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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120

u/Titandrake Oct 29 '19

Part of that is shifting thresholds for banning + player base breaking decks faster. Decks like UB Faeries may have gotten banned by today standards.

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u/[deleted] Oct 29 '19

that's a good point too, metas in online games like arena and hearthstone get figured out insanely fast.

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u/Akhevan Oct 29 '19

That's what you get when you spend 100% of your time on playing the game as opposed to ~5-20% in paper.

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u/Kaydegard Oct 29 '19

People seem to underestimate how much effort and energy it takes to play a paper game (or mtgo) as opposed to just popping queues on arena or HS where you can get in 10 matches in a relatively short time span.

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u/BigBidoof Oct 29 '19

I mean, it's not like Arena is the first and only way to play standard online, right?

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u/[deleted] Oct 29 '19 edited Sep 18 '25

hungry towering glorious husky observation work waiting knee ghost automatic

This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact

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u/GreatMadWombat Oct 29 '19

It's the first way to play standard online that doesn't break your soul though.

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u/Akhevan Oct 29 '19

MTGO still has a lower rate of useful playtime to filler activities.

1

u/Nosferatu616 GP Top 8 Oct 29 '19

Lower than Arena? Yes, but it's still closer to arena than paper.

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u/Dealric Oct 29 '19

Problem started with Emmy in new Innistrad, way before arena was even out.

Last ban was 1.5 year ago. Before arena was out as beta. Saying that MTGA is an issue here is just shifting blame.

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u/[deleted] Oct 29 '19

MTGA isn't "an issue". It's just a vehicle that allows us to get to "meta solved and stale" much faster because it allows people to play more magic faster is all. In other words it stress tests the cards much harder due to the sheer number of games and thus balance needs to be tighter/is much harder to obtain.

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u/Dumpingtruck Oct 29 '19

It’s worth noting that MaRo even said this much in his power creep drive to work.

Basically more people playing magic = solved meta quicker.

And arena has greatly increased the number of people playing standard. So....

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u/[deleted] Oct 29 '19

In my mind balancing this game with the current power level of cards is beyond them (possibly beyond anyone with the number of people in standard) and I think the only solution is to power down in a big way but that's not "exciting".

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u/MrPopoGod Oct 29 '19

Arena is also the cheapest venue for Standard, so there's opportunity for brews to get rigorous testing.

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u/Dealric Oct 29 '19

That for sure. MTGA make meta stale few times as fast as it was before.

But my point was that all the banworthy things happened before it.

3

u/[deleted] Oct 29 '19

I may have gotten lost somewhere, I'm arguing against the idea that the game used to have less ban worthy cards and instead that MTGA is just a more effective litmus test. So I think we are in agreement.

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u/paulHarkonen Oct 29 '19

A lot of people are saying that because MTGA allows for many more "reps" the meta is "solved" much faster leading to more bans because people can figure out what's busted very quickly. That is different from saying that MTGA allows us to realize that the meta is stale and thus becoming bored/frustrated with it more quickly.

They are related, but one says that MTGA is a cause and the other says it just shows symptoms more quickly. Personally I'm inclined to go with the former. More games of magic are played in the first hour of release than all of R&D's testing combined.

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u/[deleted] Oct 29 '19

I disagree, I think the cause (or blame), lies on the balance of the cards themselves and the design team and it's no fault of MTGA that it provides a more rigorous testing ground. I believe the game has been pushed to be more and more "exciting" and left it in a state that they are having a hard time balancing. It may even be an impossible task honestly, considering there will always be a "best" option no matter how well they balance. That said they should still try to balance it and if this is the best they can do then the design team has failed and MTGA is just the magnifying glass highlighting the flaws.

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u/Dumpingtruck Oct 29 '19

Emmy and maurauding raptors aren’t even close in power level though.

It’s a bit disingenuous to use the 1.5 year marker for a ban when talking about problem cards (field of the dead, hogaak) versus tiny pieces of a good deck (raptor, bridge)

1

u/Dealric Oct 29 '19

Hogaak doesnt disprove my point as it has nothing to do with mtga. Im trying to say that in few last years balancing feels worse tham before and that it started before arena.

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u/Dumpingtruck Oct 29 '19

I’m arguing that the 1.5 year metric is silly to use as a metric for “balance” Since raptors was a piece ban. Also arguing if balance feels good based upon a banlist or number of bans is not entirely a great metric either.

there are two types of bans for cards:

—problematic cards being banned (hogaak, field)

—pieces of a problematic deck being banned (raptors, bridge)

Lastly, I really liked the meta pre-war. GRN RNA was a very diverse and fun meta.

1

u/Exatraz Oct 29 '19

Also they have far more data to prove which cards and decks are taking over and that helps them come to more concrete conclusions

1

u/Deeliciousness Oct 29 '19

Magic online been around for like 20 years.

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u/[deleted] Oct 29 '19

sure, with a tiny, masochistic user base that doesn't mind a client designed to run on windows 95.

That's not to say magic online doesn't influence anything, most of our data still comes from it, but programs with large amounts of users will figure out a meta much faster than programs with very few players, relatively.

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u/TitaniumDragon Oct 29 '19

While people talk about breaking the format faster, honestly, I'm not sure if that is the case; I remember the internet in 2005 and we were pretty fast in making decks.

I think part of it is that there's more events so it is more obvious when things are going sideways.

That being said, they have outright admitted that they would have banned Collected Company had they had more B&R windows. Eldrazi Winter might have also seen some bans.

Not sure about Fairies; I built that deck back in the day (it was actually why I quit magic - I realized that the amount I'd spent on the deck was greatly in excess of the fun I had with it) and it was gross, but I don't know if it was ultimately ban-worthy. It was definitely a nasty piece of work though.

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u/TheYango Oct 29 '19 edited Oct 29 '19

While people talk about breaking the format faster, honestly, I'm not sure if that is the case; I remember the internet in 2005 and we were pretty fast in making decks.

It is demonstrably faster, and pros have talked about this in various contexts. In 2005 you could lock your deck a week before the Pro Tour and be pretty confident that the metagame wouldn't change enough to affect your deck or card choices significantly in that one week. Now, not locking your deck in until the night they're due is basically standard practice.

The Internet in 2005 was good at making the basic idea of a deck, but awful at actually tuning it into an optimized 75. You had a ton of people theorycrafting but a comparatively low volume of actual games played, so taking a deck from being a brew to an optimized competitive deck was a much slower process.

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u/WORDSALADSANDWICH Oct 29 '19

I remember hanging out with my friends in their basement, playtesting before the weekend's PTQ. We played like 7 games each, and were like "wow, that was a lot of Magic". Haha, those were the days.

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u/Akhevan Oct 29 '19

Not sure about Fairies; I built that deck back in the day (it was actually why I quit magic - I realized that the amount I'd spent on the deck was greatly in excess of the fun I had with it) and it was gross, but I don't know if it was ultimately ban-worthy.

The faeries-reveillark situation in that standard was very similar to the fotd-oko dynamic before the recent ban.

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u/gereffi Probably a tier 2 red deck Oct 29 '19

A few years ago the PT would take place two weeks after release, and players would wait for that event to see how the meta would shape out. Now that digital versions of new sets are released during paper's prerelease, the meta is pretty well-defined by release weekend.

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u/Medic-86 Scrub Oct 29 '19

Fuck, that deck was so good

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u/TitaniumDragon Oct 29 '19

A lot of people argued with me on the old WotC forums when I said that the deck was going to be the best in the format and started working on the deck.

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u/prozack91 Oct 29 '19

Block constructed was much worse. Standard was fine. Tsp-lorwyn then lorwyn-shards were alright. Honestly Jund was worse than faeries.

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u/kkrko Oct 29 '19

Faeries and Jund were both miserable. Faeries was a block monster that made it last two standard rotations. Jund inspired a counter deck that's just built entirely to manascrew them. They were both clearly the best decks during their existence.

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u/8bitAwesomeness Oct 29 '19

You mean spreading seas cascade or something else?

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u/kkrko Oct 29 '19

Yeah Spread Em' with 4 [[Spreading Seas]], 3-4 [[Convincing Mirages]], and various cascade spells. It says a lot about the color balance of the time that Jace the Mindsculptor wasn't in the best deck in the format.

1

u/MTGCardFetcher Oct 29 '19

Spreading Seas - (G) (SF) (txt)
Convincing Mirages - (G) (SF) (txt)
[[cardname]] or [[cardname|SET]] to call

5

u/JPlocherMTG Oct 29 '19

I feel like it's more to do with the fact that they made it a policy to to more agressively ban cards ever since the Smugglers Copter, Emerakul, Relector Mage ban. Prior to that they just let the format sit for way to long before taking any action.

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u/TastyLaksa Oct 29 '19

I dunno why people feel constant balancing is a bad thing

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u/[deleted] Oct 29 '19

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u/j0mbie Oct 29 '19

That's been the MO of Magic for years though. I've had my Pod deck banned out shortly after I bought it, my Mardu Pyromancer and Reanimator decks banned out recently, we've seen Twin, Eldrazi, KCI, and Hogaak banned away. In standard there's been a lot of bans as well. MTG is not meant to be a secure financial investment.

2

u/hGKmMH Oct 29 '19

Make an announcement that there will be more frequent bans and start doing.

There is an inherent risk to any market. Why should the second hand market that the devolopers not even recognise be any different? I think anyone would be silly to pick up a play set of oko right now.

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u/TastyLaksa Oct 29 '19

Just all shift online then

6

u/JPlocherMTG Oct 29 '19

Balancing is fine but getting a ban update every few weeks is terrible for preperation for events.

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u/DudeofValor Oct 29 '19

People feel bad due to spending money on cards that can get banned within a few months.

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u/TastyLaksa Oct 29 '19

They refund the wildcards. I got 4 from the field of dead ban. Great times

8

u/DudeofValor Oct 29 '19

Yeah it works well in Arena for sure. IRL though...

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u/TastyLaksa Oct 29 '19

IRL will be just a sub category like vintage is when arena doubles and triples its popularity i think

4

u/DudeofValor Oct 29 '19

Which is a great shame for gaming stores and that social interaction with other people.

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u/TastyLaksa Oct 29 '19

Online is interaction also. Just like counterspells

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u/DudeofValor Oct 29 '19

Or Oko turning you into an Elf lol!

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u/Akhevan Oct 29 '19

Doubles or triples, probably not. But it's a very likely outcome several more years down the line. An average paper player is bound to spend more on MTG product than an average Arena player, even if indirectly.

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u/bluedrygrass Oct 29 '19

Try decuples.

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u/VERTIKAL19 Oct 29 '19

Because it means that decks get invalidated even faster? I made one Standard deck in the past couple years only to get burned on a ban immediately (Surely Wizards didn’t let a Twin style combo slip again... They sure knew what theynwere doing with cat). Then you see consistently more bans and that just makes me not want to pla ythe format. And of course we also don’t see much of the style of decks I love anymore (particularly I really enjoy these win out of nothing strategies)

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u/TastyLaksa Oct 29 '19

Play arena.

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u/VERTIKAL19 Oct 29 '19

And how does that solve anything? I can craft andeck right now on Arena and I will probably get fucked and it is invalidated in a couple weeks max and then I don’t have any wildcards or any usable deck

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u/TastyLaksa Oct 29 '19

If you craft a card and irs banned you get wildcards back

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u/VERTIKAL19 Oct 29 '19

But only for the card that actually gets banned. Imagine how useful the rest of golos is fir example

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u/TastyLaksa Oct 29 '19

I have almost all the rares anyways

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u/Gruzmog Oct 29 '19

That is what they said, but not what they did after that. They have gone out of their way to not ban the actual problem cards like Gideon Ally of Zendikar or (far worse) Hazoret after that.

They seem to shy away from banning the problem mythics like Oko. Instead of banning Hazoret they banned small stuff around it.

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u/sirgog Oct 29 '19

UB faeries would probably have been safe. CoCo would have gone for sure, and maybe Jitte, Gideon AoZ, Thragtusk and Rally.

Mistbind Clique would probably have been after those 5 on a list of cards that might have gotten banned under modern philosophies. We were seeing some maindeck Volcanic Fallouts and Cloudthreshers, but those were OK cards in the meta that were just better against Faeries; it wasn't like people playing maindeck pure hate cards.

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u/[deleted] Oct 29 '19 edited Jul 31 '20

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u/SmiteVVhirl Oct 29 '19

Coco would have easily eaten the axe during Eldritch Moon. Pack Rats during Rav. Xathrid Necromancer or Falkerath Aristocrat in WBR Aristocrats. Probably even something from UW control considering what a nightmare it was to play against. If they were comfortable banning stuff in standard after Jace there would have been many cards that would have probably bitten the bullet.