Magic the Gathering • Page 52

I refuse. I make decks for fun, not for cheap wins.

 

I was really pushing for Grzegors Kowalski’s Jeskai Fires deck to top eight but he needed a win in that final round and lost to Cuneo.

I heard that on the stream. So dumb.

 

November 11, 2019 Pioneer Banned Announcement

veil banned in pioneer. no complaints there

 

ban it in Standard you cowards

 

haha most likely would happen on monday, predicting Goose, Once Upon a Time and VoS gets axed

 

I just wonder how drastic they’re going to get. I don’t even know if banning Oko on its own does anything honestly even though it’s definitely needed. I think you have to ban Nissa and Once Upon a Time and even maybe Veil of Summer too to even really make an impact. Green is so ridiculously strong right now that one card really isn’t going to fix much.

Goose, Krasis, Oko, Nissa, Veil of Summer, Once Upon a Time, Wicked Wolf... all of these cards are great on their own and the fact that they’re playable in the same deck is the problem. The balance is just so tilted to one side.

It wouldn’t be a problem if the meta was 35% or something. But it’s a huge problem when the meta is 70%. This last Mythic was 40% mirror matches. That can’t be good for Standard in general.

To play devil’s advocate... what does it say when you have to ban several brand new cards just to make the meta fair again? Maybe their design teams need to re-evaluate how they’re making these cards and do a better job play testing them before release. But to ban a bunch of really powerful cards also sets up the idea that you shouldn’t invest in a powerful deck because if it gets too powerful, it’ll just get banned. They lose either way they decide.

 

The design team hasn’t had the best track record the last several years. Guess this is more of the same.

 

ehh, i’d say it’s a hit or miss. GRN AND RNA were fun sets and brought some cool stuff.

the one before dominaria was fun too. im just wondering if the game being more accessible now because of arena makes it easier to crack

 

was able to play a bit of casual pioneer with some coworkers today. pretty fun, we were playing previous standard decks.

i was playing mono white convoke vs orzhov pack rats

 

Watch Magic: The Gathering Pro Player Makes Huge Bluff in The Top 8 of Mythic Championship VI

 

This is dope.

 

My playgroup is starting to test Pioneer and it seems like whoever casts the first true bomb / planeswalker wins. Good threats, mediocre answers. If they manage to keep the busted Devotion decks in check, I believe it will eventually turn into a gauntlet of past Standard decks, (ie: rehashed bullshit) and Standard, starting from Theros block, has been a snoozefest for me.

I'll be super bummed if it becomes the go-to "eternal" format. Legacy is dead and Modern has the same linearity issues, but at least there are sick synergies and deck concepts in these formats.

 

so basically rotated decks with some cards replaced with better ones?

 

Well, we think there's no reason not to play a linear hyperagressive deck right now, and the current top decks are exactly that, ports of past strategies with a few tweaks.

We're not stoked to be playing beefed up versions of Ramunap Red, Green Devotion and boring RG Monsters, but they're the best decks. It feels like Sultaï (basically Oko Rock) and Pack Rat decks are the only viable "slower" decks at the moment, but you're still trying to rush your planeswalkers / rats out and little else.

We have proxied a lot of stuff and tried to play with other cards "banned" (Once Upon A Time, Nykhtos, Oko, Eidolon, etc). If the format slows down a bit, Marvel / energy decks, Jeskai Ascendancy and UW / Esper / Jeskai superfriends will be viable too.

Basically it's a "goodstuff" format that makes old standard spoilers/bombs look really good, but there's not a ton of room for creative deckbuilding.

My group and I don't know the game better than anyone else, but we have been testing the format to see if it's worth investing money into, and we have decided to opt out for the time being. We'll see if the pros come out with interesting archetypes on the big scene, but it's likely better to show up with piles of "good" cards.

 

gotcha, thanks for the report. that’s about what i expected pioneer to be.

i do keep my standard decks, so it looks like i may be able to use them with minimal investment on new cards, which is good news for a casual player like me. i checked some of the lists online, and i think i found one that i only need to spend 20 bucks for to get the exact list.

the rest i may have to play around with sideboards or strictly worse cards but that’s fine

 

What is the Pioneer meta looking like right now from these tournaments being held? I’ve only seen stuff that just got rotated out recently like mono red, white lifegain, and Esper in various forms. I saw an interesting Esper list built around Approach of the Second Sun.

 

Magic: the Gathering Pioneer Decks and Metagame

Looks like a lot of mono color decks and aggro builds. On the right side of the page they have recent events and it looks pretty diverse tbh

I wouldn't really invest in a format that will have weekly bannings tho.

 

the new magic book out has been getting a lot of bad press for being badly written and taking away a lot of the character development building up, especially towards Nissa/Chandra



also this is a sentence i had to see, so im taking you all down with me

 

oof

Magic books were never good but that's terrible

 

Logged in, played one game vs Jeskai Fires. Built a good board presence, opponent wiped the board. Used Fae of Wishes to go grab a Time Wipe. Conceded.

I'll play in the dumb Cascade event tomorrow just bc it's something different.

Maybe I'll look into Historic with the official rollout next week but probably not.

 

The beauty of that deck is keeping your opponent wondering how much time they’re going to waste before they have to start from scratch. I don’t play it but I know some decks have an Emergency Powers in the sideboard and that card has to be so frustrating to play against.

 

bye oko, ouat and veil

November 18, 2019 Banned and Restricted Announcement

 

Good riddance.

 

Hopefully this brings w6 down to a reasonable price so I can grab it for my EDH deck.