1/10/2024 0 Comments Silvestri rant aqua boyIt’s one thing if you can see the immediate impact or even test it in a small-scale environment using players like they do with game patches and such. This is one of the reasons specifically designing cards to impact metagames is stupid. It also would’ve meant Faeries had a great counter-match in the metagame (even with Swans gaining GSS) and the meta likely would’ve ended up 5cc, Fae, Swans and Jund duking it out. You could beat it with hate and a solid game-plan, while it kept dumb aggro and 5cc decks on their toes thanks to Cascade. *I think Swans would’ve been one of the best decks had Seismic Assault been reprinted, at worst it would’ve hung around and kept decks honest. Oh boy, 5cc lost Wrath of God! Now they only have multiple Red sweepers, Black spot removal, Hallowed Burial, Plumeveil, Wall of Reverence and Kitchen Finks to solidify the defensive side! Whatever shall we do? With both of the main enemies of the play everything good mentality removed from the picture, should it surprise anyone that the best and brightest decided to embrace it? Unfortunately the perfect storm finally hit Great Sable Stag partially invalidated the vulnerable to counters part and all of the good land destruction (save Fulminator Mage) got pushed out the door along with Swans* combo. That and the fact that everything non-creature had hit the point of such high costs that these decks were very vulnerable to counters and mana denial, which could cost 5c decks enough tempo that they were easy to topple. The only thing keeping the giant mess of 4 and 5 color ‘best card’ mentality decks in check was the sheer overpoweredness that the tribal theme in Lorwyn block brought to Standard. So what happened? I think the biggest issue was design overrun, as WOTC and R&D clearly wanted all these insane cards to be played, but unfortunately left the tap going when it came time to divvy up who got to play what awesome cards. Rather it was a culmination of all the mistakes to this point, the ridiculous power cards printed with wildly fluctuating mana costs, the Vivids making 5cc viable and the reprinting of Reflecting Pool where it (foreseeably) became the top land in Standard. That my friends, is a sign that something just ain’t right ultimately it wasn’t all on the decision to add Great Sable Stag after Fae was just a top deck and not the deck to beat. Not only is that practically unheard of for a Standard format, the fact that the card with 100% play in the Top Eight was purely a sideboard card and costed 1GG. Great Sable Stag: 32, Volcanic Fallout, 31, Reflecting Pool 31 (and optimally should’ve been 32 as well)Įight decks running 96.8 to 100% of a given card. Nationals, Top 8 numbers you’ve most likely seen at this point, but are quite the oddity and frankly made me slump in my chair when I read them the first time. Meanwhile the second half will be actual strategic content, so feel free to skim if you’re only interested in that. The first part of this article will mostly be about Great Sable Stag, the repercussions it had on its introduction to the metagame, and why designer cards are generally bad.
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