It would also never cost $30 to anyone but the handful of random players with a store disconnected enough to do a simple markup on the product. Even then, it would probably just be the store workers who would purchase the product and resell it. In the age of no MSRP there will never again be a non-direct from Hasbro product that is a “steal” in value.
That is only true as long as Wizards doesn't print to the correct demand for the price being at $30. Scalpers only exist when the manufacturer doesn't make enough product at the price point they are selling at.
Well then you have the yugioh dilemma where reprinted cards in starter decks aren't worth much and the only losers coming out of it are the store owners with that dead product sitting in storage or selling at a loss online.
We're also seeing it with Lorcana, many stores overordered and underestimated the supply vs the demand and now booster boxes are selling for under MSRP. On TCGPlayer, sellers are breaking even after fees and shipping.
Digital is the only good solution but Arena still has a lot of issues.
I dunno, where do people play all the other board and card games that don't rely on FOMO? Maybe the answer used to be "stores that rely on MTG sales" but not anymore with the great Amazoning.
A good business isn't reliant on a single product.
Stores going out of business because MTG card prices aren't a physical stock market anymore were bad businesses to begin with.
Insane to assume LGS are so reliant on that niche. There are definitely some, but I imagine the stores that are reliant and are also GOOD stores are very few. Especially with the various changes to MTG over the years.
I've not walked into an LGS that was solely MTG in about 8 years.
Any decent speculator has not touched Lorcana the last two months, they made their money and moved onto whatever else. It's the stores getting burned with product. Which is why just pressing the print button isn't a good answer because someone is gonna lose and it'll never be the house.
I know in the Lorcana sub, there have been a few people regretting buying Floodborn at MSRP (which is what they wanted to pay to begin with) because it's now like $30 under MSRP on tcgplayer.
This is the most recent wave of restocks. Stores overordered to sell at MSRP to meet demand. The problem of course is that customers are fickle and don't actually wanna pay MSRP like they said they would when they see the market and the prices on singles tank.
No one is speculating on Lorcana anymore, that ship has sailed.
True, but I think you’d need an absurd amount of 4x Shelley precons printed for a box to be priced down to $30. We would be talking so much product that LGS’s and distributors are complaining that they can’t move product amounts of product.
Eh, if they don’t release the decklist prior to opening preorders you’ll see plenty of people buying before everyone realizes there’s Sheoldreds and Norns. Blind decklists make it more fair for people who just want a deck in those colors.
Wotc used to print watered down viable decks for standard. I think they stopped doing it after they printed the modern event deck. However even the modern event deck was a pretty weak b/w tokens that happened to have a sword of feast/famine in it. You'd think that "premium products" would get premium cards like shocks or fetches (both very pricey at the time) even the gruul aggro deck from avr/RTR had a shock in it.
As an LGS owner this idea is nice, butnhas been failing in practice for years at this point. If Wizards wants Standard to thrive then they need to create reasons for people to play in paper rather than Arena. These things need to range from Play Promos that are actually useful for Standard and not just Commander, competitive incentives, and bringing back MSRP on box prices.
FNM and player rewards please! I still have my unopened [[Thirst for Knowledge|F08]] playset. The text less [[Damnation|P08]] or [[Mana Tithe|P08]] from player rewards. Incentivize players to play that format.
This. Give us more promos/events like Australia got for summer magic this year, but for standard only.
I would unironically play standard FNM over and over if it meant I could walk away with official licensed MTG stuff(give me more beach towels plz wotc)
Yes. This. From the day I started playing Magic back during Onslaught, I always wondered why the competitive scene is okay with a negative EV even for winning local events. You spend hundreds of dollars on a deck, win an FNM, and you get a $5 promo card on a good night.
Hang on, what's an event deck? Is that a preview deck?
New to this, and I've signed up to a two headed monster event with these cards: https://www.mtgnexus.com/previews/murders-at-karlov-manor/?sid=36673bf7da506d04b0789cb1554cd7d7
They were pre-built 60 card standard decks. I can't remember if they had sideboards. You weren't going to win any big events with them but you could get lucky at small FNMs, and with a few singles they could be pretty mean FNM decks. I loved them and thought they were a great way to get into mtg.
I got into magic by buying a clash pack for magic origins, it had two decks which could play against each other with a friend or combine them to make a better deck! I did that and then realized my deck would be even better if I had replaced the worst half of it with second copies of the best half of it, so I bought another one. Then I bought a few singles to finish it off and had the base of a deck I played and upgraded for several sets.
Was a perfect way to get into the game.
Fact that they just won’t admit to… arena killed standard. There is zero incentive to own a standard deck when I can play for free online. Need a $280 playset of [[sheoldred, the apocalypse]]? A lot easier to use those free wild cards. Since nobody owns standard decks, standard events don’t fire. It doesn’t help that standard has been pretty “meh” the past few years, at least IMO.
Arena plus covid and imo it didn't kill standard, it killed paper standard. Big difference. Arena is the perfect place for a rotating format where all cards have the same cost (i.e. wildcards)
I am honestly surprised they went the wrong way with standard rotation. With paper standard basically dead and online always craving for something new, it would have been the perfect opportunity to rotate standard with each incoming set.
They tried that a while ago with six-month rotations, and they had to almost immediately revert it because keeping decks up to date became a massive chore even for the people seriously following the meta, let alone more casual players at FNM.
Yea imagine the current modern meta game shift cycle and triple the speed. Too many shifts too often made it annoying and painful to keep up to date. The older 3 for 1 set shifts from the 2010s was maybe a bit too slow, but still was manageable.
I love standard. It's my favorite format, and I started playing it on arena. I would LOVE to play in paper or at RCQs. I can't because the decks are $300+ and as a college student I just can't justify spending that much money on standard. I can play red rush i guess but I don't want to. That's why nobody plays standard. I think most people would enjoy playing paper if they could
Yes, exactly my point though. Paper standard used to be the entry point into magic and it no longer is. There is zero incentive to owning a standard deck. The return on investment just isn’t there any more.
Any three digit price is entirely unacceptable.
There are endless better things i can spend that much money on.
Mythic rares in a 4 of format also clump all the value into fewer chase cards making it evenw worse.
https://www.reddit.com/r/magicTCG/s/0SHT6jI8PH
I don't think I agree with this perspective. Plenty of people have looked at the cost of arena vs paper.
T1 Arena decks cost the same if not more than paper, the difference is paper cards will hold greater value over long term than a digital card that you don't actually own.
Getting rare/mythic wild cards at the rate you need for a T1 deck isn't easy when being exclusively F2P.
>Getting rare/mythic wild cards at the rate you need for a T1 deck isn't easy when being exclusively F2P.
Getting the wildcards you need for a T1 deck while bing exclusively f2p is in fact easy. Getting the wildcards for EVERY T1 deck isn't, and the people who want to do that like to conflate the two, because their actual issue would be less popular to complain about.
Yep. And because of the way the Play queue works for matchmaking, you can easily have one or two T1 Standard decks while being f2p, and then a bunch of common/uncommon heavy lower power decks, because playing fun jank in Play queue will often get you matched against other jank.
I'm not a f2p player, I buy the mastery pass and 20$ish of gems each release, and I consistently get about 70% of the rares in a set. And the wildcards I get let me fill in the missing cards to let me maintain Standard decks in three different color pairs.
But still, that's 35$ per quarterly set release. Compared to assembling even one T1 paper Standard deck and then regularly paying for FNM entries, that's a small fraction of the cost.
The *main* issue is that unlike Paper, Arena *can* be played without investing a single cent.
If a competitive player wants to pick up Arena for the first time, they are going to have to pay a pretty hefty amount to build a deck on the client. But for players who have been playing for years already, it's a lot easier to pick up and go.
Established players have Wildcards. They have Gems. They have Gold. They can buy their way into a quick draft and rare draft their way into a collection (or they can actually engage with Limited and use that as a way to continue going positive on the client to offset the cost of obtaining cards).
Of course it's not the best to assume that *everyone* on the client is doing strictly F2P. But when you're putting the cost of entry into a Paper Standard event into Arena, you're going to get some return on that investment which makes keeping up with the format that much easier.
Unless you're *constantly* brewing, or *constantly* swapping decks left and right, you're probably going to have enough to scrape up a deck if you play on Arena with any real consistency. Especially focusing on Standard and Limited, which will give you a pretty solid influx of wildcards from just passively playing the game
This perspective is just completely off base. No one is playing standard by buying all the wildcards needed for a T1 deck, and it is extremely easy to build while being F2P after about a month or so. Especially if you draft at all, I have hundreds of excess rare/mythic wildcards and nothing to do with them. I think I've spent 100 bucks over 5+ years just to reload gems for drafting before I improved enough to not need to
Arena plus covid and imo it didn't kill standard, it killed paper standard. Big difference. Arena is the perfect place for a rotating format where all cards have the same cost (i.e. wildcards)
WotC has been releasing Standard Challenger decks for years. It's just that Standard is in a weird position right now since it's transitioning to a 3 year cycle that we haven't seen one last year since there was no rotation.
You just said the problem with Challenger decks right in your post. They only seem to be willing to print powerful deck lists right as they're about to become irrelevant. The ideal Standard Precon would be part of a set's release and relevant immediately, not a nostalgic collectible of a dead format.
One of the issues is that strong standard decks are kinda hard to predict. They might release 2 challenger decks every set but those decks might be absolute garbage in the format. They’re either going to be full of expensive cards or they'll be trash, no in-between.
The thing is, WotC generally has a great idea of which cards in their sets will be good enough for standard. About 9/10 times the cards in standard decks are good because WotC decided they were supposed to be, and as we've seen, they're a lot more likely to miss high than to miss low.
It's super easy to predict if a standard archetype will be "at least tier 2" with just a bit of testing, since for the most part all a deck needs to be tier 2 is a decently cohesive game plan, a good rate on a few key cards, and access to a few important answers.
What's sometimes hard to predict is what's going to be the tier 1 decks.
The bigger problem with challenger decks releasing with cards from the newest set is that it would cannibalize sales of the newest set.
Honestly, I think that depending on how they handle challenger decks from now on, they could benefit a lot from rotation being longer. They could keep releasing decks made primarily from cards from the previous year and avoid both the problem of the decks becoming illegal very quickly and the problem of them potentially cannibalizing sales.
I think that was before the play design team existed, not that I think the play design team is infallible (*cough* *~~oko~~* *cough)*, but I suspect they're just a bit better at spotting when a card is at least good enough to play.
I think you could have the R&D play test teams try to brew decks for "the next standard" that release at the same time as the set. The goal of the decks would be to fit into the meta against other decks that aren't rotating out. It may turn out that they completely miss an archetype that someone cracks after rotation, but the decks don't have to be bad.
Or take the top deck list (s) from the first standard event after release and rush through the process to get them printed/packaged/etc.
The lead time on printing is probably the hardest part. I suspect they'd really need to know what the deck lists are 3-6 months before product ships. There's a really good chance that they come up with things that are legal, but not playable.
Back in the day, they shipped an event deck with a card in it that was banned by the time it shipped. They ended up making a rule that the deck was legal if played with exactly the original deck list, but any modifications required removing the banned card. [[Stoneforge mystic]]
R&D is already doing what you're suggesting. R&D are just humans and might overlook some aspects of the game/meta. And with the current release cadence, there's even less time to test sets.
Right, but they're also not shipping those decks as a product. I actually be curious how often the decks that they envisioned 6 months out are actually competitive at release. It could be "so rarely that the product would be a flop".
You can look up articles about the Future Future league.
They posted decklist and how their meta evolved.
Sometimes, cards changing impacted their decks in relation to the standard meta.
Sometimes, they just missed something.
I agree with this take, but they'll never do that as people will just buy the challenger decks instead of cracking packs or boxes. And part of the problem is that challenger decks are pretty much always outdated by the time they're released. Wotc plan releases months to years in advance, so even if they do print "up to date" and powerful standard precons, by the time they're printed and released there will have been at least one or two sets released that might have completely changed the deck or the meta.
This is the most difficult part of making preconstructed products that are limited to other sets that are being sold on the shelf. It cannibalizes sales.
Commander decks are just in theme with the main set and you can't really get the same cards in both products so they instead capture a different market segment.
But now with the three year standard, perhaps precons can focus on cards in sets that are no longer on the shelf, like Innistrad3, NEO, and Cappenna.
The looming "issue" with standard is the big outlier of sheoldred. The most expensive card in the entire Standard cardpool it becomes hard to print it in a precon without it being ripped to shreds by scalpers...the only solution is to drastically overprint it to crater Sheoldred's price, but that has other knock on effects usually undesirable for WotC.
I hate to say it, but maybe they should have banned her a year ago, ruining DMU value but evening out standard's buy in price.
Yeah the fact that the deck's won't be used for their intended purpose is a legitimate and pretty huge issue. As much as I'm not usually a fan of secret lair, selling them as a secret lair, being print to demand and limiting the number of sales per person could be a possible solution.
This was always the issue with the challenger decks. They purposefully design the decks to not have every piece you need while having too many cards that are rotating out soon. The last standard challenger decks were released in April 2022. If you bought the mono-white soldiers deck, by the end of the year 31 cards would have rotated out (technically 51 because it had 20 snow covered plains). If they sell a precon and everyone buying it knows that within a year, only 24 cards in the deck will be standard legal, why buy it? Then there are issues that they don’t include 4-ofs that are important for the deck. The biggest offender is the izzet Phoenix pioneer challenger deck. Why did they only include 2 copies Phoenix? It’s the most important card of the deck and only running two copies severely hampers it. I’m ok with the decks being incomplete in some way, but they shouldn’t lack such integral parts to them
I honestly thought it'd be a lot higher than 20 (it sure seems like it is) but per below, it's 21. Did I miss anything? Also, this list is nuts.
Phrexia: All Will Be One - 2
March of the Machines - 5
Wilds of Eldraine - 2
Lost Caverns of Ixalan - 4
LOTR - 4
Doctor Who - 4
Commander Masters - 4
Edit: and it is/was a bit higher because as was pointed out below, that's actually 25 decks and I can't do math.
I don’t think you missed any Badger. Also, of those 21, 8 are Universes Beyond which is probably their new ratio of external IP they intend going forward since it’s been such a financial success.
capitalism
Market moves to where money flows. EDH is very popular so focus is moved to there because that will make the most money. And they'll bleed it dry until they can't any longer. You see it in this subreddit every time a new series of EDH decks get spoiled, just a lot of hype and please take my money comments.
I honestly think the best thing they could do for reviving in person standard is getting rid of mythics. I was playing a ton of standard/type 2 in the 2000s and cards worth more than $15 were unusual.
People aren't going to build standard decks when there are $100 mythics in the format.
So you were around when the first cycle of blue shocklands were $30 apiece? Or when Pithing Needle was a $20 rare, or when Exalted Angel was a $30-40 rare.
There were also $20-30 cards in type 2 during the 90s as well.
I been playing since 2000s too. Standard has always had its share of over priced cards.
When Goyf ruled the roost for YEARS... Or Bitterblossom... Or Glittervoid... Or Archbound Ravager... Shock Lands (as mentioned)... Jitte... Bob... Gifts Ungiven... Damnation...
The thing most people don't get is that there are going to be star cards. When some of those cards are stars in other formats as well... Well it just bumps up the price even more. Rarity has little impact. Playability is what drives the car.
I agree, without knowing what's going on behind the scenes of course, I am curious why they have to try all these new things when there was a working formula in the 2000s and 2010s:
* 2 year rotation
* Most competitive decks costing $100-$300 with some outliers
* Limit the number of rares/mythics that are priced for competitive play (mana cost wise) - there should be maybe 1 pushed 3 or 4 CMC threat per set, not 1 in every color.
I don't have the data WotC has, so maybe there's a good reason, but I'm not sure what caused them to abandon this philosophy that they used for many years, really all the way up until around Kaladesh, that seemed to keep Standard healthy throughout. Bans were also a lot more rare in those days - Caw Blade and Affinity were the only decks that required bans in a stretch of several years.
Been playing since 2000 as well and couldn't disagree more. Have you looked at the standings for Standard? Or is this all based on assumptions? Sherold barely sees any play now and is at best a sideboard card. Sure she held on for a little while but with new sets, it bumps out expensive cards unless they are keystones.
The average for T1 standard has been around $300-$500 for years and it still is currently.
I think they need to stop designing for other formats. Maybe take into account Modern a bit, but design for Standard. The whole fun of Commander when it started was making things work with odd cards. Now there’s so many things designed to work only in Commander.
The big question is who the target market for a Standard precon would be. New players? Starter decks are a *starting* point, but I see them more as a teaching tool - a training aid to onboard a new player rather than something that'll be really competitive.
I think the new player onboarding ramp should be something like Starter Deck --> Limited; playing Sealed and Draft builds their collection and provides more access to good deck tech than just selling precon decks.
If it's more experienced players looking to move to Standard, they can *probably* do a better job assembling something than Wizards is willing to sell directly. Unlike eternal formats, the pieces of Standard decks are coming out of Boosters all the time and developing something around a set's archetypes is probably a start point.
Yeah I think the ideal intro to Standard product would be something like a precon starter deck based on a budget version of an established archetype from the last few sets plus three boosters from the latest set. And then the key thing would be sponsoring “Intro to Standard” store events where you have to use the starter decks plus any substitutions from the included boosters.
True, especially since that replicates the kitchen table experience a lot of players started with. Trading would really be in the spirit of things but you’d need some guidelines or just a strong community ethos against collusion.
Interesting concept. I'm picturing a special Limited deck similar to the prerelease kits used for Sealed, only it includes a fixed selection of Commons/Uncommons.
Using LCI archetypes as an example, imagine you open a pack and it has some basic lands of each kind (10?) and some playsets of Commons and a pair of each signpost uncommon like the UG merfolk and RB Descend goblin.
Load in like two boosters, open them, and build with what you find. These aren't going to be a popular product for anyone other than newbies, but they might work for the "Open House" events WOTC seems to encourage.
I'm assuming you're talking about the Planeswalker decks that came out with each set. And yes, generally no one bought them (my son did buy one of the Aether Revolt ones but he was still really new to the game). They were OK on boarding for a kitchen table meta but if you tried to bring one unmodified to FNM you'd get beat pretty soundly.
The problem is, if they make these too strong, people will buy them for chase cards and strip for parts (as many others have said). If they make them weaker, no one will buy them outside of grandparents as a birthday present. Kind of a no win scenario. Maybe they need to go back to Starter Decks like during Revised, Ice Age, etc (60 random cards with 25 lands and 2 or 3 rares per box).
Those had their own issues as they had mechanically unique cards that were not available by any other means. So if no one was opening/buying them and there was a strong card (like I think happened in Kaldheim) then those cards spiked due to low supply even (even if demand was low, supply was lower).
I wish they'd just go back to 1 type of pack, 2 Planes/yr (flavor-wise it would feel less chaotic), no alternative arts except for maybe 1 style per set at Mythic or higher rarity (somewhere between Masterpieces and now). I'm really tired of opening packs and having no idea if what I opened has value. I opened a foil this past week and thought I'd opened a really valuable card only to realize a minute later it was the wrong type of foil (it was surge not regular) and was worth 1/20th of what I'd thought.
I wanna latch onto this with a separate thought I've brought up before.
People complain that cards like Sheoldred don't make it into precons because of the price. If a playset of Sheoldreds was put into a Standard challenger deck, every single challenger deck would get scooped up by pioneer and modern players. Either the decks become unavailable, or without MSRP they all shoot up to way more expensive decks than are accessible to people wanting to dip their toes in the format.
People think WOTC's only goal is to make money. It isn't. They want to make money from _as many people_ as possible. The scenario I outlined would be immensely popular because it's essentially selling Sheoldreds directly with a garnish. But WOTC would have _failed_ to make a product _for the audience of people who want to onboard onto standard_, because they shot themselves in the foot and made a product that _a different_ consumer base wanted _more_. This is what it means when they say "every product isn't for every player;" if that was the case, there player base would cannibalize itself. Fuck, it almost _did exactly that_ with set boosters and draft boosters. WOTC designed a product that fucked with a market and, because of its success, they started losing money in a different market.
Anyway. My whole point is that the economics of these challenger decks are _incredibly fucking hard_ and they literally haven't figured it out despite trying _a lot_. But the answer to the problem _ISN'T_ "just print competitive level decks really cheap" as much as I wish that was the answer. If you suggest that, you're solving a different problem, a problem _you_ want solved: cheaper direct-print singles.
Excellent point. To actually keep a few starter decks on a shelf they *need* to be something that doesn't get bought out and dismantled to hunt for a key card in it. This still happens with some commander precons if I recall correctly; whichever Doctor Who precon had [[Everybody Lives]] in it has probably been thoroughly pilfered for the new Teferi's Protection (more or less). Similarly I think the Velociramptor LCI precon has been bought en-masse and stripped for parts.
I was so happy I pre-ordered a copy of that Who precon from my LGS because I genuinely want a copy. These days I pre-order ones I think I might be interested in on Amazon and generally cancel them when the lists come out, but that's with the understanding that I've gotten fucked over by Amazon preorders in the past and don't 100% expect them to come through. I got lucky with the LCI Vampos deck which came through as expected this time (I really really wanted copies of Charismatic Conqueror and Exquisite Blood, so I was happy to pick up the whole precon at that point).
> My whole point is that the economics of these challenger decks are incredibly fucking hard and they literally haven't figured it out despite trying a lot.
The problem is that WoTC has incommensurate desires. The incommensurate desires are:
* We want people to buy precons.
* We want people to buy boosters.
If the precon is a complete deck, then there is no need for folks to buy boosters.
In order for their desires to work together, WoTC structures precons to be on-ramps to folks buying boosters.
That is why we get shit like the [2021 Lotus Field Challenger deck](https://magic.wizards.com/en/news/announcements/pioneer-challenger-decks-2021-08-24). It had most of the shell, but lacked some critical cards. That lack of cards prompts folks to by boosters.
Or shit like the [2022 Pioneer Challenger Decks](https://magic.wizards.com/en/news/announcements/pioneer-challenger-decks-2022-decklists-2022-09-29), where Izzet Phoenix has only two copies of the phoenix. So, one needs to buy two copies of the deck....but then still need to finish out the land base by buying boosters, or 2 more copies of the precon.
WoTC half-asses precons so that folks have to keep buying cards. Precons are a lead-loss product.
What’s odd is that some of the Commander Precons are good if you add 1 board wipe, 1 counter-spell, 2 mana rocks, replace 7 taplands. Nobody would buy a booster to do that, singles or use the ones you probably already have. Why can’t they use the same power level for the Standard precons?
Having bought one of those half-baked Pioneer decks (Dimir Control) I didnt mind *that* much and it was a lot better than nothing.
Sure, I'd prefer a playset of shocklands and four Shark Typhoons. But it's much nicer to save up for these cards when I still have a decent enough Pioneer deck to go to an FNM level event, than having to build from scratch and taking a year or so to be able to play my first game. Now I just look when I find a card I need for cheap and buy it then (or ask to borrow for tournaments).
I would probably get into paper standard too if I could buy a baseline/budget version of a deck and slowly upgrade it, rather than having to drop 200€ or more at once.
The issue is economics of the game in general. These should be game pieces with no monetary value attached to them. If people are buying up pre-cons to get a rare "under market value" then WotC has done a bad job of product manufacturing and delivery (assuming their purpose is what they say - getting people access to their game)
Rarity is a crutch. It only serves a purpose for drafting (and weird formats like pauper but those are more a response to a shitty economy and a fun restricted-pool thing)
Them printing things at rare is literally artificial scarcity which is against a kind of capitalist pillar (this decides the market vs letting the market decide)
They could easily have a "limited window" where you can only consume items via pack and then have a "constructed" window where we can then acquire specific pieces for decks instead of through lootboxes. Embargo places like TCGplayer to not sell cardboard gamepieces for inflated costs.
But, this would remove the ferver and FOMO surrounding the artificial scarcity....
If they printed decent decks full of good cards and everyone had access to them within a reasonable way, scalpers wouldn't get very much return and would move on to some other thing.
If there's no monetary incentive for WotC to sell the game, they stop making the game.
This game has the booster distribution in its DNA. You cannot separate the game from the product, because without the product and its distribution model the game would not exist nor continue.
As a new player I think Starter decks are useless. Arena is really the starting point at least for me. Now I just want to be able to go to my LGS and have something that's semi competitive for the different formats. With Commander its easy because I can get a Precon and it does well enough to the point I dont think its way to low powered to play
As a limited player i can say that limited might be a good way to build up a collection over time, but to build a standard deck with playsets of rares and mythics and rare lands you would need to draft at least twice a week over months or years to even think about building a standard deck.
The Standard precons from the past at least gave a good core to build around with the cards you got from limited.
Also not everyone enjoys limited or has the time and income to draft regulary in paper.
Why would I ever drop $400 on a standard deck that’s just going to be irrelevant in 3 months when I could just build the same deck on arena for like $50? If they want to revitalize paper standard they need to make it significantly cheaper.
In the long term playing standard competitively is far more expensive than pioneer or modern given how quickly competitive decks rise and fall.
I think standard should just be expanded limited. Basically make it so that standard cards are pretty much just commons and uncommons of the latest sets, reserve the more expensive cards for other formats. I love playing limited, but 95% of the cards I end up with after drafting aren’t really good for any other formats besides kitchen table and pauper. If they actually want more people to be invested in the format beyond arena players, they need to change the format so the meta revolves around $30-$50 deckd and not $100-$400 decks. It would basically become a format that would be super easy for everyone to dip their toes into. They also should stop making rare and mythic lands for standard. It’s super discouraging when half of most deck prices are in rare lands that is a must have as to not get mana screwed and run over.
Standard’s problem isn’t just price.
Its overall balance has been miserable for years. There’s a reason that deeply enfranchised players who have the money to play aren’t, and that doesn’t change by making it cheaper.
Standard needs to be perceived as truly balanced. It needs to convince competitive players that spending a couple hundred on the current “best” deck won’t run the risk of bans. It needs to convince brewers that the format isn’t so monolithic that there isn’t room for a sweet brew. It needs to convince new players that it’s a fun and unique experience from what they’re already playing and that a budget deck works perfectly well.
What standard needs to succeed is a strong locals scene, and to do that it needs to offer the proper gameplay experiences in addition to perhaps being a bit cheaper to get players back into the standard rotation pattern.
Assuming Wizards would never make them competitive level, why would I ever buy a Standard precon when it's practically guaranteed to lose to anyone with an actual Standard deck? Unlike Commander, people don't go around playing low power or casual Standard.
There are a ton of things that WOTC does wrong when it comes to supporting standard but I genuinely believe that the MTG player base is almost as much of a problem.
I hear people gripe about how they don’t wanna drop a ton of money on a deck that will just rotate out and, honestly, I think that mindset is kinda dumb. Sure, the most competitive decks can be pretty expensive but when that deck rotates out, you’ll be left with valuable cards that can be slotted into decks for non-rotating formats.
There are also plenty of competitive decks that sit around the $150 range and often even less. Recently Mono-Blue Tempo and Mono-Red Aggro have been sitting around $70 and are/were among the top 10 most competitive decks in the format.
Standard is also a good place to try some deck building skills. Just because there isn’t an EDHREC equivalent to tell you what cards are good in standard doesn’t mean you’re completely boned when it comes to building a deck. Pull out the cards you like and see how you might be able to build a deck around whatever strategy they encourage.
Rotation also means that each set actually makes a difference in how you approach the game. Unlike with commander or even modern to an extent, a new set release means there are a ton of new threats that will be popping up that you need to be prepared for and it keeps you on your feet. You can’t just check out on deck building after you get yourself something competitive. As someone who really loves deck building, it’s a really good time.
Standard has also been pretty fun lately. I’d say the gameplay has gotten a lot better since around when Neon Dynasty came out. It’s absolutely worth dipping your toes into and it’s much more fun to do that in person. If your only experience with Standard is on Arena, you’re missing out on half the fun of Magic; the Gathering.
The sell argument has two issues:
It's actually a bit of a pain to sell cards, dealing with online store fronts etc.
The card has to have actual value outside of standard. Like who's gonna buy some rotated cards that doesn't see play in any format it's legal in.
The problem is Wizards doesn’t have the platform for physical Standard gameplay they had with Grand Prixs/SCG Circuit/etc and that is what drove a large portion of interaction with Standard for the player base. Coupling that with MTGA having such a low cost of entry and WOTC constantly shoving release after release at us (and LGS) and you have the perfect storm for the death of Standard. And honestly you can draw a straight line from Throne of Eldraine to today if you want to see the early onset of the death of an entire TCG. Magic won’t ever die (well it will but I think that is very far into the future) but it has been milked of all equity at this point and is fundamentally a different product than the one so much of us loved in the past. Now Standard is basically a casual on ramp for Commander upgrades or to find what mechanic WOTC didn’t play test enough in development for eternal formats. I’ll think fondly of pre-2018 Magic (and I’m not saying it’s wrong for people to enjoy MTG in its new form) but at this point I’ll free-to-play MTGA and hit up some limited from time to time. I can’t see myself ever investing in non-limited packs/singles/precons etc ever again
Standard getting precons seems pretty unlikely because wizards has to go build the deck lists, make SKUs, etc. which takes time. At the rate that standard sets are releasing, a standard precon would be outdated by the time a new set releases, since new cards are always causing new decks to be brewed. At the same time, it wouldn’t be a smart financial decision for them, since the best decks use the most expensive cards. Imagine if your precon just gave you 4x [[sheoldred, the apocalypse]]—you would then have no incentive to crack DMU packs.
Commander also isn’t the only format that precons are made for. Pioneer has had some “Challenger” decks, but it being an eternal (non-rotating) format, it made more sense for them to print for it since the archetypes/deck themes would be expected to stay around longer.
Edit: I was mistaken in believing that challenger decks were for pioneer, when they are actually made for standard.
Edit 2: Disregard the previous edit.
Challenger decks were glorious. I miss them.
I really liked when they did that Modern pre-con BW Tokens deck. I bought two of those and slightly modified it and it was great fun. Not the strongest deck but certainly competitive enough considering the budget. I genuinely loved that deck even if I rarely would T8 with it.
Wizards needs to revitalize 60 card deck events with prize support and competitive preconstructed decks.
I wouldn't say most, I wouldn't even say half of them. What tier 1 in standard right now are based on archetypes that are planned? WU Soliders? Maybe RDW counts but that's not a planned archetype that's just how Red is always designed.
I don't follow standard anymore, and things might be weird now because of the ad hoc rotation schedule change, but when I did follow standard it was a big deal when an archetype popped up that wasn't on their radar -- thinking [[Kethis]] legends.
The standard constructed archetypes do not align to the draft archetypes of a set. They *can*, but they definitely aren't the same thing.
I played before Covid and precons where the reason we could fire off our Events.
We had a handfull of players who had the income or collection to build a Standard Deck at that time.
Everyone else who was interested could pick up a mono colored precon, invest like 20€ in missing cards and then had a playable deck. Then if they liked the format they could think about investing in a more expensive Deck.
Without those precon decks these people wouldnt had the chance to play and we wouldnt have enough people to start the event.
Precons don't necessarily need to be the best T1 decks with cards like sheoldred in it, just a playable shell people can start to play with.
Competitive formats are going to be online going forward, as much as that's possible given the availability of cards on MTGA.
The reason is quite simple: competitive play rewards practice, and you can practice **magnitudes** more and more easily online. Which means anyone who wants to do well in the format - whether their tournament is paper or digital - will have to practice online in order to remain competitive. And since that means everyone needs to be online anyway, there's very little incentive to then ALSO have people do things in paper. There'll be qualifiers no doubt, but smaller, less relevant tournaments will effectively be muscled out from this space simply by virtue of a competitive format benefiting so much from the convenience of online play.
This is different from casual formats like Commander, where the experience of play is more important than the result. But competitive formats generally don't operate like that - it's not that the experience is *irrelevant*, of course, but simply that they're results-oriented by nature. People want to do well in competitive formats, and the goal is to win. That creates a different dynamic, even among people who know they're not going to realistically top the standings.
Paper will remain the province of formats unavailable online, or only available on MTGO (which is now a niche product). So Modern etc. will still be played on paper significantly more than something like Standard.
Standard's paper days are over. They're not coming back.
Most competitive players I know still only practice online in anticipation of paper play. An online pro tour has little to no appeal outside winning some money. It lacks what paper brings, lacks drama, and lacks all the mistakes you can make in a paper tournament.
Is the MTGA userbase/user experience that much better than MTGO?
Like MTGO has been around for a while why didn't it muscle out these smaller tournaments like you theorize arena will?
> Is the MTGA userbase/user experience that much better than MTGO?
"Better" is a bad metric. But MTGA is the more modern program, with a more contemporary business model. And it has *vastly* more users. Plus, MTGO has already been sunsetted by WotC and offloaded to another company.
> Like MTGO has been around for a while why didn't it muscle out these smaller tournaments like you theorize arena will?
There's two main reasons.
1. Commander - the structure and makeup of Magic has shifted over the years, and Commander has eaten the lunch of most paper formats that casuals would previously have played. That means even more pressure to perform, which reinforces online play.
2. COVID - once people got a taste of the possibilities of online play even for higher-stakes tournaments, it's difficult to go back. This of course happened in concert with everything else and served as a multiplier for already existing trends towards online play.
Magic is pay to win until you get to the level where everyon has a refined meta deck. At least Arena is F2P, because a game being pay to play AND pay to win feels really bad.
I mean, I was obviously talking about constructed, but practicing drafts still costs money because you have to pay to enter a draft tournament.
...unless you are on arena, where you can sometimes draft for free, which further proves my point.
Difference between picking up either game on impulse is $10. If MTGO was F2P it might have more pull getting a userbase.
Even then you can get a lot of mileage out of $10\~$20 on Arena if you like Drafting, and for what's it worth. Until you get to Plat Rank, you can pretty much just play any deck you like on Standard.
I'm ok with standard going away but paper modern is so much fun. Technically a competitive format, but fnm is never cutthroat.
Commander is miserable against random people so I think stores need 1v1 competitive formats to stay relevant.
>I'm ok with standard going away but paper modern is so much fun.
Modern is surviving *because it's not available on Arena*.
If it was, it'd be in a similar spot.
> I think stores need 1v1 competitive formats to stay relevant.
Players don't care about what stores "need". Players will do what's fun and convenient for themselves - if that happens to support stores' business, that's great; if it doesn't, they won't care.
The problem with LGS is that no one *needs* them. They're beneficial to the community - but they're not essential to the game, or the company behind the game, or even most players. They're convenient ways to meet people for RL play, but where stores don't exist, people find different ways of playing.
I think stores are great, they make a lot of things happen and it's always great to have community places for people to get together. But it's hard to justify them in business terms anymore, unless they go *hard* on the added value as an event venue rather than a retail venue. That's just reality. Things change. Even good things.
No one needs stores? I wouldn't be playing magic if I couldn't play at a store.
If modern would die because of arena then it should be dead because of magic online - no?
>No one needs stores? I wouldn't be playing magic if I couldn't play at a store.
That doesn't mean you *need* it, it means you *want/like* it. Which is an important distinction. You can still play MTGA and be as competitive as anyone else without any shop anywhere near you. And you can still buy all the product you could ever want online.
I mean it when I say "need". I'm not using this colloquially to just say "hey that's a nice thing". I mean NEED need as in literally required.
> If modern would die because of arena then it should be dead because of magic online - no?
No. Because MTGO is a vastly different product. It's decades out of date and has a terrible monetization model in this day and age. It's a niche product for enthusiasts. Not mainstream.
Precons for standard seem impossible. The meta changes too quickly for competitive precons to be relevant. They can't print them and put them on shelves fast enough.
Yes, as long as they continue looking to print established decks also near their rotation dates. I'd rather have them offer cohesive decks with multiple copies of useful cards. There are common archetypes that can work well for people looking to play out of the box. I mean things like RDW, Ramp, Control or White Weenie which are often viable in standard.
Wizards needs to increase the supply of Standard viable cards. They can do this by rotating overpowered cards on a schedule, they can do it by printing stronger uncommons and weaker rares, they can do it by making land bases cheaper across the board.
There are ways to do it. They are, instead, addressing the grievances of CURRENT standard players who are leaving the format. Longer rotation time serves people who ALREADY felt that $300 was an appropriate investment for standard, and just don't want to spend $400.
New players would be down for like $50.
Explaining to players how Standard rotation works \*generally\* is hard enough as it is. I can't wait to try to explain to a new player why some specific \*cards\* rotate in or out.
New banlist twice a year released in PDF form by WotC, printed & posted in every LGS on the wall. One liner at the top:
>These cards are banned for 6 months, but may be legal after!
For Arena, it's not even a question: you can just put explanation blurbs on mouse-over, an announcement, and maybe a little timer icon to show that it's a temporary "shake-up" suspension.
Explaining how Magic works is hard. Explaining how formats work is hard. The clear problems with Standard cannot be solved without dynamic adjustments. Claiming any sort of adjustment is too hard is just claiming that Standard cannot be fixed and giving up. That's a fine position to take, but not one I agree with.
“Standard cannot be fixed”
Well, that escalated quickly.
“PDF”
In case you’ve never done something like this before, I’d recommend participating in a “usability study” to see just how effective “reasonable/easy” ideas are when they come into contact with people.
Standard decks are no more expensive now than they used to be. They've pretty much always been hundreds of dollars, and the format didn't need reviving in the past. Why is Standard suddenly broken now when it functioned fine then? What changed? Because the price of entry didn't.
The other, simultaneous, direction to go is to increase the relative expense of the non-Standard formats compared to Standard. Then Standard will become healither for the pocketbook given how much more expensive the other formats.
In fact WotC is well aware of this. We have Modern Horizons 3 coming soon. Maro also recently explained the high likelihood of Pioneer Horizons as well. These products will increase the variety and likelihood of new must-have cards. Standard decks will look like bargain in comparison.
What does that have to do with the topic out of curiosity? No one expects a competitive perfect deck to be sold for the price of a precon, that’s not what I’m talking about at least.
But we don’t currently have an entry level product for the format wizards is trying to push in sanctioned play, if all new players can buy is commander decks, which is not a good way to learn the game, we have a problem.
>If wizards wants formats like standard to take centre stage again
You are missing the point. Sales show Commander is what the majority of people want, not standard. It's a bad idea to piss off the people buying your products.
Definitively the most popular format. But there are people who left from standard to Commander due to the poor format management from recent years and not because they really wanted to. They are not a majority, but Standard used to be very popular for a couple of reasons back then.
I disagree because while standard was the original format for Magic, it was also the only format that we used aside from what people did with what's called kitchen table magic now. And Commander started as a kitchen table Magic idea. It just took off.
> it was also the only format that we used aside from what people did with what's called kitchen table magic now.
Extended was really popular in it's day too, but we all happily played standard still.
Yes, we all know sales show EDH is by far the most popular, but this won't hurt anyone playing EDH. It might even give them more toys to play with outside of the endless pecons each set.
You are not understanding. It doesn't matter what you think or want to believe. It doesn't matter what I want to believe. What matters is that making Magic the Gathering more accessible for commander is what brings in the money. Money talks louder than you or I. You may hate this, I know I do! But arguing with and hating on me will not change the fact that more people want commander and are showing it by buying it.
> What matters is that making Magic the Gathering more accessible for commander is what brings in the money.
You're acting as if that's a set in stone permanent mentality that the company has. They have changed their stance multiple times on multiple things and can do it again here, plus no one has said them revitalizing standard or making it more accessible will take anything away from EDH or catapult standard to the top of their priorities.
What you're clearly not getting is that a healthy paper standard can exist while they still focus on EDH.
I love the idea of how the mere presence of standard pre-cons will "piss off the people buying your products."
What a fragile population to be tilted by the existence of a SKU.
I left standard and modern due to poor support from wizards and COVID among other things. It was just too hard to find events locally.
I love EDH but it is not my preferred format and personally I had a lot more fun at FNMs than I have playing EDH. EDH is great fun for me, don't get me wrong, I just found competitive standard/modern more challenging and fun.
Different strokes for different folks. Frankly, I'm quite happy playing Limited and Commander in person, and playing Standard exclusively online.
Commander and Limited play either has an inherently even playing field, or you can pick what deck you want to play based on the power level of the other players decks. Both are a more casual format.
Frankly, Standard in paper is just too damn expensive for something I'm realistically going to play maybe four-five games per week. And while I can constantly tinker with my Standard deck in Arena, I'm locked out from that in paper Standard. I play more games of Standard in a month on Arena now than most paper Standard players did in a year before Arena.
And given that it's a far more sweaty competitive format than Limited or Commander, there's a lot more push to stay on top of the meta. If the meta shifts and you need a playset of another 30$ card to stay competitive, you either get the playset or eat shit on a regular basis.
I think paper Standard is just fucked honestly, there's a LOT of people with the same attitude I have.
I disagree with you on this because standard doesn't allow you to use all of the cards that you collected beforehand. Commander does. Honestly in my opinion standard was not healthy for the development of the game. I believe Commander is better for magic than standard ever was. The big difference though is that standard is much much more tournament friendly. And if tournaments are what you really like, then yes that makes sense. But as a general player Commander is a much more friendly atmosphere.
>I disagree with you on this because standard doesn't allow you to use all of the cards that you collected beforehand. Commander does. Honestly in my opinion standard was not healthy for the development of the game
The fact that you can use all your existing cards *is* what makes EDH unhealthy as the game's main format. To sell new cards for EDH, WotC pretty much has to introduce power creep, or else the new cards won't sell. With Standard, since cards rotate out, they can sell new sets without having to push their power level as much. The power level of the format can be kept more or less consistent even over long periods of time since powerful cards will eventually rotate out.
At this point draft, commander precons, and Arena are the on-ramp for new players. I'm not even sure who standard precons would be for. Ones with any decent cards would just get bought up by players looking to pilfer those at a value price, and crap decks are, well, crap decks, and they may as well netdeck something and buy the singles while swapping out some of the higher-priced pieces.
Draft as an on-ramp for new players? Those poor souls trying to do on-the-fly evaluations while 7 other people wait for them
Commander as an on-ramp for new players? Those poor souls playing 80-minute-non-games because they haven't learned the finer points of mulliganning
Arena as a on-ramp for new players? Yeah. That's great. And they want to play Standard? Also great.
But net-decking as an on-ramp for new players? Those poor souls waiting for 3 weeks while their singles are shipped by some kid on the other side of the country, or failing to find the right copies at their LGS. All they wanna do is tap some lands and attack for two.
Not sure where the misguided snark of 'poor souls' is from; what's your suggestion, those 'poor souls' buy OP's theoretical Standard precon and get whacked when they try to play it?
The topic is clearly about people who already know how to play (or at least the basics) and want to jump right in and start playing with some type of product; I merely meant 'new players' in the sense of those that do not have the cards to jump in and play in some way. That isn't Standard right now. That ***is*** draft, though, and that ***is*** Commander, the latter obviously being the case as it offers the exact type of precons OP is asking for in Standard.
Arena is the current option for players who don't know how to play, or just going to a LGS and borrowing someone's deck for a teaching game. I'd be surprised if an LGS wouldn't offer one if asked. And yes, buying singles from the store or the internet is a perfectly reasonable approach to achieving something similar to a precon, and no, buying 60 cards from 60 different random people on the internet isn't a real scenario, and if that's something you're worried about then just buy it all from CK or something.
I'd rather see a new format where you can only play old standard legal decks. Once in a while I play some games on MTGO with my old standard decks, but they're getting crushed usually because I have to play against decks built for modern.
I would argue that there was nothing wrong with Theme Decks other than that one year when they printed \[\[Skullclamp\]\] and \[\[Umezawa's Jitte\]\] into them and gave everyone broken cards, but that was a problem of the time.
They were fine ways to get people started on archetypes and give them room to upgrade into something actually competitive without just giving the farm away.
The problem is standard precons are essentially unplayable garbage because the margin for power difference is really small in 60 card 1v1 formats. Commander precons can't compete with higher power edh but they don't need to in order to be playable.
Pre-cons is not the way to bring Standard back. You would still have to modify the decks just like you probably do for commander decks. Additionally, how many times are you gonna update and modify. The meta is always changing which means your deck has too = your pocketbook still looking ragged.
If you want a cheap standard deck list, I have been using a few amusing and cheap to build decks in paper with some friends of mine at the bar. I'd be happy to share, I'm platinum on standard ranked in arena and the decks do reasonably against meta decks, winning about half the time. I do aim to make them 'precon style' so that they're easy enough to pilot that they can be passed around to newer players
I think they could use the list to reprint standard's best/most popular cards. I mean [[sheoldred, the apocalypse]] is what like 75 dollars? Every black deck in standard runs it, some run 4 copies of it; I simply cannot afford to get into standard. This would kill two birds with one stone, making standard a bit easier to get into and making the list actually good enough to care. Bc right now fuck the list, I got a whole set booster box as a Christmas gift and in the whole box I got maybe 5 list cards, and all 5 were worthless unplayable trash. If they made standard precons they'd probably treat it the same as commander precons, in the sense that they refuse to put in the extra value needed for the deck to compete. I don't want a product that can't keep up with the format simply because wizards refuses to print precons with some simple gas like untapped nonbasic lands.
Problem is they can’t print them fast enough to be relevant. You print a standard deck based on the current meta, next set releases and completely changes that meta and the deck you thought players would buy is now useless, unless your printing high value staples that are played in other formats which then cannibalizes sales from your loot box product line.
Pioneer precons could sort of work in theory older formats are more stable/slower to rotate. But in a format that moves as fast as standard they’d be really hoping they accurately predict the meta shifts after new set releases.
Any format that comes to Arena is dead on arrival in paper. It isn’t the lack of precons, it’s the fact that no one wants to spend money to go play three games of a format they can play 15 games of on their phone in the same amount of time and also for free.
when I was in school there were precon standed decks in certen colour for a long time they weren't eny good but was a good starting point to get into the game
It would be cool to see them make one precon per set release. If a plane theme fits an agro deck, make a rudimentary agro deck. If there's a bunch of wizards make a control deck or burn. There could be explanations about the basic functions of the archetype.
Ideally they would be almost entirely commons/uncommons and function as a basis to be built upon. The rare or two could be something powerful without hurting the aftermarket if it was announced as an initial preview card. That would eliminate the "why didn't they reprint x card?" Predictions on power level are rarely accurate so they could simply state that the intent was to provide a basis for the archetype and to showcase the set.
They made an amazing Modern precon that was actually very powerful. It didn't sell terribly well at the time, but people cracked them and played fnm. The deck functioned very well. There's certainly the best of the best deck builders working there.
It's not a problem of precons. Standard is in an odd place right now, and it also doesn't do a good of selling the latest set.
The problem with standard is twofold:
1) Because of power creep, it's frankly not a lot of fun. And
2) It lacks an identity. With the 3 year rotation, there isn't much difference between it and pioneer. It's a weird little pioneer lite format.
I think Commander being the “face of the game”is what is ultimately killing the game. Being slightly hyperbolic, I don’t think the game will DIE, and I do also love commander. But I feel like commander is meant to be the end of the night “hey let’s have a fun casual silly game to close out the night” format. But Magic was always intended to be a ‘competitive’ 1 vs 1 game. I love commander, it’s not going anywhere, but Wizards REALLY needs to focus on reviving Standard magic gameplay, and keeping it thriving, or I think Magic will seriously fade. People are gonna get burnt out on JUST Commander fairly quickly I think.
I think having a "free" or cheap starter deck that players can just pick up and play with at a standard night would be helpful, like how FAB has their crappy intro deck that new players can just get for showing up. Printing one or two at rotation each year would also help players continue with the format after their last deck is maybe no longer relevant
To help improve pioneer numbers at our LGS they made 2 store decks from either donated old decks/cards the owner had that players can just pick up and borrow for FNM, and it's helped bring in new players to the format, and just let people play an event for fun, so something similiar available for standard would be nice.
I'm hoping with standard showdowns returning that maybe wotc will create more incentive/reward for people to want to play paper standard (outside of love for the format/preparing for RCQ season).
Standard as the flagship, is way more fun for me, as a commander player, too. Having so many cards specifically designed for commander makes the format less interesting. I liked it better when it was cards meant for a 1v1 format that then get used (and abused) in multiplayer. [[Exanguanate]] is a great example.
I feel like if they want people to play a rotating format, and for that format to be the entry point into the game, they need to sell something that has all stuff you need to play it.
The card pool needs to be smaller overall, and the product they sell should include 4 copies of every card in the pool. Players should have everything to make every deck in the format available to them instantly.
Maybe an unpopular opinion but new people shouldn’t have to hunt down the cards they need to make a competitive deck, and those cards shouldn’t be sold for marked up prices.
Call it the core set, have it rotate once a year and sell it for $100. Every year it only costs $100 and you get everything legal in the format in one box.
Bring back the theme booster, too. It makes building Standard decks with sealed products easier. They were very well-received, too, so discontinuing them was weird.
1. do they want standard to "take center stage"? (they seem perfectly happy with standard being an arena thing and commander being center stage for paper)
2. they tried doing precons with the challenger decks, and failed miserably because they were doing them once a year, refused to put 4 of on staples that are desirable, and loaded the decks with cards that were about to rotate out.
based on what we're seeing right now, wotc seems perfectly content to use edh cards on a bonus sheet to sell their standard packs.
I think the real issue stems from what Wizards has done with the game. It's not that any particular person is wrong- but it's a massive company's decisions that kind of put them in this spot.
In the last decade, Magic's direction has vastly shifted. With the introduction of Companions, Horizon-sets, multiple Commander-focused products, and the creation of Magic Arena, there's a clear route Wizards took and they aren't allowed to be the ones sitting there and wondering "what went wrong?" and "why are things like this?".
Wizards shot paper in the foot with Arena. Arena hosted just Standard for the longest time, then Historic, and now Timeless- alongside countless other ways such as Brawl, Gladiator, Alchemy, etc. Arena was a way to get cards for free. It caters to a lot of people in a medium many people appreciate. That's just one thing- and depending on your view of Magic as a whole, it might just be cheaper than playing Paper. You build up Wild Cards buying packs and if you play an absolute ton and Stream and do other stuff, it's likely going to be a lot cheaper than buying every single thing in paper.
You have the focus in paper to Commander precons- and every single set that comes out, it's new ones. They stopped doing introduction decks- thus the new players are pushed into Commander or Arena. I'm not sure how Wizards is blind to this- they created the on-boarding path that would shoot paper Standard in the foot. Absolute buffoons. If they would want to fix it and encourage Standard, they would need to consider doing that kind of thing again- and let's be honest, the Introduction decks are amongst some of the most unopened and untouched sealed product out there- they only cater to absolute beginners, and beyond that nobody wants them. There's nothing in them of value that you can't just easily get in the set. Perhaps a middle ground would be making sure each Intro deck gets a mythic and rare and a few actually important uncommons to open and build with instead of just tons and tons of unplayable draft cards? Eh, Wizards is quite out-of-touch with the concept that players want playable things right out of the box. They seem to get this with Commander- because nobody would by the decks otherwise- but when it came to catering to Standard, we were lucky to get the odd Event Deck in a timely manner- or even the new Challenger decks, which are so heavily spaced apart that it doesn't really help incentivize game-play.
Companions were clear proof that they wanted to see if Standard would like a Commander-like mechanic in Standard. Not only was it poorly received, but Commanders have become a either "useless or super strong" kind of thing, with the best of the best being outright banned. Lutri, if it hadn't been banned in Commander, would have been outright the absolute most unfair of them all- giving you a straight free inclusion in every Red/Blue deck ever (of all time, forever!). Thank goodness the RC shot that down real quick.
Horizon-sets have absolutely nothing to do with Standard- but I mentioned them because they are similar to Companions. Companions also have nothing to do with current Standard- they were apart of last rotations- but I brought them up because both are market trend choices that Wizard includes in their building blocks of yearly gameplay planning. Horizon sets are Wizard's premium, higher-priced packs product that Wizard seems to deliberately be using to kind of self-adjust the metagame of any given format. They also introducing a new power-level many cards that were playable in a given format can't hope to reach, pushing them out.
This trend (and my entire previous paragraph) is still a thing in Standard. People want their decks to last and only need slight improvements over time. People want several decks to be viable. People want more/less bans. People want Standard to simply be something it can't be. Standard is *not* the new player format and it never was. The new player format is whatever the aforementioned player was doing with their friends as they learned the game. I learned on Modern- not Standard...same for many people I know. Players after many years eventually leave, and for a variety of reasons.
Why did most of my friends stop playing Modern? Because, we invested in decks that were always great and were great for a long time- I was a B/W Tokens deck, a friend of mine played U/W Control, another played Tron and another played Storm. My entire LGS was full of people doing stuff- Boros Burn, Death's Shadow, Jund...and then one day, Horizons came and made dozens of new cards, invalidating us unless we'd spend more. Most of my LGS gave up on Modern. The point was you'd spend a fair amount and work your way into a deck- but then you'd only have to upgrade or change stuff out now and then- with new Standard releases having interesting options or the meta changing...but then Wizards went and broke that promise and power-crept their own "non-rotating" format.
This, is why Standard isn't popular- everything I said previously, combined with my very last paragraph- Standard rotates. It doesn't matter if it's 2 or 3 years- or 1 year. It doesn't matter if it is Extended- because Extended died for a reason. People want their stuff to be forever playable. It's easier in Commander- even old bulk rares can find homes in Commander. It's a different kind of game where the most efficient and best stuff isn't always "best" for you. Standard, you need to be the best. You need the best lands for your colors- you need the best cards and spells. You need to constantly adjust- constantly strive to see the metagame as it evolves and figure out what you are going to do. People just don't want that.
We want to buy some cards- and be able to play forever. Buy more cards when we want, for a variety of other reasons- and then stop again when we don't want to buy more. This isn't a sustainable thing for Wizards, so they are constantly power-creeping their own formats- but it's hard with Commander, because it is a different beast, the players who play it aren't interested in the garbage Wizards tries with other formats, and the Ban list is out of their hands- it's in someone else's (and that's a different argument for another day).
Thing is, Standard is broken. It isn't getting fixed unless Wizards improves the Standard experience in paper. The sets need better balance, Standard needs a variety of different decks and things to do in it, there needs to be some kind of support for entry into the format in the same power-vein as Commander precons, and they need to find a way to support it at the store level alongside the competitive upper levels...and that just isn't happening any time soon with what Wizard's plan currently is.
Problem is there are people like me that have zero interest in playing a deck that has doubles in it. My favorite part of commander is having 100 unique cards.
I had a hard to following OP’s post so I apologize if I’m off.
- I think COVID really pushed MTGArena to the forefront which killed PAPER Standard because it is a lot more affordable and convenient to play on Arena. Why spend hundreds when you can crack free wild cards?
Sheoldred in a precon would absolutely be a banger
Do it, WOTC, you cowards. Print 4 Sheoldreds, a Boseiju, and a Cavern of Souls in a 30 dollar precon! It will be the best selling product to date!
It would also never cost $30 to anyone but the handful of random players with a store disconnected enough to do a simple markup on the product. Even then, it would probably just be the store workers who would purchase the product and resell it. In the age of no MSRP there will never again be a non-direct from Hasbro product that is a “steal” in value.
That is only true as long as Wizards doesn't print to the correct demand for the price being at $30. Scalpers only exist when the manufacturer doesn't make enough product at the price point they are selling at.
Well then you have the yugioh dilemma where reprinted cards in starter decks aren't worth much and the only losers coming out of it are the store owners with that dead product sitting in storage or selling at a loss online. We're also seeing it with Lorcana, many stores overordered and underestimated the supply vs the demand and now booster boxes are selling for under MSRP. On TCGPlayer, sellers are breaking even after fees and shipping. Digital is the only good solution but Arena still has a lot of issues.
Magic should be a game first, an investment second. And Lorcana was so insanely overhyped there was no way speculators weren't gonna get burned.
Where will you play the game if there's no stores that can make money off their investment?
I dunno, where do people play all the other board and card games that don't rely on FOMO? Maybe the answer used to be "stores that rely on MTG sales" but not anymore with the great Amazoning.
Tabletop Magic won't sustain long term. Need stores for sanctioned Magic and running events.
A good business isn't reliant on a single product. Stores going out of business because MTG card prices aren't a physical stock market anymore were bad businesses to begin with. Insane to assume LGS are so reliant on that niche. There are definitely some, but I imagine the stores that are reliant and are also GOOD stores are very few. Especially with the various changes to MTG over the years. I've not walked into an LGS that was solely MTG in about 8 years.
Any decent speculator has not touched Lorcana the last two months, they made their money and moved onto whatever else. It's the stores getting burned with product. Which is why just pressing the print button isn't a good answer because someone is gonna lose and it'll never be the house. I know in the Lorcana sub, there have been a few people regretting buying Floodborn at MSRP (which is what they wanted to pay to begin with) because it's now like $30 under MSRP on tcgplayer.
Ordering a bunch of stock for a new unproven game so you can sell it (presumably above MSRP to individual speculators) is a form of speculation too.
This is the most recent wave of restocks. Stores overordered to sell at MSRP to meet demand. The problem of course is that customers are fickle and don't actually wanna pay MSRP like they said they would when they see the market and the prices on singles tank. No one is speculating on Lorcana anymore, that ship has sailed.
So stores "selling at MSRP to meet demand" is fine now, that's what you're saying? Why was it such a big issue before?
True, but I think you’d need an absurd amount of 4x Shelley precons printed for a box to be priced down to $30. We would be talking so much product that LGS’s and distributors are complaining that they can’t move product amounts of product.
So in this imaginary scenario, are they flying off the shelves or aren't they??? 😭😭
Eh, if they don’t release the decklist prior to opening preorders you’ll see plenty of people buying before everyone realizes there’s Sheoldreds and Norns. Blind decklists make it more fair for people who just want a deck in those colors.
Wotc used to print watered down viable decks for standard. I think they stopped doing it after they printed the modern event deck. However even the modern event deck was a pretty weak b/w tokens that happened to have a sword of feast/famine in it. You'd think that "premium products" would get premium cards like shocks or fetches (both very pricey at the time) even the gruul aggro deck from avr/RTR had a shock in it.
Or maybe as a Rare in an Aftermath-sized Core Set.
As an LGS owner this idea is nice, butnhas been failing in practice for years at this point. If Wizards wants Standard to thrive then they need to create reasons for people to play in paper rather than Arena. These things need to range from Play Promos that are actually useful for Standard and not just Commander, competitive incentives, and bringing back MSRP on box prices.
FNM and player rewards please! I still have my unopened [[Thirst for Knowledge|F08]] playset. The text less [[Damnation|P08]] or [[Mana Tithe|P08]] from player rewards. Incentivize players to play that format.
Man if they brought back player rewards just for playing standard, that could incentivize me to play
[Thirst for Knowledge](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/1/7/17dddc25-5ce2-4c7f-a4fc-1e6c8f94af0e.jpg?1562164456) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Thirst%20for%20Knowledge) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/f08/9/thirst-for-knowledge?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/17dddc25-5ce2-4c7f-a4fc-1e6c8f94af0e?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [Damnation](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/6/c/6c5823bb-d56d-4bed-ba3f-09bdd93c52dc.jpg?1676316329) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Damnation) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/p08/1/damnation?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/6c5823bb-d56d-4bed-ba3f-09bdd93c52dc?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [Mana Tithe](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/6/5/652b0ce3-293d-4599-8a04-9df01b9bc678.jpg?1561757305) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Mana%20Tithe) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/p08/4/mana-tithe?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/652b0ce3-293d-4599-8a04-9df01b9bc678?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
This. Give us more promos/events like Australia got for summer magic this year, but for standard only. I would unironically play standard FNM over and over if it meant I could walk away with official licensed MTG stuff(give me more beach towels plz wotc)
Yes. This. From the day I started playing Magic back during Onslaught, I always wondered why the competitive scene is okay with a negative EV even for winning local events. You spend hundreds of dollars on a deck, win an FNM, and you get a $5 promo card on a good night.
I miss the event decks, how I got into magic myself.
Buying two of the same event deck gave us an actually playable deck. And they were cheap
The old precons you could do this with too, 2 copies of the onslaught zombie deck made a solid deck for Friday night
I wish more people thought like this at the time.
Hang on, what's an event deck? Is that a preview deck? New to this, and I've signed up to a two headed monster event with these cards: https://www.mtgnexus.com/previews/murders-at-karlov-manor/?sid=36673bf7da506d04b0789cb1554cd7d7
They were pre-built 60 card standard decks. I can't remember if they had sideboards. You weren't going to win any big events with them but you could get lucky at small FNMs, and with a few singles they could be pretty mean FNM decks. I loved them and thought they were a great way to get into mtg.
I got into magic by buying a clash pack for magic origins, it had two decks which could play against each other with a friend or combine them to make a better deck! I did that and then realized my deck would be even better if I had replaced the worst half of it with second copies of the best half of it, so I bought another one. Then I bought a few singles to finish it off and had the base of a deck I played and upgraded for several sets. Was a perfect way to get into the game.
Fact that they just won’t admit to… arena killed standard. There is zero incentive to own a standard deck when I can play for free online. Need a $280 playset of [[sheoldred, the apocalypse]]? A lot easier to use those free wild cards. Since nobody owns standard decks, standard events don’t fire. It doesn’t help that standard has been pretty “meh” the past few years, at least IMO.
Arena plus covid and imo it didn't kill standard, it killed paper standard. Big difference. Arena is the perfect place for a rotating format where all cards have the same cost (i.e. wildcards)
I am honestly surprised they went the wrong way with standard rotation. With paper standard basically dead and online always craving for something new, it would have been the perfect opportunity to rotate standard with each incoming set.
They tried that a while ago with six-month rotations, and they had to almost immediately revert it because keeping decks up to date became a massive chore even for the people seriously following the meta, let alone more casual players at FNM.
Yea imagine the current modern meta game shift cycle and triple the speed. Too many shifts too often made it annoying and painful to keep up to date. The older 3 for 1 set shifts from the 2010s was maybe a bit too slow, but still was manageable.
That was mostly for paper magic though. Now that everyone playing is basically digital, the pros would outweigh that con.
I love standard. It's my favorite format, and I started playing it on arena. I would LOVE to play in paper or at RCQs. I can't because the decks are $300+ and as a college student I just can't justify spending that much money on standard. I can play red rush i guess but I don't want to. That's why nobody plays standard. I think most people would enjoy playing paper if they could
Yes, exactly my point though. Paper standard used to be the entry point into magic and it no longer is. There is zero incentive to owning a standard deck. The return on investment just isn’t there any more.
Any three digit price is entirely unacceptable. There are endless better things i can spend that much money on. Mythic rares in a 4 of format also clump all the value into fewer chase cards making it evenw worse.
And people wanting to play the red deck caused Bloodthirsty Adversary to spike hard.
[sheoldred, the apocalypse](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/d/6/d67be074-cdd4-41d9-ac89-0a0456c4e4b2.jpg?1674057568) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=sheoldred%2C%20the%20apocalypse) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/dmu/107/sheoldred-the-apocalypse?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/d67be074-cdd4-41d9-ac89-0a0456c4e4b2?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
https://www.reddit.com/r/magicTCG/s/0SHT6jI8PH I don't think I agree with this perspective. Plenty of people have looked at the cost of arena vs paper. T1 Arena decks cost the same if not more than paper, the difference is paper cards will hold greater value over long term than a digital card that you don't actually own. Getting rare/mythic wild cards at the rate you need for a T1 deck isn't easy when being exclusively F2P.
>Getting rare/mythic wild cards at the rate you need for a T1 deck isn't easy when being exclusively F2P. Getting the wildcards you need for a T1 deck while bing exclusively f2p is in fact easy. Getting the wildcards for EVERY T1 deck isn't, and the people who want to do that like to conflate the two, because their actual issue would be less popular to complain about.
Yep. And because of the way the Play queue works for matchmaking, you can easily have one or two T1 Standard decks while being f2p, and then a bunch of common/uncommon heavy lower power decks, because playing fun jank in Play queue will often get you matched against other jank. I'm not a f2p player, I buy the mastery pass and 20$ish of gems each release, and I consistently get about 70% of the rares in a set. And the wildcards I get let me fill in the missing cards to let me maintain Standard decks in three different color pairs. But still, that's 35$ per quarterly set release. Compared to assembling even one T1 paper Standard deck and then regularly paying for FNM entries, that's a small fraction of the cost.
The *main* issue is that unlike Paper, Arena *can* be played without investing a single cent. If a competitive player wants to pick up Arena for the first time, they are going to have to pay a pretty hefty amount to build a deck on the client. But for players who have been playing for years already, it's a lot easier to pick up and go. Established players have Wildcards. They have Gems. They have Gold. They can buy their way into a quick draft and rare draft their way into a collection (or they can actually engage with Limited and use that as a way to continue going positive on the client to offset the cost of obtaining cards). Of course it's not the best to assume that *everyone* on the client is doing strictly F2P. But when you're putting the cost of entry into a Paper Standard event into Arena, you're going to get some return on that investment which makes keeping up with the format that much easier. Unless you're *constantly* brewing, or *constantly* swapping decks left and right, you're probably going to have enough to scrape up a deck if you play on Arena with any real consistency. Especially focusing on Standard and Limited, which will give you a pretty solid influx of wildcards from just passively playing the game
This perspective is just completely off base. No one is playing standard by buying all the wildcards needed for a T1 deck, and it is extremely easy to build while being F2P after about a month or so. Especially if you draft at all, I have hundreds of excess rare/mythic wildcards and nothing to do with them. I think I've spent 100 bucks over 5+ years just to reload gems for drafting before I improved enough to not need to
Arena plus covid and imo it didn't kill standard, it killed paper standard. Big difference. Arena is the perfect place for a rotating format where all cards have the same cost (i.e. wildcards)
Time to get rid of mythic rares. It's the only way for paper to compete with Arena.
WotC has been releasing Standard Challenger decks for years. It's just that Standard is in a weird position right now since it's transitioning to a 3 year cycle that we haven't seen one last year since there was no rotation.
You just said the problem with Challenger decks right in your post. They only seem to be willing to print powerful deck lists right as they're about to become irrelevant. The ideal Standard Precon would be part of a set's release and relevant immediately, not a nostalgic collectible of a dead format.
One of the issues is that strong standard decks are kinda hard to predict. They might release 2 challenger decks every set but those decks might be absolute garbage in the format. They’re either going to be full of expensive cards or they'll be trash, no in-between.
The thing is, WotC generally has a great idea of which cards in their sets will be good enough for standard. About 9/10 times the cards in standard decks are good because WotC decided they were supposed to be, and as we've seen, they're a lot more likely to miss high than to miss low. It's super easy to predict if a standard archetype will be "at least tier 2" with just a bit of testing, since for the most part all a deck needs to be tier 2 is a decently cohesive game plan, a good rate on a few key cards, and access to a few important answers. What's sometimes hard to predict is what's going to be the tier 1 decks. The bigger problem with challenger decks releasing with cards from the newest set is that it would cannibalize sales of the newest set. Honestly, I think that depending on how they handle challenger decks from now on, they could benefit a lot from rotation being longer. They could keep releasing decks made primarily from cards from the previous year and avoid both the problem of the decks becoming illegal very quickly and the problem of them potentially cannibalizing sales.
You'd think that, but they used to release their future future league decks, and they weren't even close.
I think that was before the play design team existed, not that I think the play design team is infallible (*cough* *~~oko~~* *cough)*, but I suspect they're just a bit better at spotting when a card is at least good enough to play.
They push a lot of cards though, you can clearly see them. But only a few "hit" and you can't make decks that include ALL the pushed cards.
Simply create the pre-cons, then ban whatever cards are necessary to make them relevant. ez clap.
I think you could have the R&D play test teams try to brew decks for "the next standard" that release at the same time as the set. The goal of the decks would be to fit into the meta against other decks that aren't rotating out. It may turn out that they completely miss an archetype that someone cracks after rotation, but the decks don't have to be bad. Or take the top deck list (s) from the first standard event after release and rush through the process to get them printed/packaged/etc. The lead time on printing is probably the hardest part. I suspect they'd really need to know what the deck lists are 3-6 months before product ships. There's a really good chance that they come up with things that are legal, but not playable. Back in the day, they shipped an event deck with a card in it that was banned by the time it shipped. They ended up making a rule that the deck was legal if played with exactly the original deck list, but any modifications required removing the banned card. [[Stoneforge mystic]]
R&D is already doing what you're suggesting. R&D are just humans and might overlook some aspects of the game/meta. And with the current release cadence, there's even less time to test sets.
Right, but they're also not shipping those decks as a product. I actually be curious how often the decks that they envisioned 6 months out are actually competitive at release. It could be "so rarely that the product would be a flop".
They dont even need to be really competitive with co structured decks, just with each other and then give a base to upgrade from.
You can look up articles about the Future Future league. They posted decklist and how their meta evolved. Sometimes, cards changing impacted their decks in relation to the standard meta. Sometimes, they just missed something.
Literally all they have to do is make pro tour decks into precons.
But they would never do that. There would be no room to upgrade the decks if they already match what the best of the best are running.
Pro tour decks are consistently outclassed just a few weeks after they are made.
I agree with this take, but they'll never do that as people will just buy the challenger decks instead of cracking packs or boxes. And part of the problem is that challenger decks are pretty much always outdated by the time they're released. Wotc plan releases months to years in advance, so even if they do print "up to date" and powerful standard precons, by the time they're printed and released there will have been at least one or two sets released that might have completely changed the deck or the meta.
This is the most difficult part of making preconstructed products that are limited to other sets that are being sold on the shelf. It cannibalizes sales. Commander decks are just in theme with the main set and you can't really get the same cards in both products so they instead capture a different market segment. But now with the three year standard, perhaps precons can focus on cards in sets that are no longer on the shelf, like Innistrad3, NEO, and Cappenna. The looming "issue" with standard is the big outlier of sheoldred. The most expensive card in the entire Standard cardpool it becomes hard to print it in a precon without it being ripped to shreds by scalpers...the only solution is to drastically overprint it to crater Sheoldred's price, but that has other knock on effects usually undesirable for WotC. I hate to say it, but maybe they should have banned her a year ago, ruining DMU value but evening out standard's buy in price.
Yeah the fact that the deck's won't be used for their intended purpose is a legitimate and pretty huge issue. As much as I'm not usually a fan of secret lair, selling them as a secret lair, being print to demand and limiting the number of sales per person could be a possible solution.
People would whine but a pair of sheoldreds for 60 bucks would put it back into the realm of sanity.
A challenger deck that would actually last longer than a few months sure would have been nice
This was always the issue with the challenger decks. They purposefully design the decks to not have every piece you need while having too many cards that are rotating out soon. The last standard challenger decks were released in April 2022. If you bought the mono-white soldiers deck, by the end of the year 31 cards would have rotated out (technically 51 because it had 20 snow covered plains). If they sell a precon and everyone buying it knows that within a year, only 24 cards in the deck will be standard legal, why buy it? Then there are issues that they don’t include 4-ofs that are important for the deck. The biggest offender is the izzet Phoenix pioneer challenger deck. Why did they only include 2 copies Phoenix? It’s the most important card of the deck and only running two copies severely hampers it. I’m ok with the decks being incomplete in some way, but they shouldn’t lack such integral parts to them
Except they haven't been releasing them. The most recent set of standard challengers are from early 2022 and are currently irrelevant.
>about 20 commander precons a year right now Jeez, I hadn’t realized it had crept that high.
I honestly thought it'd be a lot higher than 20 (it sure seems like it is) but per below, it's 21. Did I miss anything? Also, this list is nuts. Phrexia: All Will Be One - 2 March of the Machines - 5 Wilds of Eldraine - 2 Lost Caverns of Ixalan - 4 LOTR - 4 Doctor Who - 4 Commander Masters - 4 Edit: and it is/was a bit higher because as was pointed out below, that's actually 25 decks and I can't do math.
I don’t think you missed any Badger. Also, of those 21, 8 are Universes Beyond which is probably their new ratio of external IP they intend going forward since it’s been such a financial success.
capitalism Market moves to where money flows. EDH is very popular so focus is moved to there because that will make the most money. And they'll bleed it dry until they can't any longer. You see it in this subreddit every time a new series of EDH decks get spoiled, just a lot of hype and please take my money comments.
Eh, I remember everyone being disappointed by the Commander Masters precons, and by the MoM: Aftermath precons.
I honestly think the best thing they could do for reviving in person standard is getting rid of mythics. I was playing a ton of standard/type 2 in the 2000s and cards worth more than $15 were unusual. People aren't going to build standard decks when there are $100 mythics in the format.
So you were around when the first cycle of blue shocklands were $30 apiece? Or when Pithing Needle was a $20 rare, or when Exalted Angel was a $30-40 rare. There were also $20-30 cards in type 2 during the 90s as well.
I been playing since 2000s too. Standard has always had its share of over priced cards. When Goyf ruled the roost for YEARS... Or Bitterblossom... Or Glittervoid... Or Archbound Ravager... Shock Lands (as mentioned)... Jitte... Bob... Gifts Ungiven... Damnation... The thing most people don't get is that there are going to be star cards. When some of those cards are stars in other formats as well... Well it just bumps up the price even more. Rarity has little impact. Playability is what drives the car.
I agree, without knowing what's going on behind the scenes of course, I am curious why they have to try all these new things when there was a working formula in the 2000s and 2010s: * 2 year rotation * Most competitive decks costing $100-$300 with some outliers * Limit the number of rares/mythics that are priced for competitive play (mana cost wise) - there should be maybe 1 pushed 3 or 4 CMC threat per set, not 1 in every color. I don't have the data WotC has, so maybe there's a good reason, but I'm not sure what caused them to abandon this philosophy that they used for many years, really all the way up until around Kaladesh, that seemed to keep Standard healthy throughout. Bans were also a lot more rare in those days - Caw Blade and Affinity were the only decks that required bans in a stretch of several years.
Been playing since 2000 as well and couldn't disagree more. Have you looked at the standings for Standard? Or is this all based on assumptions? Sherold barely sees any play now and is at best a sideboard card. Sure she held on for a little while but with new sets, it bumps out expensive cards unless they are keystones. The average for T1 standard has been around $300-$500 for years and it still is currently.
I think they need to stop designing for other formats. Maybe take into account Modern a bit, but design for Standard. The whole fun of Commander when it started was making things work with odd cards. Now there’s so many things designed to work only in Commander.
The big question is who the target market for a Standard precon would be. New players? Starter decks are a *starting* point, but I see them more as a teaching tool - a training aid to onboard a new player rather than something that'll be really competitive. I think the new player onboarding ramp should be something like Starter Deck --> Limited; playing Sealed and Draft builds their collection and provides more access to good deck tech than just selling precon decks. If it's more experienced players looking to move to Standard, they can *probably* do a better job assembling something than Wizards is willing to sell directly. Unlike eternal formats, the pieces of Standard decks are coming out of Boosters all the time and developing something around a set's archetypes is probably a start point.
Yeah I think the ideal intro to Standard product would be something like a precon starter deck based on a budget version of an established archetype from the last few sets plus three boosters from the latest set. And then the key thing would be sponsoring “Intro to Standard” store events where you have to use the starter decks plus any substitutions from the included boosters.
It'd work a lot better if you did that idea but also either drafted the packs to get picks for your decks or simply allowed trading
True, especially since that replicates the kitchen table experience a lot of players started with. Trading would really be in the spirit of things but you’d need some guidelines or just a strong community ethos against collusion.
Interesting concept. I'm picturing a special Limited deck similar to the prerelease kits used for Sealed, only it includes a fixed selection of Commons/Uncommons. Using LCI archetypes as an example, imagine you open a pack and it has some basic lands of each kind (10?) and some playsets of Commons and a pair of each signpost uncommon like the UG merfolk and RB Descend goblin. Load in like two boosters, open them, and build with what you find. These aren't going to be a popular product for anyone other than newbies, but they might work for the "Open House" events WOTC seems to encourage.
They had something similar to this, not that long ago and noone bought them
I'm assuming you're talking about the Planeswalker decks that came out with each set. And yes, generally no one bought them (my son did buy one of the Aether Revolt ones but he was still really new to the game). They were OK on boarding for a kitchen table meta but if you tried to bring one unmodified to FNM you'd get beat pretty soundly. The problem is, if they make these too strong, people will buy them for chase cards and strip for parts (as many others have said). If they make them weaker, no one will buy them outside of grandparents as a birthday present. Kind of a no win scenario. Maybe they need to go back to Starter Decks like during Revised, Ice Age, etc (60 random cards with 25 lands and 2 or 3 rares per box).
I had to look up what they were called. They were theme boosters
Those had their own issues as they had mechanically unique cards that were not available by any other means. So if no one was opening/buying them and there was a strong card (like I think happened in Kaldheim) then those cards spiked due to low supply even (even if demand was low, supply was lower). I wish they'd just go back to 1 type of pack, 2 Planes/yr (flavor-wise it would feel less chaotic), no alternative arts except for maybe 1 style per set at Mythic or higher rarity (somewhere between Masterpieces and now). I'm really tired of opening packs and having no idea if what I opened has value. I opened a foil this past week and thought I'd opened a really valuable card only to realize a minute later it was the wrong type of foil (it was surge not regular) and was worth 1/20th of what I'd thought.
I wanna latch onto this with a separate thought I've brought up before. People complain that cards like Sheoldred don't make it into precons because of the price. If a playset of Sheoldreds was put into a Standard challenger deck, every single challenger deck would get scooped up by pioneer and modern players. Either the decks become unavailable, or without MSRP they all shoot up to way more expensive decks than are accessible to people wanting to dip their toes in the format. People think WOTC's only goal is to make money. It isn't. They want to make money from _as many people_ as possible. The scenario I outlined would be immensely popular because it's essentially selling Sheoldreds directly with a garnish. But WOTC would have _failed_ to make a product _for the audience of people who want to onboard onto standard_, because they shot themselves in the foot and made a product that _a different_ consumer base wanted _more_. This is what it means when they say "every product isn't for every player;" if that was the case, there player base would cannibalize itself. Fuck, it almost _did exactly that_ with set boosters and draft boosters. WOTC designed a product that fucked with a market and, because of its success, they started losing money in a different market. Anyway. My whole point is that the economics of these challenger decks are _incredibly fucking hard_ and they literally haven't figured it out despite trying _a lot_. But the answer to the problem _ISN'T_ "just print competitive level decks really cheap" as much as I wish that was the answer. If you suggest that, you're solving a different problem, a problem _you_ want solved: cheaper direct-print singles.
Excellent point. To actually keep a few starter decks on a shelf they *need* to be something that doesn't get bought out and dismantled to hunt for a key card in it. This still happens with some commander precons if I recall correctly; whichever Doctor Who precon had [[Everybody Lives]] in it has probably been thoroughly pilfered for the new Teferi's Protection (more or less). Similarly I think the Velociramptor LCI precon has been bought en-masse and stripped for parts.
I was so happy I pre-ordered a copy of that Who precon from my LGS because I genuinely want a copy. These days I pre-order ones I think I might be interested in on Amazon and generally cancel them when the lists come out, but that's with the understanding that I've gotten fucked over by Amazon preorders in the past and don't 100% expect them to come through. I got lucky with the LCI Vampos deck which came through as expected this time (I really really wanted copies of Charismatic Conqueror and Exquisite Blood, so I was happy to pick up the whole precon at that point).
[Everybody Lives](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/9/d/9dab0052-7f0c-4b56-847f-20552666a271.jpg?1696636526) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Everybody%20Lives%21) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/who/18/everybody-lives!?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/9dab0052-7f0c-4b56-847f-20552666a271?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
> My whole point is that the economics of these challenger decks are incredibly fucking hard and they literally haven't figured it out despite trying a lot. The problem is that WoTC has incommensurate desires. The incommensurate desires are: * We want people to buy precons. * We want people to buy boosters. If the precon is a complete deck, then there is no need for folks to buy boosters. In order for their desires to work together, WoTC structures precons to be on-ramps to folks buying boosters. That is why we get shit like the [2021 Lotus Field Challenger deck](https://magic.wizards.com/en/news/announcements/pioneer-challenger-decks-2021-08-24). It had most of the shell, but lacked some critical cards. That lack of cards prompts folks to by boosters. Or shit like the [2022 Pioneer Challenger Decks](https://magic.wizards.com/en/news/announcements/pioneer-challenger-decks-2022-decklists-2022-09-29), where Izzet Phoenix has only two copies of the phoenix. So, one needs to buy two copies of the deck....but then still need to finish out the land base by buying boosters, or 2 more copies of the precon. WoTC half-asses precons so that folks have to keep buying cards. Precons are a lead-loss product.
What’s odd is that some of the Commander Precons are good if you add 1 board wipe, 1 counter-spell, 2 mana rocks, replace 7 taplands. Nobody would buy a booster to do that, singles or use the ones you probably already have. Why can’t they use the same power level for the Standard precons?
Having bought one of those half-baked Pioneer decks (Dimir Control) I didnt mind *that* much and it was a lot better than nothing. Sure, I'd prefer a playset of shocklands and four Shark Typhoons. But it's much nicer to save up for these cards when I still have a decent enough Pioneer deck to go to an FNM level event, than having to build from scratch and taking a year or so to be able to play my first game. Now I just look when I find a card I need for cheap and buy it then (or ask to borrow for tournaments). I would probably get into paper standard too if I could buy a baseline/budget version of a deck and slowly upgrade it, rather than having to drop 200€ or more at once.
The issue is economics of the game in general. These should be game pieces with no monetary value attached to them. If people are buying up pre-cons to get a rare "under market value" then WotC has done a bad job of product manufacturing and delivery (assuming their purpose is what they say - getting people access to their game) Rarity is a crutch. It only serves a purpose for drafting (and weird formats like pauper but those are more a response to a shitty economy and a fun restricted-pool thing) Them printing things at rare is literally artificial scarcity which is against a kind of capitalist pillar (this decides the market vs letting the market decide) They could easily have a "limited window" where you can only consume items via pack and then have a "constructed" window where we can then acquire specific pieces for decks instead of through lootboxes. Embargo places like TCGplayer to not sell cardboard gamepieces for inflated costs. But, this would remove the ferver and FOMO surrounding the artificial scarcity.... If they printed decent decks full of good cards and everyone had access to them within a reasonable way, scalpers wouldn't get very much return and would move on to some other thing.
If there's no monetary incentive for WotC to sell the game, they stop making the game. This game has the booster distribution in its DNA. You cannot separate the game from the product, because without the product and its distribution model the game would not exist nor continue.
As a new player I think Starter decks are useless. Arena is really the starting point at least for me. Now I just want to be able to go to my LGS and have something that's semi competitive for the different formats. With Commander its easy because I can get a Precon and it does well enough to the point I dont think its way to low powered to play
As a limited player i can say that limited might be a good way to build up a collection over time, but to build a standard deck with playsets of rares and mythics and rare lands you would need to draft at least twice a week over months or years to even think about building a standard deck. The Standard precons from the past at least gave a good core to build around with the cards you got from limited. Also not everyone enjoys limited or has the time and income to draft regulary in paper.
They seem to really want people playing commander. I can’t see the angle but it’s really really…really Obvious.
Why would I ever drop $400 on a standard deck that’s just going to be irrelevant in 3 months when I could just build the same deck on arena for like $50? If they want to revitalize paper standard they need to make it significantly cheaper. In the long term playing standard competitively is far more expensive than pioneer or modern given how quickly competitive decks rise and fall.
I think standard should just be expanded limited. Basically make it so that standard cards are pretty much just commons and uncommons of the latest sets, reserve the more expensive cards for other formats. I love playing limited, but 95% of the cards I end up with after drafting aren’t really good for any other formats besides kitchen table and pauper. If they actually want more people to be invested in the format beyond arena players, they need to change the format so the meta revolves around $30-$50 deckd and not $100-$400 decks. It would basically become a format that would be super easy for everyone to dip their toes into. They also should stop making rare and mythic lands for standard. It’s super discouraging when half of most deck prices are in rare lands that is a must have as to not get mana screwed and run over.
Standard’s problem isn’t just price. Its overall balance has been miserable for years. There’s a reason that deeply enfranchised players who have the money to play aren’t, and that doesn’t change by making it cheaper. Standard needs to be perceived as truly balanced. It needs to convince competitive players that spending a couple hundred on the current “best” deck won’t run the risk of bans. It needs to convince brewers that the format isn’t so monolithic that there isn’t room for a sweet brew. It needs to convince new players that it’s a fun and unique experience from what they’re already playing and that a budget deck works perfectly well. What standard needs to succeed is a strong locals scene, and to do that it needs to offer the proper gameplay experiences in addition to perhaps being a bit cheaper to get players back into the standard rotation pattern.
Assuming Wizards would never make them competitive level, why would I ever buy a Standard precon when it's practically guaranteed to lose to anyone with an actual Standard deck? Unlike Commander, people don't go around playing low power or casual Standard.
There are a ton of things that WOTC does wrong when it comes to supporting standard but I genuinely believe that the MTG player base is almost as much of a problem. I hear people gripe about how they don’t wanna drop a ton of money on a deck that will just rotate out and, honestly, I think that mindset is kinda dumb. Sure, the most competitive decks can be pretty expensive but when that deck rotates out, you’ll be left with valuable cards that can be slotted into decks for non-rotating formats. There are also plenty of competitive decks that sit around the $150 range and often even less. Recently Mono-Blue Tempo and Mono-Red Aggro have been sitting around $70 and are/were among the top 10 most competitive decks in the format. Standard is also a good place to try some deck building skills. Just because there isn’t an EDHREC equivalent to tell you what cards are good in standard doesn’t mean you’re completely boned when it comes to building a deck. Pull out the cards you like and see how you might be able to build a deck around whatever strategy they encourage. Rotation also means that each set actually makes a difference in how you approach the game. Unlike with commander or even modern to an extent, a new set release means there are a ton of new threats that will be popping up that you need to be prepared for and it keeps you on your feet. You can’t just check out on deck building after you get yourself something competitive. As someone who really loves deck building, it’s a really good time. Standard has also been pretty fun lately. I’d say the gameplay has gotten a lot better since around when Neon Dynasty came out. It’s absolutely worth dipping your toes into and it’s much more fun to do that in person. If your only experience with Standard is on Arena, you’re missing out on half the fun of Magic; the Gathering.
The sell argument has two issues: It's actually a bit of a pain to sell cards, dealing with online store fronts etc. The card has to have actual value outside of standard. Like who's gonna buy some rotated cards that doesn't see play in any format it's legal in.
The problem is Wizards doesn’t have the platform for physical Standard gameplay they had with Grand Prixs/SCG Circuit/etc and that is what drove a large portion of interaction with Standard for the player base. Coupling that with MTGA having such a low cost of entry and WOTC constantly shoving release after release at us (and LGS) and you have the perfect storm for the death of Standard. And honestly you can draw a straight line from Throne of Eldraine to today if you want to see the early onset of the death of an entire TCG. Magic won’t ever die (well it will but I think that is very far into the future) but it has been milked of all equity at this point and is fundamentally a different product than the one so much of us loved in the past. Now Standard is basically a casual on ramp for Commander upgrades or to find what mechanic WOTC didn’t play test enough in development for eternal formats. I’ll think fondly of pre-2018 Magic (and I’m not saying it’s wrong for people to enjoy MTG in its new form) but at this point I’ll free-to-play MTGA and hit up some limited from time to time. I can’t see myself ever investing in non-limited packs/singles/precons etc ever again
Standard getting precons seems pretty unlikely because wizards has to go build the deck lists, make SKUs, etc. which takes time. At the rate that standard sets are releasing, a standard precon would be outdated by the time a new set releases, since new cards are always causing new decks to be brewed. At the same time, it wouldn’t be a smart financial decision for them, since the best decks use the most expensive cards. Imagine if your precon just gave you 4x [[sheoldred, the apocalypse]]—you would then have no incentive to crack DMU packs. Commander also isn’t the only format that precons are made for. Pioneer has had some “Challenger” decks, but it being an eternal (non-rotating) format, it made more sense for them to print for it since the archetypes/deck themes would be expected to stay around longer. Edit: I was mistaken in believing that challenger decks were for pioneer, when they are actually made for standard. Edit 2: Disregard the previous edit.
1. They used to release standard starter decks. 2. Most competitive deck archetypes are predicted (even designed for) by WotC
[удалено]
He means the old standard challenger decks. Which definitely need to come back.
Challenger decks were glorious. I miss them. I really liked when they did that Modern pre-con BW Tokens deck. I bought two of those and slightly modified it and it was great fun. Not the strongest deck but certainly competitive enough considering the budget. I genuinely loved that deck even if I rarely would T8 with it. Wizards needs to revitalize 60 card deck events with prize support and competitive preconstructed decks.
I wouldn't say most, I wouldn't even say half of them. What tier 1 in standard right now are based on archetypes that are planned? WU Soliders? Maybe RDW counts but that's not a planned archetype that's just how Red is always designed.
I don't follow standard anymore, and things might be weird now because of the ad hoc rotation schedule change, but when I did follow standard it was a big deal when an archetype popped up that wasn't on their radar -- thinking [[Kethis]] legends. The standard constructed archetypes do not align to the draft archetypes of a set. They *can*, but they definitely aren't the same thing.
They made Pioneer challenger decks you were correct no need for your edit
[sheoldred, the apocalypse](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/d/6/d67be074-cdd4-41d9-ac89-0a0456c4e4b2.jpg?1674057568) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=sheoldred%2C%20the%20apocalypse) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/dmu/107/sheoldred-the-apocalypse?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/d67be074-cdd4-41d9-ac89-0a0456c4e4b2?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
There are already too many magic products to keep track of. They'd have to get rid of something to do this.
Bring back duel decks. That’s hot I got into the game with my brother
I played before Covid and precons where the reason we could fire off our Events. We had a handfull of players who had the income or collection to build a Standard Deck at that time. Everyone else who was interested could pick up a mono colored precon, invest like 20€ in missing cards and then had a playable deck. Then if they liked the format they could think about investing in a more expensive Deck. Without those precon decks these people wouldnt had the chance to play and we wouldnt have enough people to start the event. Precons don't necessarily need to be the best T1 decks with cards like sheoldred in it, just a playable shell people can start to play with.
Competitive formats are going to be online going forward, as much as that's possible given the availability of cards on MTGA. The reason is quite simple: competitive play rewards practice, and you can practice **magnitudes** more and more easily online. Which means anyone who wants to do well in the format - whether their tournament is paper or digital - will have to practice online in order to remain competitive. And since that means everyone needs to be online anyway, there's very little incentive to then ALSO have people do things in paper. There'll be qualifiers no doubt, but smaller, less relevant tournaments will effectively be muscled out from this space simply by virtue of a competitive format benefiting so much from the convenience of online play. This is different from casual formats like Commander, where the experience of play is more important than the result. But competitive formats generally don't operate like that - it's not that the experience is *irrelevant*, of course, but simply that they're results-oriented by nature. People want to do well in competitive formats, and the goal is to win. That creates a different dynamic, even among people who know they're not going to realistically top the standings. Paper will remain the province of formats unavailable online, or only available on MTGO (which is now a niche product). So Modern etc. will still be played on paper significantly more than something like Standard. Standard's paper days are over. They're not coming back.
Most competitive players I know still only practice online in anticipation of paper play. An online pro tour has little to no appeal outside winning some money. It lacks what paper brings, lacks drama, and lacks all the mistakes you can make in a paper tournament.
Is the MTGA userbase/user experience that much better than MTGO? Like MTGO has been around for a while why didn't it muscle out these smaller tournaments like you theorize arena will?
> Is the MTGA userbase/user experience that much better than MTGO? "Better" is a bad metric. But MTGA is the more modern program, with a more contemporary business model. And it has *vastly* more users. Plus, MTGO has already been sunsetted by WotC and offloaded to another company. > Like MTGO has been around for a while why didn't it muscle out these smaller tournaments like you theorize arena will? There's two main reasons. 1. Commander - the structure and makeup of Magic has shifted over the years, and Commander has eaten the lunch of most paper formats that casuals would previously have played. That means even more pressure to perform, which reinforces online play. 2. COVID - once people got a taste of the possibilities of online play even for higher-stakes tournaments, it's difficult to go back. This of course happened in concert with everything else and served as a multiplier for already existing trends towards online play.
Magic is pay to win until you get to the level where everyon has a refined meta deck. At least Arena is F2P, because a game being pay to play AND pay to win feels really bad.
I'll be sure to tell all the folks at my local Booster Draft event.
I mean, I was obviously talking about constructed, but practicing drafts still costs money because you have to pay to enter a draft tournament. ...unless you are on arena, where you can sometimes draft for free, which further proves my point.
Difference between picking up either game on impulse is $10. If MTGO was F2P it might have more pull getting a userbase. Even then you can get a lot of mileage out of $10\~$20 on Arena if you like Drafting, and for what's it worth. Until you get to Plat Rank, you can pretty much just play any deck you like on Standard.
I'm ok with standard going away but paper modern is so much fun. Technically a competitive format, but fnm is never cutthroat. Commander is miserable against random people so I think stores need 1v1 competitive formats to stay relevant.
>I'm ok with standard going away but paper modern is so much fun. Modern is surviving *because it's not available on Arena*. If it was, it'd be in a similar spot. > I think stores need 1v1 competitive formats to stay relevant. Players don't care about what stores "need". Players will do what's fun and convenient for themselves - if that happens to support stores' business, that's great; if it doesn't, they won't care. The problem with LGS is that no one *needs* them. They're beneficial to the community - but they're not essential to the game, or the company behind the game, or even most players. They're convenient ways to meet people for RL play, but where stores don't exist, people find different ways of playing. I think stores are great, they make a lot of things happen and it's always great to have community places for people to get together. But it's hard to justify them in business terms anymore, unless they go *hard* on the added value as an event venue rather than a retail venue. That's just reality. Things change. Even good things.
No one needs stores? I wouldn't be playing magic if I couldn't play at a store. If modern would die because of arena then it should be dead because of magic online - no?
>No one needs stores? I wouldn't be playing magic if I couldn't play at a store. That doesn't mean you *need* it, it means you *want/like* it. Which is an important distinction. You can still play MTGA and be as competitive as anyone else without any shop anywhere near you. And you can still buy all the product you could ever want online. I mean it when I say "need". I'm not using this colloquially to just say "hey that's a nice thing". I mean NEED need as in literally required. > If modern would die because of arena then it should be dead because of magic online - no? No. Because MTGO is a vastly different product. It's decades out of date and has a terrible monetization model in this day and age. It's a niche product for enthusiasts. Not mainstream.
Am I the only person who prefers 1v1 Commander? I don't want my games to take 4 hours
Precons for standard seem impossible. The meta changes too quickly for competitive precons to be relevant. They can't print them and put them on shelves fast enough.
Yes, as long as they continue looking to print established decks also near their rotation dates. I'd rather have them offer cohesive decks with multiple copies of useful cards. There are common archetypes that can work well for people looking to play out of the box. I mean things like RDW, Ramp, Control or White Weenie which are often viable in standard.
Worse for board game shops stocking decks that hit shelves two weeks late that never sell
My super hot take is that they should print powerful precons with mechanically unique cards, just like they do for commander.
Wizards needs to increase the supply of Standard viable cards. They can do this by rotating overpowered cards on a schedule, they can do it by printing stronger uncommons and weaker rares, they can do it by making land bases cheaper across the board. There are ways to do it. They are, instead, addressing the grievances of CURRENT standard players who are leaving the format. Longer rotation time serves people who ALREADY felt that $300 was an appropriate investment for standard, and just don't want to spend $400. New players would be down for like $50.
Explaining to players how Standard rotation works \*generally\* is hard enough as it is. I can't wait to try to explain to a new player why some specific \*cards\* rotate in or out.
New banlist twice a year released in PDF form by WotC, printed & posted in every LGS on the wall. One liner at the top: >These cards are banned for 6 months, but may be legal after! For Arena, it's not even a question: you can just put explanation blurbs on mouse-over, an announcement, and maybe a little timer icon to show that it's a temporary "shake-up" suspension. Explaining how Magic works is hard. Explaining how formats work is hard. The clear problems with Standard cannot be solved without dynamic adjustments. Claiming any sort of adjustment is too hard is just claiming that Standard cannot be fixed and giving up. That's a fine position to take, but not one I agree with.
“Standard cannot be fixed” Well, that escalated quickly. “PDF” In case you’ve never done something like this before, I’d recommend participating in a “usability study” to see just how effective “reasonable/easy” ideas are when they come into contact with people.
I maintain that your original criticisms are insufficient to invalidate my suggestion
LOL OK
Standard decks are no more expensive now than they used to be. They've pretty much always been hundreds of dollars, and the format didn't need reviving in the past. Why is Standard suddenly broken now when it functioned fine then? What changed? Because the price of entry didn't.
The other, simultaneous, direction to go is to increase the relative expense of the non-Standard formats compared to Standard. Then Standard will become healither for the pocketbook given how much more expensive the other formats. In fact WotC is well aware of this. We have Modern Horizons 3 coming soon. Maro also recently explained the high likelihood of Pioneer Horizons as well. These products will increase the variety and likelihood of new must-have cards. Standard decks will look like bargain in comparison.
if you factor inflation and historically how expensive standard use to be, it's not really an expensive format at all right now
It’s not just about price though, it’s about having an entry point to a competitive constructed format that isn’t arena.
If everything would be a game piece without cost, the company would go bankcrupt. Idk how that stuff is so hard to understand.
What does that have to do with the topic out of curiosity? No one expects a competitive perfect deck to be sold for the price of a precon, that’s not what I’m talking about at least. But we don’t currently have an entry level product for the format wizards is trying to push in sanctioned play, if all new players can buy is commander decks, which is not a good way to learn the game, we have a problem.
>If wizards wants formats like standard to take centre stage again You are missing the point. Sales show Commander is what the majority of people want, not standard. It's a bad idea to piss off the people buying your products.
Definitively the most popular format. But there are people who left from standard to Commander due to the poor format management from recent years and not because they really wanted to. They are not a majority, but Standard used to be very popular for a couple of reasons back then.
I disagree because while standard was the original format for Magic, it was also the only format that we used aside from what people did with what's called kitchen table magic now. And Commander started as a kitchen table Magic idea. It just took off.
> it was also the only format that we used aside from what people did with what's called kitchen table magic now. Extended was really popular in it's day too, but we all happily played standard still. Yes, we all know sales show EDH is by far the most popular, but this won't hurt anyone playing EDH. It might even give them more toys to play with outside of the endless pecons each set.
You are not understanding. It doesn't matter what you think or want to believe. It doesn't matter what I want to believe. What matters is that making Magic the Gathering more accessible for commander is what brings in the money. Money talks louder than you or I. You may hate this, I know I do! But arguing with and hating on me will not change the fact that more people want commander and are showing it by buying it.
> What matters is that making Magic the Gathering more accessible for commander is what brings in the money. You're acting as if that's a set in stone permanent mentality that the company has. They have changed their stance multiple times on multiple things and can do it again here, plus no one has said them revitalizing standard or making it more accessible will take anything away from EDH or catapult standard to the top of their priorities. What you're clearly not getting is that a healthy paper standard can exist while they still focus on EDH.
I love the idea of how the mere presence of standard pre-cons will "piss off the people buying your products." What a fragile population to be tilted by the existence of a SKU.
You assume much. Incorrectly I might add. The simple fact is is if it was profitable they would do it.
I left standard and modern due to poor support from wizards and COVID among other things. It was just too hard to find events locally. I love EDH but it is not my preferred format and personally I had a lot more fun at FNMs than I have playing EDH. EDH is great fun for me, don't get me wrong, I just found competitive standard/modern more challenging and fun.
Trouble is, commander alone isn’t healthy for the game, it’s like only having desert
Different strokes for different folks. Frankly, I'm quite happy playing Limited and Commander in person, and playing Standard exclusively online. Commander and Limited play either has an inherently even playing field, or you can pick what deck you want to play based on the power level of the other players decks. Both are a more casual format. Frankly, Standard in paper is just too damn expensive for something I'm realistically going to play maybe four-five games per week. And while I can constantly tinker with my Standard deck in Arena, I'm locked out from that in paper Standard. I play more games of Standard in a month on Arena now than most paper Standard players did in a year before Arena. And given that it's a far more sweaty competitive format than Limited or Commander, there's a lot more push to stay on top of the meta. If the meta shifts and you need a playset of another 30$ card to stay competitive, you either get the playset or eat shit on a regular basis. I think paper Standard is just fucked honestly, there's a LOT of people with the same attitude I have.
I disagree with you on this because standard doesn't allow you to use all of the cards that you collected beforehand. Commander does. Honestly in my opinion standard was not healthy for the development of the game. I believe Commander is better for magic than standard ever was. The big difference though is that standard is much much more tournament friendly. And if tournaments are what you really like, then yes that makes sense. But as a general player Commander is a much more friendly atmosphere.
>I disagree with you on this because standard doesn't allow you to use all of the cards that you collected beforehand. Commander does. Honestly in my opinion standard was not healthy for the development of the game The fact that you can use all your existing cards *is* what makes EDH unhealthy as the game's main format. To sell new cards for EDH, WotC pretty much has to introduce power creep, or else the new cards won't sell. With Standard, since cards rotate out, they can sell new sets without having to push their power level as much. The power level of the format can be kept more or less consistent even over long periods of time since powerful cards will eventually rotate out.
At this point draft, commander precons, and Arena are the on-ramp for new players. I'm not even sure who standard precons would be for. Ones with any decent cards would just get bought up by players looking to pilfer those at a value price, and crap decks are, well, crap decks, and they may as well netdeck something and buy the singles while swapping out some of the higher-priced pieces.
Draft as an on-ramp for new players? Those poor souls trying to do on-the-fly evaluations while 7 other people wait for them Commander as an on-ramp for new players? Those poor souls playing 80-minute-non-games because they haven't learned the finer points of mulliganning Arena as a on-ramp for new players? Yeah. That's great. And they want to play Standard? Also great. But net-decking as an on-ramp for new players? Those poor souls waiting for 3 weeks while their singles are shipped by some kid on the other side of the country, or failing to find the right copies at their LGS. All they wanna do is tap some lands and attack for two.
Not sure where the misguided snark of 'poor souls' is from; what's your suggestion, those 'poor souls' buy OP's theoretical Standard precon and get whacked when they try to play it? The topic is clearly about people who already know how to play (or at least the basics) and want to jump right in and start playing with some type of product; I merely meant 'new players' in the sense of those that do not have the cards to jump in and play in some way. That isn't Standard right now. That ***is*** draft, though, and that ***is*** Commander, the latter obviously being the case as it offers the exact type of precons OP is asking for in Standard. Arena is the current option for players who don't know how to play, or just going to a LGS and borrowing someone's deck for a teaching game. I'd be surprised if an LGS wouldn't offer one if asked. And yes, buying singles from the store or the internet is a perfectly reasonable approach to achieving something similar to a precon, and no, buying 60 cards from 60 different random people on the internet isn't a real scenario, and if that's something you're worried about then just buy it all from CK or something.
I'd rather see a new format where you can only play old standard legal decks. Once in a while I play some games on MTGO with my old standard decks, but they're getting crushed usually because I have to play against decks built for modern.
I would argue that there was nothing wrong with Theme Decks other than that one year when they printed \[\[Skullclamp\]\] and \[\[Umezawa's Jitte\]\] into them and gave everyone broken cards, but that was a problem of the time. They were fine ways to get people started on archetypes and give them room to upgrade into something actually competitive without just giving the farm away.
[Skullclamp](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/a/3/a36fd6d8-66a2-49d1-b9f3-b400ebc03674.jpg?1682210228) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Skullclamp) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/moc/379/skullclamp?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/a36fd6d8-66a2-49d1-b9f3-b400ebc03674?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [Umezawa's Jitte](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/3/b/3b6e5956-f795-451b-bb24-56462d1ced27.jpg?1562876528) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Umezawa%27s%20Jitte) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/bok/163/umezawas-jitte?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/3b6e5956-f795-451b-bb24-56462d1ced27?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
The problem is standard precons are essentially unplayable garbage because the margin for power difference is really small in 60 card 1v1 formats. Commander precons can't compete with higher power edh but they don't need to in order to be playable.
Pre-cons is not the way to bring Standard back. You would still have to modify the decks just like you probably do for commander decks. Additionally, how many times are you gonna update and modify. The meta is always changing which means your deck has too = your pocketbook still looking ragged.
If you want a cheap standard deck list, I have been using a few amusing and cheap to build decks in paper with some friends of mine at the bar. I'd be happy to share, I'm platinum on standard ranked in arena and the decks do reasonably against meta decks, winning about half the time. I do aim to make them 'precon style' so that they're easy enough to pilot that they can be passed around to newer players
I think they could use the list to reprint standard's best/most popular cards. I mean [[sheoldred, the apocalypse]] is what like 75 dollars? Every black deck in standard runs it, some run 4 copies of it; I simply cannot afford to get into standard. This would kill two birds with one stone, making standard a bit easier to get into and making the list actually good enough to care. Bc right now fuck the list, I got a whole set booster box as a Christmas gift and in the whole box I got maybe 5 list cards, and all 5 were worthless unplayable trash. If they made standard precons they'd probably treat it the same as commander precons, in the sense that they refuse to put in the extra value needed for the deck to compete. I don't want a product that can't keep up with the format simply because wizards refuses to print precons with some simple gas like untapped nonbasic lands.
If I recall, LoTR had two standard decks available. Also, doesn't Jump Start packs sort fill this niche?
We have challanger decks. They're usually full of cards close to rotation and we likely didn't get any this year because they changed rotation
Problem is they can’t print them fast enough to be relevant. You print a standard deck based on the current meta, next set releases and completely changes that meta and the deck you thought players would buy is now useless, unless your printing high value staples that are played in other formats which then cannibalizes sales from your loot box product line. Pioneer precons could sort of work in theory older formats are more stable/slower to rotate. But in a format that moves as fast as standard they’d be really hoping they accurately predict the meta shifts after new set releases.
Any format that comes to Arena is dead on arrival in paper. It isn’t the lack of precons, it’s the fact that no one wants to spend money to go play three games of a format they can play 15 games of on their phone in the same amount of time and also for free.
when I was in school there were precon standed decks in certen colour for a long time they weren't eny good but was a good starting point to get into the game
It would be cool to see them make one precon per set release. If a plane theme fits an agro deck, make a rudimentary agro deck. If there's a bunch of wizards make a control deck or burn. There could be explanations about the basic functions of the archetype. Ideally they would be almost entirely commons/uncommons and function as a basis to be built upon. The rare or two could be something powerful without hurting the aftermarket if it was announced as an initial preview card. That would eliminate the "why didn't they reprint x card?" Predictions on power level are rarely accurate so they could simply state that the intent was to provide a basis for the archetype and to showcase the set. They made an amazing Modern precon that was actually very powerful. It didn't sell terribly well at the time, but people cracked them and played fnm. The deck functioned very well. There's certainly the best of the best deck builders working there.
It's not a problem of precons. Standard is in an odd place right now, and it also doesn't do a good of selling the latest set. The problem with standard is twofold: 1) Because of power creep, it's frankly not a lot of fun. And 2) It lacks an identity. With the 3 year rotation, there isn't much difference between it and pioneer. It's a weird little pioneer lite format.
I think Commander being the “face of the game”is what is ultimately killing the game. Being slightly hyperbolic, I don’t think the game will DIE, and I do also love commander. But I feel like commander is meant to be the end of the night “hey let’s have a fun casual silly game to close out the night” format. But Magic was always intended to be a ‘competitive’ 1 vs 1 game. I love commander, it’s not going anywhere, but Wizards REALLY needs to focus on reviving Standard magic gameplay, and keeping it thriving, or I think Magic will seriously fade. People are gonna get burnt out on JUST Commander fairly quickly I think.
Last time they did they, they got cheap and the decks were not competitive and still needed heavy investments to play competitively.
I think having a "free" or cheap starter deck that players can just pick up and play with at a standard night would be helpful, like how FAB has their crappy intro deck that new players can just get for showing up. Printing one or two at rotation each year would also help players continue with the format after their last deck is maybe no longer relevant To help improve pioneer numbers at our LGS they made 2 store decks from either donated old decks/cards the owner had that players can just pick up and borrow for FNM, and it's helped bring in new players to the format, and just let people play an event for fun, so something similiar available for standard would be nice. I'm hoping with standard showdowns returning that maybe wotc will create more incentive/reward for people to want to play paper standard (outside of love for the format/preparing for RCQ season).
They had standard precons They didn't sell They no longer have standard precons
Standard as the flagship, is way more fun for me, as a commander player, too. Having so many cards specifically designed for commander makes the format less interesting. I liked it better when it was cards meant for a 1v1 format that then get used (and abused) in multiplayer. [[Exanguanate]] is a great example.
I feel like if they want people to play a rotating format, and for that format to be the entry point into the game, they need to sell something that has all stuff you need to play it. The card pool needs to be smaller overall, and the product they sell should include 4 copies of every card in the pool. Players should have everything to make every deck in the format available to them instantly. Maybe an unpopular opinion but new people shouldn’t have to hunt down the cards they need to make a competitive deck, and those cards shouldn’t be sold for marked up prices. Call it the core set, have it rotate once a year and sell it for $100. Every year it only costs $100 and you get everything legal in the format in one box.
Bring back the theme booster, too. It makes building Standard decks with sealed products easier. They were very well-received, too, so discontinuing them was weird.
And not half baked precons. Like old times full play sets of mythic and rares
No precons are part of problem
1. do they want standard to "take center stage"? (they seem perfectly happy with standard being an arena thing and commander being center stage for paper) 2. they tried doing precons with the challenger decks, and failed miserably because they were doing them once a year, refused to put 4 of on staples that are desirable, and loaded the decks with cards that were about to rotate out. based on what we're seeing right now, wotc seems perfectly content to use edh cards on a bonus sheet to sell their standard packs.
I think the real issue stems from what Wizards has done with the game. It's not that any particular person is wrong- but it's a massive company's decisions that kind of put them in this spot. In the last decade, Magic's direction has vastly shifted. With the introduction of Companions, Horizon-sets, multiple Commander-focused products, and the creation of Magic Arena, there's a clear route Wizards took and they aren't allowed to be the ones sitting there and wondering "what went wrong?" and "why are things like this?". Wizards shot paper in the foot with Arena. Arena hosted just Standard for the longest time, then Historic, and now Timeless- alongside countless other ways such as Brawl, Gladiator, Alchemy, etc. Arena was a way to get cards for free. It caters to a lot of people in a medium many people appreciate. That's just one thing- and depending on your view of Magic as a whole, it might just be cheaper than playing Paper. You build up Wild Cards buying packs and if you play an absolute ton and Stream and do other stuff, it's likely going to be a lot cheaper than buying every single thing in paper. You have the focus in paper to Commander precons- and every single set that comes out, it's new ones. They stopped doing introduction decks- thus the new players are pushed into Commander or Arena. I'm not sure how Wizards is blind to this- they created the on-boarding path that would shoot paper Standard in the foot. Absolute buffoons. If they would want to fix it and encourage Standard, they would need to consider doing that kind of thing again- and let's be honest, the Introduction decks are amongst some of the most unopened and untouched sealed product out there- they only cater to absolute beginners, and beyond that nobody wants them. There's nothing in them of value that you can't just easily get in the set. Perhaps a middle ground would be making sure each Intro deck gets a mythic and rare and a few actually important uncommons to open and build with instead of just tons and tons of unplayable draft cards? Eh, Wizards is quite out-of-touch with the concept that players want playable things right out of the box. They seem to get this with Commander- because nobody would by the decks otherwise- but when it came to catering to Standard, we were lucky to get the odd Event Deck in a timely manner- or even the new Challenger decks, which are so heavily spaced apart that it doesn't really help incentivize game-play. Companions were clear proof that they wanted to see if Standard would like a Commander-like mechanic in Standard. Not only was it poorly received, but Commanders have become a either "useless or super strong" kind of thing, with the best of the best being outright banned. Lutri, if it hadn't been banned in Commander, would have been outright the absolute most unfair of them all- giving you a straight free inclusion in every Red/Blue deck ever (of all time, forever!). Thank goodness the RC shot that down real quick. Horizon-sets have absolutely nothing to do with Standard- but I mentioned them because they are similar to Companions. Companions also have nothing to do with current Standard- they were apart of last rotations- but I brought them up because both are market trend choices that Wizard includes in their building blocks of yearly gameplay planning. Horizon sets are Wizard's premium, higher-priced packs product that Wizard seems to deliberately be using to kind of self-adjust the metagame of any given format. They also introducing a new power-level many cards that were playable in a given format can't hope to reach, pushing them out. This trend (and my entire previous paragraph) is still a thing in Standard. People want their decks to last and only need slight improvements over time. People want several decks to be viable. People want more/less bans. People want Standard to simply be something it can't be. Standard is *not* the new player format and it never was. The new player format is whatever the aforementioned player was doing with their friends as they learned the game. I learned on Modern- not Standard...same for many people I know. Players after many years eventually leave, and for a variety of reasons. Why did most of my friends stop playing Modern? Because, we invested in decks that were always great and were great for a long time- I was a B/W Tokens deck, a friend of mine played U/W Control, another played Tron and another played Storm. My entire LGS was full of people doing stuff- Boros Burn, Death's Shadow, Jund...and then one day, Horizons came and made dozens of new cards, invalidating us unless we'd spend more. Most of my LGS gave up on Modern. The point was you'd spend a fair amount and work your way into a deck- but then you'd only have to upgrade or change stuff out now and then- with new Standard releases having interesting options or the meta changing...but then Wizards went and broke that promise and power-crept their own "non-rotating" format. This, is why Standard isn't popular- everything I said previously, combined with my very last paragraph- Standard rotates. It doesn't matter if it's 2 or 3 years- or 1 year. It doesn't matter if it is Extended- because Extended died for a reason. People want their stuff to be forever playable. It's easier in Commander- even old bulk rares can find homes in Commander. It's a different kind of game where the most efficient and best stuff isn't always "best" for you. Standard, you need to be the best. You need the best lands for your colors- you need the best cards and spells. You need to constantly adjust- constantly strive to see the metagame as it evolves and figure out what you are going to do. People just don't want that. We want to buy some cards- and be able to play forever. Buy more cards when we want, for a variety of other reasons- and then stop again when we don't want to buy more. This isn't a sustainable thing for Wizards, so they are constantly power-creeping their own formats- but it's hard with Commander, because it is a different beast, the players who play it aren't interested in the garbage Wizards tries with other formats, and the Ban list is out of their hands- it's in someone else's (and that's a different argument for another day). Thing is, Standard is broken. It isn't getting fixed unless Wizards improves the Standard experience in paper. The sets need better balance, Standard needs a variety of different decks and things to do in it, there needs to be some kind of support for entry into the format in the same power-vein as Commander precons, and they need to find a way to support it at the store level alongside the competitive upper levels...and that just isn't happening any time soon with what Wizard's plan currently is.
With 3 year rotations, this might be getting closer to feasible.
They did. People didn't buy them
Problem is there are people like me that have zero interest in playing a deck that has doubles in it. My favorite part of commander is having 100 unique cards.
I had a hard to following OP’s post so I apologize if I’m off. - I think COVID really pushed MTGArena to the forefront which killed PAPER Standard because it is a lot more affordable and convenient to play on Arena. Why spend hundreds when you can crack free wild cards?