What The Bans Mean To Standard!

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Newsletter
Thursday, January 12th

The holidays are over and business is seriously picking up in the Magic world! The supposedly stale Standard format has had a giant jumpstart over the last week with Aether Revolt being revealed and some of the most unwanted Standard outlaws being put away for good! Thanks for playing, Emrakul! You'll not be missed!

What has you excited? A new Modern landscape? How about the hot debate on whether or not Saheeli Rai and Felidar Guardian are too good? Are you psyched for this weekend's Prerelease? No matter what has you hyped for this invigorating period of Magic in January, StarCityGames.com has plenty for you to enjoy!

— Danny West, Content Coordinator

Reid Duke takes down Grand Prix Louisville!

The Big Implications Of The Ban Announcement
By Michael Majors  

Wizards of the Coast has cited that Smuggler's Copter "was the result of a new card type being pushed too far" and this makes sense.

Near the beginning of Kaladesh, players were concerned over the dominance of Smuggler's Copter, including cries of the very first SCG Tour^® event Top 8 featuring 32 copies of the card. Smuggler's Copter has breached almost every type of aggressive and midrange strategy while being difficult to interact with and it itself encouraging unintuitive play patterns.

It's fun if the presence of a card type forces players to have to engage in a sort of positioning dance—leaving up mana to threaten an answer to an opponent's card if they are willing to pull the trigger. This tension that Vehicles present is cool and interesting. The problem is that it shouldn't be something that can literally occur nearly every single game, starting on the second turn.

When that is the reality we live in, the format becomes completely warped—changing the type of removal we are forced to play and, in the case of Smuggler's Copter, specifically forcing players to load up on ways to fight a high-powered flyer that also takes big strides to invalidate Planeswalkers. It might be easy for some to argue that the presence of Fatal Push "fixes" this problem enough to where Copter doesn't deserve a ban, but that's not really a solution. It's true that more colors would have cleaner answers to the offender, but that doesn't suddenly make the games fun.

Simply, the stats are too high and the opportunity cost of playing the card is too low. A common theme of banned cards is how they stop players from making other competitive choices. Players aren't allowed to fully explore the use of a cool new card type like Vehicles through avenues like Fleetwheel Cruiser or Aethersphere Harvester when there is a card like Smuggler's Copter that just hits higher on every note.

January 21-22

January 28-29

February 4

The Combo
By Patrick Chapin  

Look, I don't know how they ended up printing Felidar Guardian in the same block as Saheeli Rai. It's so much just the Splinter Twin plus Deceiver Exarch experience, it's not even funny. Saheeli just keeps copying Felidar Guardian, which just keeps blinking Saheeli Rai. You're even attacking with a million 1/4s, just like Deceiver Exarch!

The idea that it could have been missed is actually disturbing, but the idea that it could have been intentional is even more so. Either way, this combo is so fast, so efficient, so deadly, it is surely going to be a defining force in the format to come.

It's not that this combo is unbeatable. There's lots of stuff that interacts with it. Rather, it is going to define the sorts of interaction people have to play with. You can't really plan on racing it without any interaction. The combo is faster and more consistent than Aetherworks Marvel, plus it doesn't require any bad cards.

Geez.

It's not just the possibility of playing Saheeli Rai on turn 3 followed by a turn 4 Felidar Guardian that is so scary. At least that line of play involves a "shields down" moment. Where things get really obnoxious is the prospect of a turn 6 Felidar Guardian, blink a land, and then using the three mana to cast Saheeli Rai and combo off.

And that's only the beginning.

How To Most Enjoy Your Aether Revolt Prerelease
By Adrian Sullivan  

Personally, for me, all Magic experiences before the very big ones (Pro Tours, Grand Prix, etc.) are opportunities to learn. What I want is the chance to have my ideas shaken up, new thoughts to emerge, or epiphanies to happen.

If that's you as well, there are some important things you can do to best accomplish that.

It's easy to simply reinforce what you already believe. If you think that the best Sealed decks involve two colors, seventeen land, eighteen creatures, and five tricks (give or take), you can just apply that formula and be done with it. If your formula, whatever it is, is close to reasonable, you will get a close to reasonable result in that event.

However, sometimes things are very far from what you expect.

There have been Limited formats where fifteen land was common for the best archetype, and formats where very nearly every creature worth its salt was worth playing over all but the best spells. There are formats where Equipment has been universally good or nearly universally bad. Even more impressively, there have been formats where, once you add the second set in the block, they fundamentally shift what is important.