Standard without Felidar Guardian? Copy that!

Posted On 3:07 PM // Leave a Comment

Newsletter
Thursday, April 27th

Well, that was quite a week. #SCGATL is now going to be more interesting than ever with Felidar Guardian out of the format for good! How will the tournament field adapt to such a sudden change of pace? Is there any way to get enough playtesting? For the players, it will be a challenge; but for the SCG Tour viewers on Twitch? It'll be massively entertaining! It's going to be a fun free-for-all, but the weekend isn't without its casualties. In just the past 24 hours, we've had Brad Nelson and myself expressing deep concerns about the implications of the sudden ban, as well as Todd Anderson putting together tons of decks to compete in the new and open world of Standard! Whatever happens this weekend, you can bet that it'll be fascinating to watch! Good luck to everyone competing, and welcome to Amonkhet!

— Danny West, Content Coordinator

Missed Opportunities
By Brad Nelson  

The loudest voice is always unhappy. Initial reactions to changes that aren't clearly beneficial for the consumer will always be from unhappy customers. Happy consumers don't always feel the need to voice their opinion, but tend to quietly continue enjoying the product. Normally the only praise a company will receive from happy customers is when they feel their voice was validated by the decision, or the company went above and beyond expectations. We saw this yesterday, when many from the Pro community reached out on Twitter to thank Wizards for going back on a decision they previously complained about.

Negative exposure to the public normally should be met by some reaction from a company, but it's different when it comes to competitive Magic and the Pro Tour's complex moving pieces. Many of the decisions Wizards has to make deal with a variety of stipulations. They have to work around Hasbro's restrictions/requests, their own capabilities, and eventually our opinions. It's not like they are forcing us to drop from tournaments so an off-duty judge can play in the event. Our outrage is not always justified. Our opinions are not facts. We are simply people who want our reality to meet our expectations!

My entire argument boils down to this: Wizards should do a better job when pertaining to how and when announcements are made so it constantly doesn't feel like they are jumping the gun, but also should trust in their decisions and not put so much emphasis on how public figures in the community are initially handling the change. People will be upset about things but eventually accept them. Poor decisions will happen, like the one made on Monday, but it's a slippery slope to constantly be changing the status quo at this frequency. It opens Pandora's Box as we the consumers never know what their reality is going to be.

May 5-7
AKH Limited

May 20-21
Team Constructed

May 27-28
Modern

Guardians
By Danny West  

I don't know how, in 2017, with the lessons learned from Affinity, from Yawgmoth's Will, from fast mana, from Storm, from Dredge...that a format could be undone by what basically amounts to a Glimmerpoint Stag. If I knew more nice things to say about this situation, I'd say them. The card isn't a marquee pack-mover. The card isn't something anyone was heavily financially invested in (without the rest of the archetype). The card wasn't anything to write home about.

Except it was poison to the most important format in Magic.

The only thing that I can think of that would damage consumer confidence more than a quick ban on a plainly evil new card like this is to let it run wild and undo thousands of hours of developer labor. And the only thing I can think of that would damage consumer confidence more than that is not banning it after the joke had long run its course. And the only thing I can think of that would damage consumer confidence more than that would be to establish it as a mainstay and then take it away 48 hours before the first big Standard tournament.

It isn't even that Felidar Guardian was wrong—it's that everything about it and surrounding it was.

Snek And Show
By Todd Anderson  

The deck is sleek with very little fluff. The sideboard plan is good for punishing players who sideboard out most or all of their removal. Confiscation Coup is particularly annoying against B/G Aggro, and the maindeck copies of Magma Spray are giving my Scrapheap Scrounger a severe case of The Fear.

Long story short: this deck is solid. If you like control, give it a shot. As first runs go in a new format, it looked sleek, smooth, and consistent, and that's just about all you can ask for in a deck this early in testing. Will it win the Pro Tour? Most likely not, but it could make a big impact at #SCGATL this weekend, so keep your eye out.

Let's move on.

Since Monday, I've played in five Standard Leagues with one bad U/R Spells deck and four different variations of B/G Aggro, mostly to see which variation of the archetype I thought would be best for handling the Big Two. Now that we no longer have to worry about the threat of Felidar Guardian, some of our card choices will change. There are so many ways you can build the deck that it will be difficult to figure out the best version, given so little time to actually playtest.

But it wouldn't be much fun if it was easy.