Post by sdfkjgh on Sept 11, 2020 23:26:04 GMT
A few weeks ago, I came to a realization: with this much ramp in Standard, plus all the dual lands and Triomes, pretty much ALL decks are essentially Tron decks. Right, Drew Carey?
Hi, welcome to Standard, where every deck is Tron, and mana costs and colors don’t mean anything! That’s right, they don’t mean anything, just like in every past Standard nicknamed Combo Winter!
What’s the point of having a mana cost of 
, when no matter the deck, they have access to 8+ mana on turn 6, at the latest, with a mode of turn 4 or 5? If I wanted to waste everybody’s time, I could search through all 2149 cards currently legal in Standard, plus all 10 cards that are banned in the current Standard (never a good sign) for all the ramp cards, but I’d make a lot of questionable choices about some cards being half a ramp card. Plus, do we really need to? We already know that there’s too fucking much, ennumerating it isn’t going to tell us much more we need to know, but didn’t already. Hell, even my Standard deck, Os Mutantes, runs the full four each of two ramp cards.
Wizards, I get why you banned Growth Spiral, I do. It was too much, too fast. But if a 1-shot effect was too much for Standard, why didn’t you also ban the card that does all that, repeatedly, plus gives you 3 life every time it does so, and KEEPS COMING BACK TO DO IT?! Frankly, I’d rather have the one-and-done than the repeat offender that can’t be gotten rid of.
And now, we find out that they’re reprinting fucking Lotus Cobra. HAVE THEY LEARNED NOTHING?!?!! Apparently, because they keep forgetting Rule #1, and it keeps biting them in the ass. CLASS, WHAT IS RULE #1?!
Everybody: DON’T SUBVERT THE MANA SYSTEM!!!
I’ll reiterate here what I’ve said elsewhere: The upper limit on ramp cards should be 1 or 2, mebbe 3 (if it’s a special occasion), every third Standard rotation. No more of this bullshit where every tournament-viable card is ramp. I mean, fucking Runaway Steam-Kin is ramp! The most dominant Control deck right now is a ramp deck that also just happens to be a control deck. Control should NEVER get access to ramp! It already has everything else, don’t let it outpace decks trying to fight it.
Tron, as an archetype, prolly shouldn’t exist. Its namesake lands were printed before anyone knew what they were doing, and should never have made it to print, but it’s too late now, they’ve been Grandfathered in, and instead of doing the right thing and banning them, Wizards does what they always do.
We don’t need a format where every deck does a credible impression of Tron. Some of the worst, most oppressive, and least healthy Standards, with the greatest number of people leaving the game due to how unfun they were, were the ones where it was all only ever The One Deck to Beat, vs. The One Deck Made to Beat It, locked into an either beat-’em-or-join-’em situation. We don’t need more of that, and when it gets to that point, then everything and everybody’s failed, on a massive scale.
We can do better, and maybe the first step is a severe pulling back, like unto the Mercadian Masques and Kamigawa blocks of old. Mebbe nothing so drastic, but something to pull the needle back towards normal, because right now, it’s feeling like not only is it off the scale, but it’s actually circled right back around, to once again be past the red zone. And from what I’ve seen so far of Zendikar Rising, it looks like it’s only going to get more ludicrous.
It’s a lot like the analogy I told people during the Democratic primaries: You’re on a bus that’s driving along a mountainous passageway. On your right, is a sheer cliff face, with a mile-long drop onto jagged, wave-clashed rocks. Suddenly, some assholic madman shoves his way to the middle of the bus, takes a shit right on the carpet, throws the driver under the wheels, and jerks the steering wheel HARD, 90° to the right. Unbelievably, there are some who are actually cheering him on, and reveling in everyone’s impending demise. You somehow manage to wrestle control away from this psychopath. Do you:
1. Turn the wheel even further to the right, hoping to flip the bus before it plunges everyone to their doom, to minimize casualties? 2. Turn the wheel 45°, towards the average of the previous position and the new, life-threatening course, only delaying a death-plunge with your moderacy?
Or
3. Turn the bus all the way to the left, to fully course-correct the actions of a madman?
Magic needs a course correction away from the constant increase of powercreep.
This has been my Ted Talk.
Thanks to Daij_Djan for being the best editor I've ever had.