYI the yearly ban announcement is tomorrow! However, the sense I'm getting from many pros playing Standard is that there isn't anything they'd like to see banned, so there's a good chance that nothing gets hit.
On the other hand, even though many pros don't desire bans, I think there'd be pushback if they banned nothing in Standard. Here are what I think would be the likely hits:
Sunfall - Much too over the top as a sweeper and does too much to support "no win con" control
Atraxa - Remained the best ramp, reanimation, and Fight Rigging target her entire time in Standard, even in decks not in her colors
Sheoldred, the Apocalypse - Not seeing much tournament play right now, but still very common on Arena Standard and a card players find frustrating to face
Plaza of Heroes - Makes legend blob decks straightforward even after rotation
On the other hand, even though many pros don't desire bans, I think there'd be pushback if they banned nothing in Standard. Here are what I think would be the likely hits:
Sunfall - Much too over the top as a sweeper and does too much to support "no win con" control
Atraxa - Remained the best ramp, reanimation, and Fight Rigging target her entire time in Standard, even in decks not in her colors
Sheoldred, the Apocalypse - Not seeing much tournament play right now, but still very common on Arena Standard and a card players find frustrating to face
Plaza of Heroes - Makes legend blob decks straightforward even after rotation
Sunfall is one of the reasons I don't play standard. I don't mind having my board wiped at all -- that's important. But exiling my whole board and giving them a threat? It might be fair statistically, but it's completely unfun. Atraxa is also pretty stupid to play against as you sometimes just lose and there's really nothing you can do about the outrageous advantage she gives. I'd be happy to see them both and might even consider trying standard again.
I don't mind boardwipes. I mind exiling boardwipes that also give Wincons. And we have too many exiling wincons in standard already and some even exile the GY, which led to the prevalence of "no win con" control decks, which are just plain unfun.
control might be more interesting to play against once memory deluge leaves
wandering emperor is less obnoxious, but it's a very good combination with that card. that will also exit
let's see what happens
wandering emperor is less obnoxious, but it's a very good combination with that card. that will also exit
let's see what happens
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Last minute ban speculation, if Wizards wants some Standard bans but wants to minimize the number, then I could see
Sunfall
Up the Beanstalk
With the logic of leaving out Atraxa being that the New Capenna lands will rotate out and her mana cost will become an actual risk. An Up the Beanstalk ban weakens several potential decks and also would feel better for Standard players than banning their expensive rares.
Sunfall
Up the Beanstalk
With the logic of leaving out Atraxa being that the New Capenna lands will rotate out and her mana cost will become an actual risk. An Up the Beanstalk ban weakens several potential decks and also would feel better for Standard players than banning their expensive rares.
B&R announcement - Sticker and attraction bans, All That Glitters ban in Pauper
New
May 13, 2024, Banned and Restricted Announcement
Announcing changes to Pauper, Legacy, and Vintage, effective May 13, 2024.
all that glitters banned in pauper.
all sticker and attraction cards banned
May 13, 2024, Banned and Restricted Announcement
Announcing changes to Pauper, Legacy, and Vintage, effective May 13, 2024.
Legit thrilled by this. I hope a lesson was learned about Un-sets and legality for the future.THANK FUCK- they are banning all sticker cards and all attarction cards- basically everything from Unfucked that they made legal is now bannedMay 13, 2024, Banned and Restricted Announcement
Announcing changes to Pauper, Legacy, and Vintage, effective May 13, 2024.magic.wizards.com
MH3 story previews day 1
New
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Oh lol, turns out this isn't the yearly Standard ban window. The article mentions that that will be after the release of Modern Horizons III.
Further explanation of the Pauper changes.
magic.wizards.com
Gavin also mentions that there's a Modern Horizons III card that will likely have to be banned in Pauper coming up. Regarding stickers, while he regrets that this kills the Sticker Stompy deck, MTGO hasn't been able to support most Unfinity cards and it's good to bring paper in line with it.
magic.wizards.com
The stories published this week are old ones reformated to work better with the new site layout. This article mentions they have new previews, but I looked and they don't.
This was somewhere, though.
Colorless permanents include lands, as a reminder.
Further explanation of the Pauper changes.
Explanation of Pauper Bans for May 13, 2024
Announcing changes to Pauper, effective May 13, 2024.
Gavin also mentions that there's a Modern Horizons III card that will likely have to be banned in Pauper coming up. Regarding stickers, while he regrets that this kills the Sticker Stompy deck, MTGO hasn't been able to support most Unfinity cards and it's good to bring paper in line with it.
Relive the Eldrazi Menace Across Magic Story with Modern Horizons 3
The Eldrazi return—like you've never seen them before—in Modern Horizons 3. Read on to see why they're so feared!
The stories published this week are old ones reformated to work better with the new site layout. This article mentions they have new previews, but I looked and they don't.
This was somewhere, though.
Colorless permanents include lands, as a reminder.
Comet notably sees some Eternal play, and that's still around.THANK FUCK- they are banning all sticker cards and all attarction cards- basically everything from Unfucked that they made legal is now bannedMay 13, 2024, Banned and Restricted Announcement
Announcing changes to Pauper, Legacy, and Vintage, effective May 13, 2024.
Relive the Eldrazi Menace Across Magic Story with Modern Horizons 3
The Eldrazi return—like you've never seen them before—in Modern Horizons 3. Read on to see why they're so feared!
The stories published this week are old ones reformated to work better with the new site layout. This article mentions they have new previews, but I looked and they don't.
"I—I'amrakul!"
No changes for Timeless is good. MH3 is gonna throw things into such chaos that might as well let it ride. Mana Drain really hasn't been that much of a new problem and feels on the level with other stuff. Honestly most of the time it's just Counterspell because using the extra mana with the general low curve you see in most decks means you don't have a ton of places to spend the colorless mana except for like replacing some of the Dredge on Dig/Treasure Cruise.
Nothing else feels particularly busted, even if some strategies have way more broken cards than others right now. So they just need to add stuff to balance things out that way.
Nothing else feels particularly busted, even if some strategies have way more broken cards than others right now. So they just need to add stuff to balance things out that way.
Oh dang, I had just seen that Pleasant Kenobi video absolutely excoriating "Mind" Goblin (and Unsets in general) about why he hates it so much and his points were pretty valid. It was like a month ago. I guess that sentiment was shared.
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Neglected to post this earlier
magic.wizards.com
No updates to previously covered planes. Here are the new plane ratings, lower is better.
Arcavios (Strixhaven) - 3
Eldraine - 4
Ikoria - 5
Kaldheim - 4
Kylem (Battlebond) - 8
New Capenna - 6
Thunder Junction - 5
Eldraine loses (gains) points due to the work needed to follow up on story developments from Wilds and the fact that they'll have to delve into slightly lesser known fairy tales on a return.
Ikoria was popular but lacks a mechanical core they can return to (neither mutate nor companion are slam dunk returns), so they'll have to revisit how they'll handle the giant monster theme.
The problem with Kaldheim is that, if anything, there's too much to cover in a single set, with there being ten sub-planes. Foretell is very likely to return in a Kaldheim 2, along with snow and maybe MDFC gods.
For Kylem, they'd have to worldbuild everything outside the arena.
New Capenna scores high in every metric except for actual popularity, making it the worst of the new Standard worlds. However, Kamigawa wasn't popular at the time either.
Thunder Junction's rating was given without knowledge of how well the set did, as this article was written before it released.
The Rabiah Scale, Part 3
Mark revisits the Rabiah Scale, where he rates the likelihood of returning to planes in Magic's most recent excursions through the Multiverse.
No updates to previously covered planes. Here are the new plane ratings, lower is better.
Arcavios (Strixhaven) - 3
Eldraine - 4
Ikoria - 5
Kaldheim - 4
Kylem (Battlebond) - 8
New Capenna - 6
Thunder Junction - 5
Eldraine loses (gains) points due to the work needed to follow up on story developments from Wilds and the fact that they'll have to delve into slightly lesser known fairy tales on a return.
Ikoria was popular but lacks a mechanical core they can return to (neither mutate nor companion are slam dunk returns), so they'll have to revisit how they'll handle the giant monster theme.
The problem with Kaldheim is that, if anything, there's too much to cover in a single set, with there being ten sub-planes. Foretell is very likely to return in a Kaldheim 2, along with snow and maybe MDFC gods.
For Kylem, they'd have to worldbuild everything outside the arena.
New Capenna scores high in every metric except for actual popularity, making it the worst of the new Standard worlds. However, Kamigawa wasn't popular at the time either.
Thunder Junction's rating was given without knowledge of how well the set did, as this article was written before it released.
Yeah because if Magic players need anything it's a wild and complicated excuse to play big stupid creatures. That sound was my eyes rolling so hard they fell out.
"they'll have to revisit how they'll handle the giant monster theme"
how about by actually having giant monsters?
how about by actually having giant monsters?
I think most casual players happily jamming a limited (or limited-esque deck if it's kitchen table) with like 20% 6+ drops is exactly why they can't just stuff the set full of big dumb idiots. The reality is that a deck's mana curve is important, and so you can't just say "this set will have more big creature but we change nothing else" and expect it to work. Ikoria already attempted to get around this by giving some of the big dumb idiots cycling, and I'd assume if they revisit they could focus more on that. Mutate was the idea of making a monster dangerous though its versatility rather than its size, but complexity is very high and it runs into the Aura problem.
I think one mechanic they could use as a baseline would be Prototype, because that mechanic was, well, prototyped to solve a similar problem as Ikoria had: The Brother's war is defined by its huge and terrible war machines, and to represent that on the cards we got big colorless artifact creatures that could be cast as smaller creatures for a lower, color mana cost. So I could see them using that idea again but calling it "Offspring* or something where you can play a baby version of the monster for less mana or the fully-grown one for a ton of mana. Maybe with some extra wrinkle given that the "color-colorless" dichotomy would be gone then?
anime wandering emperor costs a ton. how much is furry jace going to go for?
mutate not returning would be a bit of a bummer. it's too bad that in limited cycling pretty much ran over everything else.
Neglected to post this earlier
The Rabiah Scale, Part 3
Mark revisits the Rabiah Scale, where he rates the likelihood of returning to planes in Magic's most recent excursions through the Multiverse.
No updates to previously covered planes. Here are the new plane ratings, lower is better.
Arcavios (Strixhaven) - 3
Eldraine - 4
Ikoria - 5
Kaldheim - 4
Kylem (Battlebond) - 8
New Capenna - 6
Thunder Junction - 5
Eldraine loses (gains) points due to the work needed to follow up on story developments from Wilds and the fact that they'll have to delve into slightly lesser known fairy tales on a return.
Ikoria was popular but lacks a mechanical core they can return to (neither mutate nor companion are slam dunk returns), so they'll have to revisit how they'll handle the giant monster theme.
The problem with Kaldheim is that, if anything, there's too much to cover in a single set, with there being ten sub-planes. Foretell is very likely to return in a Kaldheim 2, along with snow and maybe MDFC gods.
For Kylem, they'd have to worldbuild everything outside the arena.
New Capenna scores high in every metric except for actual popularity, making it the worst of the new Standard worlds. However, Kamigawa wasn't popular at the time either.
Thunder Junction's rating was given without knowledge of how well the set did, as this article was written before it released.
mutate not returning would be a bit of a bummer. it's too bad that in limited cycling pretty much ran over everything else.
Well yeah lol of course, no one is suggesting that. The problem with Mutate, at least for me, was that it was needlessly complicated when Bestow was the same idea done simple and right.
Oh yeah sorry I didn't mean you particularly there, I meant it more as a general "you." And yeah, Mutate is the kind of thing that's a lot of baggage for something that was often a bit underwhelming and still has the general Aura problems. I could really see them revisiting Prototype somehow as well as keeping big cycling creatures.
For sure. The aura problem sucks for sure. Probably too strong to have the creatures mutated onto the base creature return to hand on death. Maybe it gets Ward X, where X is the number of mutations? They could definitely spend some time reshaping it and making it work, but honestly it all feels like adding more baggage to it. I sort of hope they bin it and go another direction because there are cleaner answers from a design perspective.
You're right, Prototype would be awesome to build from. Also they could reuse Monstrous. Perhaps double-sided transform mechanics should be on the table, maybe even Meld would be a good fit? Especially now with the emphasis on Commander, a big generic 5-part mutation stack is cumbersome, but more importantly less "cool" than a 2-part massive melded legendary. There are already plenty of options to revisit or build off of to keep the giant monster theme that a 5 feels a little out of line.
y'all are overthinking this
they could just make the creatures big without all costing 6+ mana
maybe do tiny humans vs big monsters for some contrast
it's not like they care about the pace/balance of limited anymore
they could just make the creatures big without all costing 6+ mana
maybe do tiny humans vs big monsters for some contrast
it's not like they care about the pace/balance of limited anymore
MH3 story previews day 2
New
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MH3 story previews day 3
New
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More republished stories, more cards
First official time seeing kindred on a card.
Strong common
Monoblue reach (and it's secret reach at that)
First official time seeing kindred on a card.
Strong common
Monoblue reach (and it's secret reach at that)
OP
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I'm iffy on it, leaning toward not making a new thread at this point.
Just played against someone who drafted and evidently got to play the funkiest Ghired, Mirror of the Wind & Nexus of Becoming Combo. Basically, every turn put a token 3/3 of a card in his hand on the board and copy it for every nontoken creature on the board. NUTS lol. to draft two mythics and get to play them both....and me having zero removal :(
That's sweet, I've never drafted or played against a deck that actually uses the BIG artifact synergies. Definitely some fun and powerful cards but the odds of putting it all together like that in limited are so low