June 30, 2025 • 39 mins
An unwashed reaction to the Standard ban announcement of June 2025
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Credits
Written and performed by Daniel Wagner, aka CovertGoBlue
Edited by Roman Milan
Logo design by HolyMTG - HolyMTG@gmail.com Twitter @HolyMTG
© CovertGoBlue Entertainment, LLC
Use promo code CGBPOD to get a discount at CoolStuffInc.com and show love for the audio podcast.
If you'd like to see the video version of this podcast, check it out here!
Credits
Written and performed by Daniel Wagner, aka CovertGoBlue
Edited by Roman Milan
Logo design by HolyMTG - HolyMTG@gmail.com Twitter @HolyMTG
© CovertGoBlue Entertainment, LLC
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
The cover Go podcast is now on iHeartRadio, Spotify, and
Apple Podcasts, and is proudly sponsored by cool stuff ink
dot com. Use the promo code cgb pod at check
out to get a discount and show your love for
the audio version of the show. Do Do Do, Doody
doody dow dey dudey Cover Good podcast. What's up masa Falcons?
(00:29):
You get a rare one today? You get me before shower,
no shave, no clean hair, tank top. Why because they
just dropped the ban announcement and are you ready guys,
Let's see, let's see what they've got. Let's head right in.
I have no idea. March thirty, that's not it, Dune thirtieth,
(00:52):
twenty twenty five, that's Reddit. This is the Oh, I
gotta put the link in up here at the search bar. Smooth, god,
it's so bright A lot I can save you. This
is why you watch my channel for this. Holy crap?
Did I just see that correctly? Anyway? Dark reader? Nice
little browser extension. Oh my god, Oh my god, they
(01:20):
fired all the bullets. Look at they brought out the
whole team. They brought five people for this announcement. They
absolutely launched the Bullets and they hit seven cards, seven cards,
(01:43):
Corey steel Cutter, A Buelo's Awakening, Monstrous Rage, Heartfire, Hero,
Up the Beanstalk, Hopeless Nightmare. This town ain't big enough.
It ain't big enough for none of us. They went
for every deck. They they went for Red, they went
for Prowess, they went for Awakening, the Omniscience, they went
(02:06):
for beans And I mean, yeah, I guess Domain's been
there a long time. Sure, Domain is the one that
I think changes the most with rotation. That's why I
didn't think they'd have to kill it. And then they
also hit Hopeless Nightmare and this town Ain't big enough? Wow,
(02:26):
Oh my gosh, this is going to make a really
great What Got Banned video someday. Anyway, all these other
things have no changes with Corey steel Cutter suspended pending
a rebalance, and in Pioneer Best of One on Arena,
trickery is banned because there are people who just don't
like playing Magic Gathering. There's always that group that would
(02:49):
rather play a slot machine than Magic the Gathering in
their Magic the Gathering. And then there's counter Spell unbanned
in Historic always thought that was weird, Okay, Howdy gamers. Ah. Yes,
my name is Carmen clem Parents and I'm a senior
(03:09):
game designer on Magic's play design team. Welcome to our
midyear ban and restrict date announcement for twenty twenty five.
The previous update to the band and restricted list focused
on changes to Modern and Legacy with massive upheaval and popper,
but for this announcement, we're shining a spotlight on Standard. Yeah. Yeah,
the I of Soron has found standard. Given the quality
(03:30):
of cards being added to standard ban list, I'll go
ahead and roll out the red carpet for gd in
to talk about the details of what's changing and why.
As usual, we'll be on weekly MTG in Twitch dot
tv slash Magic tomorrow that's July first, at ten am
specific time to discuss these changes and answer any lingering questions.
You can submit questions for that stream over on the
(03:52):
official Magic Gathering discord. To jump to our discussion of
a particular format, click below. Okay, we have discussion. Let's
go standard with all these bands, all these beautiful cards
got banned. So much for my no changes idea, but
(04:15):
thanks for all the clicks anyway, Wow, is this enough
to change the play patterns of Standard. That was my
biggest concern. I've never been so happy to be wrong
about the bands. But will it change things? It looks
like this is intended to do a lot of changing,
all right. Today's announcement is our once a year early
(04:37):
rotation window for Standard. Our goal with this window, by
the way, this is the first time they've done this,
the early rotation window to try to shake things up,
So that also plays a lot into what would they do.
Our goal with this window is to set the next
rotation cycle up to be as fun as possible. We
do this by saying an early goodbye to a number
of cards that have proven their strength and made the
(04:57):
format less fun, either by creating unhealthy patterns or by
restricting the viable deck building options available in the environment. Okay,
so all best decks will now be banned in whatever.
This is the early rotation window in Standard's that's what
it's gonna be. Although when is that next year? Because
now they're starting to ban in February, so it'll be
(05:19):
like January. But make January be something in Magic that's
kind of exciting. It's usually a dead time. We do
this by saying an early goodbye to a number of
cards that prove their strength up created pre lay patterns yep,
restricting the viable deck building options available in the environment. Below,
we'll discuss these bands and are reasoning behind them. Then
we'll discuss the lessons learned from these cards. For three
(05:42):
year Standard, we're announcing the banning of seven cards and
Standard seven is a lot of cards. Is it the
most ever at once? When they did the Mirriad in
bands it was arc Bound, Ravager, Disciple of the Vault
and the five Lands and Darks. You'll say it's not
the most ever at once, but I mean comparing it
to Affinity is weird because the land cycle had to
(06:04):
be completely banned even for our early rotation window, and
especially so since it has been over two years since
any cards at were all at all were banned in Standard.
Has it really been two years since they banned me
Hook Massacre and then they banned Invoke Despair reckon our
(06:24):
bankbuster fable that was the last ban? Wow, it really
has been that long. I'm old, ye, So how do
we get here? Our last ban and restricted announcement was
three months ago, shortly after the release of eighth or Drifts. Oh,
let's go. At the time Standard was looking fun and healthy.
There were three decks clearly at the top of the
(06:44):
meta game Red Aggressive Mouses, Self Bounced Synergy, and the
Pixie decks a Domain or Lords Rampjeck. But below those
top three was a sea of other decks that stood
a fighting chance on any good given weekend. Come on,
say the flourishing thing, Say the thing. Standard was flourishing.
(07:05):
The release of Tarkier Dragonstorm in April had a dramatic
effect on the metagame, propelling is It Prows to the
top of the metagame on the wings of Corey steel Cutter. Yeah,
right to the top, right to forty percent. It was
the deck to beat at the recent round of the
Standard Regional Championships and represented over forty percent of the
Standard metagame at Pro Tour Final Fantasy. Here is an
(07:27):
example of such a monster. Here you go, Here you Go.
It's clear that is It Prowess deck is having a
negative effect on the Standard metagame. Its play rate numbers
are substantially higher than we have seen in Standard in
the recent past. Beyond just play numbers, though, the degree
to which the deck is warping the rest of the
metagame around it is crystal clear. One easy example is
(07:51):
Mono Red, which reinvented itself for an is It Prowess
world by adapting large numbers of main deck copies of
mage Bean Lizard, an excellent card against Prowess STRATG that
was seeing very little play before the decks rise to prominence.
A lot of people pointed this stuff out in my
band videos, like these numbers aren't real CGB Yoshi. Everybody
(08:11):
is wharping their deck around. Is it powersh to be? Did?
Therefore this is not like ape. You're meta, sure, but
who's to say that spells deck won't be there next time?
And Maje Bain Lizard can still be a good card.
I think people, I think when a card is good,
it's not only good against one deck. There are other
things that will use the strategy. It's not like Graveyard
(08:31):
Hate won't be in decks anymore because of Buelo's awakening
his band Like yes and no, there's an argument. I
don't think it's as clear as everybody makes it. Oh.
The other big argument from my band video, which got
so many views, Thank you to everybody, was that the
statistics did not take into account mirror matches. Or if
they did. Those are compiled by Frank Carston, who does
(08:53):
this all the time. You should follow Frank Carston on
x or Twitter or whatever you want to call it.
You should follow Frank Carson on whatever platform Frank is
on where the numbers come out. Frank always removes mirror matches.
So you guys, I you know what, you know what
statistic I want. I want statistic of the number of
people fighting over like whether or not the statistics included
(09:14):
mirror matches. That's what I want, because the comments in
that video were just going off anyhow, that is a
little side tangent. I think it's I think it's totally
fine that the numbers include some amount of main deck
and sideboard hate that is taken into account in a meta,
because it's not always deck specific hate. It has other places.
(09:35):
It's not like Mage main Lizard is a terrible Mono
red card. It's probably good in a Mono red mirror too,
because it's got four boute and you can hit it
with the Lizard Land of the Rock Faced Village, and
it's also good against any other spell combo that comes
out of VV in the future. So I don't think
Mage main Lizard is like, oh, well, because that is popular,
(09:55):
because is it? Prowess is popular. These numbers aren't pure stander.
It's always like this. It's always like finding the right
the right tool in the shed to battle a particular
meta Always Corey steel Cutter is the obvious target from
the is at Proustck for banning. It is quite simply
too strong for the format, or any format. You might
(10:15):
argue a card that's a little bit stronger than everything else.
In addition to quickly rising to the top of the
standard meta game, Corey steel Cutter also had a large
impact on Modern, a format considerably more powerful than Standard.
You don't say. It also has the quality of being
a challenging card to interact with profitably due to the
increased burden of answering artifacts and the ease with which
(10:37):
Corey steel Cutter leaves meaningful board presence behind even when
quickly destroyed. This combination of sheer strength and resilience has
let Corey steel Cutter run rampant on Standard. It's only
been legal since darkiear guys, it's only been legal since March,
and it's gone. How did this happen? At this point,
it's clear the tools to challenge Corey steel Cutter's dominance
(10:57):
don't exist in the environment. Did we play rushed it? Whatever?
For these reasons and in the interest of metagame diversity
of Cory steel Cutter's band, I have to go make
a note to self right now, you're gonna see me
like live like note myself as a reminder. Get the
Corey steel Cutter clip from Rare in video. It goes
(11:21):
on the clips channel. So check out the clipschannel cover
Go clips formerly cover go Live. That's a fun place
to post things. I have to get our clip of
us talking about Corey steel Cutter before it was released.
Did we say it would get banned? I think one
of us might have. I've got to go check it out.
But it was just so obviously the most broken card
in that set. It was stupid. Let's see the level
(11:44):
of dominance of is it prowess? In the recent standard
Wait hold on, I missed this sentence. For the sake
of clarity and setting expectations going forward, the banning of
Corey steel Cutter is the kind of action we would
take in any of our banning windows. What the level
(12:04):
of dominance of is it prowess? In the recent Standard
metagame clearly meets our threshold for bands outside the once
per year Standard window. They are saying this could have
been emergency band. They are saying, yeah, they are saying
this could be an emergency band level card. They are
saying Corey steel Cutter is a mistake. That's what they're saying.
(12:31):
Only red cards are these kind of mistakes nowadays? Oh
my god. That ah. Anyway, the release of Corey steel
Cutter reshaped the landscape of Standard. It's very challenging to
predict what will happen to the metagame after its banning,
but we have concerns that the format may drift back
to the format it as it previous existed previously, no kidding.
(12:54):
To make sure the next Standard metagame is diverse and
as room for exploration, we're banning six additional cards. This
is the part that's This is the part that really
shocks me. Corey steel Cutter. I'm like, yeah, busting card,
go for it. But they have other options. Is it
will still be a deck and a threatening deck. That
is probably a good thing when you look at it
that way. I didn't think they'd pull the trigger on
(13:16):
all the decks that were popular before Corey steel Cutter,
because they didn't pull the trigger on them in the past,
like you like, why are we hitting Domain now and
it's not even being played, right, why are we hitting what? What?
But the idea is that they want they legitimately want
to shake standard and it's weird because to me, it
(13:39):
feels like it goes against the idea of the three
year standard. It goes against the idea of you get
to play your decks and they avoid making bands. So
the people who invested in all these overlords, hopefully those
overlords are still good in other decks. They probably will be.
They're very amazing cards. But the Domains an expensive deck
and Bean's just got banned. Okay, it doesn't feel stable.
(14:03):
It's interesting. Maybe it's because they looked at it and
said Domain is Like I figured they just let Domain
rotate like they have in the past. But maybe they
looked at it and said, Domains about to die. Anyway,
we banned Beans now we keep another Beans deck from
being popular. So something changes and the Domain deck was
on its last leg anyhow, they just get one less
(14:24):
month to play their Domain deck before it rotates, which
is probably fine, especially with all the magic cons and
I believe the RCQ season out of the way. I
didn't check the pro schedule before saying that. Somebody correct
me if you need to anyway. Yeah, yeah, Zorious Omniscience
Uh huh, huh huh. The second most popular deck at
(14:46):
Final Fantasy was Zoria's Omniscis Combo, with more than twenty
percent share of the meta game. Every Best of One
gamer could have told you about this. The omniscious deck
has exhausted. Has existed as a part of the metagame
for a while, but climbed in popularity to be a
major player after gaining new cards in Roiling Dragonstorm and
Merangue River Regent. With the release of Tarki or Dragonstorm,
(15:07):
I thought it made it more fun more. Dragons of
Bueilo's Awakening always had the potential to create a deck
like this, as formata is cheaper than we normally allow
for non creature reanimation effects to be, but we had
hoped that turning what it brings back into a creature
would allow ample counterplay. This has not proven to be
(15:31):
the case for Omniscients. What a thought, and you put
that in the format for like five years, maybe seven
with foundations, It's great combo decks like Azarius Omniscients are
something we want to exist in Standard, but when too strong,
they warp the format around them and reduce the number
(15:51):
of viable decks. This version of Omniscience has proved too
powerful and too consistent for these reasons of those Awakening
is bad, my boy? What have they done to my boy? Ah?
I'll have to find a way to get to Mythic
like a normal human being and not just win most
(16:12):
of my blue white games on turn four. Such a shame.
So sad I had built it. I had built a
version of the Omniscience deck that was rotation proof. I
actually have some footage from it. I may release it
just from members, or I may actually release it while
I'm gone. It was funny because the win con that
want the way to end the game the same turn
(16:32):
is all gone, Like founding a third path is rotated,
and so is invasion of Arcavios. All those things rotated,
and so it didn't win the turn it got out
the Omniscients. It just drew its whole deck, while almost
all of its deck enough so you don't deck out.
It puts all the dragons on the board. It generates
one hundred prowess otters by having a stormchaser's talent in
(16:54):
the deck. So it just generates like as many otters
as the rope allows you to do. It gets all
the confound riddles, and this town ain't big enough so
that it possibly could in your hand, So you would
pass the turn with a hand. That's like three confounding
riddles for this town ain't big enough and a thousand
odds and it's turned four and four dragons and you
just pass. They probably sit there and rope. You put
(17:17):
something on the stack, you counter it with a riddle,
pass back, you win. I didn't even have to win,
like it was so anyway, this is for the best.
I'll miss I'll miss my omniscience time. I really will.
But you always have seven hours of it to go
back and watch if you miss it too. It's for
(17:39):
the best. Monstrous Rage has been powering aggressive red decks
in standard since its release in Wilds of l Dream.
It is one of the strongest and most efficient com
metrics to have ever been printed, and probably the only
one that will ever be banned. Do I have to
read this? Are my eyes actually seeing this? We've enjoyed
(18:06):
having a combat trick be a strong standard card. I'm
telling you, man, I'm telling you whoever they snuck into
the building at Wizards of the Coast love their mono
roids so much, so much the red propaganda is getting
(18:29):
to a boiling point anyway, anyway, but it's clear that
Monstrous Rage has overstayed its welcome. It has enabled combo
style agro decks more than we would like, and has
played a large role in lowering the fundamental turn in Standard.
A fundamental turn being where the game is effectively over,
(18:49):
such as having like easily now it's like turn three
and turn four definitely, but Standard was never meant to
be like you Die on Turn four format in the
past and putting players under too much pressure too quickly.
In addition, the fact that it grants trample has decreased
the utility of blocking in the format. Brian Kibler would agree,
(19:13):
and greatly eroded the efficiency of defensive creatures as a
counter strategy to aggressive decks. I really should have just
posted it had me saying a lot of naughty words.
I should have just edited out the boot. I should
have just bleeped all my naughty words. I should have
posted the clip. I was playing a game with a
dinosaur deck where I cast the three man of sixty
(19:33):
six pugnacious hammer skull on turn two off lan of
rls and a manifold mouse just like a heartfire hero
just goes right over it. And I cast another one
the next turn and another lan of rls, and it
goes right through them again, and I die like it
was and the whole time I am just like I played.
(19:54):
I played a six y six on turn two and
it wasn't big enough for their one man of mouse
and monstrous rage and whatever else they had. It was. Yes, ah,
it's very enraging, very monstrously rageye, isn't it all right?
I keep losing my spot because I'm sorry. I have
(20:14):
a lot of yap in me today. I have a
lot of app about Standard in general for these reasons,
and in the interest of eliminating the least fun aggressive
play patterns in Standard. They admit it right up here.
It was fun having a combat trick. Uh. Okay, least
fun aggressive play patterns in Standard monstrous rageous band. At
(20:40):
least they saw the light. At least that happened. Okay,
But then this is interesting because they've talked about the
mice and how the mice will always be together, and
how they'll always be the best, most amazing, synergiestic package
that a Red deck has ever had. Heartfire Hero has
been another key piece of Red Aggressive deck strength throughout
the last year of Standard. The curve of Heartfire Hero
(21:02):
into Manifold Mouse puts the opponent under pressure immediately and
forces decks to have ample interaction for the early turns. Additionally,
Heartfire Heroes Die trigger gives the Red decks significant resiliency
to many kinds of removal. This strength has shifted the
format towards decks that can interact starting on turn one
(21:25):
or two, or decks that can leverage temporary lockdown. Yep,
that's all you can do. That's all you can do,
or you're just dead. You can't play a creature into
a creature into a creature that aren't these mice. You're dead. Duh.
We want Red Aggressive strategies to be a viable option
in Standard. Why why it's always there? It's always there.
(21:49):
It don't you don't. You don't have to handhold Mono
Red this way. It's always there. It was there when
people didn't want it to be a strategy. It was there.
Why because it's the fastest and it's got caught. Like
it's always just these fact the fastest little things that
can kill somebody who stumbles. Mono Red can exist without
(22:10):
endless R and D support. It can, it has in
the past. It's just every time they're like, we're gonna
juice Mono Red. Now they print something like fire Blast
and the format goes to hell. That's a boomer reference. Anyway,
Heartfire Hero has proven to have too much explosive power
combined with too much resiliency. As such, the mouse is banned.
(22:33):
Get that little get it out, Get it out of here.
We discussed banning only Heartfire Hero or Monstrous Rage, but
ultimately decided that banning both was the correct course of action.
So I play Alchemy every now and then. Thank you
to my sponsors at Wizards of the Coast. I appreciate you.
The play MTG Arena channel, and Monstrous Rage is banned there.
(22:58):
So I have played in environment with a smaller standard,
kind of like a smaller standard because Alchemy still has
a two year rotation, and in that environment, Heartfire Hero
is nerved. It's an one. In Alchemy, I still played
against red Mice constantly. I think the first like three
matches I had when the last time I queued into
(23:20):
Alchemy were Heartfire Hero on turn one. It wasn't enough.
It wasn't enough to even nerf the card to an
O one. It's still good. I think I lost all
of those games. By the way, the two cards are
both independently strong, and leaving either alone would make it
likely why can't I read oh yeah, because I just
(23:43):
woke up and my eyes aren't working. And leaving either
alone would make it likely that aggressive decks in the
format would still be combo style agro dex with consistent
explosive starts and a lot of burst damage potential. By
banning both, we shift the aggressive strategies of the format
away from combo style agro, decrease the interactional burden on
(24:05):
the non aggressive decks in the format, and thus increase
the number of viable cards and decks. And there's your
domain overlords. Up the bean Stock is no stranger to
the ban list, having been banned in modern since twenty
twenty three. At this point, up the Beanstock has been
clearly cemented as the best in class source of card
(24:27):
advantage for slower decks. It shares Corey steel Cutter's quality
of being challenging to interact with profitably, as its controller
will almost always be up a full card on the exchange.
This means decks powered by up the bean Stock are
hard for many types of strategies to adapt to, which
effectively eliminates them from the metagame when up the Beanstock
decks are prevalent. The deck building puzzle of up the
(24:49):
bean Stock has also been solved so many times you
mean by rides end, you mean by whatever the green
one is with a living weapon at this point that
we expect it to be more monotonous than engaging, as
more cost reduction cards may get released in future sets.
(25:09):
We've even felt some of these pains while developing cards
and mechanics that have yet to be released. For these reasons,
Up the Beanstock is banned, so they've been trying to
print cards that are like this costs x less to cast,
where X is the number of cards in your hand,
or X is your life total, or X is your
graveyard or whatever else, and they've been like, well, what
(25:31):
about up the Beanstock And then they're like, oh, well,
I guess we can't print that card, then it would
be broken. And now they're like, you know what, guys,
we want to have more fun deck building in the future,
so we're banning up the beanstock now, all right, job's done.
Orzov Pixie. Interesting that they are showing Orozov Pixie. Okay,
(25:56):
this is interesting because arguably the deck that was playing
Pixie was no longer playing this Town big Enough, which
is one of the cards they band and it's probably
because of the temporary lockdown situation. And they're hoping that
the temporary lockdown situation isn't a thing anymore, that you
have to run that card because nothing else deals with
Corey's Steel Cutter and the mice. All right. The self
(26:20):
bounced decks have shifted a lot as the format has progressed,
with just a small, powerful core consistent between iterations. Hopeless
Nightmare is a key piece of that core, serving the
role of a one man a trinket that is powerful
to cast many times in a game. The pattern of
constant discard it forces on the opponent is among the
least fun elements of the deck and shrinks the game
(26:43):
in a way that makes it hard to come back from.
Once the self bounced deck gets going. In addition, Hopeless
Nightmare provides the self bounced decks with both interaction and damage,
allowing the deck to position itself as a disruptive aggressive deck.
I have died. I've died on turn four going second,
so before my turn four to the Hopeless Nightmare deck.
(27:04):
And when you're playing a deck like Omniscience and like
they let you discard the Omniscients and you have the
Awakening in hand and you're just waiting to untap on
turn four and then they actually output twenty damage before
that happens, You're like, uh, okay, it's kind of kind
of insane. Yeah, it was a turn three lockdown, turn
four of Buelo's Awakening hand and I just died. I
(27:25):
was dead, allowing the deck to position itself as a
disruptive aggressive deck in the interest of removing the least
fun elements of self bounce. Hopeless Nightmares band This Town
Ain't big Enough has seen play in many different standard decks.
It almost always sees play alongside Stormchaser's Talent, a two
card package that has proven itself in a variety of shells.
Most recently, this package played a role in the Is
(27:47):
It Prous deck, but before that it was a key
player and versions of the self bounce strategy that incorporated
Blue when commonplace. This Town Ain't big Enough makes the
format less fun through its unique ability to interact with
any permanent based strategy while still advancing the Wheelders game plan,
while not a huge share of its overall power. The
loop with Stormchaser's talent is particularly frustrating, and it adds
(28:10):
the threat of an endgame lockout to many matchups, making
games less fun. For these reasons, This Town big Enough
is banned, so they're gonna talk more. I'll read all this.
I have thoughts. It's interesting that they haven't brought up
the metagame share of any of these things. The only
(28:31):
place they brought that up was Omniscience and steel Cutter
and the rest of these they're like they they kind of.
It appears that they'll use metagame share when as a
as a justification to ban something now, but at least
in this rotation window, lack of metagame share is not
(28:53):
a justification because they're not talking about how many decks
played This Town Ain't big Enough or Hopeless Nightmare or Beans.
They're talking about the experience. So this is interesting because
there's been this debate for years of do they ban
for player experience or do they ban for numbers? The
answer today is both all the above. The answer today
(29:15):
is yes, that's different. I wouldn't say they've never done it,
but now like that debate is a moot point, and
going into future band announcements, the answer can once again
be yes. And maybe it is only for these rotation
window announcements. This is the first of it's kind of
(29:37):
in that sense, so maybe they'll say they're only going
to do that this at these times. I don't know.
It's it's weird because from now on, band debate is
going to not have a rock to stand on. It's
literally going to be, well, people don't like hopeless Nightmare.
It could get banned and I'll be like yes, and
they'll be like, this deck is forty percent of the meta.
(29:59):
It's going to get banned, and I'll be like, also, yes,
both apparently are now true. Oh god, we're going to
talk about three year standard. It's been a little over
two years since we announced the shift to three year standard,
so we haven't even had a full three year standard
cycle yet. And this happened with every set we release,
(30:21):
we learn more about how to adapt our design heuristics
to this new model for standard good Good. The set
of bands is emblematic of two key learnings we'll be
caring forward in the future. I would love to know
more about this first, with the larger card pool of
three year standard, we need to be more precise with
our one man of cards and our cards that synergize
(30:44):
with one man of cards. Yes, this is a very
good point. I'll read the rest of their thing. But
most people don't understand how cheap a one man of
card is. Going from a one man cost card to
a two man cost card is double. So if you
get at the same effect or even a bonus for
a card that costs half of what a two man
(31:06):
of card costs, leveraging that will always win you games
like it's the biggest jump in the man of curve
is from one mana to two mana. If you have
a powerful one man effect and your opponent has no
one man effect but a powerful two man of effect,
you're still well ahead. It's yeah, it's crazy. We have
the cards ban today cost one mana and Corey steel
(31:28):
Cutter has to be played alongside the cheapest cards available.
The potential for one man of cards to define a
format grows as the card pool increases, and we've learned
that going to three year standard is a larger step
in that direction than we had first believed. Standard is
more fun when the starts of games often cost more
than one or even two mana. That is so true,
(31:50):
and we will be taking steps to ensure that is
true more often going forward. Love that standard should be
like a turn five, six seven format standard. I've been
watching some old stand footage. You know how many games
a standard would start with a tap land, either a
three color tap land or a skry Land. Oh and
those were good formats, man, those were good formats. And
(32:11):
now it's like, well, if I'm not playing stuff on
turn one, whether it's duress, cut down, manifold mouse, a
bounce spell like into the flood maw something, I'm dead.
It's like, you're just dead. I gotta play a storm
Chaser's talent because it's a one man of card. I
just need something on the board and I don't want
to die. Second, we need to scrutinize and be careful
with the rate of cards that are challenging to interact with.
(32:34):
Favorably of. They didn't learn from Lucky Clover in Witches
of and that's what they're saying right now. I'm very
bothered with the increased power level of cards in the
larger format that is three year standard decks are very
capable of turning a small advantage into a snowball that
ends the game. Strong cards that leave resources behind when
dealt with, like Corey Steel Cutter and Up the Beanstalk,
(32:56):
reliably create that first small advantage. Identifying these cards and
evaluating their strength and context of their interactional requirements is
a task that play Design is incorporating into our process
going forward. Your two man of cards can't be busted
snowball cards that pay for themselves. Yep, that makes sense.
That makes so much sense. One last announcement for standard today,
(33:20):
considering our next standard rotation won't be until early twenty
twenty seven, we will be having two of our early
rotation standard banning windows before the next standard rotation. You
can expect one of these windows in about eighteen months,
right before rotation as usual. That's probably the January one.
The other one will be in roughly nine months around
(33:41):
the midway point. But we haven't decided on an exact
date yet, and it could move around by a month
or two. We will clearly indicate which announcements will significant,
will specifically take a deeper look at Standard. Okay, they've
said there's going to be a few more band announcements
(34:02):
they're playing in the future. I guess there are some
cards on the way that have them concerned, or they're
just generally concerned after this huge shock wave that they
just sent through Magic the Gathering with this announcement. Either
can be true in either sense. It's a good idea.
So do we want to read about Pioneer, Do we
(34:24):
want to read about Modern? Do we want to read
about all these other formats? Where did something get banned?
I mean, honestly, they wrote a ton of stuff about
various things in here, which is interesting, But I don't
play a lot of these formats. Alchemy suspending Corey steel Cutter.
That makes so much sense, But it's kind of weird
that they can't just do rebalance. Here's a rebounce for you.
(34:44):
The monk is an no one done all right, best
of one? Or here's a how what if the monk
was a zero zero the monk token it generates what
if it was a zero zero What if, guys, what
if there you had to have the cutter at hatch
to it for it to be alive, or you had
to have a prowess trigger on that turn for it
to live, and then it would die at the end
(35:06):
of turn anyway, because you move the cutter off it
to generate a new one, kind of like that Arena team.
If you're watching, consider the monk tooken being a zero zero.
A hey anyway, Uh yeah, the counterspell unbanned is fine.
Timeless Brawl, no changes, I mean, we'll read one for
our favorite format. The popularity of Brawl continues to grow
(35:29):
with the addition of over one hundred new commanders. The
update included the partner mechanic for the first time. We
have accounted for partner in our manage making system and
when continue to adjust individual placement of commanders as they
prove themselves. Actually most they put so many commanders straight
to HELLQ already. I was kind of amazed at all
the commanders that go straight to hell in the new
(35:50):
Brawl format of Final Fantasy. But hey, that's a whole
other subject, all right, guys, they did the thing it
did happen and Corey steel Cutter of Bueilo's Awakening, Monsters, Rage, Heartfire,
Hero Up the Beanstock, Copless, Nightmare, This Town, big Enough
are all banned. When will that take effect on arena?
(36:13):
Effective date June thirtieth, So maybe later today I'll be
able to record with a new environment. That's crazy. That's crazy.
As I come to the end of this video, those
of you who stay till the end, good job, but
don't turn it off yet. I have announcements in general
for the channel. They might be a separate video in
(36:34):
the future soon, but just so you guys have a
heads up, I'm going on vacation. I leave tomorrow early,
so today is my only day to record with these
ban announcements. I mean, maybe no changes would have made
my vacation easier. This means that there won't be a
lot of Magic the Gathering Arena content during my vacation,
(36:54):
and I'm gone all the way in for two weeks
until July fourteenth, I believe something like that. And when
I get back, I'm going straight to work on Edge
of Eternities as I'm an official Magic the Gathering ambassador
for that. So the standard content it's really sad, but
these bands are happening. But I won't have the opportunity
to do as much standard content content as I want
(37:16):
for the next two weeks, as I do have a
vacation planned. I do have some things already scheduled for
that trip. In particular, I was sponsored to be in
Rren's Rumble, a Horstone event celebrating the new set into
the Emerald Dream, and I have some sweet matches against
other content creators like Cemo, Boxy and Amazonian and day nine,
(37:36):
and I have some sweet videos of that that I
will be posting on the channel for you guys to enjoy.
And for those who don't like Harstone and have comments
for me about that, I would otherwise there'd be nothing.
So it's just it's just there for the people who
want it. If you don't want it, that's fine, I
get it. It makes me really sad to read like
angy comments and see thumbs downs on the videos. I
(37:59):
gets you feel like your voice must be heard. But
the other option was nothing. It's not like there was
gonna be a standard video in its place. It's not
taking the place of any standard content. I'm not gonna
have enough time to record enough content after these bands,
So there's gonna be days of just nothing on the
channel for like during this vacation. But in the meantime,
I do have some Hearthstone VODs to release, and I
(38:20):
do have a few other pieces of content to release,
and I also have some members only content that I'm
going to put up. Usually it's like out of like
it's like brawl videos, and it's not like brawl videos
with a hot new Final Fantasy commander. It's like, hey,
I played Emery for the thirtieth time. I have some content.
There's a Tammio video like that, and those videos I'm
not sure if I'll release public or not, but anyway,
(38:43):
that's what's going on the channel for the next two weeks.
Is going to have some sponsored Heartstone content and probably
whatever Magic content I can get done today, and then
there are gonna be days with no posts whatsoever. We
also have the worst possible live episode from Vegas is
going to be coming out, so there are things that
are going to drop. I'm just gonna be playing a
(39:04):
lot less arena for the next two weeks, which is
unfortunate now that there are bands. But I'll be back.
I'll be back on the fourteenth, and I'll be back
to work on Arena. I'm not quitting Magic the Gathering.
And those of you who stayed till the end of
this video and see the comments in the Heartstone videos
about him quitting Magic the Gathering, you guys know the
truth and you can drop some truth bombs that I'll
be back and definitely playing Magic the Gathering on the
(39:26):
fourteenth of July after my vacation. And thank you very
much you stayed till the end. That, of course, is
the number one thing you can do to help the
channel top it off hit like his subscribe. Thank you
my Masa Falcons. You're cool.
The cover Go podcast is now on iHeartRadio, Spotify, and
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doody dow dey dudey Cover Good podcast. What's up masa Falcons?
(00:29):
You get a rare one today? You get me before shower,
no shave, no clean hair, tank top. Why because they
just dropped the ban announcement and are you ready guys,
Let's see, let's see what they've got. Let's head right in.
I have no idea. March thirty, that's not it, Dune thirtieth,
(00:52):
twenty twenty five, that's Reddit. This is the Oh, I
gotta put the link in up here at the search bar. Smooth, god,
it's so bright A lot I can save you. This
is why you watch my channel for this. Holy crap?
Did I just see that correctly? Anyway? Dark reader? Nice
little browser extension. Oh my god, Oh my god, they
(01:20):
fired all the bullets. Look at they brought out the
whole team. They brought five people for this announcement. They
absolutely launched the Bullets and they hit seven cards, seven cards,
(01:43):
Corey steel Cutter, A Buelo's Awakening, Monstrous Rage, Heartfire, Hero,
Up the Beanstalk, Hopeless Nightmare. This town ain't big enough.
It ain't big enough for none of us. They went
for every deck. They they went for Red, they went
for Prowess, they went for Awakening, the Omniscience, they went
(02:06):
for beans And I mean, yeah, I guess Domain's been
there a long time. Sure, Domain is the one that
I think changes the most with rotation. That's why I
didn't think they'd have to kill it. And then they
also hit Hopeless Nightmare and this town Ain't big enough? Wow,
(02:26):
Oh my gosh, this is going to make a really
great What Got Banned video someday. Anyway, all these other
things have no changes with Corey steel Cutter suspended pending
a rebalance, and in Pioneer Best of One on Arena,
trickery is banned because there are people who just don't
like playing Magic Gathering. There's always that group that would
(02:49):
rather play a slot machine than Magic the Gathering in
their Magic the Gathering. And then there's counter Spell unbanned
in Historic always thought that was weird, Okay, Howdy gamers. Ah. Yes,
my name is Carmen clem Parents and I'm a senior
(03:09):
game designer on Magic's play design team. Welcome to our
midyear ban and restrict date announcement for twenty twenty five.
The previous update to the band and restricted list focused
on changes to Modern and Legacy with massive upheaval and popper,
but for this announcement, we're shining a spotlight on Standard. Yeah. Yeah,
the I of Soron has found standard. Given the quality
(03:30):
of cards being added to standard ban list, I'll go
ahead and roll out the red carpet for gd in
to talk about the details of what's changing and why.
As usual, we'll be on weekly MTG in Twitch dot
tv slash Magic tomorrow that's July first, at ten am
specific time to discuss these changes and answer any lingering questions.
You can submit questions for that stream over on the
(03:52):
official Magic Gathering discord. To jump to our discussion of
a particular format, click below. Okay, we have discussion. Let's
go standard with all these bands, all these beautiful cards
got banned. So much for my no changes idea, but
(04:15):
thanks for all the clicks anyway, Wow, is this enough
to change the play patterns of Standard. That was my
biggest concern. I've never been so happy to be wrong
about the bands. But will it change things? It looks
like this is intended to do a lot of changing,
all right. Today's announcement is our once a year early
(04:37):
rotation window for Standard. Our goal with this window, by
the way, this is the first time they've done this,
the early rotation window to try to shake things up,
So that also plays a lot into what would they do.
Our goal with this window is to set the next
rotation cycle up to be as fun as possible. We
do this by saying an early goodbye to a number
of cards that have proven their strength and made the
(04:57):
format less fun, either by creating unhealthy patterns or by
restricting the viable deck building options available in the environment. Okay,
so all best decks will now be banned in whatever.
This is the early rotation window in Standard's that's what
it's gonna be. Although when is that next year? Because
now they're starting to ban in February, so it'll be
(05:19):
like January. But make January be something in Magic that's
kind of exciting. It's usually a dead time. We do
this by saying an early goodbye to a number of
cards that prove their strength up created pre lay patterns yep,
restricting the viable deck building options available in the environment. Below,
we'll discuss these bands and are reasoning behind them. Then
we'll discuss the lessons learned from these cards. For three
(05:42):
year Standard, we're announcing the banning of seven cards and
Standard seven is a lot of cards. Is it the
most ever at once? When they did the Mirriad in
bands it was arc Bound, Ravager, Disciple of the Vault
and the five Lands and Darks. You'll say it's not
the most ever at once, but I mean comparing it
to Affinity is weird because the land cycle had to
(06:04):
be completely banned even for our early rotation window, and
especially so since it has been over two years since
any cards at were all at all were banned in Standard.
Has it really been two years since they banned me
Hook Massacre and then they banned Invoke Despair reckon our
(06:24):
bankbuster fable that was the last ban? Wow, it really
has been that long. I'm old, ye, So how do
we get here? Our last ban and restricted announcement was
three months ago, shortly after the release of eighth or Drifts. Oh,
let's go. At the time Standard was looking fun and healthy.
There were three decks clearly at the top of the
(06:44):
meta game Red Aggressive Mouses, Self Bounced Synergy, and the
Pixie decks a Domain or Lords Rampjeck. But below those
top three was a sea of other decks that stood
a fighting chance on any good given weekend. Come on,
say the flourishing thing, Say the thing. Standard was flourishing.
(07:05):
The release of Tarkier Dragonstorm in April had a dramatic
effect on the metagame, propelling is It Prows to the
top of the metagame on the wings of Corey steel Cutter. Yeah,
right to the top, right to forty percent. It was
the deck to beat at the recent round of the
Standard Regional Championships and represented over forty percent of the
Standard metagame at Pro Tour Final Fantasy. Here is an
(07:27):
example of such a monster. Here you go, Here you Go.
It's clear that is It Prowess deck is having a
negative effect on the Standard metagame. Its play rate numbers
are substantially higher than we have seen in Standard in
the recent past. Beyond just play numbers, though, the degree
to which the deck is warping the rest of the
metagame around it is crystal clear. One easy example is
(07:51):
Mono Red, which reinvented itself for an is It Prowess
world by adapting large numbers of main deck copies of
mage Bean Lizard, an excellent card against Prowess STRATG that
was seeing very little play before the decks rise to prominence.
A lot of people pointed this stuff out in my
band videos, like these numbers aren't real CGB Yoshi. Everybody
(08:11):
is wharping their deck around. Is it powersh to be? Did?
Therefore this is not like ape. You're meta, sure, but
who's to say that spells deck won't be there next time?
And Maje Bain Lizard can still be a good card.
I think people, I think when a card is good,
it's not only good against one deck. There are other
things that will use the strategy. It's not like Graveyard
(08:31):
Hate won't be in decks anymore because of Buelo's awakening
his band Like yes and no, there's an argument. I
don't think it's as clear as everybody makes it. Oh.
The other big argument from my band video, which got
so many views, Thank you to everybody, was that the
statistics did not take into account mirror matches. Or if
they did. Those are compiled by Frank Carston, who does
(08:53):
this all the time. You should follow Frank Carston on
x or Twitter or whatever you want to call it.
You should follow Frank Carson on whatever platform Frank is
on where the numbers come out. Frank always removes mirror matches.
So you guys, I you know what, you know what
statistic I want. I want statistic of the number of
people fighting over like whether or not the statistics included
(09:14):
mirror matches. That's what I want, because the comments in
that video were just going off anyhow, that is a
little side tangent. I think it's I think it's totally
fine that the numbers include some amount of main deck
and sideboard hate that is taken into account in a meta,
because it's not always deck specific hate. It has other places.
(09:35):
It's not like Mage main Lizard is a terrible Mono
red card. It's probably good in a Mono red mirror too,
because it's got four boute and you can hit it
with the Lizard Land of the Rock Faced Village, and
it's also good against any other spell combo that comes
out of VV in the future. So I don't think
Mage main Lizard is like, oh, well, because that is popular,
(09:55):
because is it? Prowess is popular. These numbers aren't pure stander.
It's always like this. It's always like finding the right
the right tool in the shed to battle a particular
meta Always Corey steel Cutter is the obvious target from
the is at Proustck for banning. It is quite simply
too strong for the format, or any format. You might
(10:15):
argue a card that's a little bit stronger than everything else.
In addition to quickly rising to the top of the
standard meta game, Corey steel Cutter also had a large
impact on Modern, a format considerably more powerful than Standard.
You don't say. It also has the quality of being
a challenging card to interact with profitably due to the
increased burden of answering artifacts and the ease with which
(10:37):
Corey steel Cutter leaves meaningful board presence behind even when
quickly destroyed. This combination of sheer strength and resilience has
let Corey steel Cutter run rampant on Standard. It's only
been legal since darkiear guys, it's only been legal since March,
and it's gone. How did this happen? At this point,
it's clear the tools to challenge Corey steel Cutter's dominance
(10:57):
don't exist in the environment. Did we play rushed it? Whatever?
For these reasons and in the interest of metagame diversity
of Cory steel Cutter's band, I have to go make
a note to self right now, you're gonna see me
like live like note myself as a reminder. Get the
Corey steel Cutter clip from Rare in video. It goes
(11:21):
on the clips channel. So check out the clipschannel cover
Go clips formerly cover go Live. That's a fun place
to post things. I have to get our clip of
us talking about Corey steel Cutter before it was released.
Did we say it would get banned? I think one
of us might have. I've got to go check it out.
But it was just so obviously the most broken card
in that set. It was stupid. Let's see the level
(11:44):
of dominance of is it prowess? In the recent standard
Wait hold on, I missed this sentence. For the sake
of clarity and setting expectations going forward, the banning of
Corey steel Cutter is the kind of action we would
take in any of our banning windows. What the level
(12:04):
of dominance of is it prowess? In the recent Standard
metagame clearly meets our threshold for bands outside the once
per year Standard window. They are saying this could have
been emergency band. They are saying, yeah, they are saying
this could be an emergency band level card. They are
saying Corey steel Cutter is a mistake. That's what they're saying.
(12:31):
Only red cards are these kind of mistakes nowadays? Oh
my god. That ah. Anyway, the release of Corey steel
Cutter reshaped the landscape of Standard. It's very challenging to
predict what will happen to the metagame after its banning,
but we have concerns that the format may drift back
to the format it as it previous existed previously, no kidding.
(12:54):
To make sure the next Standard metagame is diverse and
as room for exploration, we're banning six additional cards. This
is the part that's This is the part that really
shocks me. Corey steel Cutter. I'm like, yeah, busting card,
go for it. But they have other options. Is it
will still be a deck and a threatening deck. That
is probably a good thing when you look at it
that way. I didn't think they'd pull the trigger on
(13:16):
all the decks that were popular before Corey steel Cutter,
because they didn't pull the trigger on them in the past,
like you like, why are we hitting Domain now and
it's not even being played, right, why are we hitting what? What?
But the idea is that they want they legitimately want
to shake standard and it's weird because to me, it
(13:39):
feels like it goes against the idea of the three
year standard. It goes against the idea of you get
to play your decks and they avoid making bands. So
the people who invested in all these overlords, hopefully those
overlords are still good in other decks. They probably will be.
They're very amazing cards. But the Domains an expensive deck
and Bean's just got banned. Okay, it doesn't feel stable.
(14:03):
It's interesting. Maybe it's because they looked at it and
said Domain is Like I figured they just let Domain
rotate like they have in the past. But maybe they
looked at it and said, Domains about to die. Anyway,
we banned Beans now we keep another Beans deck from
being popular. So something changes and the Domain deck was
on its last leg anyhow, they just get one less
(14:24):
month to play their Domain deck before it rotates, which
is probably fine, especially with all the magic cons and
I believe the RCQ season out of the way. I
didn't check the pro schedule before saying that. Somebody correct
me if you need to anyway. Yeah, yeah, Zorious Omniscience
Uh huh, huh huh. The second most popular deck at
(14:46):
Final Fantasy was Zoria's Omniscis Combo, with more than twenty
percent share of the meta game. Every Best of One
gamer could have told you about this. The omniscious deck
has exhausted. Has existed as a part of the metagame
for a while, but climbed in popularity to be a
major player after gaining new cards in Roiling Dragonstorm and
Merangue River Regent. With the release of Tarki or Dragonstorm,
(15:07):
I thought it made it more fun more. Dragons of
Bueilo's Awakening always had the potential to create a deck
like this, as formata is cheaper than we normally allow
for non creature reanimation effects to be, but we had
hoped that turning what it brings back into a creature
would allow ample counterplay. This has not proven to be
(15:31):
the case for Omniscients. What a thought, and you put
that in the format for like five years, maybe seven
with foundations, It's great combo decks like Azarius Omniscients are
something we want to exist in Standard, but when too strong,
they warp the format around them and reduce the number
(15:51):
of viable decks. This version of Omniscience has proved too
powerful and too consistent for these reasons of those Awakening
is bad, my boy? What have they done to my boy? Ah?
I'll have to find a way to get to Mythic
like a normal human being and not just win most
(16:12):
of my blue white games on turn four. Such a shame.
So sad I had built it. I had built a
version of the Omniscience deck that was rotation proof. I
actually have some footage from it. I may release it
just from members, or I may actually release it while
I'm gone. It was funny because the win con that
want the way to end the game the same turn
(16:32):
is all gone, Like founding a third path is rotated,
and so is invasion of Arcavios. All those things rotated,
and so it didn't win the turn it got out
the Omniscients. It just drew its whole deck, while almost
all of its deck enough so you don't deck out.
It puts all the dragons on the board. It generates
one hundred prowess otters by having a stormchaser's talent in
(16:54):
the deck. So it just generates like as many otters
as the rope allows you to do. It gets all
the confound riddles, and this town ain't big enough so
that it possibly could in your hand, So you would
pass the turn with a hand. That's like three confounding
riddles for this town ain't big enough and a thousand
odds and it's turned four and four dragons and you
just pass. They probably sit there and rope. You put
(17:17):
something on the stack, you counter it with a riddle,
pass back, you win. I didn't even have to win,
like it was so anyway, this is for the best.
I'll miss I'll miss my omniscience time. I really will.
But you always have seven hours of it to go
back and watch if you miss it too. It's for
(17:39):
the best. Monstrous Rage has been powering aggressive red decks
in standard since its release in Wilds of l Dream.
It is one of the strongest and most efficient com
metrics to have ever been printed, and probably the only
one that will ever be banned. Do I have to
read this? Are my eyes actually seeing this? We've enjoyed
(18:06):
having a combat trick be a strong standard card. I'm
telling you, man, I'm telling you whoever they snuck into
the building at Wizards of the Coast love their mono
roids so much, so much the red propaganda is getting
(18:29):
to a boiling point anyway, anyway, but it's clear that
Monstrous Rage has overstayed its welcome. It has enabled combo
style agro decks more than we would like, and has
played a large role in lowering the fundamental turn in Standard.
A fundamental turn being where the game is effectively over,
(18:49):
such as having like easily now it's like turn three
and turn four definitely, but Standard was never meant to
be like you Die on Turn four format in the
past and putting players under too much pressure too quickly.
In addition, the fact that it grants trample has decreased
the utility of blocking in the format. Brian Kibler would agree,
(19:13):
and greatly eroded the efficiency of defensive creatures as a
counter strategy to aggressive decks. I really should have just
posted it had me saying a lot of naughty words.
I should have just edited out the boot. I should
have just bleeped all my naughty words. I should have
posted the clip. I was playing a game with a
dinosaur deck where I cast the three man of sixty
(19:33):
six pugnacious hammer skull on turn two off lan of
rls and a manifold mouse just like a heartfire hero
just goes right over it. And I cast another one
the next turn and another lan of rls, and it
goes right through them again, and I die like it
was and the whole time I am just like I played.
(19:54):
I played a six y six on turn two and
it wasn't big enough for their one man of mouse
and monstrous rage and whatever else they had. It was. Yes, ah,
it's very enraging, very monstrously rageye, isn't it all right?
I keep losing my spot because I'm sorry. I have
(20:14):
a lot of yap in me today. I have a
lot of app about Standard in general for these reasons,
and in the interest of eliminating the least fun aggressive
play patterns in Standard. They admit it right up here.
It was fun having a combat trick. Uh. Okay, least
fun aggressive play patterns in Standard monstrous rageous band. At
(20:40):
least they saw the light. At least that happened. Okay,
But then this is interesting because they've talked about the
mice and how the mice will always be together, and
how they'll always be the best, most amazing, synergiestic package
that a Red deck has ever had. Heartfire Hero has
been another key piece of Red Aggressive deck strength throughout
the last year of Standard. The curve of Heartfire Hero
(21:02):
into Manifold Mouse puts the opponent under pressure immediately and
forces decks to have ample interaction for the early turns. Additionally,
Heartfire Heroes Die trigger gives the Red decks significant resiliency
to many kinds of removal. This strength has shifted the
format towards decks that can interact starting on turn one
(21:25):
or two, or decks that can leverage temporary lockdown. Yep,
that's all you can do. That's all you can do,
or you're just dead. You can't play a creature into
a creature into a creature that aren't these mice. You're dead. Duh.
We want Red Aggressive strategies to be a viable option
in Standard. Why why it's always there? It's always there.
(21:49):
It don't you don't. You don't have to handhold Mono
Red this way. It's always there. It was there when
people didn't want it to be a strategy. It was there.
Why because it's the fastest and it's got caught. Like
it's always just these fact the fastest little things that
can kill somebody who stumbles. Mono Red can exist without
(22:10):
endless R and D support. It can, it has in
the past. It's just every time they're like, we're gonna
juice Mono Red. Now they print something like fire Blast
and the format goes to hell. That's a boomer reference. Anyway,
Heartfire Hero has proven to have too much explosive power
combined with too much resiliency. As such, the mouse is banned.
(22:33):
Get that little get it out, Get it out of here.
We discussed banning only Heartfire Hero or Monstrous Rage, but
ultimately decided that banning both was the correct course of action.
So I play Alchemy every now and then. Thank you
to my sponsors at Wizards of the Coast. I appreciate you.
The play MTG Arena channel, and Monstrous Rage is banned there.
(22:58):
So I have played in environment with a smaller standard,
kind of like a smaller standard because Alchemy still has
a two year rotation, and in that environment, Heartfire Hero
is nerved. It's an one. In Alchemy, I still played
against red Mice constantly. I think the first like three
matches I had when the last time I queued into
(23:20):
Alchemy were Heartfire Hero on turn one. It wasn't enough.
It wasn't enough to even nerf the card to an
O one. It's still good. I think I lost all
of those games. By the way, the two cards are
both independently strong, and leaving either alone would make it
likely why can't I read oh yeah, because I just
(23:43):
woke up and my eyes aren't working. And leaving either
alone would make it likely that aggressive decks in the
format would still be combo style agro dex with consistent
explosive starts and a lot of burst damage potential. By
banning both, we shift the aggressive strategies of the format
away from combo style agro, decrease the interactional burden on
(24:05):
the non aggressive decks in the format, and thus increase
the number of viable cards and decks. And there's your
domain overlords. Up the bean Stock is no stranger to
the ban list, having been banned in modern since twenty
twenty three. At this point, up the Beanstock has been
clearly cemented as the best in class source of card
(24:27):
advantage for slower decks. It shares Corey steel Cutter's quality
of being challenging to interact with profitably, as its controller
will almost always be up a full card on the exchange.
This means decks powered by up the bean Stock are
hard for many types of strategies to adapt to, which
effectively eliminates them from the metagame when up the Beanstock
decks are prevalent. The deck building puzzle of up the
(24:49):
bean Stock has also been solved so many times you
mean by rides end, you mean by whatever the green
one is with a living weapon at this point that
we expect it to be more monotonous than engaging, as
more cost reduction cards may get released in future sets.
(25:09):
We've even felt some of these pains while developing cards
and mechanics that have yet to be released. For these reasons,
Up the Beanstock is banned, so they've been trying to
print cards that are like this costs x less to cast,
where X is the number of cards in your hand,
or X is your life total, or X is your
graveyard or whatever else, and they've been like, well, what
(25:31):
about up the Beanstock And then they're like, oh, well,
I guess we can't print that card, then it would
be broken. And now they're like, you know what, guys,
we want to have more fun deck building in the future,
so we're banning up the beanstock now, all right, job's done.
Orzov Pixie. Interesting that they are showing Orozov Pixie. Okay,
(25:56):
this is interesting because arguably the deck that was playing
Pixie was no longer playing this Town big Enough, which
is one of the cards they band and it's probably
because of the temporary lockdown situation. And they're hoping that
the temporary lockdown situation isn't a thing anymore, that you
have to run that card because nothing else deals with
Corey's Steel Cutter and the mice. All right. The self
(26:20):
bounced decks have shifted a lot as the format has progressed,
with just a small, powerful core consistent between iterations. Hopeless
Nightmare is a key piece of that core, serving the
role of a one man a trinket that is powerful
to cast many times in a game. The pattern of
constant discard it forces on the opponent is among the
least fun elements of the deck and shrinks the game
(26:43):
in a way that makes it hard to come back from.
Once the self bounced deck gets going. In addition, Hopeless
Nightmare provides the self bounced decks with both interaction and damage,
allowing the deck to position itself as a disruptive aggressive deck.
I have died. I've died on turn four going second,
so before my turn four to the Hopeless Nightmare deck.
(27:04):
And when you're playing a deck like Omniscience and like
they let you discard the Omniscients and you have the
Awakening in hand and you're just waiting to untap on
turn four and then they actually output twenty damage before
that happens, You're like, uh, okay, it's kind of kind
of insane. Yeah, it was a turn three lockdown, turn
four of Buelo's Awakening hand and I just died. I
(27:25):
was dead, allowing the deck to position itself as a
disruptive aggressive deck in the interest of removing the least
fun elements of self bounce. Hopeless Nightmares band This Town
Ain't big Enough has seen play in many different standard decks.
It almost always sees play alongside Stormchaser's Talent, a two
card package that has proven itself in a variety of shells.
Most recently, this package played a role in the Is
(27:47):
It Prous deck, but before that it was a key
player and versions of the self bounce strategy that incorporated
Blue when commonplace. This Town Ain't big Enough makes the
format less fun through its unique ability to interact with
any permanent based strategy while still advancing the Wheelders game plan,
while not a huge share of its overall power. The
loop with Stormchaser's talent is particularly frustrating, and it adds
(28:10):
the threat of an endgame lockout to many matchups, making
games less fun. For these reasons, This Town big Enough
is banned, so they're gonna talk more. I'll read all this.
I have thoughts. It's interesting that they haven't brought up
the metagame share of any of these things. The only
(28:31):
place they brought that up was Omniscience and steel Cutter
and the rest of these they're like they they kind of.
It appears that they'll use metagame share when as a
as a justification to ban something now, but at least
in this rotation window, lack of metagame share is not
(28:53):
a justification because they're not talking about how many decks
played This Town Ain't big Enough or Hopeless Nightmare or Beans.
They're talking about the experience. So this is interesting because
there's been this debate for years of do they ban
for player experience or do they ban for numbers? The
answer today is both all the above. The answer today
(29:15):
is yes, that's different. I wouldn't say they've never done it,
but now like that debate is a moot point, and
going into future band announcements, the answer can once again
be yes. And maybe it is only for these rotation
window announcements. This is the first of it's kind of
(29:37):
in that sense, so maybe they'll say they're only going
to do that this at these times. I don't know.
It's it's weird because from now on, band debate is
going to not have a rock to stand on. It's
literally going to be, well, people don't like hopeless Nightmare.
It could get banned and I'll be like yes, and
they'll be like, this deck is forty percent of the meta.
(29:59):
It's going to get banned, and I'll be like, also, yes,
both apparently are now true. Oh god, we're going to
talk about three year standard. It's been a little over
two years since we announced the shift to three year standard,
so we haven't even had a full three year standard
cycle yet. And this happened with every set we release,
(30:21):
we learn more about how to adapt our design heuristics
to this new model for standard good Good. The set
of bands is emblematic of two key learnings we'll be
caring forward in the future. I would love to know
more about this first, with the larger card pool of
three year standard, we need to be more precise with
our one man of cards and our cards that synergize
(30:44):
with one man of cards. Yes, this is a very
good point. I'll read the rest of their thing. But
most people don't understand how cheap a one man of
card is. Going from a one man cost card to
a two man cost card is double. So if you
get at the same effect or even a bonus for
a card that costs half of what a two man
(31:06):
of card costs, leveraging that will always win you games
like it's the biggest jump in the man of curve
is from one mana to two mana. If you have
a powerful one man effect and your opponent has no
one man effect but a powerful two man of effect,
you're still well ahead. It's yeah, it's crazy. We have
the cards ban today cost one mana and Corey steel
(31:28):
Cutter has to be played alongside the cheapest cards available.
The potential for one man of cards to define a
format grows as the card pool increases, and we've learned
that going to three year standard is a larger step
in that direction than we had first believed. Standard is
more fun when the starts of games often cost more
than one or even two mana. That is so true,
(31:50):
and we will be taking steps to ensure that is
true more often going forward. Love that standard should be
like a turn five, six seven format standard. I've been
watching some old stand footage. You know how many games
a standard would start with a tap land, either a
three color tap land or a skry Land. Oh and
those were good formats, man, those were good formats. And
(32:11):
now it's like, well, if I'm not playing stuff on
turn one, whether it's duress, cut down, manifold mouse, a
bounce spell like into the flood maw something, I'm dead.
It's like, you're just dead. I gotta play a storm
Chaser's talent because it's a one man of card. I
just need something on the board and I don't want
to die. Second, we need to scrutinize and be careful
with the rate of cards that are challenging to interact with.
(32:34):
Favorably of. They didn't learn from Lucky Clover in Witches
of and that's what they're saying right now. I'm very
bothered with the increased power level of cards in the
larger format that is three year standard decks are very
capable of turning a small advantage into a snowball that
ends the game. Strong cards that leave resources behind when
dealt with, like Corey Steel Cutter and Up the Beanstalk,
(32:56):
reliably create that first small advantage. Identifying these cards and
evaluating their strength and context of their interactional requirements is
a task that play Design is incorporating into our process
going forward. Your two man of cards can't be busted
snowball cards that pay for themselves. Yep, that makes sense.
That makes so much sense. One last announcement for standard today,
(33:20):
considering our next standard rotation won't be until early twenty
twenty seven, we will be having two of our early
rotation standard banning windows before the next standard rotation. You
can expect one of these windows in about eighteen months,
right before rotation as usual. That's probably the January one.
The other one will be in roughly nine months around
(33:41):
the midway point. But we haven't decided on an exact
date yet, and it could move around by a month
or two. We will clearly indicate which announcements will significant,
will specifically take a deeper look at Standard. Okay, they've
said there's going to be a few more band announcements
(34:02):
they're playing in the future. I guess there are some
cards on the way that have them concerned, or they're
just generally concerned after this huge shock wave that they
just sent through Magic the Gathering with this announcement. Either
can be true in either sense. It's a good idea.
So do we want to read about Pioneer, Do we
(34:24):
want to read about Modern? Do we want to read
about all these other formats? Where did something get banned?
I mean, honestly, they wrote a ton of stuff about
various things in here, which is interesting, But I don't
play a lot of these formats. Alchemy suspending Corey steel Cutter.
That makes so much sense, But it's kind of weird
that they can't just do rebalance. Here's a rebounce for you.
(34:44):
The monk is an no one done all right, best
of one? Or here's a how what if the monk
was a zero zero the monk token it generates what
if it was a zero zero What if, guys, what
if there you had to have the cutter at hatch
to it for it to be alive, or you had
to have a prowess trigger on that turn for it
to live, and then it would die at the end
(35:06):
of turn anyway, because you move the cutter off it
to generate a new one, kind of like that Arena team.
If you're watching, consider the monk tooken being a zero zero.
A hey anyway, Uh yeah, the counterspell unbanned is fine.
Timeless Brawl, no changes, I mean, we'll read one for
our favorite format. The popularity of Brawl continues to grow
(35:29):
with the addition of over one hundred new commanders. The
update included the partner mechanic for the first time. We
have accounted for partner in our manage making system and
when continue to adjust individual placement of commanders as they
prove themselves. Actually most they put so many commanders straight
to HELLQ already. I was kind of amazed at all
the commanders that go straight to hell in the new
(35:50):
Brawl format of Final Fantasy. But hey, that's a whole
other subject, all right, guys, they did the thing it
did happen and Corey steel Cutter of Bueilo's Awakening, Monsters, Rage, Heartfire,
Hero Up the Beanstock, Copless, Nightmare, This Town, big Enough
are all banned. When will that take effect on arena?
(36:13):
Effective date June thirtieth, So maybe later today I'll be
able to record with a new environment. That's crazy. That's crazy.
As I come to the end of this video, those
of you who stay till the end, good job, but
don't turn it off yet. I have announcements in general
for the channel. They might be a separate video in
(36:34):
the future soon, but just so you guys have a
heads up, I'm going on vacation. I leave tomorrow early,
so today is my only day to record with these
ban announcements. I mean, maybe no changes would have made
my vacation easier. This means that there won't be a
lot of Magic the Gathering Arena content during my vacation,
(36:54):
and I'm gone all the way in for two weeks
until July fourteenth, I believe something like that. And when
I get back, I'm going straight to work on Edge
of Eternities as I'm an official Magic the Gathering ambassador
for that. So the standard content it's really sad, but
these bands are happening. But I won't have the opportunity
to do as much standard content content as I want
(37:16):
for the next two weeks, as I do have a
vacation planned. I do have some things already scheduled for
that trip. In particular, I was sponsored to be in
Rren's Rumble, a Horstone event celebrating the new set into
the Emerald Dream, and I have some sweet matches against
other content creators like Cemo, Boxy and Amazonian and day nine,
(37:36):
and I have some sweet videos of that that I
will be posting on the channel for you guys to enjoy.
And for those who don't like Harstone and have comments
for me about that, I would otherwise there'd be nothing.
So it's just it's just there for the people who
want it. If you don't want it, that's fine, I
get it. It makes me really sad to read like
angy comments and see thumbs downs on the videos. I
(37:59):
gets you feel like your voice must be heard. But
the other option was nothing. It's not like there was
gonna be a standard video in its place. It's not
taking the place of any standard content. I'm not gonna
have enough time to record enough content after these bands,
So there's gonna be days of just nothing on the
channel for like during this vacation. But in the meantime,
I do have some Hearthstone VODs to release, and I
(38:20):
do have a few other pieces of content to release,
and I also have some members only content that I'm
going to put up. Usually it's like out of like
it's like brawl videos, and it's not like brawl videos
with a hot new Final Fantasy commander. It's like, hey,
I played Emery for the thirtieth time. I have some content.
There's a Tammio video like that, and those videos I'm
not sure if I'll release public or not, but anyway,
(38:43):
that's what's going on the channel for the next two weeks.
Is going to have some sponsored Heartstone content and probably
whatever Magic content I can get done today, and then
there are gonna be days with no posts whatsoever. We
also have the worst possible live episode from Vegas is
going to be coming out, so there are things that
are going to drop. I'm just gonna be playing a
(39:04):
lot less arena for the next two weeks, which is
unfortunate now that there are bands. But I'll be back.
I'll be back on the fourteenth, and I'll be back
to work on Arena. I'm not quitting Magic the Gathering.
And those of you who stayed till the end of
this video and see the comments in the Heartstone videos
about him quitting Magic the Gathering, you guys know the
truth and you can drop some truth bombs that I'll
be back and definitely playing Magic the Gathering on the
(39:26):
fourteenth of July after my vacation. And thank you very
much you stayed till the end. That, of course, is
the number one thing you can do to help the
channel top it off hit like his subscribe. Thank you
my Masa Falcons. You're cool.
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