Standard has had plenty of problems over the past couple of years. From the four color decks in Battle of Zendikar Standard being too much for players to handle, Temur Energy and Four Color Cat Combo decks with Saheeli Rai and Felidar Guardian, as well as the Aetherworks Marvel decks using Emrakul, the Promised End. Recently Standard has had problems with the War of The Spark Planeswalkers like Teferi, Time Raveler, and Nissa, Who Shakes the World, and with Throne of Eldraine cards such as Fires of Invention, Once Upon A Time, and Oko. Uro, Titan of Nature's Wrath was the most recently boogie man of Standard, until Omnath, Locus of Creation came to culminate this list. As we can see, Standard has had a pretty rough couple of years. Today we'll be taking a closer look at the systemic problems in Standard like the oppressive static abilities on planeswalkers, free spells, land ramping, and mana doubling, to the most recent problem of insane value-based midrange threats.
The most forgivable of these design mistakes were the static abilities on the War of the Spark Planeswalkers. Most of the cards were fine for Standard but only a few were too oppressive. Narset, Parter of Veils, and Teferi, Time Raveler led to very unfun games in Standard. Narset shutting down card draw made it hard for decks to keep up on resources. Teferi, Time Raveler was problematic by shutting down instants which made gameplay miserable. It was too dominant and became a one card control deck. It bounced threats, forced the opponent to play at sorcery speed, and replaced itself. Any deck running Teferi was doing all the things a control deck wants to do while making a traditional control deck with counterspells feel dumb. I said these were forgivable because these were the first cards like these to ever exist. However, this isn't to say that Teferi shouldn't have been banned early to improve the health of the format.
Another problem Standard has faced is the push to playing free spells. Once Upon A Time is the most basic example of this. A free spell that you play at the beginning of the game to mold your hand perfectly was broken, especially in conduction with the London Mulligan. We also have cards that work towards generating avenues towards free spells. Aetherworks Marvel back in Kaladesh is when we first started to see this kind of problem. Spinning the wheel on turn four in Marvel decks resulted in a turn four Emrakul, the Promised End or Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger which basically ended the game. The return of this was Fires of Invention. Although Fires lacked the ability to put Eldrazi Titans into play on turn four it did make playing spells for free available to a lot of different shells. Being able to play a board wipe and a powerful planeswalker onto an empty board in a single turn was very backbreaking. Lukka, Coppercoat Outcast was a way to play a free Agent of Treachery, and Fires of Invention in the same deck only compounded the issue.
What appears to be the biggest issue for Standard is the way mana ramping has changed to land ramping. Putting extra lands into play with Uro and Growth Spiral is far more difficult to interact with than an Elvish Mystic. It wasn't long ago since Wizards said that they were moving away from one mana ramp creatures like Llanowar Elves and Birds of Paradise. Although Wizards came around by reprinting Llanowar Elves in Dominaria, they then moved ramp cards towards the direction of Growth Spiral. Like I said earlier, ramping lands into play is far harder to interact with than mana dorks. You can Bolt the Bird but you can't as easily stop an instant speed land ramp spell that cantrips like Growth Spiral. The draw a card ability on these spells like Growth Spiral and Uro is what really makes this style of design dangerous. Cards like Cultivate have existed for years and were never considered dangerous because they have a cost. You want to Cultivate early but it becomes a dead draw later in the game. Having these spells replace themselves eliminates the risk of playing them. A value engine like Wilderness Reclamation and a mana double effect like Nissa, Who Shakes the World become problematic in a world when decks are focused on putting as many lands into play at no cost in the deck building process while also drawing into the late games bombs to use those lands. It becomes too easy to take advantage of them.
Finally, we come to the current issue plaguing Standard, insane value-based midrange threats. Last week we discussed the havoc that Uro brought onto Standard, since then we have learned that our struggle is not over and lives on through Omnath. Omnath and Uro both capture the problems of power creep in Standard. The blaring problem with these cards is that they just do everything. They both replace themselves and shut down damage races with life gain, and ramp your mana. Omnath is a little more egregious than Uro if you ask me because of its ability to get back the mana you spent to cast it. Sure Uro comes back over and over again until your will to live escapes your body, but being able to play Omnath on turn five with a Fabled Passage into Escape to the Wilds is disgusting. It gets even more depressing when you consider that Omnath decks were cutting Uro because it was weak in the mirror match. The fact that these cards replace themselves or generate card advantage puts Standard in a place where no one is running out of resources. After all, isn't the battle for resources and making good decisions both inside and outside of combat what Standard is supposed to be about? Having insane midrange threats like this warps the format towards playing these crazy value-based ramp decks. The dynamic of a metagame where control, aggro, midrange, ramp, and even the occasional combo deck are fighting for rank has been missing in Standard for quite some time. It has become the game of who can go over the top the most with something like Hydroid Krasis or who lands the first Ugin, the Spirit Dragon. Although the metagame has seen the rise of Dimir Rogues and Dimir Control I do feel that Omnath is a problem in the four color adventure decks. Lucky Clover is already a powerful value engine so giving that deck another engine seems overpowered. It is also worth mentioning that Standard has so many value-based mechanics at the moment. Escape cards from Theros Beyond Death, Adventure cards from Throne Of Eldraine, cycling from Ikoria, also Kicker and module lands from Zendikar Rising. Never before have so many powerful mechanics been in the same format at one time.
Although the banning of Uro has helped the diversity of the Standard meta I still feel that Omnath is a problem. Whether it's in the Omnath ramp shell or the adventures deck, this one card has too much value. Wizards could ban something like Lucky Clover to nerf the adventures deck but banning Omnath is most likely the best option. This article's purpose was to shed some light on the direction that Magic design has moved towards. The community has been very vocal across all platforms but unfortunately, Wizards isn't the best at dealing with problems raised by the community. However, M21 is a recent set that shows that Wizards still knows how to make cards that are good for Standard like Elder Gargaroth and Terror of the Peaks. Cards that are only powerful if they live a turn and the opponent doesn't have an answer. Unlike the cards we mentioned earlier, these cards don't replace themselves right away or immediately snowball value. They have a risk attached to them but are still powerful enough to win the game if unanswered.
Those were my thoughts on the systemic issues of Standard design in the past couple of years. I hope this article was informative or at least interesting in some way. Let us know your thoughts on Standard down below and next week we'll be brewing some new Standard builds. Follow us on Social Media to make sure you don't miss those new articles and to join the fellowship. Thanks for reading and have a great day!
Kommentarer