On Standard

I think it's worth checking out what Patrick Sullivan has to say in this Twitch stream.

This is a really interesting discussion about where Standard-and to me, by extension, all formats-ought to be.

Can you innovate? Can you make risks? If not then maybe things are problematic.

I've watched this video five times and each time I glean a little more.

I think the reason for that is because that is how I want Magic to be.

I don't like storm decks because they play so far away from how Magic plays. Similarly, dredge decks.

I don't resent that they exist, nor the players that want to play them. But because they are so far afield of what a game of Magic should be or rather, the plane they want to interact on, namely a series of interactions that create tension and drama because you're trying to outplay your opponent, versus reducing the game to one of solitaire, I shy away from them. If every game vs those decks means: I have to bring in a sideboard then something is weird about those games of Magic. I'm not sure that 'weird sideboard answers' is the best example of Magic games.

I think it also shows in the kinds of decks I frequently build. They aren't always cheap creatures or instant value creatures. They require me to build/payoff a thing. They focus on singular and often not-winning mechanics (like Vigilance). That doesn't mean I want to build control decks: it means I want to have my decisions matter, instead of being flatly blown out because the power curve is something I cannot ignore.

But before I go any further, I want to link Patrick Chapin's article referenced by Mr. Sullivan in his rant.

This is a great perspective, to me and it helps inform why I like playing casual Legacy decks: yes, at the top tiers Legacy gets narrow but there is still room for weird stuff, finding ideas that are from left field. There's room for oddities-or even throwbacks like mono-Green stompy decks-to be updated, tweaked and maybe make a run.

But it's not easy for that to exist. In any format, really.

Just things to chew on: I don't have an answer and I've seen the design of Magic improve over the past two plus decades (creatures matter now!) but it's also come with some downsides (Limited environment > everything) that are worth examining.