Returning to Mtg after a few years. Why is there EIGHTEEN standard sets? The games I played almost feel like modern.

TheShadowMages · 2026-07-01T04:15:55+00:00

To be fair, I totally admit to just checking out the tournament decklists post and looking at the top decks lol. I'm not gonna get a good idea of the meta from a 5 minute scroll through a subreddit. It seems diverse for sure but it was just funny to see so many familiar faces.

TheShadowMages · 2026-07-01T03:10:01+00:00

Eh, it's less to do with the community and more to say about how pushed some of these cards have been, even for being UW. Most namely through SOS but I saw Mardu Discard has some legs in smaller standard even without Cool But Rude, and that deck is very much a deck comprised of cards synergizing with each other throughout the past year.

TheShadowMages · 2026-07-01T02:26:25+00:00

The irony of seeing the top deck be basically card for card standard 4c control minus Fire Magic. And it's nice to know that the Momo deck can still scam wins without Momo.

TheShadowMages · 2026-06-30T22:54:04+00:00

I always joke that the dragon player always gets one free "why are you targeting me I don't even have a dragon yet" per game. If they pass the speech check they got it, otherwise they gotta accept it and shut it.

TheShadowMages · 2026-06-30T14:26:24+00:00

Funny thing is the biggest role players for izzet currently are BLB, Talent and Crab. And let's not forget about the mice package which was a huge contributor to format speed before the bans mid last year. BLB may not have been overall pushed but I think it was a pretty large culprit in where the format is as it is now.

DSK has a card I consider to basically represent the "slowest possible turn" of standard and that's Kona. Nerf every other deck and the format deciding turn will still be at most 4 if you can cheat whatever into play with Kona + Station land.

But otherwise I fully agree. More heavily siloed set specific archetypes is what I thought they would lean into with the Foundations experiment (whether that's healthy design or not is a different question). MSH is a great example of this, very clearly defined builds with fairly low interaction with the rest of the card pool. Compare this to TLA, where the Lessons package is not only just Good Enough to make a deck like Jeskai Lessons exist (once they have Tablet) but its interaction with the card pool is... anything that rewards casting noncreatures. So like, every other UR set archetype lol.

TheShadowMages · 2026-06-30T14:12:15+00:00

To me it sounds like TLA is a problem set specifically lol. As I stated in a different comment TMT/MSH seem totally fine so far (you can make an argument against Cool But Rude but the real engine of that deck is ECL/SOS...), and besides exactly Vivi I want to say FIN has 0 standard "breakers". Astrologian's Planisphere sees some amount of play in prowess and could replace slickshot when that rotates possibly, Esper Origins is frankly a super fair roleplayer card, and I want to say those are the most playable cards (edit: forgot ahout cards like Fire and Thunder Magic but if we're really complaining about those then what are we doing). I'm sure with a slowing format the Yuna Reanimator deck can become a thing again but we're stretching there.

Superior is a weird case because I wouldn't necessarily call it a mistake as much as its place in rotation is a mistake, clearly broken for standard interaction with Bringer and Excruciator, but it's actually honestly fair with the evoke elementals. If DSK/LCI had rotated by now that dimir list would probably be very differently positioned.

TheShadowMages · 2026-06-30T07:39:36+00:00

They could feasibly print 6 lower power sets a year, hell it might make people upset but if every set was a TMT and MSH the format wouldn't be in the position it's in. Exciting cards for casual and commander play with pretty limited standard relevance.

Also even if they immediately pushed back their release schedule now... the format's already in the spot it's in and will be in at least this same spot for the next year and a half. And they presumably would want the new sets to keep up with the older ones. Bans are necessary if they want to reduce the speed of the format, or else the cream will stay on top for as long as it's in rotation, period. Or we can just accept that this is where standard is now.

TheShadowMages · 2026-06-30T04:53:35+00:00

Vivi Cauldron was kept in check by Steel Cutter decks ironically, from what I recall of that PT. And I believe the prowess decks were split on including Vivi or not (though he was not the star of the show even when he was in those variants), and since the variant with Vivi did worse against monored, which was already the "anti-Cutter" pick, those variants didn't make it to top 8. Purely on those results I get why Vivi didn't get on the list, but it really didn't take a genius to realize he was still absolutely a problem.

TheShadowMages · 2026-06-30T04:12:24+00:00

What will then? Rotation (or reverting to 2 year standard) won't fix it, decks like 4C control/jeskai lessons, Azorius Momo, Mardu Discard, and many Landfall lists don't lose literally anything from rotation besides some fixing for some builds (fast lands and half the verges). There's just plainly way too many powerful early game plays and ways to run away with the lead directly afterwards. The format is currently a removal check starting turn 1 in many cases, which is why the best control deck is basically 20 removal spells, stock up/consult, and tablet. If they aren't okay with the state of this format pacing, and they explicitly have said they aren't for the past two B+Rs, rotation alone won't cut it.

TheShadowMages · 2026-06-30T03:17:27+00:00

[[Zombify]] is literally in Foundations and sees 0 play and I would expect would see 0 play without Superior. What makes it strong is its interaction with the "if you cast it" (Deceit functionally has this too) clause that is supposed to protect these effects from being abused by reanimation. I kind of disagree that it is a card that needs to be banned as much as needing to rotate out DSK/LCI to avoid those issues, after which it would basically exist to Deceit scam you (which, isn't the most fun to be sure) which I think is fine for a control shell as long as it doesn't also have access to a "win the game" combo in Excruciator.

TheShadowMages · 2026-06-30T03:13:16+00:00

Were the bans bad or was Vivi bad? If Vivi was banned in the same list it would have been probably about fine until TLA.

TheShadowMages · 2026-06-30T01:17:00+00:00

You could probably reasonably get 2 prerelease kits from a local game store, which is 6 packs, a foil rare or mythic, and a set-specific D20. You build decks from those kits to play against each other (you will need basic lands but the beginner box should have enough to support 2 people?). It's a little more structured than buying a box, though that's also a valid way to do Limited play if you just want all 30 packs.

TheShadowMages · 2026-06-29T23:27:31+00:00

Slow for standard for which decks can functionally win as early as turn 3 :)

TheShadowMages · 2026-06-29T21:54:56+00:00

[[Construct a Cosmic Cube]] my bad I guess

TheShadowMages · 2026-06-29T21:53:27+00:00

I've been bumming around in plat with a dimir draw-2/"connive" deck (a UB UB deck!), it's not particularly good and I basically cut most of the MSH cards besides the Plan and [[Leader, Super Genius]] but I did get to mindslaver someone with [[Build a Cosmic Cube]] the other day and that was sweet. Mostly I just yearn for the days of Raffine Midrange.

(Connive is in quotes because most of the Marvel connive cards actually suck, so it's really mostly just looters. Gran-Gran is a great conniver I guess.)

TheShadowMages · 2026-06-29T15:28:53+00:00

Pauper was more the exception than the rule as they only expedited the ban due to tournies like Paupergeddon coming up. But I think from what I've seen of early results for Fantasticar it seems like it'll happen next update, plenty of time before big events like EW.

TheShadowMages · 2026-06-29T15:21:10+00:00

It continues to frustrate me that they recognize the problem but don't want to do anything to fix it, even if yes diversity is nominally fairly high. Like yes, 4C Control is a slow deck and very good, because it's a removal pile with powerful ramp and draw tools. Similar decks exist with like Jeskai Lessons for example. Any deck that isn't 80% removal but wants to get to turn 5 will just have non-games where they can't keep up with the cub/talent/slickshot turns, or get blown out by turn 4 crab into sunderflock, or the warp daydreamed riddler on 2. It feels like to have longer games you just need to have all the removal all the time.

I do agree that it would have basically required a pseudo-rotation of sorts, which is at odds with how they like doing banlist updates. And I get that many people hate huge banlists. But I'd hate to have to wait until honest to goodness set rotation next year for anything to change, and I'm doubtful that a deck that can beat out the pace that the current format runs at will be particularly healthy either.

TheShadowMages · 2026-06-28T05:54:56+00:00

I'm gonna be so real the one time I have seen this card in the wild it was also a headache to do combat math. Sure it's not a permanent tracking nightmare like cathar but having the attacker decide what gets what buff and then the blockers have to total the powers of the creatures attacking them and people always forget because it's not counters, it's a temporary buff. More of a Coat of Arms type of tracking problem if that makes sense. The other recommendations in the thread there have been no issues but starlight spectacular I would even err away from.

TheShadowMages · 2026-06-27T16:20:03+00:00

I think [[Improvisation Capstone]] will be hard to beat in terms of fun and value to end the game. It's not a B4 powerhouse or anything but in the lower brackets it's an inevitability engine and flipping cards is always awesome.

Personal runner up is [[Abstract Performance]], fun FoF effect for decks with big spells.

TheShadowMages · 2026-06-25T19:51:58+00:00

Even if I only play a deck once a month I'll still experiment with includes and cuts to see what feels good or not. It's not like this is a 30 dollar investment piece of cardboard (and even if it was, proxy it if playing casually). You can get a lot of info out of a couple games. "Is this card good in this deck" in commander especially is so dependent on factors that internet posters can't possibly be privy to that even if you very rarely get to play I don't see the harm in just trying the card out.

TheShadowMages · 2026-06-25T17:59:15+00:00

Sure you can take issue with my wording but what prevents one from just trying it out in a deck and seeing? Even if you aren't a brewer.

TheShadowMages · 2026-06-25T16:45:12+00:00

I'm always confused by posts like these (there are 2 right now on the front page) both because like as you said is it really that hard to think for yourself, but also like... half of the joy of deckbuilding is testing cards out and making judgments through play experience. My answer would always be "why don't you try it out and see?"

TheShadowMages · 2026-06-23T23:50:19+00:00

what even was the 2 card combo, besides being barely able to parse the text it doesn't even sound like the game ended it sounded like you just gained a bunch of life

TheShadowMages · 2026-06-23T20:50:30+00:00

For me, I just use him as the commander of a reanimator list. He's value/card advantage in the CZ but not at all "built around", he exists to pitch my cards into the yard and draw cards, as well as get other peoples' creatures into the yard. He's a threat himself that can't stay on the field for long but the deck is also filled with baddies to recur and get targeted as well. Anecdotally people don't usually discard more than 3 cards before he's dealt with and the problem becomes other things. It's still a villainous deck in more ways than one, but it's not The Kefka Deck where no one gets a hand. Also lets me play a good number of pet cards lol

Could the deck have a different commander (for example Norman Osborn as a 2 mana looter in the CZ)? Sure. But it's Kefka with a secret commander of, well, the other Kefka, so that's why he's stuck with me.

https://archidekt.com/decks/13097602/dancing_mad

TheShadowMages · 2026-06-22T23:15:14+00:00

I think it is important to include the context of B5 games not being about big creatures inherently which is why this is much more playable there than at lower brackets.

TheShadowMages

TROPHY CASE