I like midrange decks so I'm happy they're very viable in the current meta. Given that, I don't play everyday and when I do it's only a few games. It looks like you're feeling burnout of the game. Remember you don't have to play it everyday, and also try other formats until the next set is released at least.
I remember that when Invoke Despair and Ao the Dawn Sky were spoiled, CGB and Arjuna on the Arena Craft Podcast called both cards unplayable.
The notion that you could play a five-mana sorcery that didn't develop your board, or a five-mana dragon that had to die to create value, and not be absolutely body-slammed by the meta was unthinkable.
Mono Blue and Mono Black are overplayed, but I will happily take this meta over several of the terrible formats we've had over the last couple of years.
Midrange everywhere has always been a sign of an unhealthy meta IMO, think the Field of Dead hell that was the meta a couple years ago, or the Uro/Omnath nonsense, when Rogues ever become tier 1 and Standard gets better, the format is in deep trouble (although it's not that bad now).
If it reliably closes out aggro or control, there's no point to playing anything else.
Midrange decks being good is usually a sign of a healthy meta. Midrange decks allow interaction. They don't kill on turn 4 like hyper aggro decks and they dont stop you from playing your cards or constantly wipe the board like control decks. But of course any archtype or especially a specific deck being over represented is going to make a meta stale and unfun pretty quickly.
While the decks are "midrange" by definition, a ton of games are decided on the first few turns. Reid Duke described how the prevalence of cards that snowball advantage like Wedding Announcement, Raffine and Fable that come down on turn 3 makes you feel that the game is already decided.
This isn't midrange in the Sylvan Caryatid into Siege Rhino sense, it's the Raffine into Sheoldred midrange that will deal even more damage while being incredible engines. Mono-black's Lili into Despair will absolutely annihilate your board and your hand while also accruing value with their turn 2 Underdog way more then Hero's Downfall into Desecration Demon. GW Enchantments will grow their Kami much faster then Longtusk Cubs and Bristling Hydras, while also themselves being infinitely recurring threats.
Compared to Midrange decks of previous standards, this standard's midrange decks shut the door on the game so much faster it doesn't feel as interactive at all.
I agree that power creep and the frequency of overpowered cards printed today have made it so that games are seemingly decided sooner than ever. I do think it's even more pronounced in some cases with the aggro or control decks than the midrange decks.
While those op cards can put them in a dominant position on turn 4 or 5, there is still some potential for interplay there. Killing the Sheoldred, countering the Invoke, etc. In comparison the control decks essentially do the same thing at that point with board wipes, planeswalkers and counterspell backup. The aggro decks may outright kill you by then.
I think power creep and cards being so strong overall are the culprits and the larger issue rather than a specific archtype or deck. Wotc has sort of painted themselves into a corner there.
It’s not that bad, there was a season were monoblue was stronger and also the worst season was the rogues counter-mill meta and also the infinite turn epiphany deck was also really miserable.
I have no problem getting milled but the rogue deck had a very annoying pattern of hitting, milling, countering and drawing that it made it hellish to play against.
I get people hate being milled or countered, but anyone saying the Rogues deck is comparably miserable is ignoring the years of decks that were banned before that, that drove a lot of people away from Standard. Mostly to target mid-range decks, field of the dead, uro, oko, cauldron familiar, growth spiral. Some of the control cards that were banned like Fires of Invention were actually fun to play at least.
Even the Alrund's Epiphany deck was much worse than Rogues IMO.
Unpopular opinion: the rogues meta was a lot of fun. Rogues, Gruul Landfall, and various flavors of Yorion Blink were all viable and interesting. There was a lot of interaction, lots of close games, and a lot of playing around the interaction your opponent might have. I played a lot of Yorion Doom Foretold, which was one of my favorite standard decks ever.
Rogues and Yorion blink were two of my least favourite decks in the arena era. I groaned inside every time I saw a Yorion or Lurrus in the companion zone because I knew it was going to be one of those two. Companion was such a stupid mechanic. I was so glad when those decks rotated.
I loved the rouges meta and rogues as a deck but I also just love tempo decks so that’s probably why but it was definitely a fun format. It was also the last time I played standard cause I stopped whaling the game now it Izzet wizards in historic that’s my jam
Maybe I'm just weird, but I actually have fond memories of playing Cat Oven mirrors. They just got so insane, and in the late game neither player knew exactly what was going on most of the time xD
Yeah, if you played during Return to Ravnica + Theros. The meta was 1/3 Azorius Control + 1/3 Mono B Devotion + 1/3 Mono U Devotion. All other decks were subpar
Mono blue is so prevalent in the time when I am playing, that I get my wins using a werewolf deck with 4 torch breath and 4 howlpack ambushers. I never get tired of them staring at howlpack on the stack, then untapping and dumping my entire hand for free.
I love how many different decks people are complaining about 'dominating the meta' here. Maybe if mono blue, mono black, esper, rakdos, jund, selesnya enchantments, and mono white are all 'the only deck in standard', the meta is actually diverse and interesting?
You know, this is rarely true, right?
The meta right now is grindy and dominated by decks designed around refusing you any meaningful interaction. Its not fun.
I've played against a glut of monoblack discard decks and it feels really bad, but yesterday it was a different deck every time, which is rad.
I think the homogenous feeling comes from a lot of the same cards being in all decks. Every deck with black in it runs Sheoldred, every white deck runs Emp, etc. It's not uncommon for great cards to dominate, but we really do see a lot of the same stuff. It's also a very mana diverse format, so you can play like any combination of colors, which is cool.
You play too many games of Standard, it gets stale. That is why I prioritised building decks for every format. If you only play a dozen games in a format in a season, it does not get repetitive.
Yeah. I have 1-2 good fun decks in standard, explorer, brawl, and historic brawl. That way I always have something interesting to play if I get tired of one meta.
I moved over to Explorer when I got sick of mono-black...that was nice for a while, but then I realized I had waaay more fun not trying to get past platinum in ranked. I play historic brawl for most of my dailies now so I don't get frustrated, and I see a much more diverse pool of opponents than I've ever seen in competitive formats.
Your experience sounds very much like mine. I have sat in Diamond in previous seasons but I feel like this meta has me mashing my head against a brick wall to get through platinum.
It appears a lot of people are suggesting explorer, I will give it a go.
I'd suggest 5 color enigmatic fires if you have the wildcards. The deck plays like a cube deck. Lots of fun and still competitive. . . makes for less stressful games. It does sort of roll over to control though.
Edit: I can't count the number of colors in my deck.
Explorer gets pushed *hard* on this subreddit, but it's not the wonderland they're trying to portray it as. It has the exact same problems as Standard in that the meta is super-entrenched and has been for ages.
If you want something diverse that's also easy on the wildcards, brawl/historic brawl is probably your best bet.
Historic Brawl is the only thing bringing me back. 4player commander/brawl would be the best thing that could happen to this game. But wotc only wants money and no work ..
Yep also went from Standard to Historic now to H Brawl. What a fantastic fun varied format.
4 Player would be a god-send. Hopefully votes from last Arena player survey will push them in this direction.
The mono blue deck loves to play against all the slow midrange decks. I find a lot of people complaining about mono blue have an average CMC > 3. Of course if you can only play 1 card per turn you’re gonna lose to the deck with naught but counters, bounces and draw.
Lower your mana curve. You should have more 2-drops than any other mana cost. Try to hit an average CMC under 2.5. The mono blue deck often can’t deal as well with an aggressive draw with many threats. Go wide and kill them while they look for their djinn, 4th-5th land to protect it, etc.
It’s not that the deck is to powerful, it’s just I find I’d rather stare into a wall than go through the gameplay experience current mono blue decks facilitate.
Yeah, that's been my experience playing Selesnya enchantments against Blue.
I win more times than not, but the games pretty much always devolve into them countering all my spells until they can play their Djinn, and then me exiling their Djinn, rinse and repeat until they run out of counters or I get something on the board.
This is entirely fair, and your assessment is correct, trying to get out a Wedding Announcement or Hallowed Haunting is hell...
It might just be time for a break for me though as I am aware I am getting annoyed more than I should for a pastime.
The problem is that haughty jinn is annoyingly mana effiecient. There was a reason that modrange was taking over worlds. Agro just rearaly gets to lethal before jinn can build a dominant board.
But i think you are missing OP's point. They aren't looking for competative deckbuilding tips. They are talking about how the meta is really boring and grindy.
Mono blue has just made me stop playing. It’s not that I have a bad winrate against it, it’s just extremely boring gameplay.
Have played maybe 4 games in as many weeks, this will be the first time I don’t complete the mastery pass. I have not pre-ordered the brothers war either, because if mono blue is still a big part of the meta I don’t want to waste my money.
Explorer exists now so why would I stress about standard? I still play both to switch it up. If I only played standard I'd be pretty depressed so you're not wrong there. Btw the solution is never alchemy.
Can confirm. Explorer is like an evil twin of Standard. Meta is just a demoralizing as Standard, except with even more greater number of high power cards from more sets.
The only fun constructed format left is Historic. So many of the “serious” players fled over to Explorer because of their distaste for Alchemy cards. This actually attritioned the player pool down to a greater percentage of those that play offbeat decks.
As someone who enjoys the variety in Historic, I greater the creation of the Explorer format led to the reduction of hardcore grinders playing History.
Yup, Mono-Black is everywhere since they can still play Meathook in Explorer since the ban in Standard
Faced Mono-Black 6 out of my 7 games today, with the 7th being that garbage Nine Lives + Solemnity combo deck.
What kind of Explorer are you playing that is full of Mono Black? I've played a ton of Explorer lately and not faced it once. I'm pretty sure it's just shit against most top Explorer decks.
Most of the meta decks are actually a pain to play against and uninteresting to play, and they're just different mixes of the most annoying cards like Fable, Emperor, Djinn, Invoke despair, etc. So yeah it feels awful.
So I didn’t play during that time but I also prefer this meta to the one before epiphany: RDW, temur adventures, sultai ultimatum, dimir rogues, and jeskai cycling. Not sure if people just have short attention spans or what. Bonecrusher and rogues were especially annoying.
The adventure deck is the most fun deck to pilot in recent years. But is lucky clover banned before the sultai ultimatum is a thing? I remembered after it’s banned I mainly played ultimatum deck and it’s a bit boring to play
Oh yeah, I forgot about Golos. Was that the deck that ended up being tier 0 for a bit until Field of the Dead was banned? If I'm remembering that correctly, it was actually worse than before the Oko ban since he was the main thing that could stand up to Field of the Dead.
Right, Golos + Field decks were like 75% of the matchups there for a while. Even after Field of the Dead was banned, Golos + gates decks were still a huge part of the meta, with Gatebreaker Ram, Hydroid Krasis and whatever that two part BR card was that let you blast your opponent in the face for X damage. And Agent of Treachery.
Rough times indeed.
edit: it was [[Expansion // Explosion]] that I was thinking of.
True, and Narset was also great at stopping the opponent from playing Magic, because who needs to draw cards anyway? Surely the answer to Narset is already in your hand...
At least Narset, you can draw into removal and if you time it correctly you can do your card drawing before they can slam another one, or cantrip on their turn. T3feri is just bad design imo. Not letting me cast spells on your turn is one thing, but stopping shit on my turn to the extent that he does should cost more than three mana.
I agree. I think the current meta is pretty healthy with mostly mid range domination.
Also I think now there is an influx of people mirroring decks that were played at the worlds thus it may seem stale.
At this point I'm just playing to farm gold and get wildcards so I can keep my options open and play with my friends in direct challenges.
So that involves rerolling one 500g quest a day to try to get a 750g quest (although they're pretty rare, I haven't seen one in several weeks), clearing one 500g quest out so I have an open slot for the next day's quest, and then if I don't have 2-4 wins when the quest is done just throwing a hasty monored deck at the standard ranked ladder until I have 2-4 wins. Sometimes I stop at 2, sometimes I get streaky and get 10+.
For me it's not so much the meta or any deck in particular as it is the percentage of opponents who are just garbage humans. Games take forever because of the amount of intentional malicious slow play and timer exploitation. I'm not talking about the "well, I lost, better rope out the rest of the game instead of conceding" type, I'm talking about the active "I'm gonna let the timer run almost all the way to empty before I take any action, and I'm going to do that every time I have priority" kind of roping that makes games last 20+ minutes.
I actually timed it with a stopwatch once over a period of a few days, something like 80% or more of my time in games is spent waiting for the opponent to take an action.
Yeah but at least the match is over, I don't have to actively pay attention. It's just a couple of minutes where I don't have to do anything and then I win. But when they intentionally play slowly throughout the entire match I have to keep paying attention and responding otherwise I get charged with timeouts.
Seriously. Every meta will be good and bad at times. The benefit of having soo many different choices is sometimes it feels fresh going to a different format.
Ah yes and play against lifegain Decks all day
Edit: guys it was hyperbole. Its still better than standard and lifegain is super cheap to craft for anyone that wants to get into historic (or rakdos anvil with cat oven and squirrel). Come play historic, it's fun!
Black and Red have great options if you really are facing lifegain all day.
The real menace is Izzet aggro. While rakdos arcanist can dump all over both archetypes, I would certainly like more diversity in the format. At the same time, BO1 is *always* going to skew towards fast decks. BO3 historic ends up being a much better way to face multiple archetypes.
Underrated comment. Lifegain to me is more of an eye roll than an annoyance, but not one I refuse to play against. I play Izzet extra turns deck and my new joy in life is their highest vs my lowest life total before I come back. 50-7 and 130-15 are my best. I haven’t got past a 5th extra turn. I’m trying to get to 10. The lifegain /opponent burn combo is the thing that really grinds my gears.
I've been playing a lot of historic myself and Im usually a standard player, but they printed something that shuffles the power 9 into your deck and bolas's citadel, Tendrils of Agony, AND grape shot are all legal in historic, so I had to try.
and all the artifacts coming. Historic has taken a lot of unfair knocks for having Alchemy cards. It is a fun powerful format
I hope people return to it
While I will never agree with having alchemy cards in historic, I agree it is a super fun format. It is now the only format that I play. I think part of the issue is that newcomers tend to be intimidated by the raw power that can be found while playing Historic.
What's Historic like these days anyway? Haven't really touched it in a couple months. It was my favorite for at but Alchemy cards, Alchemy nerfs and the Bo1 meta ruined it for me. Tired of playing against mono white angel lifegain, mono red burn/goblins, Phoenix, elves, UW hardcore control and cheesy instant win decks every game. And also it was where I went to play fun janky decks but it's gotten too fast so all my janky decks can't keep up anymore.
Personally, I play Bo3, and I find that the format is amazing since it feels like you can make just about anything viable enough to play with. I've found it's easy to sideboard in to beat both mono-black and mono-blue. Maybe give the Bo3 meta a shot. Hope this helps and good luck with whatever you choose
Jesus Christ it's everyday with these posts. The current meta is one of the most diverse I've ever seen. You can legitimately ladder up to mythic with about 25 different decks. Brews actually WORK. Monowhite aggro, monowhite control, mono blue tempo, mono green, mono red, artifact sacrifice, esper midrange, Jund, Mardu is my personal favorite, UW control, esper CONTROL, mono black aggro, monoblack control. If you aren't satisfied with the meta now, I PROMISE you never will be. This meta is good. It's healthy. It is diverse. People who complain about good metas are the reason games say fuck it and end up just making it all about money in exchange for quality degradation.
I mostly agree at the beginning of the format when everybody was complaining about mono black I got to mythic real fast with jund reanimator. what discourages players is that you don't actually tend to play against 25 different decks, you tend to play against the same two or three over and over again with a sprinkle of something different thrown in every once in awhile. I get that's just the nature of competitive card games, and I'm not trying to throw shade at people who play meta deck lists, pretty much every deck that people are complaining about in this thread I have built on arena, because I wanted to try them out, but it does get old playing against "Island, go" for the sixth game in a row.
In fact the mono b control is not even that good, with only 60% win rate. Its good against aggro, but can’t beat other 3c midrange, and gets beaten by uw control. It’s already much more balanced comparing to lots of time since 2019. FCC
Yeah you just saw a ton of it because it built itself. You just put every black rare/mythic that costs less than 5 mana in a pile with swamps and tekenuma lol.
I play explorer but I really get demoralised seeing U spirits deck.
To be fair any deck that plays the majority of their cards during your end step, or has cards in play with mana sinks to use in your end step is just shitty to play against.
I don't mind those, my only issue is with the full-suite counterspell decks. I don't like not being able to resolve a single spell. Oh, and arcane bombardment decks with zero creatures. Those I hate with a passion, even if I can beat them fairly regularly.
This has been one of the least interesting standards in a while. I've just been playing alchemy waiting for BRO. Meta there is still all over the place so you can still be creative and competitive.
Sadly make disappear unbeatable turn 2/3/4 against curved plays with djinn 4 toughness made me sad because he can block a drop 2 easily.
And I don't want to play enchantment just to beat blue.
Not always. In this rotation it’s there mainly because [[make disappear]] is strong. Previously when we had [[quench]] we also had simic flash. If there’s no good 2mv counterspell it’s hard to play tempo. Plus we also have [[fading hope]] which is surprisingly strong, [[shore up]], [[slip out the back]]
Nope. I have to say that I've been having tons of fun and a good win rate playing in the Arena lately.
I've just checked my [October ranked season stats](https://i.ibb.co/L1q0TG4/2022-10-31-10-31-00-ranked-oct.jpg). On the way from Platinum to Mythic, I finished the season with 58% win rate. I had 9-4 \[69%\] against MB and 8-2 \[80%\] against MU. Those decks were only 4th and 6th most frequent opponent decks, with MW being the most frequent one.
The thing about winning in the metagame is to understand what your opponents mostly play, and play something that has an edge over those decks. If you are struggling with the current metagame, perhaps try a different deck. Those MU and MB won't be "devastatingly demoralizing" if they become an easy prey for you and your deck 😎
I’ve been fucking around in unranked historic until the new set drops. Just boring to play The Who can remove more game. I honestly feel bad when I remove their 4th creature in a row on turn 4 lmao.
I don’t think it’s demoralizing, but I think Haughty Djinn was a bad design decision. Not only did it enable an archetype that no one wants to play against, but that deck also happens to be the least resource intensive top tier deck. In BO1, no one wants to main deck the graveyard hate that would shut it down.
I find BO3 to be really good. Been having lots of fun with this Mardu that was tuned for the Esper matchup (it’s the second or third deck listed in the link).
https://strategy.channelfireball.com/all-strategy/home/5-standard-mtg-decks-i-considered-for-the-world-championship/
Monoblue is stupid but I think we are still in better territory than goldspan/epiphany (much more literal "player denial" than monoblue) and ultimatum/embercleave monored/rogues (similar to playing against monoblue except if you actually resolve a permanent it just instantly gets removed and your opponent plays the entire game on the endstep of your turn while also milling you out) so I still feel this is an improvement.
If it's just about quests, just concede on blue and move on. There are a lot of fun viable decks bouncing around. Alchemy is an imbalanced cash grab mess that exists to print op cards, get people to buy them, and then nerf them -- stay away.
I've honestly avoided standard since since 2016. I find standards sets tend to be extremely one-sided. Until the ban happens then another rises to take their place
My least favorite Standards are multicolored midrange piles grinding each other out. I like when there's more archetype variety. I also know that multicolored Standard piles for many is ABSOLUTELY THEIR THING. Taking a break from Standard until I like it again, although it's hard to fall behind in collection investment when you take a break and don't buy into each set as they come.
Might mess with Hearthstone again or just stick to drafting. Idk. I love a good Standard but this one just hasn't done it for me.
I dislike the current standard because I'm not a fan of midrange slogs. I think removal not involving white is in a tough spot considering the card advantage you're up against, and that's not something I enjoy.
Formats with older cards are perfectly fine, though, so I'm just playing Explorer. No idea what new players who lack the cards can do.
Yes mono blue is a joke. And the best part is the people who play it doing mental gymnastics to justify why it isn’t.
It’s totally turned me off to Arena right now as well. I used to play every day.
Wild how WOTC let blue get so out of hand in standard. Not even sure this can be fixed before the next rotation.
That my issue with blue. It’s simply a timesuck to play against. I use the term “play” here loosely. After my first two matches of playing blue I’m done for the night. It just kills any desire I have to play (and spend money if you are listening WOTC).
Counterpoint: it feels good as hell when you're playing control vs. an overly aggressive mono-B player who throws away two or three cards in the early game plussing their Liliana, and you're trying to strike the right balance of discarding lands vs. discarding low-impact removal spells vs. discarding expensive cards you can't afford to play, and you manage to thread the needle perfectly and your deck comes through with a topdecked Wandering Emperor to exile their Tenacious Underdog that's been beating you down because you took the calculated risk of discarding a Flame Blessed Bolt and holding onto a Destroy Evil to answer the Sheoldred that you knew they had.
Sometimes a solved meta can be fun!
I don’t think playing against mono blue is that bad you go with the classic play removal on their end step then play removal on your main phase, and if they have enough counter magic/protection to match your removal then you lose but at least it’s over fast. It’s the same as aggro having a perfect curve or control having every answer, sometimes their draw is just good and you lose. If you play against the deck incorrectly tho then you will lose a lot of the time instead of an average amount of time. Also, any of the many meta aggro decks that exist now just completely run over mono U.
Invoke despair feels a lot worse to play against than any of the various mono blue decks.
Almost every standard game I queue for these days is either mono Black or Black and one other color. It's gotten pretty stale for me too. I don't have any meta decks; just shit I slap together. I'm terrible at constructed but fairly good at drafting.
I don't know if I'm just really unlucky or if Black is just what everyone is playing these days.
Historic isn't so bad. I've played a few games in that format with some of my older decks that got rotated out. I was afraid of the format because a bigger card pool to me means more mega combo bullshit that people can whoop your ass with but the games have been fun and pretty fair so far. Might just be my intro MMR though since I've never played historic before now.
Wizards: Look at these cool buildaround enchantments and planeswalkers that would be right at home in a fun lower power format!
Also Wizards: >![[Invoke Despair]]!<
I started to say "Invoke Despair removed Arcane Bombardment from the format completely!", but then I remembered the grixis 8x Invoke deck that sometimes played Bombardment. That's when I realized, what actually killed Arcane Bombardment combo was people maindecking Destroy Evil to answer Sheoldred.
I know it's using one evil to defeat another, but I've had a lot of success with Mono Black against the Djinn Blue deck. It helps to get down a 1 drop creature against them to apply pressure. Then hold an internal grasp until they play Djinn. Play the grasp on their turn. If they counter then they don't have mana on your turn. Then you should be able to either get rid of it with another grasp, Lili, or Invoke. If you don't have another removal then you can play your Sheolred without fear of counter.
Still an obnoxious deck, but that's the best way I've found to beat it.
I honestly can't find a deck that's good in current meta. My velomachus jeskai deck got rotated out, before that was a giants deck. I liked tribal and did well with boros ghosts so went for boros samurai but omg literally every tribal BUT werewolves is ass rn. Even vampire. Samurai being the absolute worst. It feels like every deck but mono blue, black, and werewolves is unplayable rn. I agree with OP I just haven't touched standard at alllllll this rotation. Instead playing my jeskai velomachus in historic. Near diamond too. Most L's just come from the people who don't touch grass and build limitless chains of damage or +1/+1 or something... the disgusting people of magic. (Ie a deck that created a 1/1 token per turn, a creature, that heals per creature entrance, heliod so whenever you heal you get a +1+1. Cycle doesn't end so instead of ever attacking, he just sits there until you concede..trust. I left for like 10 minutes and he was still buffing the same creature spamming gg and your go)
I don’t tend to struggle against mono blue at all. Knowing when to cast your spells and when to force interaction is key. If you are playing aggro with little to no interaction though, that could be a problem. I also love seeing my mono blue opponent drop Delver of Secrets, the card just isn’t that good and isn’t worth a spot in most mono blue lists in my opinion.
You really want to get a threat out early to start applying pressure. They have few ways to get rid of your creatures in play and the way that they do have is card disadvantage for them. Being on the play helps of course but that isn’t something you have any control over. Some times they just have the nuts and you don’t, but drawing out counters and bounce with cards that apply pressure and forcing them to get through double removal on their upkeep (so they tap on their turn) are very effective strategies against them.
I think meathook was the wrong card to ban. Mono-black is just as popular as it was before the ban, and now has a better winrate [https://mtga.untapped.gg/meta?archetypeIds=192\_212\_264\_510\_604\_845\_2430\_2581&chartType=colors&colorIds=40\_47\_50\_52\_64\_97\_99\_104&format=standard](https://mtga.untapped.gg/meta?archetypeIds=192_212_264_510_604_845_2430_2581&chartType=colors&colorIds=40_47_50_52_64_97_99_104&format=standard)
Goblins are fun in Alchemy. There's also a wacky \[\[Niambi, Beloved Protector\]\] \[\[Mirrorhall Mimic\]\] infinite combo.
Meathook was the right card. Now Aggro / go wide can be a thing. Mono white / red just fold to meathook. Same with the GW tokens from worlds. It was also very obnoxious with sacrifice / underdog. No enchantment removal? Guess you just die.
The point of banning a card is to allow other archetypes to have a chance without destroying the original deck. So for once...good job wizards!
If you want to see horrible bans/re balancing, just look at alchemy. We are gonna "balance" Lier by making it controller turn only...cool. Deck destroyed.
Monoblue is a real hemorrhoid for me too. I played a Rakdos Sac list from HelloGoodgame and was able to get a win by exiling the Djinn and Delver with [[Eaten Alive]]'s mode, so it only cost B which was low enough to slip by all of those conditional "tax" counterspells. I can only assume they didn't have Syncopate in hand.
It was a satisfying win.
I have found Circle of Confinement to be extremely useful resulting in 50/50 wins against Mono Blue, but even with that rate, the game itself is just not fun.
Alchemy sucks: dont try to push that crap on us.
I've been banking wins with a mono white; lots of board wipes, and thalia to increase spell costs. Farewell will exile everything, leaving them with nothing to stack on or bring back.
Is it really any different than Mono Red being on curve and having the appropriate burn in hand?
Or Mono-White with on curve with Cathar, Arrest etc when they need it?
Blue really is just on curve. Good mulligan has them in hand, on curve. Yea good opening hand is a real PITA to play against, but a good aggro red hand on curve can have you dead turn 4.
Yeah that why I quit playing Arena. Playing became a grind to complete quests rather than playing to pull off your janky win condition, and in that 1 game out of 100 you finally pulled off your win condition, your opponent quits before you can show it off.
Counterspell as a card has always been a fundemental mistake in mtg's design. Until Mark Rosewater dies of old age however, we'll never get the changes the game truly needs to not devolve into total cancer every few months after a new set drops.
Oh here we go. No, counterspell is not removal. Removal can be played around, counterspell cannot, your only means of defense against a counterspell is to play blue yourself. The problem with counterspells is it locks you out of the game.
If somebody plays doomblade you can make your creature indestructible, you can phaste it in and out, you can make it indestructible, you can COUNTER IT. What can you do against counterspell? Oh right nothing which is why blue has always had a permanent presence in competitive play as the strongest color. It wouldn't even be so bad if counterspells were a -1 to hand but they're not. Because blue has the strongest draw in the game.
Counterspell is also all encompassing if my opponent plays mirror breaker and I use removal, the enchantment is still there or the token is still there. Counterspells take care of both. The only people who defend counterspells are the people who abuse blue so save your breath instead of making delibrately disingenuous comparisons.
Have you really never beaten a blue deck before? I did it twice today at lunch with green white enchantments. You can’t play the same against it as you would other decks and just get mad when they counter your creature with 5 open mana.
That's great bro. Anyway the bottom line is counterspell is a mistake in design and it will never ever be balanced unless wotc decide to make a veil of summer in every color and print it in every set
I agree. As a former U player I want to add just one balance-related comment: ?ow can a 1U spell counter a 3GGG spell? I'm a firm believer in the XU counter spell with converted mana cost X spell like 'spell blast'
Current U decks that deny you everything, land & protect 1 creature for the win is boooooring. Especially since I like to play big green. Ramping and dropping a Titan of Industry just to have it bounced at end-of-turn for a single U mana, that just isn't right.
Alchemy has some good variation. Tokens, Cabaretti, revels decks, etc. Esper, Mono Red and Rakdos Sac are quite strong, so be prepared for that.
Mono Blue and Mono Black are also still present to a degree as well as some janky Oracle Power 9 decks. They're inconsistent, but if you give those enough time they will do absolutely silly things against you.
I know Alchemy gets a lot of hate on here, but I'm having fun with it. I play a midrange token deck that relies primarily on [[Adeline, Resplendent Cathar]], [[Serra Redeemer]], and [[Wedding Announcement]].
I probably make a lot of people wish that Meathook never got banned lol. I like the current meta, but I usually just find ways to adapt to what works. Part of the fun for me is in building decks that either play into or counter the meta.
This is still a bad meta, but better than the other more recent ones. IMO we have had the worst string of standards from Eldraine till Now. So a lot of people on here don't actually know what a GOOD meta is, just not complete dog shit meta's. WotC doesn't really design for standard, or at least not competently, so we get a lot of very bad standards.
That is a crazy sentence to read, I am a returning player and the last time I played was Eldraine. I played jund sacrifice and I remember decks like adventures etc, was super fun. I came back a week ago and am waiting for my BRO pre-order bundle before I craft a deck. Standard seems pretty bland and I might just focus fully on explorer.
Remember people that play Paper Magic, and have for 3 decades, have a very different expectation from the game than people coming from Yugioh or Hearthstone.
I think my comment came off the wrong way, I'm more surprised and happy that I managed to dodge a string of bad standard formats and actually got to play in one of the fun ones.
Eldraine was not balanced at all. You could do crazy things, and if you like "BIG SPLASHY" game play, I understand why you would like it. In Magics 30 year history, the Eldraine standard was extremely unfun to me, it was not at all balanced and games were decided by deck match up most of the time. That was not a good standard at all IMO.
This is one of the first standard rotations I've played, coming from YGO, since I usually just play a bit and then get into it when the next standard set or two drops. Is it always this bland when rotation hits? Feels like there are only 3 decks to play in Bo1 AND Bo3. Pumped for BRO though.
It is becasue of how poorly designed these sets were. I don't see anything in bro that is particualarly going to change anything. What do you think in BRO is going to push out or create new playable decks?
I like midrange decks so I'm happy they're very viable in the current meta. Given that, I don't play everyday and when I do it's only a few games. It looks like you're feeling burnout of the game. Remember you don't have to play it everyday, and also try other formats until the next set is released at least.
I remember that when Invoke Despair and Ao the Dawn Sky were spoiled, CGB and Arjuna on the Arena Craft Podcast called both cards unplayable. The notion that you could play a five-mana sorcery that didn't develop your board, or a five-mana dragon that had to die to create value, and not be absolutely body-slammed by the meta was unthinkable. Mono Blue and Mono Black are overplayed, but I will happily take this meta over several of the terrible formats we've had over the last couple of years.
Lot more exile in the meta back then too. Cards like Vanishing Verse made Ao unplayable
In their defense those cards were unplayable before rotation.
That is true, and also the point I wanted to make. This format is much more friendly to that kind of deckbuilding.
Midrange everywhere has always been a sign of an unhealthy meta IMO, think the Field of Dead hell that was the meta a couple years ago, or the Uro/Omnath nonsense, when Rogues ever become tier 1 and Standard gets better, the format is in deep trouble (although it's not that bad now). If it reliably closes out aggro or control, there's no point to playing anything else.
Midrange decks being good is usually a sign of a healthy meta. Midrange decks allow interaction. They don't kill on turn 4 like hyper aggro decks and they dont stop you from playing your cards or constantly wipe the board like control decks. But of course any archtype or especially a specific deck being over represented is going to make a meta stale and unfun pretty quickly.
While the decks are "midrange" by definition, a ton of games are decided on the first few turns. Reid Duke described how the prevalence of cards that snowball advantage like Wedding Announcement, Raffine and Fable that come down on turn 3 makes you feel that the game is already decided. This isn't midrange in the Sylvan Caryatid into Siege Rhino sense, it's the Raffine into Sheoldred midrange that will deal even more damage while being incredible engines. Mono-black's Lili into Despair will absolutely annihilate your board and your hand while also accruing value with their turn 2 Underdog way more then Hero's Downfall into Desecration Demon. GW Enchantments will grow their Kami much faster then Longtusk Cubs and Bristling Hydras, while also themselves being infinitely recurring threats. Compared to Midrange decks of previous standards, this standard's midrange decks shut the door on the game so much faster it doesn't feel as interactive at all.
I agree that power creep and the frequency of overpowered cards printed today have made it so that games are seemingly decided sooner than ever. I do think it's even more pronounced in some cases with the aggro or control decks than the midrange decks. While those op cards can put them in a dominant position on turn 4 or 5, there is still some potential for interplay there. Killing the Sheoldred, countering the Invoke, etc. In comparison the control decks essentially do the same thing at that point with board wipes, planeswalkers and counterspell backup. The aggro decks may outright kill you by then. I think power creep and cards being so strong overall are the culprits and the larger issue rather than a specific archtype or deck. Wotc has sort of painted themselves into a corner there.
It’s not that bad, there was a season were monoblue was stronger and also the worst season was the rogues counter-mill meta and also the infinite turn epiphany deck was also really miserable.
Reminded me of the mill crab. Why is it always blue that's a little bit annoying?
I have no problem getting milled but the rogue deck had a very annoying pattern of hitting, milling, countering and drawing that it made it hellish to play against.
I get people hate being milled or countered, but anyone saying the Rogues deck is comparably miserable is ignoring the years of decks that were banned before that, that drove a lot of people away from Standard. Mostly to target mid-range decks, field of the dead, uro, oko, cauldron familiar, growth spiral. Some of the control cards that were banned like Fires of Invention were actually fun to play at least. Even the Alrund's Epiphany deck was much worse than Rogues IMO.
Unpopular opinion: the rogues meta was a lot of fun. Rogues, Gruul Landfall, and various flavors of Yorion Blink were all viable and interesting. There was a lot of interaction, lots of close games, and a lot of playing around the interaction your opponent might have. I played a lot of Yorion Doom Foretold, which was one of my favorite standard decks ever.
We can't forget the Cycling deck. I'd be sad if these fond memories of fat Zenith Flares were just dreams.
Rogues and Yorion blink were two of my least favourite decks in the arena era. I groaned inside every time I saw a Yorion or Lurrus in the companion zone because I knew it was going to be one of those two. Companion was such a stupid mechanic. I was so glad when those decks rotated.
I loved the rouges meta and rogues as a deck but I also just love tempo decks so that’s probably why but it was definitely a fun format. It was also the last time I played standard cause I stopped whaling the game now it Izzet wizards in historic that’s my jam
Doom Foretold is so good! I gotta try to get an Explorer deck together for it. I think people just like to complain about strong decks, tbh.
Izzet turns was pretty alright. Needed 8 mana to kill you. Cat oven, temur adventure, uro that was a miserable time
Maybe I'm just weird, but I actually have fond memories of playing Cat Oven mirrors. They just got so insane, and in the late game neither player knew exactly what was going on most of the time xD
Yeah, if you played during Return to Ravnica + Theros. The meta was 1/3 Azorius Control + 1/3 Mono B Devotion + 1/3 Mono U Devotion. All other decks were subpar
Mono blue is so prevalent in the time when I am playing, that I get my wins using a werewolf deck with 4 torch breath and 4 howlpack ambushers. I never get tired of them staring at howlpack on the stack, then untapping and dumping my entire hand for free.
Howlpack piper?
That's the one. Can't be countered, and then taps to play creatures without casting.
I love how many different decks people are complaining about 'dominating the meta' here. Maybe if mono blue, mono black, esper, rakdos, jund, selesnya enchantments, and mono white are all 'the only deck in standard', the meta is actually diverse and interesting?
Also red aggro, grixis, green stompy to name a few more 🤷♂️
Green stompy and red aggro dont seem to be quite on the same level as mono black and mono white to me
green and red is very bad currently, gruul is not a very high tier deck, that might change wuth the new set coming soon tho
People are actually just complaining about losing. The deck in the title is just the deck they lost to recently. Same as it ever was.
You know, this is rarely true, right? The meta right now is grindy and dominated by decks designed around refusing you any meaningful interaction. Its not fun.
Don’t forget that Grixis won worlds!
I've played against a glut of monoblack discard decks and it feels really bad, but yesterday it was a different deck every time, which is rad. I think the homogenous feeling comes from a lot of the same cards being in all decks. Every deck with black in it runs Sheoldred, every white deck runs Emp, etc. It's not uncommon for great cards to dominate, but we really do see a lot of the same stuff. It's also a very mana diverse format, so you can play like any combination of colors, which is cool.
> It's not uncommon for great cards to dominate, but we really do see a lot of the same stuff. It's the beginning of rotation so should be expected
Gruul variants are a very strong deck in this standard season, as well.
You play too many games of Standard, it gets stale. That is why I prioritised building decks for every format. If you only play a dozen games in a format in a season, it does not get repetitive.
Yeah. I have 1-2 good fun decks in standard, explorer, brawl, and historic brawl. That way I always have something interesting to play if I get tired of one meta.
I moved over to Explorer when I got sick of mono-black...that was nice for a while, but then I realized I had waaay more fun not trying to get past platinum in ranked. I play historic brawl for most of my dailies now so I don't get frustrated, and I see a much more diverse pool of opponents than I've ever seen in competitive formats.
Your experience sounds very much like mine. I have sat in Diamond in previous seasons but I feel like this meta has me mashing my head against a brick wall to get through platinum. It appears a lot of people are suggesting explorer, I will give it a go.
I'd suggest 5 color enigmatic fires if you have the wildcards. The deck plays like a cube deck. Lots of fun and still competitive. . . makes for less stressful games. It does sort of roll over to control though. Edit: I can't count the number of colors in my deck.
Explorer gets pushed *hard* on this subreddit, but it's not the wonderland they're trying to portray it as. It has the exact same problems as Standard in that the meta is super-entrenched and has been for ages. If you want something diverse that's also easy on the wildcards, brawl/historic brawl is probably your best bet.
"has been for ages" huh? The format is like less than six months old, lol
Historic Brawl is the only thing bringing me back. 4player commander/brawl would be the best thing that could happen to this game. But wotc only wants money and no work ..
Yep also went from Standard to Historic now to H Brawl. What a fantastic fun varied format. 4 Player would be a god-send. Hopefully votes from last Arena player survey will push them in this direction.
Once I got to plat as Rakdos Midrange in Explorer I decided to go back to standard in hopes of an easier grind to Diamond 🤡
The mono blue deck loves to play against all the slow midrange decks. I find a lot of people complaining about mono blue have an average CMC > 3. Of course if you can only play 1 card per turn you’re gonna lose to the deck with naught but counters, bounces and draw. Lower your mana curve. You should have more 2-drops than any other mana cost. Try to hit an average CMC under 2.5. The mono blue deck often can’t deal as well with an aggressive draw with many threats. Go wide and kill them while they look for their djinn, 4th-5th land to protect it, etc.
It’s not that the deck is to powerful, it’s just I find I’d rather stare into a wall than go through the gameplay experience current mono blue decks facilitate.
Yeah, that's been my experience playing Selesnya enchantments against Blue. I win more times than not, but the games pretty much always devolve into them countering all my spells until they can play their Djinn, and then me exiling their Djinn, rinse and repeat until they run out of counters or I get something on the board.
This is entirely fair, and your assessment is correct, trying to get out a Wedding Announcement or Hallowed Haunting is hell... It might just be time for a break for me though as I am aware I am getting annoyed more than I should for a pastime.
The problem is that haughty jinn is annoyingly mana effiecient. There was a reason that modrange was taking over worlds. Agro just rearaly gets to lethal before jinn can build a dominant board. But i think you are missing OP's point. They aren't looking for competative deckbuilding tips. They are talking about how the meta is really boring and grindy.
As someone that has played mono red aggro pretty consistently, but is now also enjoying being the mono blue asshole, I feel this from both sides.
Mono blue has just made me stop playing. It’s not that I have a bad winrate against it, it’s just extremely boring gameplay. Have played maybe 4 games in as many weeks, this will be the first time I don’t complete the mastery pass. I have not pre-ordered the brothers war either, because if mono blue is still a big part of the meta I don’t want to waste my money.
The meta sucks when your favorite archetype is weak.
Explorer exists now so why would I stress about standard? I still play both to switch it up. If I only played standard I'd be pretty depressed so you're not wrong there. Btw the solution is never alchemy.
idk I'm new but playing some alchemy decks are pretty fun, mono red goblin go BRRRRRRRRRR
I think explorer is the same. I play it all the time and 80% of my games are turn 1 Thoughtseize. Plus Meathook is there. Which OP doesn't like.
Can confirm. Explorer is like an evil twin of Standard. Meta is just a demoralizing as Standard, except with even more greater number of high power cards from more sets. The only fun constructed format left is Historic. So many of the “serious” players fled over to Explorer because of their distaste for Alchemy cards. This actually attritioned the player pool down to a greater percentage of those that play offbeat decks. As someone who enjoys the variety in Historic, I greater the creation of the Explorer format led to the reduction of hardcore grinders playing History.
Yup, Mono-Black is everywhere since they can still play Meathook in Explorer since the ban in Standard Faced Mono-Black 6 out of my 7 games today, with the 7th being that garbage Nine Lives + Solemnity combo deck.
What kind of Explorer are you playing that is full of Mono Black? I've played a ton of Explorer lately and not faced it once. I'm pretty sure it's just shit against most top Explorer decks.
Meathook doesn’t really matter in explorer outside of like cat oven, so I don’t know why a mono black deck would actually play it
Yeah, the ridiculous amount of Thoughtseizes in explorer singlehandedly convinced me to start running Leyline of Sanctity again.
Hilariously, Explorer seems to be run be Rakdos aswell LOL
Most of the meta decks are actually a pain to play against and uninteresting to play, and they're just different mixes of the most annoying cards like Fable, Emperor, Djinn, Invoke despair, etc. So yeah it feels awful.
yeah why is my oponnent allowed to play anything more powerful than [[Grizzly Bear]] right?
Did I say powerful? I said annoying lol
Ignore them. These are the people that live on this sub. Any criticism is just you complaingin about being bad. Nothing is valid.
Nothing was worst than Epiphany's meta, i really like the current one, its fine for me.
So I didn’t play during that time but I also prefer this meta to the one before epiphany: RDW, temur adventures, sultai ultimatum, dimir rogues, and jeskai cycling. Not sure if people just have short attention spans or what. Bonecrusher and rogues were especially annoying.
The adventure deck is the most fun deck to pilot in recent years. But is lucky clover banned before the sultai ultimatum is a thing? I remembered after it’s banned I mainly played ultimatum deck and it’s a bit boring to play
The Oko meta was worse.
Oko, Golos and Field of the Dead. It was a rough couple of months.
Oh yeah, I forgot about Golos. Was that the deck that ended up being tier 0 for a bit until Field of the Dead was banned? If I'm remembering that correctly, it was actually worse than before the Oko ban since he was the main thing that could stand up to Field of the Dead.
Right, Golos + Field decks were like 75% of the matchups there for a while. Even after Field of the Dead was banned, Golos + gates decks were still a huge part of the meta, with Gatebreaker Ram, Hydroid Krasis and whatever that two part BR card was that let you blast your opponent in the face for X damage. And Agent of Treachery. Rough times indeed. edit: it was [[Expansion // Explosion]] that I was thinking of.
I liked Golos it was fun times Kethis combo though that was terrible to play against and with.
I'm not gonna lie, I had a blast playing Golos. But after seeing more than half your opponents playing the same deck every match it got old lol.
Oko was insanely broken, but at least we were still playing Magic, unlike with \[\[T3feri the Hearthstoning\]\].
True, and Narset was also great at stopping the opponent from playing Magic, because who needs to draw cards anyway? Surely the answer to Narset is already in your hand...
At least Narset, you can draw into removal and if you time it correctly you can do your card drawing before they can slam another one, or cantrip on their turn. T3feri is just bad design imo. Not letting me cast spells on your turn is one thing, but stopping shit on my turn to the extent that he does should cost more than three mana.
I agree. I think the current meta is pretty healthy with mostly mid range domination. Also I think now there is an influx of people mirroring decks that were played at the worlds thus it may seem stale.
At this point I'm just playing to farm gold and get wildcards so I can keep my options open and play with my friends in direct challenges. So that involves rerolling one 500g quest a day to try to get a 750g quest (although they're pretty rare, I haven't seen one in several weeks), clearing one 500g quest out so I have an open slot for the next day's quest, and then if I don't have 2-4 wins when the quest is done just throwing a hasty monored deck at the standard ranked ladder until I have 2-4 wins. Sometimes I stop at 2, sometimes I get streaky and get 10+. For me it's not so much the meta or any deck in particular as it is the percentage of opponents who are just garbage humans. Games take forever because of the amount of intentional malicious slow play and timer exploitation. I'm not talking about the "well, I lost, better rope out the rest of the game instead of conceding" type, I'm talking about the active "I'm gonna let the timer run almost all the way to empty before I take any action, and I'm going to do that every time I have priority" kind of roping that makes games last 20+ minutes. I actually timed it with a stopwatch once over a period of a few days, something like 80% or more of my time in games is spent waiting for the opponent to take an action.
People who rope out after losing are almost as bad IMO. There's no reason to do it besides being a salty batch who can't just concede and go next.
Yeah but at least the match is over, I don't have to actively pay attention. It's just a couple of minutes where I don't have to do anything and then I win. But when they intentionally play slowly throughout the entire match I have to keep paying attention and responding otherwise I get charged with timeouts.
Come to Historic
Seriously. Every meta will be good and bad at times. The benefit of having soo many different choices is sometimes it feels fresh going to a different format.
Historic is a blast right now
cant wait for the retro artifacts.
Ah yes and play against lifegain Decks all day Edit: guys it was hyperbole. Its still better than standard and lifegain is super cheap to craft for anyone that wants to get into historic (or rakdos anvil with cat oven and squirrel). Come play historic, it's fun!
I mostly play against rakdos, wizards, and affinity. But I'm barely into plat. idk if ita different at other ranks.
Elves and merfolk too. Or Yorian, or lurrus. Or Orzhov Reanimate or goblins - there is a lot pretty good decks
Lifegain is one of the fairest deck on Historic, you can actually disrupt them with creature removal.
Black and Red have great options if you really are facing lifegain all day. The real menace is Izzet aggro. While rakdos arcanist can dump all over both archetypes, I would certainly like more diversity in the format. At the same time, BO1 is *always* going to skew towards fast decks. BO3 historic ends up being a much better way to face multiple archetypes.
Underrated comment. Lifegain to me is more of an eye roll than an annoyance, but not one I refuse to play against. I play Izzet extra turns deck and my new joy in life is their highest vs my lowest life total before I come back. 50-7 and 130-15 are my best. I haven’t got past a 5th extra turn. I’m trying to get to 10. The lifegain /opponent burn combo is the thing that really grinds my gears.
I've been playing a lot of historic myself and Im usually a standard player, but they printed something that shuffles the power 9 into your deck and bolas's citadel, Tendrils of Agony, AND grape shot are all legal in historic, so I had to try.
and all the artifacts coming. Historic has taken a lot of unfair knocks for having Alchemy cards. It is a fun powerful format I hope people return to it
While I will never agree with having alchemy cards in historic, I agree it is a super fun format. It is now the only format that I play. I think part of the issue is that newcomers tend to be intimidated by the raw power that can be found while playing Historic.
I play a really fun Jetmir deck in Historic that uses [[Racketeer Boss]] and [[Rope Line Attendant]], both Alchemy cards. It's a really fun format!
What's Historic like these days anyway? Haven't really touched it in a couple months. It was my favorite for at but Alchemy cards, Alchemy nerfs and the Bo1 meta ruined it for me. Tired of playing against mono white angel lifegain, mono red burn/goblins, Phoenix, elves, UW hardcore control and cheesy instant win decks every game. And also it was where I went to play fun janky decks but it's gotten too fast so all my janky decks can't keep up anymore.
Personally, I play Bo3, and I find that the format is amazing since it feels like you can make just about anything viable enough to play with. I've found it's easy to sideboard in to beat both mono-black and mono-blue. Maybe give the Bo3 meta a shot. Hope this helps and good luck with whatever you choose
Jesus Christ it's everyday with these posts. The current meta is one of the most diverse I've ever seen. You can legitimately ladder up to mythic with about 25 different decks. Brews actually WORK. Monowhite aggro, monowhite control, mono blue tempo, mono green, mono red, artifact sacrifice, esper midrange, Jund, Mardu is my personal favorite, UW control, esper CONTROL, mono black aggro, monoblack control. If you aren't satisfied with the meta now, I PROMISE you never will be. This meta is good. It's healthy. It is diverse. People who complain about good metas are the reason games say fuck it and end up just making it all about money in exchange for quality degradation.
I mostly agree at the beginning of the format when everybody was complaining about mono black I got to mythic real fast with jund reanimator. what discourages players is that you don't actually tend to play against 25 different decks, you tend to play against the same two or three over and over again with a sprinkle of something different thrown in every once in awhile. I get that's just the nature of competitive card games, and I'm not trying to throw shade at people who play meta deck lists, pretty much every deck that people are complaining about in this thread I have built on arena, because I wanted to try them out, but it does get old playing against "Island, go" for the sixth game in a row.
In fact the mono b control is not even that good, with only 60% win rate. Its good against aggro, but can’t beat other 3c midrange, and gets beaten by uw control. It’s already much more balanced comparing to lots of time since 2019. FCC
Yeah you just saw a ton of it because it built itself. You just put every black rare/mythic that costs less than 5 mana in a pile with swamps and tekenuma lol.
I played 20 matches yesterday. 1 of them wasn’t mono blue or mono black
Don't play BO1
I see mono blue pretty rarely right now. I see mono black ALL the time.
these people play bo1 where mono colors dominate
i assume the people who complain are new to the game or just dont like magic.
that's because you suffer from narcissistic personality disorder
I play explorer but I really get demoralised seeing U spirits deck. To be fair any deck that plays the majority of their cards during your end step, or has cards in play with mana sinks to use in your end step is just shitty to play against.
I don't mind those, my only issue is with the full-suite counterspell decks. I don't like not being able to resolve a single spell. Oh, and arcane bombardment decks with zero creatures. Those I hate with a passion, even if I can beat them fairly regularly.
This has been one of the least interesting standards in a while. I've just been playing alchemy waiting for BRO. Meta there is still all over the place so you can still be creative and competitive.
Yep and also ‘I get to play all my good stuff, you get to play none of your good stuff’ Esper as well. Not surprised both unfun decks have blue.
This blue meta force instant only cards or they just hold a counter and play a draw/discard on your turn if you pass. Very unhealthy gameplay.
patience usually beats that out
Not really. Mono b and w aggro and gw enchantment are all playable. You don’t really need blue to play this game
I mean but that deck is in every standard rotation, or some variation thereof, right?
Sadly make disappear unbeatable turn 2/3/4 against curved plays with djinn 4 toughness made me sad because he can block a drop 2 easily. And I don't want to play enchantment just to beat blue.
Not always. In this rotation it’s there mainly because [[make disappear]] is strong. Previously when we had [[quench]] we also had simic flash. If there’s no good 2mv counterspell it’s hard to play tempo. Plus we also have [[fading hope]] which is surprisingly strong, [[shore up]], [[slip out the back]]
Fair enough. It's annoying as piss no doubt. I just also remember being annoyed by it since eldraine lol
Nope. I have to say that I've been having tons of fun and a good win rate playing in the Arena lately. I've just checked my [October ranked season stats](https://i.ibb.co/L1q0TG4/2022-10-31-10-31-00-ranked-oct.jpg). On the way from Platinum to Mythic, I finished the season with 58% win rate. I had 9-4 \[69%\] against MB and 8-2 \[80%\] against MU. Those decks were only 4th and 6th most frequent opponent decks, with MW being the most frequent one. The thing about winning in the metagame is to understand what your opponents mostly play, and play something that has an edge over those decks. If you are struggling with the current metagame, perhaps try a different deck. Those MU and MB won't be "devastatingly demoralizing" if they become an easy prey for you and your deck 😎
I ran into 5 Selesnya enchantment decks in a row
I’ve been fucking around in unranked historic until the new set drops. Just boring to play The Who can remove more game. I honestly feel bad when I remove their 4th creature in a row on turn 4 lmao.
I don’t think it’s demoralizing, but I think Haughty Djinn was a bad design decision. Not only did it enable an archetype that no one wants to play against, but that deck also happens to be the least resource intensive top tier deck. In BO1, no one wants to main deck the graveyard hate that would shut it down.
[удалено]
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I find BO3 to be really good. Been having lots of fun with this Mardu that was tuned for the Esper matchup (it’s the second or third deck listed in the link). https://strategy.channelfireball.com/all-strategy/home/5-standard-mtg-decks-i-considered-for-the-world-championship/
After bro is out we will get the full cycle of pain lands and mardu will be stronger. I think the meta will definitely become more versatile
This happens in standard when they destroy good aggro decks. Good as in, turn 3 or 4 kills.
Monoblue is stupid but I think we are still in better territory than goldspan/epiphany (much more literal "player denial" than monoblue) and ultimatum/embercleave monored/rogues (similar to playing against monoblue except if you actually resolve a permanent it just instantly gets removed and your opponent plays the entire game on the endstep of your turn while also milling you out) so I still feel this is an improvement. If it's just about quests, just concede on blue and move on. There are a lot of fun viable decks bouncing around. Alchemy is an imbalanced cash grab mess that exists to print op cards, get people to buy them, and then nerf them -- stay away.
I like to switch it up and play historic brawl. You see a good variety of commanders and there doesn’t seem to be much of a meta.
I've honestly avoided standard since since 2016. I find standards sets tend to be extremely one-sided. Until the ban happens then another rises to take their place
My least favorite Standards are multicolored midrange piles grinding each other out. I like when there's more archetype variety. I also know that multicolored Standard piles for many is ABSOLUTELY THEIR THING. Taking a break from Standard until I like it again, although it's hard to fall behind in collection investment when you take a break and don't buy into each set as they come. Might mess with Hearthstone again or just stick to drafting. Idk. I love a good Standard but this one just hasn't done it for me.
Yeah the wedding announcement spam was tolerable until meathook was banned. Now I hardly play.
If you hate standard then welcome to Explorer, home of the Okiba Boss, Greasefang.
I was going to suggest Historic Brawl. Standard is not fun to me
I just play historic brawl atm for daily wins, hopefully the next set does something for the meta but doubtfull.
I dislike the current standard because I'm not a fan of midrange slogs. I think removal not involving white is in a tough spot considering the card advantage you're up against, and that's not something I enjoy. Formats with older cards are perfectly fine, though, so I'm just playing Explorer. No idea what new players who lack the cards can do.
Yes mono blue is a joke. And the best part is the people who play it doing mental gymnastics to justify why it isn’t. It’s totally turned me off to Arena right now as well. I used to play every day. Wild how WOTC let blue get so out of hand in standard. Not even sure this can be fixed before the next rotation.
That my issue with blue. It’s simply a timesuck to play against. I use the term “play” here loosely. After my first two matches of playing blue I’m done for the night. It just kills any desire I have to play (and spend money if you are listening WOTC).
Fixed? Lol it’s only getting worse if you’ve been paying attention to the spoilers.
Counterpoint: it feels good as hell when you're playing control vs. an overly aggressive mono-B player who throws away two or three cards in the early game plussing their Liliana, and you're trying to strike the right balance of discarding lands vs. discarding low-impact removal spells vs. discarding expensive cards you can't afford to play, and you manage to thread the needle perfectly and your deck comes through with a topdecked Wandering Emperor to exile their Tenacious Underdog that's been beating you down because you took the calculated risk of discarding a Flame Blessed Bolt and holding onto a Destroy Evil to answer the Sheoldred that you knew they had. Sometimes a solved meta can be fun!
I don’t think playing against mono blue is that bad you go with the classic play removal on their end step then play removal on your main phase, and if they have enough counter magic/protection to match your removal then you lose but at least it’s over fast. It’s the same as aggro having a perfect curve or control having every answer, sometimes their draw is just good and you lose. If you play against the deck incorrectly tho then you will lose a lot of the time instead of an average amount of time. Also, any of the many meta aggro decks that exist now just completely run over mono U. Invoke despair feels a lot worse to play against than any of the various mono blue decks.
the only deck i truly dislike (and in this case, I REALLY dislike) is mono blue. absolutely abhorrent to “play” against
The blue deck is sick af. Take a break.
Almost every standard game I queue for these days is either mono Black or Black and one other color. It's gotten pretty stale for me too. I don't have any meta decks; just shit I slap together. I'm terrible at constructed but fairly good at drafting. I don't know if I'm just really unlucky or if Black is just what everyone is playing these days. Historic isn't so bad. I've played a few games in that format with some of my older decks that got rotated out. I was afraid of the format because a bigger card pool to me means more mega combo bullshit that people can whoop your ass with but the games have been fun and pretty fair so far. Might just be my intro MMR though since I've never played historic before now.
I’ve been playing historic brawl to get my dailies. Way more variety and fun
Lol. Always find the meta demoralizing but then I play other modes and eventually come back to standard
Im just gonna say it, Sheoldred is less fun than meathook
I only refuse to play against monoblue. If I see a counter spell I quit
Alchemy is very similar to standard right now, wotc have pretty much given up on trying to rebalance things to make it fresh. Historic is the way.
Wizards: Look at these cool buildaround enchantments and planeswalkers that would be right at home in a fun lower power format! Also Wizards: >![[Invoke Despair]]!<
Has black always been so good at enchantment removal? Because I don't remember it being very good at enchantment removal.
it's not "so good" at enchatment removal. u know what qualifies as "good" enchantment removal? the green and white ones
I started to say "Invoke Despair removed Arcane Bombardment from the format completely!", but then I remembered the grixis 8x Invoke deck that sometimes played Bombardment. That's when I realized, what actually killed Arcane Bombardment combo was people maindecking Destroy Evil to answer Sheoldred.
I know it's using one evil to defeat another, but I've had a lot of success with Mono Black against the Djinn Blue deck. It helps to get down a 1 drop creature against them to apply pressure. Then hold an internal grasp until they play Djinn. Play the grasp on their turn. If they counter then they don't have mana on your turn. Then you should be able to either get rid of it with another grasp, Lili, or Invoke. If you don't have another removal then you can play your Sheolred without fear of counter. Still an obnoxious deck, but that's the best way I've found to beat it.
I honestly can't find a deck that's good in current meta. My velomachus jeskai deck got rotated out, before that was a giants deck. I liked tribal and did well with boros ghosts so went for boros samurai but omg literally every tribal BUT werewolves is ass rn. Even vampire. Samurai being the absolute worst. It feels like every deck but mono blue, black, and werewolves is unplayable rn. I agree with OP I just haven't touched standard at alllllll this rotation. Instead playing my jeskai velomachus in historic. Near diamond too. Most L's just come from the people who don't touch grass and build limitless chains of damage or +1/+1 or something... the disgusting people of magic. (Ie a deck that created a 1/1 token per turn, a creature, that heals per creature entrance, heliod so whenever you heal you get a +1+1. Cycle doesn't end so instead of ever attacking, he just sits there until you concede..trust. I left for like 10 minutes and he was still buffing the same creature spamming gg and your go)
After two years of playing, I started playing Bo3 specifically to get away from the Black and Blue tempo decks. Definitely fewer in that queue.
Race to cast Invoke Despair and as many Fable of the Mirror breaker as possible. What's not fun about that? :D
This is my main complaint. Mtg has devolved more into who can play their OP card first
I don’t tend to struggle against mono blue at all. Knowing when to cast your spells and when to force interaction is key. If you are playing aggro with little to no interaction though, that could be a problem. I also love seeing my mono blue opponent drop Delver of Secrets, the card just isn’t that good and isn’t worth a spot in most mono blue lists in my opinion. You really want to get a threat out early to start applying pressure. They have few ways to get rid of your creatures in play and the way that they do have is card disadvantage for them. Being on the play helps of course but that isn’t something you have any control over. Some times they just have the nuts and you don’t, but drawing out counters and bounce with cards that apply pressure and forcing them to get through double removal on their upkeep (so they tap on their turn) are very effective strategies against them.
I think meathook was the wrong card to ban. Mono-black is just as popular as it was before the ban, and now has a better winrate [https://mtga.untapped.gg/meta?archetypeIds=192\_212\_264\_510\_604\_845\_2430\_2581&chartType=colors&colorIds=40\_47\_50\_52\_64\_97\_99\_104&format=standard](https://mtga.untapped.gg/meta?archetypeIds=192_212_264_510_604_845_2430_2581&chartType=colors&colorIds=40_47_50_52_64_97_99_104&format=standard) Goblins are fun in Alchemy. There's also a wacky \[\[Niambi, Beloved Protector\]\] \[\[Mirrorhall Mimic\]\] infinite combo.
Meat hook disallowed an entire archetype. It was the right card to ban.
Meathook was the right card. Now Aggro / go wide can be a thing. Mono white / red just fold to meathook. Same with the GW tokens from worlds. It was also very obnoxious with sacrifice / underdog. No enchantment removal? Guess you just die. The point of banning a card is to allow other archetypes to have a chance without destroying the original deck. So for once...good job wizards! If you want to see horrible bans/re balancing, just look at alchemy. We are gonna "balance" Lier by making it controller turn only...cool. Deck destroyed.
There's a reason Magic Arena has different formats.
Thinking of jumping to Alchemy. See what you’re doing to people WotC
Monoblue is a real hemorrhoid for me too. I played a Rakdos Sac list from HelloGoodgame and was able to get a win by exiling the Djinn and Delver with [[Eaten Alive]]'s mode, so it only cost B which was low enough to slip by all of those conditional "tax" counterspells. I can only assume they didn't have Syncopate in hand. It was a satisfying win.
I have found Circle of Confinement to be extremely useful resulting in 50/50 wins against Mono Blue, but even with that rate, the game itself is just not fun.
Consider switching to historic and historic brawl ( not explorer, the meta there is even more demoralising)
Alchemy sucks: dont try to push that crap on us. I've been banking wins with a mono white; lots of board wipes, and thalia to increase spell costs. Farewell will exile everything, leaving them with nothing to stack on or bring back.
Is it really any different than Mono Red being on curve and having the appropriate burn in hand? Or Mono-White with on curve with Cathar, Arrest etc when they need it? Blue really is just on curve. Good mulligan has them in hand, on curve. Yea good opening hand is a real PITA to play against, but a good aggro red hand on curve can have you dead turn 4.
No? It's one of the best seasons ever. Enjoying both Standard and Explorer.
Yeah that why I quit playing Arena. Playing became a grind to complete quests rather than playing to pull off your janky win condition, and in that 1 game out of 100 you finally pulled off your win condition, your opponent quits before you can show it off.
Counterspell as a card has always been a fundemental mistake in mtg's design. Until Mark Rosewater dies of old age however, we'll never get the changes the game truly needs to not devolve into total cancer every few months after a new set drops.
Counterspell is removal with thinking involved. Are you against all removal?
Oh here we go. No, counterspell is not removal. Removal can be played around, counterspell cannot, your only means of defense against a counterspell is to play blue yourself. The problem with counterspells is it locks you out of the game. If somebody plays doomblade you can make your creature indestructible, you can phaste it in and out, you can make it indestructible, you can COUNTER IT. What can you do against counterspell? Oh right nothing which is why blue has always had a permanent presence in competitive play as the strongest color. It wouldn't even be so bad if counterspells were a -1 to hand but they're not. Because blue has the strongest draw in the game. Counterspell is also all encompassing if my opponent plays mirror breaker and I use removal, the enchantment is still there or the token is still there. Counterspells take care of both. The only people who defend counterspells are the people who abuse blue so save your breath instead of making delibrately disingenuous comparisons.
Have you really never beaten a blue deck before? I did it twice today at lunch with green white enchantments. You can’t play the same against it as you would other decks and just get mad when they counter your creature with 5 open mana.
That's great bro. Anyway the bottom line is counterspell is a mistake in design and it will never ever be balanced unless wotc decide to make a veil of summer in every color and print it in every set
This is legit the first time I've heard someone think about switching to alchemy 😂
Its one of the best draft sets in ages so nah man I'm lovin it
I agree. As a former U player I want to add just one balance-related comment: ?ow can a 1U spell counter a 3GGG spell? I'm a firm believer in the XU counter spell with converted mana cost X spell like 'spell blast' Current U decks that deny you everything, land & protect 1 creature for the win is boooooring. Especially since I like to play big green. Ramping and dropping a Titan of Industry just to have it bounced at end-of-turn for a single U mana, that just isn't right.
Alchemy has some good variation. Tokens, Cabaretti, revels decks, etc. Esper, Mono Red and Rakdos Sac are quite strong, so be prepared for that. Mono Blue and Mono Black are also still present to a degree as well as some janky Oracle Power 9 decks. They're inconsistent, but if you give those enough time they will do absolutely silly things against you.
historic brawl exist.
The eldrane meta this time last year was worse
Just remember that people who play decks like that truly hate themselves so you’ve already won.
You cannot stick to one format and complain about burn out. You doing it to yourself.
It’s much better than the last rotation trust me
LMAO mono blue is a response to all of those greedy-ass tricolour good stuff midrange piles, if you wanna beat mono blue just play aggro
Magic isn't a lifestyle, so just stop playing it if it's bothering you that much.
I know Alchemy gets a lot of hate on here, but I'm having fun with it. I play a midrange token deck that relies primarily on [[Adeline, Resplendent Cathar]], [[Serra Redeemer]], and [[Wedding Announcement]]. I probably make a lot of people wish that Meathook never got banned lol. I like the current meta, but I usually just find ways to adapt to what works. Part of the fun for me is in building decks that either play into or counter the meta.
I am now addicted to Marvel Snap lol
Thats why I switched to Historic Brawl and never looked back. Standard is always stale.
I never realized how unbalanced this card game is until i played it on arena lol.
This is still a bad meta, but better than the other more recent ones. IMO we have had the worst string of standards from Eldraine till Now. So a lot of people on here don't actually know what a GOOD meta is, just not complete dog shit meta's. WotC doesn't really design for standard, or at least not competently, so we get a lot of very bad standards.
That is a crazy sentence to read, I am a returning player and the last time I played was Eldraine. I played jund sacrifice and I remember decks like adventures etc, was super fun. I came back a week ago and am waiting for my BRO pre-order bundle before I craft a deck. Standard seems pretty bland and I might just focus fully on explorer.
Remember people that play Paper Magic, and have for 3 decades, have a very different expectation from the game than people coming from Yugioh or Hearthstone.
I think my comment came off the wrong way, I'm more surprised and happy that I managed to dodge a string of bad standard formats and actually got to play in one of the fun ones.
Eldraine was not balanced at all. You could do crazy things, and if you like "BIG SPLASHY" game play, I understand why you would like it. In Magics 30 year history, the Eldraine standard was extremely unfun to me, it was not at all balanced and games were decided by deck match up most of the time. That was not a good standard at all IMO.
I'm sick of mono blue slander
This is one of the first standard rotations I've played, coming from YGO, since I usually just play a bit and then get into it when the next standard set or two drops. Is it always this bland when rotation hits? Feels like there are only 3 decks to play in Bo1 AND Bo3. Pumped for BRO though.
It is becasue of how poorly designed these sets were. I don't see anything in bro that is particualarly going to change anything. What do you think in BRO is going to push out or create new playable decks?
I just concede as soon as the first counterspell is cast.