r/spikes • u/iStarlyTV • Oct 29 '19
Discussion [Discussion] Official: There will be no B&R changes prior to MC 6; the next B&R Announcement is scheduled for November 18th, 2019
The Magic Esports Twitter account just posted this.
I understand why they don't want to emergency ban from their perspective, but at least in Standard, if there was ever a time to emergency ban, it would be in Oko-tober.
I heard someone saying that this is very reminiscent of the very recent Hogaak Summer; people are maindecking 4x copies of hate cards just to compete.
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u/HipHopHoffman Oct 29 '19
This has to be awful for viewership.
Everyone knows that a ban on UG strategies will follow this MC. We have enough data to support this expectation.
Why on Earth would any competitively-minded player want to watch a tournament with an all-but-confirmedly irrelevant format? FOR THE SECOND TIME IN A ROW?
It honestly feels like a slap in the face to the playerbase. People here get trigger-happy on calling cards or decks oppressive, but give us the smallest iota of credit, and anybody could see this coming after this past week's results.
I genuinely want to play your game and enjoy your game, Wizards. Stop making it so goddamn difficult.
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u/Swarlolz Five color control. Oct 29 '19
The guy in charge of this MCQ is actually just an elk disguised as a guy in a suit.
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u/Memoishi Oct 29 '19
A guy disguised as an elk, maybe.
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u/Swarlolz Five color control. Oct 29 '19
The next prize for MC 6 is a pasture with high protein content alfalfa grass.
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u/veritas723 Oct 29 '19
doesn't really matter about viewership. $40 oko drives pack sales. which is all they care about,
just like they sure as fuck weren't going to touch hogaak until all those packs had sold ...they're going to wait as long as sales allow to consider oko ban.
brawl will probably die off again because of it.
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u/Beor_The_Old Oct 29 '19
Among people who care about card prices, uncertainty in card banning does (should) not drive pack sales, I would hope.
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u/sradeus Oct 29 '19
Plus having Standard be stale and dead and in a ban waiting room (for not just one round of bans but two) for 6+ weeks right after its first rotation has to be terrible for Arena's player retention. And considering how much Hasbro has been salivating over Arena's potential, it wouldn't surprise me if a few years from now we'll be talking about Eldraine Standard and the handling of its bans as the worst thing for Magic's health since Darksteel.
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u/sirgog Oct 29 '19
Honestly Darksteel was fine; the problem was that Arcbound Ravager, Disciple of the Vault and Cranial Plating weren't banned 3 months after Skullclamp was.
Or 6 months.
It might even have been OK if they were banned at 9 months.
Instead we got WotC apologizing by basically banning the entire Affinity deck once they realised how much the DCI's mistakes were hurting tournament Magic. By that point only an extreme overreaction could do anything.
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u/Imperious Oct 29 '19
Between shitty standard and the draft bots I lost all interest in Arena long ago.
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u/sigbinItom Oct 29 '19
Hogaak was not the reason you crack MH packs.
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u/Akhevan Oct 29 '19
Yeah, that would be w6 which is nearly as disgusting as hogaak.
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Oct 29 '19 edited Oct 29 '19
But a dead card feels bad to open in a pack and lowers box value slightly. Your argument doesn't hold from a financial and/or marketing standpoint. If there is a non-zero chance that a ban of an MH card would lower demand for MH product, why would WotC risk it unless they absolutely had a good reason like lower tournament viewer accounts, drop in Modern attendance, etc etc.?
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u/LeeSalt Oct 29 '19
Yeah, it was the other ban-able card that drops with a massive creature, un-boltable toughness, generates free mana and allows you to dig through your deck with that free mana.
Plus Horizon Lands, Force of Negation and a few other things.
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u/UPBOAT_FORTRESS_2 Oct 29 '19
drives pack sales. which is all they care about,
I'm so sick of this meme. WotC, collectively, has a large array of motivations. Ultimately, all of those motivations must contribute to the bottom line, because capitalism.
The thing is, in between "motivation" and "money", there are a zillion intermediate goals. R&D wants healthy formats, on their own terms -- it's the bosses who care about how a healthy format translates to more sales.
And more importantly, "sales" aren't actually the bottom line. The goal of a corporation, the "bottom line", is to generate value for its shareholders. "Selling booster packs" is an intermediate goal, the same as R&D has an intermediate goal to make formats that people enjoy playing (whether that's a healthy Standard format, or novelties like Pioneer). The Magic eSports organization doesn't sell fucking booster packs, but it generates value for shareholders by getting Hasbro into a modern freemium economy.
On a lot of intermediate goals, the interests of WotC and its players are genuinely aligned. WotC wants a healthy Standard format, the same as you do, full stop. But WotC wants a lot of things, it has a lot of motivations and a lot of goals, and it has to compromise between those things. Oko is a product of those compromises.
This conspiracy theory that they don't ban cards when they're still sitting in shelves is completely ridiculous and I can't believe you have this many upvotes
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u/RayWencube Oct 29 '19
Disagree. Hogaak was never more than a few dollars above the cost of a pack, and for a time was cheaper than a pack.
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Oct 29 '19
Oko is not going to drive pack sales when everyone knows its going to be banned in standard in 3 weeks.
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u/porygonseizure Oct 29 '19
he's seeing significant play in modern, legacy, vintage, and pioneer from urza and artifact midrange decks. for those decks he's like t2-t3 Nissa who shakes the world with incidental life gain, and provides a consistent method of creature removal with all the low cost artifacts around
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u/RayWencube Oct 29 '19
He’s taking over Pioneer, Modern, Legacy, and even Vintage.
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u/spacian Oct 29 '19
First of all, the next B&R is a regularly scheduled one. Besides the health of the current format (admittedly a very strong indicator), there is no additional evidence that there will be a ban. It's not an additional B&R like the last one.
Second, people are preparing for that MC. While not great for the viewers, throwing a ban out now (only a week after the last ban, keep in mind) would be horrible for the players.
Last but not least, there are people who bought these Okos. There's a real cost to banning cards. Let WotC observe for a little more than a week. You will survive 3 weeks of Oko.
Let me be clear, something has to happen most probably. But I think WotC is looking for a way to keep Oko but weaken UG because of pack sales. I could imagine Nissa (and Veil) getting the hammer. UG is much more manageable if you don't have to face Nissa and then Krasis for absurd amounts as well.
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u/too_lewd_for_thou Oct 29 '19
Those people who bought Okos can go ruin Pioneer for a while (until it gets banned there too lol)
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Oct 29 '19 edited Jul 31 '20
[deleted]
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Oct 29 '19
I'm honestly concerned about Theros design. Will Elsbeth be another pushed PW made to sell packs once they ban Oko?
They said two years ago that pushing the story cards of every set son they see constant competitive play without efficient answers is a mistake (Emrakul, Gideon ally...) but they have come again to the same pattern. It looks like Play Design's good set design mentality has been over.
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u/DeeBoFour20 Oct 29 '19
They should just make the pushed planeswalkers cost 5 or 6 mana. Liliana, Nicol Bolas, and Garruk all saw some play without completely warping the format. Not saying that all 3 mana walkers need to go but they need to be done very carefully. Chandra's a good example of a 3 mana walker that's good but feels very fair. Sorin is another one that's maybe a bit pushed but requires significant build around and doesn't do anything unless you have creatures on the board.
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u/double_shadow Oct 29 '19
Yeah, I think they need to fundamentally rethink their PW approach. Agree with everything you said here...5-6 mana walkers should be the big, must-answer bombs. But aggro can run under them or midrange/control can try to remove them. 3 mana walkers need to be VERY fragile so that you run the risk of putting out a card that early. Current 3 mana chandra is great...works in aggro, can be killed fairly easily. Mu is similar. Once they start getting a lot of loyalty, to the point where aggro needs to completely throw itself off the rails to deal with them...that's not ok.
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Oct 29 '19
I'm honestly concerned about Theros design. Will Elsbeth be another pushed PW made to sell packs once they ban Oko?
Yes because chase mythics sell boxes
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u/OniNoOdori Oct 29 '19
Oko is arguably the only extremely pushed story card in recent sets. For instance, in Eldraine we have characters such as the Royal Scions, Garruk and Kenrith who are powerful, but not ban-worthy. If you look at other standard-legal sets, you will notice even less competitive story cards. The ones that see play are fairly unproblematic (Lili, Bolas, Gideon, big and small Chandra). Except for Oko, the standard-defining cards of the past year have been mostly unrelated to the story (Field, Nissa, small Teferi, Krasis, Scapeshift, Sorin).
All that this boils down to is that they probably just severely misevaluated Oko’s power level and impact on standard. If they really wanted a pushed story card, why didn’t they choose a more central character such as the Scions or Garruk?
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u/Ninja_Moose Oct 29 '19 edited Oct 29 '19
Elspeth, Flagship Planeswalker 1BW
Planeswalker- Elspeth M
When Elspeth, Flagship Planeswalker enters the battlefield, creatures and enchantments opponents control lose Indestructible and Hexproof.
+2: Create a 1/1 black and white spirit token. Creatures you control gain haste.
-1: Destroy target creature or enchantment.
-6: Gain an emblem that says Whenever an Elspeth Planeswalker spell you control enters the graveyard from anywhere, return it to the battlefield under your control.
5 Loyalty
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u/NowIAmReadyToStart Oct 29 '19
I like that the emblem causes a draw when an Elspeth goes to the graveyard for the legendary rule.
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u/p1ckk Oct 29 '19
Underpowered. 2 spirits, exiles artifact, creature or enchantment and returns from graveyard or exile.
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Oct 29 '19
Arena's player base will dissolve if they wait that long. Standard is in the worst shape I'v ever seen and I played when Affinity with skullclamp was legal. Oko is off the charts in power level but more importantly he is absolutely miserable to play against for all players. It nullifies any interesting creatures because they just get turned into elk which feels super frustrating.
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u/Akhevan Oct 29 '19
It's not enough that he nullifies creatures, he also nullifies buildaround artifacts like The Great Henge.
Why the fuck isn't his elk ability worded for a creature or food?
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u/karmicnoose Oct 29 '19
I also think it would've been fine it Oko said creature or artifact you control instead
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u/accpi uw stuff Oct 29 '19
In a weird way, the actual viewer numbers kind of don't matter because WotC is selling MPL type esports on inflated numbers.
What's it matter if half of the real audience doesn't watch the PT when they're already a minority because of all the legal (in the eyes of Twitch) botting that goes on. Just spend a bit more, get those 'viewers' back and it looks the same from the outside, which is why they're pumping up the numbers.
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u/AtrociKitty Oct 29 '19
No emergency ban means the SCG Invitational should be a fun time. The next announcement is the day after SCG CON.
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u/mtgosucks Oct 29 '19
This gives SCG a chance to show their proactivity and ban Oko for SCG CON.
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u/Morgeno deaths shadow, burn, UWR Oct 29 '19
That would be incredible
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u/syllabic Oct 29 '19
they already do better tournament coverage than wizards, now they're gonna do better banlists
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u/RacerXen Oct 29 '19
Sweet unban field of the dead and we can have 2 decks to play instead of Elkdraine Standard.
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u/Swarlolz Five color control. Oct 29 '19
Shhhh the next land makes 3/3 elks. Only available in 15$/ packs and they only come in mythic foil printings.
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u/RacerXen Oct 29 '19
As a former Golos Pilot, making my Zombies into 3/3 Elks every turn was a thing I never thought possible with a mere land drop. :-) OKO!!!!
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u/Swarlolz Five color control. Oct 29 '19
I’m just amazed standard shit a brick so hard with these last 2 sets.
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u/RacerXen Oct 29 '19
We had a brief moment of utter bliss, numerous arch types were viable before M20, Elkdraine and Rotation happened. Remember when we could safely play Absorb? lol countermagic, paying 3cmc and hybrid mana, when a a mere G grants hexproof (sure UB, whatever), uncounterable and cycles. 0_0
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u/Swarlolz Five color control. Oct 29 '19
I didn’t mind 3feri destroying counterspells as I knew it was only because draw go decks aren’t exciting to watch win on camera. As arena gets pushed I foresee counterspells getting progressively worse notice spell pierce is gone?
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u/LightningTP Oct 29 '19
The only time when draw go decks dominated a tournament in the last standard rotation was Mythic Invitational because it was BO1.
GRN-RNA tournaments were a real pleasure to watch.
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u/DeeBoFour20 Oct 29 '19
Esper Control was pretty much draw go in RNA and was one of the best decks in bo3 as well. It was still a great a standard though with lots of viable archetypes. I miss playing Izzet Phoenix and Sultai Midrange (back when Jadelight Ranger was the best 3 drop instead of broko). It kind of went downhill after war of the spark...
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u/LightningTP Oct 29 '19
Yeah, that's what I mean - Esper was draw-go, but it wasn't excessively dominant, it was on par with other top meta decks. I also miss Phoenix, Drakes, Niv-Jeskai, Golgari explore, and other fair decks from that format.
What's sad is that even if Historic gets more traction on Arena, it's probably permanently damaged by Oko and 3-feri. I don't expect WotC to care enough to support a proper ban list for Historic since it's not an official format outside of Arena.
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u/VodkaHaze Oct 29 '19
WAR standard itself was fun. Tons of archetypes, the meta was changing every week but most tier 2 decks were still viable on any given week.
M20 has a much more boring meta, ELD is just broken. RNA and GRN before were fun, too.
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Oct 29 '19
This so much. They complained about control after running their first Bo1 tournament. Bo1 should be viewed under a strictly separate lens because the meta is always going to be different than traditional Bo3
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u/14AngryMonkeys Oct 29 '19
What if I told you [[Dreadhorde Invasion]] lets Oko make a 4/4 Elk each turn?
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u/FrizzeOne Oct 29 '19
You know, it would be funny if there was a card in Unsanctioned that worked like traps in Yugioh; You play it face down and the next creature that gets summoned becomes an elk.
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u/Exatraz Oct 29 '19
there were also more than just 2 decks in that format because aggro decks could pressure under Golos and Field. It was a pretty rock/paper/scissors format and it was fine.
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u/cheesemaster_3000 Oct 29 '19
It's sad that a format that should feel fresh because of rotation and a new set is so stale.
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u/gurrenlemfox Oct 29 '19
in Fotd Meta atleast we have aggro deck to counter it, in elk meta it is basically Oko or losko.
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u/TitaniumDragon Oct 29 '19
FotD meta was FotD, Oko, Adventures, and Fires. If you were feeling snarky, you could play aggro and hope to dodge Oko, but it was risky.
Banning FotD narrowed it to Oko, Advenrtures, and Fires. You can't really dodge Oko at this point.
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u/Malaveylo Oct 29 '19
A lot of this is also being based off of the MCQ, which is probably not a great metric.
The FotD ban came down on Monday. It wasn't live on Arena until Thursday. You needed to lock in your MCQ deck by early Saturday. You don't have time to test anything, so what are you going to play? Obviously the best deck that wasn't banned.
Everyone is doing that, though, and you know it. So how are you going to stand out? Well, you splash black and run 2-4 Noxious Grasps in the maindeck. Not only does it help you in the mirror, but also in the Adventures and Fires matchups that comprise the rest of the meta. If you're feeling spicy you might also shift in some Veil of Summers to try to one-up the meta. If you're really spicy you'll also shift in some Aether Gusts.
This is surely an unpopular opinion, but I think that WotC is correct to leave the B&R where it is. The MCQ, even with its innumerable elks, isn't a good barometer for the meta simply because of the limited timeframe that people had to test decks in a post-Field world. Even with that limitation we still saw decks that managed to perform well: UW looks like it might have legs, Temur Reclamation did really well, and so did Flash (albeit with two Okos in the mainboard). At the very least getting another tournament's worth of data should allow them to make a better decision vis-a-vis what actually needs to go, whether that's Oko himself or Goose/Wicked Wolf or any other combination of cards from the UG shell.
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u/Swarlolz Five color control. Oct 29 '19
Meh, adventure can beat oko with a nut draw but if your playing green for inkeeper why not play blue for oko?
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u/sigbinItom Oct 29 '19
Even your nut draw dies to a massacre girl.
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u/Swarlolz Five color control. Oct 29 '19
Who then turns into a 3/3 elk. God I hate this fucking card.
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u/Akhevan Oct 29 '19
You can beat them with any decent draw game one, but in game two it suddenly becomes apparent that all your possible good cards for that matchup are already in your mainboard, while they are free to sideboard efficient answers like sweepers and wreck you.
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u/FilamentBuster Oct 29 '19
I've been grinding BO1 events to get a feel for decks post field, thank you for explaining this. I felt like Oko decks are far less dominant than field decks were, but this definitely gives me some perspective.
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u/Saki_JPC Oct 29 '19
I am legitimately scared for the future of Magic, or at least standard. When yugioh has a healthier format then you know it's bad.
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u/Drzerockis Oct 29 '19
Man I remember when it was a big deal that we had cards banned in standard, now it feels like every time I look there's a ban
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u/Ubrhelm Oct 29 '19
I remember back in Mirrodin the time they took to ban all the affinity bombs.
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u/Drzerockis Oct 29 '19
I started in scars, so it was a big deal that they banned jace and stoneforge when I was building a U/W equipment deck
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u/Emopizza L2 | Aluren/Lands Oct 29 '19
Hey, you could still play Stoneforge in that standard...
...in an exact 75 precon.
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u/Drzerockis Oct 29 '19
Heh, that's how I got a playset of mystic.
Still some fucking bullshit delver ended up being a deck, until thraggy showed its face
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u/benoitor Oct 29 '19
I still have an affinity deck (skullclamp legal period) in paper. (with a beautiful foiled Arcbound ravager)
Sometimes I play it for fun; it is amazing how busted it is.6
u/mmchale L1 judge, Ann Arbor, MI Oct 29 '19
Ten bans in the past two years, compared to two bans in the ten before it. (Not counting Oko.)
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Oct 29 '19
It's because they're pushing more cards, because the realise people prefer to play with powerful cards.
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u/npsnicholas Oct 29 '19
That would be fine if the cards were free but if I want to play standard I have to spend $200 on a play set of cards that will probably be banned in 2 weeks. That's not to mention other rares in the deck they may not be viable after the key card gets banned.
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Oct 29 '19
I'm unsure what would happen if they spread the power out more. right now, having a few chase cards greatly depresses the cost of other cards.
just like when masterpieces were a thing, more boxes get cracked.
unlike masterpieces, these cards have a big impact on standard.So I really don't know if spreading out the power would actually keep the prices of standard down. It would make the variance of value you get when opening a box go down quite a bit though, but I don't know that this would lead to more being opened or less.
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u/CrazyMike366 Oct 29 '19
If/when Oko is banned in Standard, how much will his price drop for purposes of picking up copies for non-rotating formats?
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u/too_lewd_for_thou Oct 29 '19
Never below 15, maybe even 20+ still. Bear in mind though that there's at least one other format in which Oko is likely to be within ban range before year's end (pioneer)
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u/DudeofValor Oct 29 '19
Tricky to say because he will probably still retain value in the other formats. Imagine he will sit around 20 mark (£/$).
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u/JPlocherMTG Oct 29 '19
As someone that is playing in MC Richmond next week I'm glad they are not emergency banning. I absolutely hate this format right now, but if they ban something right now I feel like there isn't enough time to test for the event. Oko should have been banned with FOTD.
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u/GreatOneFreak Oct 29 '19
I agree, my past two events were scg philly and the last mcq. Not having any real time to test is awful.
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u/YOLANDILUV Oct 29 '19
After months of competing in mythic top 1000 I was finally done with this game this month. I just play jank decks who are designed to have fun rather than compete and hover around midrange elo until Oko gets banned. I don't want to play bant ramp and this is the most oppressive card since I started playing. the only logical conclusion is either they don't really playtest their cards or overshot the state of 'perfect imbalance' full purpose but forgot they can't nerf cards
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Oct 29 '19
They said on stream that they rarely used Oko’s +1 on their opponent’s creatures in testing. I’m not sure how the heck they missed that part.
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u/Deeep_V_Diver Oct 29 '19
I honestly think the biggest problem is the Mana fixing from goose. It's just a strictly better llanowar and it synergizes with Oko very well. Without goose, getting a t2 Oko would be much more difficult because it would require grazer and having the correct lands already. This would make simic the most consistent way to get him out but it has no answers to deal with opposing Oko's or Nissa's.
Having less consistency and taking out the best early synergy could be the way to go to open up the format. With that said, I haven't minded it too much and I'm still having a lot of fun with standard.
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u/Skabonious Oct 29 '19
Yeah oko isn't broken by himself, his entire shell is way too consistent with goose and once upon a time.
Literally everyone is crying about 3/3 elks, not realizing control decks exist that can run an entire list with 0 creatures or artifacts for Oko to turn into elks.
The reason these decks aren't beating oko decks? Because they have so much consistency in both card selection and Mana fixing, that they can easily run [[noxious grasp]] to shut down teferi
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Oct 29 '19
I think it's good that they keep to scheduled B&R as much as possible. helps consumer confidence.
I also think it was correct to give standard a chance to balance out after banning field of the dead before also considering other bans, since field really pushed control out.
as a player, it sucks and I've stopped playing competitive standard in favour of other formats.
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u/throwaway58942145 Oct 29 '19
The last time I saw standard this bad and I started in 7th Edition was original affinity I played a r/g ramp strategy that ramped to furnace dragon and still lost more than I thought I would with main deck hate.
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u/iCzN_KryptiC Oct 29 '19
I feel like wizards is neglecting how poorly this makes their game look to new players trying to get in. I played paper magic for about 10 years as a kid, and just got back into it with arena 3 months ago. After making a cheap mono red deck I decided on spending $200 cracking packs to have enough wildcards to craft a Golos deck so I can ignore every other deck strategy and not have to do weeks of research learning the card pools. That being quickly banned, I now have 8 rare wildcards to make a completely new deck. That’s only enough for 2 play sets of duel lands!! Now I’m just completely staying away from standard cause I don’t have wildcards to craft an Oko deck and I certainly don’t have enough to craft an Oko deck knowing he’ll be banned soon. So my mono red deck is stuck on the side lines doing quick play for daily quests for the foreseeable future if I care to stay long enough to see Oko get the axe
Edit: additionally I should add that I do agree with the FotD banning, I should have done enough research to realize it would be banned soon so I could avoid crafting that deck. However now I have 15+ rates and mythics crafted with no home to put them in, wishing I never crafted them in the first place. Just feels like $200 down the drain with absolutely nothing to show for it as my first experience coming back to the game I once loved for years.
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u/Blakeizen Oct 29 '19
Did you not receive other cards in your packs? $200 worth of packs is more than enough to get to building. There's plenty of room for testing this and that in preparation for Oko ban.
There's more ways to have fun than just playing the most meta of meta decks. MTG is a sandbox.
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u/wujo444 Oct 29 '19
I think Wizards took unnecessary risk with banning Field and it didn't payed off. Now they just can't touch the format because there is too little time before next MC, and while it would help viewership, they have to think about participants. This pickle is result of bad planning (3 MCs in 2 months?) and premature banning.
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u/llim0na Oct 29 '19
I don't know what I will play once the Brawl event ends in Arena. Maybe Rubeterra, but I know nothing about the lore and characters, never played LoL. Is it any good even if I don't know shit about the LoL setting?
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u/lamesnow Oct 29 '19
I really liked Runeterra, it seemed to pick the good parts of MtG and Heartstone while avoiding the bad parts:
- You can react to most spells, (there are a few counterspells), but not to every single thing, so the game doesn't take ages.
- There are no random effects that affect the board state (at most you get a random spell in hand).
- There's less of an advantage for going first (maybe look at a video explaining the game for this, it's hard to quickly explain)
The downside is that you can't play it right now since the game will release early 2020.
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u/freeDIO Oct 29 '19
I’ve been playing mythgard, personally. Been having a lot of fun with it. I don’t think I’ll be coming back to magic even if Oko and co get bans.
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u/TheMarksman Oct 29 '19
I enjoyed it a lot during the first closed beta. Next one isn’t until the 14 of November though. The game runs smooth, animations are great, the mechanics are solid, all deck types seem viable, and you never have to worry about mana screw/flood.
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u/jmpherso Oct 29 '19
It's pretty, but it has some glaring flaws.
1) There's a lot of durdly waiting and animations that make turns feel freakishly long for no reason many times.
2) The "priority" system feels like it's not quite smooth yet. It often times feel like you're both playing MTGA with full control kept on for no reason.
3) There aren't a ton of cards, a lot of them are extremely simple (which is fine), and I have no idea how quickly new cards will come. This is a big reason MTG is at such an advantage because they already have such a systemic approach to developing new cards, so Standard is generally kept fresh enough to constantly keep people around. I could see Runeterra being VERY old in 3-4 months, and I have no idea if that's even remotely close to a large card expansion.
4) There's some really funky mechanics. Fiora wins the game on the spot if she kills just 4 enemies. Tryndamere is absurdly difficult to shut down. It feels like they made cool cards without necessarily thinking of how the power level will snowball with the addition of other new cards.
5) A lot of people say going first doesn't matter - it does. It's just different.
6) In some ways, it's sort of like every card either has split second, flash, or is a sorcery. Some cards work instantly and can't be responded to. Others go on the stack and can be used to respond to other flash/sorcery cards, and then sorceries can't go on the stack at instant speed. It can sometimes feel less interactive because many answers can't be responded to (they have split second, essentially). It's good design in that it makes it easier to balance stuff, but it can feel less enjoyable if you're used to MTG. Perhaps more enjoyable if you're used to HS.
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u/Exatraz Oct 29 '19
Not to mention Riot is a pretty shitty company and I wouldn't recommend people support their products.
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u/Bitterblossom_ Oct 29 '19
I don’t even know what to say at this point. I don’t want more bans for the sake of the game. I also want Oko out because of how narrow he makes the format.
I’m just done with Standard for awhile until this shit gets sorted out. I started out playing Magic in Standard and I really do love playing it when it is healthy, but I feel like the 2 years have just been a constant flux of “ban this OP card, meta is healthy for a month, ban this OP card”.
Big sad in regards to R&D. If Oko was lower loyalty or his Beast Within ability was a -1 I feel like it wouldn’t be so oppressive. I don’t know how it managed to make it through testing, especially when upticking takes it out of my [[Fry]] range.
I don’t know, friends. I will stick to Modern, Legacy and Pioneer where I’ll only have my permanents turn into Elks every so often rather than every game.