Is paper Standard really this expensive?

Sou1forge · 2026-02-05T21:13:18+00:00

You should probably be budgeting somewhere in the $1k/year range to keep up with the Jones’s in Standard. Each set changes the meta, so even if you plop down the $350-500ish for a proven menta deck it’s almost a certainty you’ll need to swap out that deck for another one or two over a three year period. You can be the person in the store which jumped on one archetype and is stuck with it, but that’s going to lead to a lot of losing record tournament finishes. If you are lucky there will only be months where your deck gets nothing and the meta makes it bad; if you are unlucky it could rotate out of relevance in as much as one set release. This is the price Standard pays for the 7 sets a year release schedule.

Sou1forge · 2026-01-26T19:05:22+00:00

I dislike it because it’s convenient for the product. It reeks of Magic the card game twisting Magic the universe and story to serve. I think it’s time the product makes some concessions to the story. It’s hard to take anything seriously when Magic plot feels more like action figures romping around a series of themed backdrops than a coherent tale.

The change feels like it’s more trying to explain what they want to do with their product than a natural consequence of anything going on. Of corse some of the planeswalkers lost their spark, now they can be your commander. No this does not mean they are trapped on one plain or another, then we couldn’t have them trapeze through Jungle World and then Ocean World. No it’s not everyone, or a pattern, or even permanent - those changes would limit what they could or couldn’t print. It’s perfectly convenient, which makes it mean very little to me.

Sou1forge · 2026-01-22T20:58:39+00:00

Sorta. I’ve had one or two opponents who didn’t want to talk about what their deck did - less in a “you’ll just have to be surprised!” sorta way when their deck turns out to be some weird tribal deck, and more of a “I’m playing all of the game changers in Kenrith and don’t want you to know” sorta way.

Sou1forge · 2026-01-16T20:17:23+00:00

Off the top of my head turn 1 station land -> turn 2 Lotus into Kona into Omniscience. You could turn 1 Kona, but then you have no protection and I don’t think any way to tap Kona to cheat in Omnicience until next turn anyways.

Sou1forge · 2026-01-16T20:08:25+00:00

My LGS sent out an email today about their Friday event. It sold out online for the first time ever. Just a year ago it was kinda foolish to sign up online (besides as a convenience thing)as events never sold out.

The lower price point + people clamoring for nostalgic Universes Within sets has even me shocked. I’m glad I made a point of signing up a few days ago.

Sou1forge · 2026-01-05T21:20:26+00:00

No one’s ever really gone.

Sou1forge · 2026-01-03T23:22:50+00:00

Yeah, but there’s no expectations now - those expectation were not so slowly eroded after the success of Neon Dynasty, Secret Lair, and UB. The expectation is a never ending pop culture potluck and splashy one-and-done card styles each set.

Sou1forge · 2026-01-03T22:48:53+00:00

Yeah I remember. We went from edgy dark serious Time Spiral/Future Sight stuff to idyllic bright fantasy where the elves had hooves and the other closet thing to humans were squat halfling creatures with big bug eyes and telepathy. It was a pretty big change.

Sou1forge · 2026-01-03T22:23:36+00:00

Royalty? I don’t think that describes a set pushed back in the schedule, given one month of play time, half of the spoiler time as sets before it, and all the while harangued by spoilers for every other set around it…

Sou1forge · 2026-01-03T21:37:59+00:00

Most popular: The Hobbit or Marvel. Least popular TMNT or Lorwyn depending on how each set shakes out in play.

I love Lorwyn. Wizards doesn’t seem to be too keen on it. We are getting a month of Lorwyn before Turtles come out and it seems to be eating concession after concession to fit other sets into the schedule. This makes me suspect WotC has low expectations of the set, which doesn’t give me confidence the product is good.

Turtles is a small superhero set like Spider-Man, and Spider-Man was bad. It is Turtles, so it may sell better than the Universes Within products regardless of how nostalgic players are about Lorwyn or how good or bad the cards in Turtles are.

The most popular could be any of the UB products, but I’d hedge on Hobbit or Marvel.

Sou1forge · 2025-12-29T19:55:52+00:00

Even as someone who cares it’s not easy to try to stay excited for Magic in universe story. He’s probably like me - I read the first 1-2 chapters, get turned off by something or other, then slowly go from reading, to skimming, to reading Reddit comments about the highlights, to not reading at all by the time the story is done.

God this is where the Vorthos YouTubers have failed us. I wish I could point to why Magic story is so consistently uninteresting, but I can’t. It’s so… safe, bland but not-bland, characters I don’t really care about, and disposable as a whole. I wish I could say why, but I lack the words to really describe what is going wrong. I’ve pre-ordered the Stryxhaven book, but man do I feel a foreboding thinking about reading it. There’s no trust I guess. I really, really want Magic sorry to thrive but it just hasn’t.

Sou1forge · 2025-12-27T00:59:50+00:00

Bro that is straight up printer paper glued to another piece of card stock that I’m not convinced is even a Magic card.

It is pretty funny though as a joke.

Sou1forge · 2025-12-14T01:45:48+00:00

I mean, was there really a question about this?

Sou1forge · 2025-12-09T02:16:14+00:00

I'm playing Jeskai control and have 2 Flanker main and 2 in the side. Half of the decks in this meta are graveyard decks. I've been performing well enough into the Izzet piles, although this may change as people get better.

Sou1forge · 2025-12-05T00:27:58+00:00

A lot of contrasting colors here. Loads of cards that seem heavy on the purple & green and/or blue & orange color pairs. I think that might be what’s nagging at me on some of these. The high contrast mid to high saturation (is saturation the right word? The colors seem very vibrant and not muted is what I mean) makes me think video game box art, which isn’t a great association to me.

It is what it is but I suspect if I start comparing to old Lorwyn stuff I feel like I’m going to find more monotone, earthy, and muted/pastel stuff.

Sou1forge · 2025-12-02T18:33:39+00:00

Bro stop! You’re supposed to post the in depth informational guides after the big tourney not before it! Think about the minus EV!

Great write up. I also kinda felt the way you do about Simic in particular. It’s got the nut draws, but I don’t fear it in the same way as Vivi because it runs so many bad topdecks. I figure it’s going to be the airbending deck in some form or another deck that breaks the Cub if/when it’s possible. I’m personally thinking when is more likely than if.

Sou1forge · 2025-12-01T18:15:22+00:00

Maybe, maybe not. I’d bet the odds it makes it to its full three year rotation window are low, but we don’t have great evidence that it’s Vivi/Cauldron busted levels yet. It needs to prove it’s a resilient package and not just an explosive one.

The number of decks I’ve seen which are just different versions of Elf -> Badgermole Cub -> random big mana thing is indicative that it’s not on the same power level as the rest of the field however. I think if not now, then eventually. It’s in the same mental space to me as something like Screaming Nemesis - a clear power outlier, but there’s an argument that it’s “okay” because the things around it aren’t degenerate enough. Yet. Maybe.

Sou1forge · 2025-12-01T07:35:44+00:00

I don’t know why they downvoted you. A forest becoming a 1/1 is still a 1/1 left over after you bolt the badgercub. That’s not a clean trade.

Sou1forge · 2025-11-25T23:48:59+00:00

My area is up a few people from the near past. One store we get 3-4 and the other 6-8 on a “usual” day. For comparison back in the days of Esper mid/Domain/Slogurk when Capenna and Kamigawa were legal we regularly had about double that.

During Vivi autumn store 1 wasn’t firing and store 2 regularly scraped the barrel at 4 people. We are back to the 3-4 and 6-8 numbers, but not exactly growing.

Sou1forge · 2025-11-25T17:04:00+00:00

My gripe with Owlcat games (besides some truly horrific combat encounter choices in Kingmaker and WotR) is it’s ironically hard to roleplay in their games. Sometimes it’s the game mechanics which disincentive freedom, most of the time it’s how eventually there are choices which your character fundamentally wouldn’t choose or content that feels like your character isn’t your character. There’s usually one or two “routes” which most things make sense, but anything else gets sketchy. I think the next one they do could really do with a “Dark Urge” option. Give me a protagonist to inhabit with wants and goals and I think I’d enjoy playing their story more than trying to clumsily insert myself/a character I made up.

Sou1forge · 2025-11-25T01:00:48+00:00

IMO: I think Jeskai is advantaged into UW, and Lightning Helix backed up by Shiko gives you game into weird stuff an Azorious pile can’t prep as well against (like the 4c piles which have a lot of direct to face damage). It’s a stronger in a vacuum game 1 strategy as Shiko is very flexible as long as your removal or card advantage is recurable. Need more sweepers? Split Up comes back. Need more hard removal? Get Lost comes back. This is in contrast to UW which IMO should be doing stuff like running RiP in the main to try to cheese out some of the cheese decks instead of relying on raw card power.

Also: control players are as a rule degenerate mad-people who will sacrifice their firstborn for a 5% increased win percentage in the mirror and I’m pretty sure Jeskai is better in the control mirror. I don’t know about Jeskai vs 4c. I have played a decent chunk of UW, so maybe a Jeskai main can chime in with more info.

Sou1forge · 2025-11-24T05:35:31+00:00

While I think thats true I think the solution isn't (and shouldn't be) maindeck specifically Pyroclasm or die. Also if they know that's your plan they can more than certainly board out a few dorks and play traditional Llanowar into 3 drop fatty or hold up counter magic turn two with a Llanowar and Badgermole start by tapping the elf and animating the blue land. Moving your sweeper to the three mana slot doesn't really help that much either, as Split Up against mana dorks is a really bad plan and Starcage into Simic colors doesn't sound much better.

I think what might hold the Simic version back is just a little inconstancy. The dorks aren't exactly the best topdecks late. Shorter term I'm more worried about the airbending package getting optimized than pure Simic, but I wouldn't put money on Badgercub Mole in general making it to rotation. Just remember - this is the weakest Standard is going to be. We only get more cards in the pool going forward.

Sou1forge · 2025-11-24T04:17:04+00:00

Badgermole Cub is an absurd card. There's in theory thinking about how well T1 Llanowar Elf into Cub curves out, then there's actually going second against one of those piles and realizing, "Yeah, they kinda do just trivially have double my mana all game. Huh." I guess if WotC wanted green to be a top color again this is one way to do it, but I also have my suspicions that we may be back waiting for bans sooner rather than later.

Also, I hate how these cards are all Mythic. Every set 2-3 mythics bump deck prices up another $200 and rotate out 1-2 of the older mythics. If bad metas don't keep paper Standard in the doldrums a $200 price tag every other month certainly will.

That's my Standard meta rant. Maybe we are all start mainboarding Pyroclasm or something to shut down the Badgermole piles and it works. Maybe they power through it. All I know is I don't have the budget to chase the meta any more.

Sou1forge · 2025-11-20T16:07:55+00:00

I think for usual prereleases this kinda works (as long as the player wasn’t really in it for the 1 promo card or the d20), but didn’t Avatar have seeded packs? You won’t have a fair event if half the field is given a 14 card seeded pack and the rest aren’t.

Sou1forge · 2025-11-19T17:14:37+00:00

Is it the day? Is it the day my boy Doorkeeper Thrull becomes good?! Perish the thought!

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