How Reality TV paved the way for Game of Thrones

(Warning: spoilers for like, everything on earth follow.)

Twice now, in Game of Thrones, the audience of home has reacted in horror as one of the series’ many leads was cut down in cold blood.  They were shocked, dismayed, and upset.  But secretly? They were also exhilerated.  Narrative conventions thrown out the window. Complete unpredictability.  “No one is safe.” Author George R.R. Martin has said that he’s written these books as if writing historical fiction where the audience doesn’t know the outcome.  It’s one thing to be watching a war movie where we know the Nazis lose.  It’s quite another to be watching one where you have no idea who’s going to come on top.  But this isn’t the first time we’ve seen audiences blindsided by a show turning the tables on their expectations.

On May 31, 2000, Survivor premiered.   As it aired its initial slate of episodes, viewers steadily increased, and a pattern emerged in the editing.  Viewers were given a logical reason for why someone was voted out, and the editing was sure to make viewers understand why the group did what they did, even if they didn’t fully agree with.  In episode 1: Sonja got axed because she was old.  E2? BB, cause he was obnoxious.  3- Stacy-Annoying. 4-Ramona- Sick.  5? Dirk, too religious.  6, Joel, too chauvinistic.  It was essentially a social morality play, one where viewers didn’t know the outcome.  But in episode 7, the rug was pulled out from everyone when the merge turned the game individual.  Gretchen, the castmember who you’d most want by your side in a real survival situation, was voted out because they perceived her to be the biggest threat to their chances to winning the game. There was suddenly no moral compass, no justification given to the vote other than “you win or you die.” Audiences were stunned.  Shocked.  Outraged.  And they came back for more, as ratings for the finale nearly doubled that of Gretchen’s boot episode.

Long before Game of Thrones came on the air, Survivor introduced audiences to the world of “reality TV.”  But a better name for what Survivor is would be the “Serialized Game Show.”   Survivor penalizes the viewer for missing episodes, because each episode is intrinsically linked to the events of the prior one.  Although you could usually pick up what was going on, missing an episode of the show was like skipping a chapter in a book.  Shows like Survivor trained audiences to make TV shows a habit, rather than something you could flip on and off at any time, like Law & Order.   They also expected more out of their audience’s attention.  Because they’d start with a cast of 16-20, it was important for the editors to be able to help the audience learn who these strangers were as they started battling each other in the TV arena.  Shows like Survivor helped change people’s perception of what viewers were willing to tolerate.  They required viewer investment and rewarded those viewers with thrills you simply couldn’t get elsewhere.

There’s a reasons Survivor fan fics always suck:  the real thing is just straight up better.  Survivor is a show that kills a character every episode.  Each episodes builds on the tension and dynamics established in the previous episode, and each episode closes with a tense (or edited-to-be-tense) vote where the audience is shock/relieved/indifferent to find out who’s getting their head chopped off.  The very nature of the game- it’s unscripted nature,  is what makes the show so compelling.  Arya stark states that “Anyone can be killed”, and on both Game of Thrones and serialized game shows, that’s definitely the case.  In the case of reality TV, history is literally unwritten, and in Game of Thrones, it’s written as though it weren’t even written.  We learn to understand the motivations of each of the characters, even if we don’t like them, and when the audience’s hopes are dashed, broken, and bloodied, we always understand why. (In the context of the story.)The very things that made a show like Survivor work helped pave the way to show people that it really could be possible for audiences to fall in love with a series that tends to kill off the audience’s favorite characters! 

However, over the years, some of these shows have taken steps to try and insure that a happy ending almost always occurs, and have hurt themselves in the process.  Later this week, I’ll have an update into how some of these evolutions have actively worked to actively make reality TV competitions worse, and how I think the situation can be rectified.

Grand Prix KC Modern Postmortem

Modern, as a format, is in much better shape than it was a year ago. But it’s still not “there” yet. Here’s where I think it’s having issues and needs improvement.

1) Commentary is a huge issue for coverage

The commentary (Marshall Sutcliffe and Ben Swartz) was simply not up to the task. (Don’t take this personally if you read this guys!) They’re obviously familiar with the broad strokes of the format, but they don’t know the intricacies or interactions very well, and so it just gets infuriating to listen to after a while. You actually need to be familiar with the past 10 years of magic cards and how they interact in a competitive setting, and the lack of actual hands-on experience showed in the booth. You can teach a coverage guy the general deck archetypes. But you can’t teach him hours upon hours of play experience. WotC really needs to step up coverage where formats like Modern/Legacy are concerned and get players to commentate who know their stuff and who can adequately explain complex board states to viewers. This format’s not easy, and has a lot of very odd cards in it thanks to the Time Spiral era. Explaining broad strategies, why someone might choose a certain line, why someone would risk tapping out vs. Twin, etc. All commentators will make mistakes. Finding players who are available, commentate well, know the format, and will give up playing a GP won’t be easy, but if you can pull it off, it’ll be a huge benefit to introducing players to the wonders of Eternal and almost-Eternal formats.

2) Modern has an “Oops I Win” problem

I really like Modern. But, after having a relatively balanced metagame for a while, we’re now seeing a shift to a metagame consisting of 50% combo decks. The problem isn’t so much that more people are playing straight-up combo decks. The problem is that all sorts of tradtional midrange and control decks are now adapting combo finishes. Pod, a midrange deck in Standard, now plays either a GY recursion kill engine or a Kiki-Jiki engine. UWR control decks have adapted to having a bunch of value guys +Splinter Twin/Kki. And other combo decks have moved into “normal” territory – Living End now plays a LD suite it hardcasts. Scapeshift imitates a control shell that seeks to just blast its opponents when it hits 7-8 lands. Dedicated control decks and aggro decks are just left in the cold right now as they can’t keep up with the arms race. Note how Affinity’s just not a deck right now. The metagame’s pushing decks into directions (better be able to beat infinite life bro!) that seem very unhealthy, and Chapin’s prediction that “more bans will be necessary” seems likely to come to fruition. The scapeshift/UWR match was the perfect example of what this format could be, and was unique because the endgame resembled an actual game of magic rather than a concession to an onboard kill. That kind of tension was missing throughout the coverage, and when you saw it there, it served as a reminder of what the best games of magic are really like. We need more of those and less invisible trigger chains

3) Ban suggestions/food for thought

This is going to be me spitballing, but here goes. We all knew the ban list would need to be worked on. It seems likely that it’ll need to be tweaked some more. These are cards that I think merit consideration. I’m throwing out my thoughts on them. Some I think are good ideas. Others probably aren’t.

Simian Spirit Guide– This card only shows up in dedicated combo decks. And they’re the sorts of decks which are generally going to routinely be violating the “T4” rule. (Goryo’s Vengeance/Breach, Living End.) In a format where Lotus Petal would be “too good”, this guy is essentially a Lotus Petal you can’t even interact with, and who helps strategies (on the margins) that you really don’t want to be giving the help to. It was doing some really gross things all day, and unlike a ritual or mana dork, you can’t interact with the ability pre-emptively

Birthing Pod– I’m actually a fan of this card. I don’t think banning Pod itself really solves any problems though. It’s a very good enabler, but the interactions it enables already exist elsewhere. Case in point:

Melira, Sylvok Outcast– The interaction between her and the persist creatures is hugely problematic. The misguided templating on her ability is unfortunately not errata-able , and so we’re stuck with a not-so-difficult to assemble infinite life combo that’s relatively resilient. Even with Pod gone, you end up with a deck that looks like a totally bananas version of Junk Aristocrats. It’d be a weird ban for sure, but they’ve banned weirder.

Kiki-Jiki– I actually think he’s fine. 5 mana 2/2? Sure. Not a problem. However…

Splinter Twin– The phantom menace of the format. Splinter Twin is a very oppressive card, in that the deck/strategy’s existence warps everyone else’s consderations of what to play since you need to be able to prevent the T3 EoT Exarch, tap a land, T4 Twin play on the draw. The deck does a lot of awful things to how you have to approach the format, and KOing its consistency (making it have to rely on only Kiki) would, imo, greatly improve people’s willingness to play more “tap out” type archetypes that are currently just shut down because of this dumb card’s existance. Speaking of really stupid cards…..

Emrakul, The Aeons Torn– This card sucks to play with. The Commander team knew it. Market research shows it. We know it. It’s not fun to play with, it’s not fun to play against. In Legacy, there are many, many more lines of interaction, mostly due to SnT and Karakas. In Modern? Not so much. The Goryo’s Vengeance deck is really cool, but Emrakul is the part that turns it from cool to miserable. None of the other cards involved are all that overpowered, even Mr. Grislebanned, and I’d really like to find a way to keep cards like Vengeance and Through the Breach in the format without having to deal with “lol you can’t do anything about it.”

So, those are my big 4. I do think that Modern needs tuning adjustments at this point. All-Combo-All-The-Time is not really going to work in the long run, but I don’t think we need huge changes that eradicate archetypes altogether. I think SSG, Melira, Splinter Twin, and Emrakul all leaving would contribute to a much healthier format. But I’m curious what other people think. Sound off below or hit me up on twitter.

Rising Waters, Sunken Hope

Have you noticed it? It’s creeping up all around you. Prices have been slowly climbing to untold-of heights. First Innistrad block started shooting up. Now Legacy’s starting its climb. And soon, in a few months, we’re going to see the effects hit Modern when PTQ season starts. The entire MTG price floor is rising due to increased demand, and we’ve just started to feel the impact.

Some people have been calling this a bubble. Those people are wrong. This is not a bubble. This is the end result of Duels of the Planeswalkers 2013 and Return to Ravnica. The sold-out prereleases nationwide were a harbinger. The player base has expanded dramatically in the course of a few months as players both old and new have entered (or re-entered) the game’s player base. This is going to have enormous implications for all three major constructed competitive formats.

First off is Standard. This is going to be the one least affected by these issues. The cards pre-RTR are simply just going to be annoyingly expensive until they rotate out of Standard. That’s all. We’ve seen this happenen with Scars block last year, but this is hitting harder due to just how large the player influx was this year. RTR block, however, should be priced at a point that makes sense due to the ability of prices to hit “Box Equilibrium” from dealers simply cracking product and redeeming MTGO collections. You think the prices of Shocklands are low now? Just wait a few months. You won’t believe how low they go.

Next up is Legacy. Don’t believe there’s a demand increase? Just go take a look at JTMS, Polluted Delta, and The Abyss. Oh, and Underground Sea. The format’s edging ever closer to that point where it shuts out more people than it’s worth, but unfortunately I don’t think Modern’s in a position yet to take the “Eternal Format of Choice” mantle away if the PT results are anything to go by.) I’m very curious how the attendance disparity between SCG D1/D2 will evolve this year, as at some point, the barrier issues in the format are going to start creating issues trying to run a tournament series half-based on the format. The manabases are the critical issue, and while reprinting fetches would help, the duals are just going to keep going up up up, and at some point, the players “sitting on the sideline” will force a change. The question is just how big that untapped player volume is right now.

And finally, we get to Modern. If you thought prices were bad now… you have no idea what we’re in for. What’s happened to Legacy courtesy of the SCG series will happen to Modern, courtesy of PTQ season, and I have every expectation that we’re about to get a severe price shock to the format’s staples. Players are going to be eagerly awaiting the impact of MTGMM on accessibility. It’s going to be viewed as the format’s salvation, in a way.

But sadly, I don’t think it’s going to be enough. Tarmogoyf is already around $85-100. I expect that price to rise. And with it, I expect Modern Masters to both a) quickly sell out and b) not have the market impact they’re hoping for due to the unexpectedly massive player influx from RTR. This product was planned out before they could have know that was coming, and I strongly suspect that it’s going to underperform in re-adjusting the market, at least with that particular Green Llhurgoyf.

So what,as players, should our reaction be to all this? Simple- if you need it, get it now. You’re already late to the game if this price level rise is new to you, but luckily, most people who aren’t dealers haven’t quite caught wind of just how seismic this shift in demand is. With any luck, you’ll be able to get what you need before the rising price tide puts a severe damper on your ability to pick up a brand new deck.

Cavern of Souls and the “Counterspell Problem” in Standard.

Cavern of Souls, in the matter of less than 24 hours, has created an enormous amount of discussion and outcry. Some believe that people are over-reacting, and indeed, they probably are in a format like Legacy, where Wasteland is there to punish greedy manabases. But the outcry over the card has more to do with how R&D’s recent decisions over the past few years have led to a place where countermagic, despite their best intentions, has become the best method of interacting with opposing cards, despite their public desire to see it diminished in effectiveness. And thus, with the prospect of a card that completely blanks any card with “Counter Target Spell” on it is legitimately terrifying to people.

But what exactly has led to this point? The issue here really starts not with Counterspells, but with R&D’s stated goal of “Making Creatures Good”. At the beginning of the game’s history, Creatures were, indeed, underpowered relative to other classes of cards. Over time, R&D has slowly been ramping up the power level of creature cards to get them on a level equal to the other card types.

In addition, R&D discovered that counterspells were frustrating to a large portion of the player base, as it felt “better” to them to have a creature taken out by Wrath of God or Doom Blade instead of a dastardly Counterspell. This led R&D to attempt to gradually scale back the power level of countermagic. They’ve printed less of them and made them less efficient, so that decks consisting of 20+ counterspells are no longer really viable in format. However, there have usually been a few decent ones kicking around each format, so that the threat of a counterspell is always there.

However, in recent years, the push to make creatures better has begun to work at cross purposes with R&D’s other goal of reducing the prevalence of weakening counterspells. Two methods in particular have increased the marginal value of countermagic relative to other forms of removal, and in the process, forced decks to lean on the few counterspells they have even harder in order to interact with their opponent’s cards.

The first trend that has led to this has been a steady increase in in the power level and tonnage of “187” creatures with “Enters the Battlefield” abilities. First introduced in Visions, and quickly adopted and expanded upon in future Magic expansions, these “Virtual Vanillas” have spell-like effects when entering the battlefield. Cards like Cloudgoat Ranger, Sea Gate Oracle, or Acidic Slime all leave their controller up a “Card”, even if the creature is subsequently removed with a spell like Lightning Bolt or Doom Blade after it enters the battlefield. Because of this, the relative value of Countermagic compared to other types of traditional damage or destruction-based removal has actually increased because of the added marginal benefit of keeping the creature’s “spell effect” off the battlefield as well. The cycle of Titans is the best possible example of this. If you take out any of the cycle (Except Frost Titan) out after they enter the battlefield, your opponent is still “up” 1-2 cards, and if they’ve attacked? 2-4! Because of this, players in Standard have had to rely on countermagic as the primary means of fighting this attrition war.

But card advantage isn’t the only reason that players have reacted so strongly here. The introduction of mass amounts of Hexproof creatures into the Standard environment over the past four sets has created a situation where again, players have been conditioned to use countermagic over other forms of removal if they want to interact with these creatures. With Hexproof creatures, they are unable to be targetted by an opponent once they enter the battlefield, blanking cards like Doom Blade. But unlike the Shroud creatures like Blastoderm, that previously graced the battlefields of Magic, who were able to be chump blocked for days, the Hexproof ability allows the creature’s controller to attach Auras and Equipment that provide evasive abilities to their Hexproof creatures, making it nearly impossible to interact with the creature once it resolves without an instant speed disenchant effect and a handy blocker. This natural resistance to both blocking and spot removal again creates a stuation where counterspells become the simplest answer to a creature with Hexproof, as the chances of interacting with the creature while it is in play are then restricted mostly to sweepers, which are relatively narrow, often inefficient, and have a great deal of issues in the current standard environment due to mechanics like Undying.

And thus, is it any wonder that a large number of players are immediately concerned by Cavern of Souls? The move towards strong 187 and Hexproof creatures has created a situation where the value of the ability to interact with a creature before it hits the battlefield far outweighs the value of attempting to interact with it once it resolves. Despite weakening counterspells overall, R&D has steadily increased their marginal value relative to other forms of removal and interaction over the past year. And now, with many players seeing them as the*only* defense they have against the hexproof and ETB creatures in the format, suddenly a card appears that threatens to shut that entire line of play down without a single non-land card slot being used up in the process.

Is it any wonder that panic has erupted? R&D has, despite their best efforts, steadily increased the marginal value of countermagic even as they’ve reduced the power and number of individual counterspells. Now, with players perceiving that the best class of interactive spells is about to be rendered obsolete, they fear that Standard may become a format where you are simply playing “at” your opponent, trying to race or out-trump them , rather than a format where you can expect to interact or interfere with their gameplan in any reasonable manner. And given what we’ve seen of Standard lately, with control decks on life support, I do not believe that fear to be unwarranted or irrational.

Cube Draft #1!

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Cube Draft #2!

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The 9/20 Modern B/R Updates- My take

September 20th is going to be a very interesting day.  Not only will the B/R updates be out, but the Innistrad spoiler will have launched the previous day.  This is likely going to result in MAJOR upheaval in all 3 major constructed formats on October 1st, as Legacy is almost certainly seeing a Mental Misstep ban, Standard is going to see a rotation, and Modern is certainly going to have some adjustments to the B/R list.  In addition, Aaron Forsythe has mentioned that they are going to be much more liberal than usual with Modern bans and unbannings in order to try and adjust various facets of the format and keep it from becoming stale.  That means we likely have big adjustments on their way after the combo-dominated PT: Philly, and a potential for sweeping change.  So, as we prepare for the oncoming wave, here’s what I think should/will happen to the banlist in the format.

Unbans:

Ancestral Vision

This one is a no-brainer.  It doesn’t appear as though this card would even see play in the current format, and it doesn’t appear to be particularly dangerous without Bitterblossom around to provide a way to stall out the game.

Jace, the Mind Sculptor

The primary reason for his ban was to avoid a PT: Jace scenario, which the switch from Extended was designed to do.  After seeing the results of the PT, it’s highly unlikely the format would allow that to occur, given the speed of many of the decks.  And what better way to drum up excitement than let one of the most notorious cards in history loose once more.

Bans:

Cloudpost

There’s no way around this one:  the post has to go.  With the concious decision to scale back the power of Wasteland/Stone Rain effects in Modern design, the card is simply too good, too fast, and too  difficult for other decks to interact with in this format.  If you want people to be able to cast “their spells”, you need to ensure that “their  spells” are of a reasonable casting cost.  The Urzatron will still exist, and feed into a much slower, fairer, and interactive deck.

Blazing Shoal

This one saddens me, but there’s no good way around it, and it’s because of the same issue Cloudpost faces- with no Wasteland or Force of Will effects, the deck is simply far too fast for the format.

Emrakul, the Aeons Torn

Emrakul’s problem is simply a lack of ways to interact with him.  When cheated into play, say via Through the Breach, there’s nothing you can do other than to attempt to counterspell the Breach.   Once he’s in play, there’s nothing you can really do to interact with the big stupid spaghetti monster.  He’s been banned in EDH for being “un-fun”, and I suspect a similar fate awaits him in Modern.

Pact of Negation

Pact is here because it has only one purpose- protecting Combo decks the turn they go off.  It’s a free counter that only works in the most dominant set of archetypes in the format, and really does nothing positive for the format.  Disrupting Shoal is a much, much fairer version of the same effect.

Splinter Twin

This will get hit to slow down the Twin combo decks by forcing them to rely on Kiki-Jiki, a much more fragile combo generator, instead.  The deck’s incredibly oppressive, and this would allow more decks the ability to interact with them favorably.

Rite of Flame

T1 Ascension is a problem, and this slows the speed of U/R storm combo decks considerably.  It’s very possible that they might hit more of the Storm cards as well, but this is one I’m fairly certain won’t survive the bannings.

Planeswalker Points and the WoW Daily Dungeon Quest Problem

With the emergence of a new non-ELO ratings system, Wizards of the Coast has sought to fix a significant flaw in the system: that the ELO rating system actively discouraged players from playing. However, with the change to Planeswalker Points, we now have another system that itself may actually have the exact same problem, albeit, via a different set of incentives. To explain why this is, I first want to take you to a little game called World of Warcraft.

In World of Warcraft: WotLK and Cataclysm, when playing at high levels, you earned points by defeating high-level bosses in 10 and 25-man groups that could be translated into personal rewards. And to encourage high-level players to still use the 5-man systems, the developers put into place a system that gave you points for doing the 5-man dungeons once a day. However, this change ended up being a double-edged sword for the game. High-level gamers want to Min-Max (they’re Spikes, after all), and as min-maxers, that meant that if you weren’t able to get online and grind a 5 man each day, and make every raid that week, you would fall behind your fellow players. And if you were to fall behind to far, there’s a chance you could be replaced eventually by someone else. The incentive to get on and grind the game was one that eventually led me to quit the game, as I was not able to keep up, due to school and work commitments. Being able to hop online for at least an hour or two a day just wasn’t feasible for me. I’m not the only person who felt this way, either, as earlier this year, Blizzard changed the Daily Dungeon quest to a set of 7 Dungeon runs that could be completed at any point during the week, due to the negative impact this incentive had on their playerbase.

Why does this matter to Magic? Because with the advent of Player points, we can easily just replace WoW with M:TG, and replace Daily Dungeon with Weekly FNMs. With the system changing from the Zero-Sum ELO system to an “All-Upside” system, the incentive is now to play as much as you humanly can. The system is now in danger of essentially rewarding “those with no life” instead of “those who play the best”, due to the system’s inability to judge how good your opponent is. A win against Kai Budde at a Grand Prix now gets you the exact same amount of points as you’d gain against a 5 year old kid who started playing two months ago. And because of this, the system now rewards your # of wins, more than your quality of wins. The system now says: “You have a full time job and a kid? Better win a PTQ or be able to get a special invite from WotC.” The incentives are now perverted.

PVDDR noted that with “results: GP 1st, GP t4, GP t16, PT t64. My ranking in #pwp for that time period: 51st. 1400 points behind Alex who didn’t even attend the PT.” This is the sort of problematic issue that can potentially drive top-tier players away from the game, as if they’re unable to compete with the college/unemployed grinder types in quantity of events, there needs to be a quality mechanism in place to try and correct this. Apparently there is supposed to be some sort of placement bonus for the T8 at these major events. I would suggest that the bonuses need to go far deeper than that, in order to try and make these events more than simply the equivalent of 5 or 6 large FNMs. Another solution would be to simply maintain the Pro Player’s Club, in addition to the current system, in order to help players who are only able to make large events due to their professional and personal commitments. The greatest danger with the current system is the frightening possibility of a player winning a Grand Prix, yet not qualifying for the PT on rating because they simply didn’t attend enough events. Hopefully it will not take a robbery of that magnitude to induce changes in the new system. While the old one was not perfect, it at least was a way to measure “skill” in the game. The new system seems to measure one’s willingness to sacrifice one’s free time far more instead, and hopefully, there will be some way in the future for the two to come into balance.

The Modern Banlist: Why Tarmogoyf Must Go

The Modern format has arisen out of the crippling supply issues facing the Legacy format.  Due to WoTC’s inability to reprint format staples due to their presence on the reserve list, a severe shortage of cards for the format has lead to prices spiraling out of control and a large number of players priced out of the format, unable to get over the incredibly high barrier to entry.  The format has become unsustainable due to its inability to accommodate new players, and this has led to the creation of Modern, a format where none of the cards are on the reserved list.  A provisional ban list has been created, and the standards for bans seem to be the same as any other format.  But this is a mistake.  Modern is not just any format, it is designed to be a sustainable Eternal format.  Allowing Legacy-esque barriers to entry to emerge in the format would be a gigantic mistake.  And it’s because of those potential barriers that I say this: Tarmogoyf is not a sustainable card, would create an enormous barrier to entry to the format, similar to Jace in the current Standard format, and should be banned pre-emptively to nip this issue in the bud.

Tarmogoyf is an unsustainable card for one simple reason: There is no realistic  way for WoTC to add enough additional copies of the card to the market to put a dent in its value.  The card is a horrible mistake and supremely unbalanced.  There’s virtually no chance they would be willing to risk it in a Standard environment again, so reprinting it in a normal expansion is out.  Because the card is $75, there’s also no way for them to reprint it in a duel, commander, or other such preconstructed product, due to the card single-handedly raising the market price of the deck to triple its MSRP.  And although they could print it in a “From the Vaults” set, the impact of such a printing would be negligible.  The price would barely register a drop, as the print run for those sets is very, very small.

Because of this, Tarmogoyf is essentially on the Reserved list.  This is a problem because Tarmogoyf is a card which we know to be incredibly powerful, and one we know would be a major player in the Modern format.    The issue is that as time goes on, demand for this card is only going to go up and up, and available supply will gradually diminish.  This leaves us with the same barrier to entry issues that we see in Legacy and Standard.  In Legacy, most decks require a down payment of $500 or more, simply to get a “real” manabase.  In Standard, you need to have four Jace, the Mind Sculptors before moving on to the other 56 cards.  Having access to four Tarmogoyfs will be a necessity for any serious Modern player, and will, over time, become an even bigger hurdle for the format and a bigger problem for the game overall.   The solution to this problem is simple.  Ban Tarmogoyf before it even has a chance to become a problem.

Standard needs bans. But which ones?

Where should the banhammer fall in Standard?

Right now, Standard is actively driving away players.  Standard tournament attendance is dropping, and people are frustrated.  People are staying home rather than play frustrating mirrors and barely interactive matchups all day, and I cannot blame them.  Recently, many believe a ban to be almost inevitable.  However, there’s been much debate over what should or should not be banned.  I think there are currently two cards that need to go, another that should probably go, a fourth that may be a good idea, and a fifth that some have wanted to see banned, but I would like to see given time in a new format.  The first of these, however, I believe to be a non-negotiable.

Public Enemy Number One- Stoneforge Mystic.

Once a nice, friendly card advantage engine for Boros in Standard, and a Sword-protector in Standard, this little guy has turned into a monster, rivaling Bitterblossom  in the amount of frustration he can create when played by an opponent?  How did this happen?  There are two big reasons why.

a) He’s a tutor.  One big problem with the current environment is Mystic’s ability to tutor up a protection Sword for all 5 colors in the game or a Living Weapon capable of acting as a removal spell (Mortarpod) or a Baneslayer Angel (Batterskull.)   This tutoring ability is a huge problem, because alongside Preordain, the redundancy in these decks is huge.   And when combined with the next set of problems, the Mystic’s tutoring ability can blow games out in ways Bitterblossom only dreamed of.

b) He lets you ignore costs.  Costs matter to game design.  Players  evaluate the tradeoffs between various costs and benefits, and make decisions accordingly in an attempt to win. The game does not just revolve around the positive benefits, as a system of checks and balances have to be put into place to keep the game fun, interesting, and interactive.   In Magic, cards, mana, and time are all resources, and Mystic allows one to cheat all 3.  The “Card” cost is cheated via his Tutor ability.  He doesn’t “cost” a card, as he replaces himself when cast.  The Mana cost is cheated via his activated ability.  His ability allows you to put any size equipment into play for two mana. This was not so problematic when the equipment you could put into play with the ability only cost one or two mana.  However, as the Swords and Batterskull cost 3 or 5 mana, he is now allowing players to cheat mana costs and obtain access to powerful abiliies at least one or two turns ahead of when they should.

The third thing he lets you ignore is time.  None of the equipment in Standard has flash.  However,  due to his ability, Stoneforge Mystic allows a player to play equipment during his opponent’s end step.  And now, due to the living weapon mechanic, he allows you to play creatures during your opponent’s end step as well.  This reduces the “opportunity cost” of playing equipment severely, as you no longer have to tap mana during your main phase to play it.  It also reduces the potential risk of your opponent playing counter spells against you.  He creates a very similar situation to what was present to the one the Faeries deck creates, which is that while he is in play, you get “The Button”, and are able to act last.  Instead of having to proactively  put out threats, he lets you wait until the last possible moment to do so, and in a way that makes it very difficult for your opponent to interact with you.

The sad thing is that these problems were likely avoidable.  The concept of the card is awesome.  A blacksmith dreams up a weapon, then makes it for you!  Had his ability been XW, tap, (where X is the CMC of the equipment), and not 1W, tap, he would have been “future proofed”, and still a very, very good card.  But by not recognizing the benefits provided by his  ability, and not forcing it to scale  to the size of the equipment being “dreamed up”,  he has become a  destructive force, and one that needs to be removed from the Standard format for the good of the game.  He is the biggest blunder in Standard contained in a single card.  However, he is likely not the biggest blunder, when considering card combinations.  That would go to the following fellow and his friend Deceiver Exarch.

Public Enemy Number Two: Splinter Twin.

I feel bad for Splinter Twin.  He shoudn’t be a part of this discussion.  Deceiver Exarch never should have been printed with that casting cost at this point in time.  If he was a 4 or 5 mana critter with a smaller butt, we wouldn’t be having this discussion. But he was, and so we must have it.  Splinter Twin is a problem because it prevents one’s opponents from actually playing a game of Magic.  Once the Splinter Twin player has 3 mana open, you can no longer tap out.  Doing so puts you at risk of the other player simply going “EOT Flash Exarch in, Main Phase Twin, you lose!”  While there are indeed many ways to go after this deck, because the Splinter Twin deck is often running disruption and/or counterspells, there’s quite a large chance that they will be unfazed, and simply swat them away.   Another consideration is that one of the biggest problems with this format has been its hostility to agressive creature-based strategies, normally one of the keystones of a healthy metagame.  They often have no choice but to tap out each turn to play threats, and this non-interactive combo actively punishes them for doing it.  If Mystic were to be banned, this deck would almost certainly just take its place at the top of the food chain.  And unfortunately, that would be as equally bad a situation.   This lack of aggro decks has been the primary reason for the next card’s dominance, and it is a situation that a few well-placed bans would hopefully correct.

Mr. Misunderstood:  Jace, the Mind Sculptor.

Jace, the Mind Sculptor is an overpowered card.  His Brainstorm ability NOT having a loyalty cost attached to it is one of the most absurd decisions made by R&D in recent years.  Would an legendary enchantment that let you brainstorm once during your main phase be overpowered?  Most would say yes.  And combined with the rest of his abilities, Jace has become a problem in many formats.  But I do not believe Jace to be the true cause of Standard’s problems.  His ubiquity is merely a symptom of the lack of aggro decks in the format, and the design problems created by the introduction of planeswalkers.  While he is good, he’s also very soft to his older self, Mr. Jace Beleren, who is also quite absurd at the moment.  Even if Big Jace were banned, Little Jace would simply take his place, as the same things making Big Jace good are making Little Jace, and planeswalkers in general, quite insane right now.  Let’s take a look at why that is.

The Planeswalker Problem

Planeswalkers were designed to allow players to play with Storyline characters in ways that weren’t previously possible, and have been a success on many levels.  However, their introduction has changed the way we have to evaluate many strategies, and this has created an imbalance in the current Standard environment tilting it in their favor.  Planeswalkers are designed to be dealt with either by damage, or via a spell or ability that takes them out in a single shot, like Maelstrom Pulse.   When Alara left the Standard format, almost all of the non-direct damage ways to kill a Planeswalker left the format.  This created several problems.  The first is that Planeswalkers have haste, while most creatures do not.  This means that a Planeswalker will immediately make an impact on the battlefield and be able to interact with a non-haste creature before the  creature can interact with it.  I believe this to be a big reason as to why creatures have suddenly found it “necessary” to have haste in recent years in order to be viable in constructed.  As annoying as Bloodbraid Elf was, it quickly became a necessary evil in order to allow the beatdown decks a sledgehammer to throw against the planeswalkers.  He nearly single-handedly kept Jace in check while he was in Standard, alongside Maelstrom Pulse, Vengevine, and Blightning.  Planeswalkers were designed to be killable by an army of dorks.  However, players’ ability to play agressive strategies has not been solely limited by the existance of Planeswalkers.  I believe the following card has been the biggest issue for them in standard, and unfortunately, until the Splinter Twin deck replaced it, been the biggest combo problem around.

The Phantom Menace- Valakut, the Molten Pinnacle.
Valakut is essentially a long-form combo deck.  It does not interact often with the opponent’s deck.  It seeks solely to assemble a set of lands that allow it to first wrath an opponent’s board, if necessary, followed by massive shots to their opponent’s dome.   The Valakut deck wants to interact with its opponents deck as little as possible, as that time spent interacting is time it isn’t spending searching out ways to kill you.  Valakut has enabled Jace-based decks in two ways – the non-interactive nature of the Valakut demolished the ability of agressive strategies to compete in the format, while at the same time, the blue-based Jace decks provided the best set of tools (counterspells) to fight off the deck.  Jace doesn’t exist in a vacuum, and again, the same problems that led to his dominance originally would still be present even if he was gone.  Jace Beleren would move to a 4-of, and similar cards would take his place.  However, there is one other blue card I believe deserves a hard, hard look, especially if one decides to keep Jace in the format.

The enabler:  Preordain. 

Mark Rosewater has often made a point of how Variance is one of the positive attributes to magic- how it forces you to adapt to different situations because you won’t always face the same situation twice.  Preordain is allowing players an unhealthy level of control in what they see out of their decks.  Combined with Mystic, Jace, and the various equipments running around,  it is increasing the amount of redundancy in decks while reducing variance to levels unseen in many, many years.  Being able to ensure you don’t draw a second squadron hawk, aren’t going to see two more lands, or being able to see 3  fresh cards the next time you brainstorm are turning out to be incredibly marginal advantages in the right hands.  Players are currently able to leverage this card to do incredible things at the moment, and it is entirely possible that the card is creating a situation where it’s too “easy” to find an answer to aggressive decks, which have normally had the drawback of being at the mercy of their deck, compared to control or combo decks.

Wrapping up

The complete lack of competitive aggressive decks in Standard has been a huge issue with Standard for quite a long time.  I believe any attempts to rebalance the format need to take that into account.  Jace-based decks were able to dominate in large part because of the lack of pressure brought on by those strategies.  A Jace ban would be a problematic situation for many reasons, and I believe there are far more elegant, if not immediately obvious, ways to weaken his position in the field without an outright ban of the card.  Bans however, are necessary right now, as doing nothing and continuing to let player turnout hemorrhage, is the last thing the game needs right now. The post-M10 era has given the game an unprecedented boom, and it would be a shame if the Scars block led to yet another bust.

To summarize- I would ban Mystic, Twin, and Preordain with no hesitation.  I would like to see Valakut banned as well, attempting to achieve the same “palate cleanse” that was aimed for with the PT: Amsterdam Extended format bans.  And I would leave Jace alone, hoping that this would be enough to temper him.