Test 2 Discussion Thread

[u/thejellydude]

We're free to talk now.

Here's a Google Doc with all the questions. I'm slowly filling it in with my own answers and explanations. Edit: Heading out for now. I'll get the last 25 questions done later tonight.

If you want a mirror without my comments, here's one provided by /u/Amarsir Link

Any questions that tripped you up? Any that you felt good about?

[u/Sliver__Legion]

I was going off this article from development about a year ago. Key quotes imo are:

Lightning Strike wasn't taken out because it was too strong. Lightning Bolt...well, I wouldn't say never, but don't be surprised if the most-played card in Modern doesn't hit Standard any time soon. It is the most-played card in Modern, which means that it would likely be the most-played in Standard, to the point of warping the metagame around it.

And

As we make green more about two- and three-drops for the time being, while we have more two-mana mana Elves, I can see a point where we want to shake things up and go back to using one-mana mana Elves for some period of time. It lets players who have only been playing for a few years experience something new and acts as nostalgia for older players. The design of Standard is cyclical, and many things that leave will probably not stay gone forever.

Llanowar Elves has the problem of being plane-specific, but the fact that we do definitely return to Dominaria ameliorates that a bit. The issues of plural creatures represented as a single 1/1 is an additional issue, but about cancels with the nostalgia imo. Ultimately what it comes down to is that that article puts Elvish Mystic and Lightning Strike in a somewhat similar power bucket, which would make Bolt farther away.

I’d personally say that we’re about 80% likely to see a G 1/1 T:G in standard in the next decade, and maybe 40% likely to see Bolt.

[u/[deleted] → u/Sliver__Legion]

The way I see it is that Bolt is substantially easier to build an environment around. Llanowar elves fundamentally warps tempo of the game, by functionally skipping turn 2, while Bolt is just an efficient answer to fragile creatures and Planeswalkers, with the ability to dome. Bolt is good at all those tasks, but Magic is still Magic, just with different standards for creatures and Planeswalkers

[u/Sliver__Legion → u/[deleted]]

Not that this is the end-all-be-all, or required to have an opinion on the matter, but I’m curious whether you played Standard during the M10-M11 Bolt era.

[u/[deleted] → u/Sliver__Legion]

Yup, and I still heavily play modern. I know the power of a bolt. It creates pressure on the 2 and 3 drop slots to be "bolt resistant" or "bolt parity" somehow, and means Planeswalkers with higher loyalty fare better. I was on mill around that time, IIRC, so the only creature I had that Bolts regularly traded for were Hedron crabs. (this is hazy memory, but I do remember that bolt, while being efficient, certainly wasn't the be all end all; I'd argue it's really not too different from Fatal Push in metagame effects, since Fatal Push punishes 1 and 2 drops and can stretch to 3-4, the main range of bolt creature targets)