Breaking Down Standard

by magicmakrel

I recently went to a free FNM here in Florida. I usually only attend the free FNMs in my area because paying for that experience seems absurd. It was the second free FNM I had attended in a week. My record was terrible. Over the combined events, my record was 8-1-1. That’s 8 losses, one tie, and one win. However, I was able to win some games, if not matches. Likewise people with far better records and far more expensive decks than mine did not place in the money.

This was my decklist at the second event:

Requiem for Disruption

Main Deck
3x Aetherize
3x Archaeomancer
3x Curiosity
4x Frostburn Wierd
4x Invisible Stalker
23x Island
4x Nightveil Specter
4x Rapid Hybridization
4x Stolen Identity
4x Unsummon
4x Void Wielder

Sideboard
1x Elixir of Immortality
4x Mind Sculpt
4x Mind Shrieker
3x Sensory Deprivation
3x Witchbane Orb

Although the deck is a mono-blue build, I placed no emphasis on counterspells. Most people at the FNM have the overpriced Cavern of Souls to mitigate the threat of counterspells. Disruption presents a different strategy than straightforward denial decks. Unlike denial decks that overload counterspells, a disruption deck does not force players into purchasing expensive countermeasures like Cavern of Souls. I opted for Mindsculpt in the sideboard to provide card advantage instead of Dissipate. Likewise, I provided a nod to Nightveil Specter over Mist Raven in the mainboard. Frostburn Wierd was mainboarded over Mindshrieker because I assumed I might need a blocker against aggro rush decks.

Arguably, I could have played a deck which might have given me a slightly better record. One of the reasons I chose to play the deck I did was because of the upcoming change to the legendary rules. WOTC is making it so that two legendary creatures can be on the board at the same time under the control of different players. This eliminates the ability to clone kill legends. Although a player can clone a legend and keep it, players rarely have the same mana base and activating the abilities of another players legend is not always possible. This reduces the opportunities budget players had to level the playing field. Even if you try to play clones now, you will probably need a diverse land base to support the clones and everyone knows, the dual lands aren’t cheap.

This new rule change comes one year after poison seems to have disappeared from the player option list.

In many respects, this is a policy change which will try to push players further towards unnecessarily expensive solutions. I do not plan on spending the money to keep up with this new twist as I am tired of the unilateral rules changes, the inability to obtain affordable cards, and the indifference to player experience that WOTC is showing players with its recent design choices.

Wizards claims that this change will improve player interactivity, but I felt my recent matches cloning my opponents creatures (and killing some of the legendary creatures I copied) was interacting with my opponent’s board state. It required careful decision making and play on my part and challenged my opponents to overcome the loss of their creatures on their next turn. Sometimes they overcame the difficulties caused by cloning and sometimes they did not. Most of them thanked me for the interesting challenge.

Many of my opponents were running the typical decks that I (and many other players) are all too tired of playing. The deck lists at the FNM seem more suitable to a PTQ than the kind of innovative deck design one might expect to see at a free FNM where losers will outnumber winners 8-1 no matter how much top 8 netdecking people do. Players get tired of playing the same stale decks over and over again.

Despite their talk of increasing interactivity, Burning Tree Emmissary is probably the most broken “bear” I have ever seen. Assuming a perfect draw, it would be possible for a player to do lethal damage with very little response from an opponent by turn three. This continues a trend in which WOTC introduced overpowered one and two drops through Innistrad. The overall impact was to make Magic a game of draw rather than skill and diminish the interactivity. Vexing Devil was another (mulligan to?) draw card that increased turn 1 damage to four points without much effort and without allowing much opportunity to respond from an opponent on the draw.

Cards like Vexing Devil and Burning Tree Emissary are not alone in breaking the constructed formats in their low CMC requirements, high damage potential, and limited response.

Despite this, WOTC has not even taken the time to make sure there are actually five colors to play. Want to play mono-black in standard? Hope you don’t plan on any serious permanent control. Options for permanent control are the somewhat CMC overcosted Undercity Plague. This, however, gives your opponents a choice of sacrifice which means they will choose something they don’t need. Descent into Madness is currently grossly overpriced and requires you to sacrifice as well. Finally, with M14, there is the reprint of Ratchet Bomb. It is probably overpriced right now as it has just been released. Options outside of mono-black increase substantially. Dreadbore, Merciless Eviction, and Putrefy increase the options available to splashers if you are willing to pay for the high price of color fixing that obtaining dual lands usually requires. I am not, which is why I ran a simple mono-blue deck.

Oblivion Ring did not receive a reprint, which might be an attempt to push players into Detention Sphere. This again runs along money lines as all multicolored permanents will probably require land fixing.

WOTC also chose not to reprint the core dual check lands but has announced its intention to create new lands for the forthcoming set. Players are apparently expected to simply jump onto the new treadmill. All the while, apologists assert that WOTC has no control over the secondary market even though they are creating and reducing the demand for cards based on their rules and tight-fisted distributions practices.

I personally feel the degrading play environment created by a standard format that is essentially being broken by design is intended to force players to pay for the experience of drafting.

As I no longer have the benefit of a casual play group, I am taking many of my decks apart and resigning myself to the fact that WOTC no longer cares about the experience of all players.