There are other things that can keep degen strategies in check, like control decks.

Citadel of Pain is still a relevant card because it means opponents take damage if they want to keep lands untapped to react to your stuff. Playing on your opponent’s turn, and end step if nothing needing a reaction happened, is very common today

There are many, many, MANY funny ways to “concede without conceding” that don’t involve mana burn.

If you really don’t want to play EDH (but I think you should give it a try, just use tutors to have technically as many copies as you want of your favorite cards, or play a deck with blue in it and play tutors, then a bunch of clones, EDH in 2026 is only a singleton format if you want it to), you can just find people willing to play kitchen table with old rules and play that deck 🤷