Behind the scenes at Pro Tour OGW. Video interviews with: LSV, Frank Lepore, Adrian Sullivan, Frank Karsten, Eric Froehlich, Brian Kibler and more: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HeaKQY8dX_M
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“Vintage Education” Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
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Intro animation done by the talented Geoffrey Palmer. Check him out here: https://twitter.com/livingcardsmtg
Tolarian Winds: Standard. If it’s broke, fix it (and nothing will make you broke like standard)
Standard is THE constructed format of Magic: The Gathering. It’s the format of Friday Night Magic. It’s also the first format that most new players enter the game through, and thus it is a gateway to the game. It’s also outrageously expensive, and incredibly hard to keep up with now that cards rotate out twice as often. Just how effective is that as a Gateway?
I’ve also had a lot of friends over this last year dropout of Magic. Some were folks who once were regulars at my local game store, others, very close friends who had been playing this game as long and fanatically as I have. All of them said variations of the same thing: “I can’t keep up. The last standard deck I built was no good in no time at all. It’s prerelease again? I missed the last one. I’m two standards out of date. My deck is no longer playable and buying a new one is too expensive.”
There was a time where I always had 2-3 Standard deck just for me, my wife always had one. These were decks that had been built by us, refined over time, honed and tested and had special places in our hearts.
Nowadays, I have one standard deck kicking around that holds no special connection to me, and my wife hasn’t had a standard deck in forever. Who can keep up? Who can afford to?
How to fix Standard:
Here’s some of the most important changes that I feel are critically in needed in Standard.
Let’s start with reprints. Block sets need more reprints than they currently have, which is next to nothing. While this does vary from set to set, out of 200+ new sets, oftentimes only half a dozen or fewer cards are reprints, and seldom are any of them needed.\
Standard might be the central constructed format, but you have to create connections to the other formats. Otherwise, people who don’t primarily play standard will have no reason to be a part of new set releases, whether it’s buying booster packs for draft or other, attending pre release, or having a standard deck to play at Friday night Magic.
I am not saying that new sets need reprints for the purposes of Modern. That’s just an added bonus. I am saying new sets need a greater volume of reprints for Standard, to get all players interested in what is the current set. If new sets do not have ANY interest to players of other formats, then you get player stagnation. If new sets have cards players of other formats want, then those players are more likely to see a reason to participate in some way with those sets. The reprinted cards may even interest them in the Standard format.
This of course would have a positive effect on those other formats as well, as reprints are severely needed for Modern and other formats, and those formats are not getting the needed reprints from supplemental product. It’s all interconnected. Strengthening one format, strengthens the others.
But the vast majority of cards will always be new, but there’s a big change needed in the nature of these new cards. Print less jank! It amazes me that some players still don’t realize that Wizards intentionally designs cards to be bad. This is so that in a draft environment, players must solve the puzzle of which cards in their hand are good, which bad, which are amazing and which are terrible, and thus this translates into the vast, vast majority of cards in a new set being completely worthless in constructed formats, least of all is standard.
The changes are too rapid, and while pro and aspiring pro players can keep up, your average Magic player, someone who isn’t going to GPs and PTQs and just want to go down to the shop and play, the people with school or jobs, it’s harder and harder to keep up.
Standard is the gateway constructed format to Magic: The Gathering. But as it currently stands, that Gateway is closed, and only those that can scale the fence can really get in.
More reprints.
Less jank.
Less frequent rotations.
That’s the key to unlocking that gate and letting everyone back in.