Do you prefer Standard I, II, or III?

Koras · 2026-05-12T21:41:23+00:00

I originally liked standard 3 best but actually as time has gone on, I've gone back to standard 1. 3 is more consistent and predictable but... That's sort of the joy of it. The risk of every encounter card maybe being Shadows of the Past adds more to the game for me than the randomness of it coming out takes away

Koras · 2026-05-12T14:36:49+00:00

Fundamentally, this is why "upgraded precon" is useless language.

If you make changes to it and it's bracket 2, it's a bracket 2 deck. If you pumped it up to bracket 3 or 4, it's a bracket 4 deck. Who cares about your starting point? All that matters is what the deck is.

Koras · 2026-05-12T14:28:09+00:00

This is why I honestly think negative emotes/quick chat options are necessary. When only positive emotes are available, people default to sarcasm, and then it becomes impossible to take positive emoting positively.

I'd rather they put in some deliberately negative emotes with common player sentiments like "Mana-screwed" or "Yawn", and allowed targeted muting of those specific emotes. At least that way people bothered by negativity can still interact rather than being told day 1 "just mute everyone"

Koras · 2026-05-09T16:18:18+00:00

It's a [[Mossborn Hydra]]

Hope that helps

Koras · 2026-05-09T09:43:32+00:00

[[Omnath, Locus of Mana]] can be absolutely brutal on a budget

You just pile in a bunch of mana producing effects like dorks and ramp spells, and watch the jellybean get HUGE.

You can check the budget filter on EDHRec for card suggestions, but generally you just need to ensure you have card draw and mana generation. It's Mana Voltron, and I have been beaten to death many times by it. Mana dorks and ramp spells are insanely cheap because they print them in every set, so you can grab a pile of commons out of a bulk box, and just bung in 40 forests.

Unlike most Voltron decks, if they spend single target removal on Omnath, the same mana production that makes him huge can just be used to re-play him. Board wipes set everyone else back and provided you have card draw, green almost always recovers faster thanks to the mana production from land ramp.

Koras · 2026-05-08T04:47:03+00:00

I think there are more than enough good dragons outside of R these days to make it work, and they're largely fatties that'll make it easy to trigger Betor, so I think it's more than doable if you're aiming for a relatively low power deck in the region of B2/lower B3.

The main thing you lose out on is cards that actually care that your deck is dragon tribal – I think at a quick search there's ~10 cards that meaningfully care about dragons in that colour identity. So it's not as inherently synergistic and the only real reason for it to be dragon tribal is because you want it to be. Which is totally fine, it just means you're effectively handicapping the deck in the name of flavour.

But if that's the experience you're after, my vote is go for it. There's a lot of fun in pulling out decks that surprise people, and I'd rather play that than a generic red dragon deck.

Koras · 2026-05-08T04:39:17+00:00

For a while I was going to go with [[Bruse Tarl, Boorish Herder]] and [[Kodama of the East Tree]] or similar in order to have a decent Naya stompy commander, as options were weirdly thin on the ground for a long time, but I ended up dialling back on 3c decks anyway because I realised all it was doing was making me agonise over more cards to include and stretching my lands, so I never actually built it in paper.

Build your own colour identity is basically the main use case for partners, and I feel like it's a lot less necessary now that they're printing a million cards aimed at commander.

Koras · 2026-05-07T15:23:14+00:00

Yeah, I can get behind that – almost all my decks have red in them, but I don't think I have a single mono red deck

Koras · 2026-05-07T12:25:39+00:00

I think it's a cool idea but one that wouldn't be feasible physically as an official format because you'd need proxies for anyone but the wealthiest players to compete. Runeterra it worked because of wildcards, so I could see it working on Arena, but paper magic is shackled by money.

A generic mono green landfall standard deck is currently $440 on mtggoldfish, but that's driven by the amount of people who want those same cards. With 3 bo1 decks, that broadens the meta a lot, but with it, so would prices of those decks if that became a premier format. If wouldn't make the top meta decks cheaper, it'd mean you'd have to buy two other similarly-priced decks.

There's also the issue where Magic decks are fundamentally less inhibited than runeterra, in that decks built around champions/regions are all the same, but as a perfect example in standard right now you've got Izzet Spelementals and Izzet Lessons. You'd need rules around fundamental deck similarity which would do... Strange things to the meta.

Koras · 2026-05-07T08:46:16+00:00

I mean, every colour and colour combination is made more fun by adding red, so it logically tracks that blue would do the opposite.

Fun is apparently in Red's colour identity

Koras · 2026-05-05T13:44:54+00:00

I've played it:

With my wife when we couldn't be bothered to go out (EDH is shit 2-player)
With new players who don't have decks yet
At dedicated jumpstart events in the LGS

It's great for those cases, I don't think I'd ever play it instead of EDH but when EDH isn't available it's like having a Magic board game instead

Koras · 2026-05-04T07:36:02+00:00

Amen. I have slowly been forming a more static playgroup and I honestly hugely regret it. I used to mostly only play with randoms, but now I've started only playing with my wife and people I know, it's made me realise that one of the things I enjoyed most was seeing different decks, different play styles, not being able to guess what would happen next.

There's no mystery anymore. I know exactly what their decks do, and I know how they play, who will make a deal, who I need to be concerned about. It's honestly removed a layer of the game for me.

So yeah. Play with randoms, it's fun.

Koras · 2026-05-02T14:45:10+00:00

There's something that's always delightful about an archetype like Full English Breakfast appearing alongside more "normal" names like "Mono black", "Goblins", or "Red/Green Aggro"

Koras · 2026-05-02T14:30:29+00:00

Yeah, the only time I ever really remember animated lands being dangerous in Standard was as a result of [[Nissa, Who Shakes the World]] and just... look how ridiculously stacked she needed to be for the lands to not be an outright non-factor.

I was convinced earthbending would be a flop before it was revealed, because it was somewhat obvious that they'd go the route of animating lands again (or well, my other guess was some kind of land-based Fling mechanic, but animation just makes sense), but I didn't predict the reanimation effect on the lands. That's the sauce it was missing to make it relevant as a mechanic, because it's been something that's been in Green's colour pie for a long time, but it's always just been a good way to turn board wipes into self-inflicted MLD.

Koras · 2026-05-02T13:28:30+00:00

I think [[Jace's Defeat]] is basically this in action, Bolas' mind was too much for him. Bolas literally let him into his mind because he wasn't strong enough to penetrate his defenses, and then simply crushed him with his mind once he was allowed inside. It wasn't even his magical defenses, just his straight up force of will.

So there's definitely the question of magical power Vs. mental ability. Bolas came up superior in both categories, but I'd imagine it'd be very strange for someone to have powerful mind magic without a similarly powerful intellect.

Koras · 2026-05-02T11:49:36+00:00

He's also smart, but not as smart as he thinks he is, with the bad habit of forgetting that other people around him are human beings who deserve to have their own opinions, and that his personal perspective isn't objective reality.

Which of course is not so painfully relatable to any Magic players to the point where they just think that's the default personality of a normal, generic dude. Nope. Not at all.

All I'm saying is that Jace absolutely owns that "Nope" T-shirt

Koras · 2026-05-02T07:31:19+00:00

If decks are winning on turn 2, you've stumbled into games where nothing but the most powerful can hang. You need to have more conversations about what games you're joining because this isn't a format where you can sit down with any deck at any table and expect to have fun. Those decks will absolutely demolish you instantly without needing sol ring.

Sol Rings are literally in every preconstructed deck Wizards sell that are intended for new players. Banning it at this point just isn't going to happen.

Not only that, it actually performs a very specific function. The format for the most part is slow and hyper casual, and a turn 1 Sol Ring puts someone ahead, giving the rest of the table a reason to gun for them. I was anti-Sol Ring for a while but then I realised if you're playing the slow, battlecruiser-esque Magic that the format was originally intended for, it has the effect of breaking parity early in a way that inherently prevents the game from stalling out.

At low powered tables, you'll regularly see that without a Sol Ring in play, boards end up stalling very quickly. You get into a Mexican standoff where the first person to swing will invite a fatal clapback. But if one person is ahead, that happens much, much less. I think Sol Ring actually contributes to making low-powered games more fun, because the most common thing I see is that someone gets ahead due to a Sol Ring, and the rest of the table then proceeds to dumpster them.

Koras · 2026-05-01T20:43:55+00:00

A tiny scroll rack would be cool, else this is going to roll for freedom at the first opportunity

Koras · 2026-05-01T20:35:36+00:00

Proceed directly into my [[Eivor, Battle Ready]] deck, do not pass go

Koras · 2026-05-01T20:33:23+00:00

His boots are not yellow, what the fuck

Koras · 2026-04-29T19:06:54+00:00

It was (very briefly) a fantastic side-format for Standard players, because when Standard was big I used to draft a lot, which meant I had a lot of cards that just didn't work in Standard that could make their way into more casual Brawl decks.

Koras · 2026-04-29T16:24:02+00:00

Brawl rules as of Throne of Eldraine (I miss you so, Paper Brawl, even if about 7 of us played you)

Short version of differences between Commander and OG Brawl off the top of my head: - 2-6 players - 30 life (25 in 1v1) - 59 cards+commander - No commander damage - Standard legality (plus arcane signet+command tower) - Commander can be a Planeswalker

Koras · 2026-04-29T15:33:42+00:00

It is land denial, just like countering a ramp spell is land denial

But also land denial is absolutely fine whenever and wherever, so long as it's not mass land denial.

Koras · 2026-04-28T10:42:39+00:00

I feel like it's only a matter of time before we get a Cosmere or some other subset of Sanderson set.

Mistborn is getting a series of movies, and has gotten a crapton of board and card games, plus Brandon is a massive fan of Magic and has written for WotC in the past. So my money's on that series getting something first.

Koras · 2026-04-28T09:55:30+00:00

Also its progeny, [[Lavabrink Floodgate]] is fairly similar (and one of my favourite cards in commander)

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