[Community Discussion]: What format do you believe is designed best?
General forum
Posted on Feb. 3, 2014, 11:48 p.m. by Epochalyptik
In light of the recent Modern bans and Commander bans, I think it's appropriate to discuss formats.
This time, let's talk about format design. Which of the formats (Standard, Modern, Legacy, Vintage, Commander, Pauper) do you think is the best designed and maintained? Your answer does not necessarily have to be your favorite format. You can certainly like to play one format, yet respect the way another is built.
You should also explain why you like the format. Is it the ban list management, the legal sets, the environment, or something else?
As a follow-up question, which format would you play if you had the money and opportunity to play any deck? Often, players feel limited by the barrier to entry of older formats, so they may not be able to experience a part of the game they would otherwise try. Is there a format - or even a specific deck - that you'd like to pilot that you haven't been able to for some reason?
In the end what I'm drawing from this conversation is that the formats to most people are defined heavily by the available pool of cards. That the more cards available, the better the format.
This seems reasonable to me, but at the same time, doesn't. Because most people are only looking at the format as 'how good of a deck can I build/play that I like'. There isn't a consideration for what the format brings to the table for the ones that are considered lesser. For example, standard, it's ever changing feel isn't considered a positive. The want to have similar archetypes viable across all formats hurts. The fact that there are finite possibilities seems to get lost or hated on.
I think the conversation needs to move into more 'what does this format do differently than the others with the available pool and why is that a good thing.'. Then we can find out what makes each format different and enjoyable. Now I know some people are going to be biased against some formats, based on a few factors including, availability of certain cards to make the game easier, thus better for them and money. There will also be a detachment based on what they know and love. In my experience people in general will always love the first good one, not necessarily what is better. This means that people who started playing in the modern era will love modern cards more than anything else. This is also part of the human nature that makes it hard to change. In my example, I love legacy because I started playing when abur duals where in standard and some of those cards still hold value to me, not money, but personal value. Cards not seeing play anymore due to better options. The style of play back then is also very much what legacy is today.
Now there will always be exceptions to the rule the first good one, you love the most. But the proof is in the pudding, google was the first good search engine, still the most popular, the music you consider good, even in the same genre for the most part you love the bands/groups/singers that you first listened to more than newer ones. This seems to me be the same issue that we see with 'what cards/archetypes are available in the pool'. Why we can't get away from that.
Also very few have touched on, the management or the use of the banlist to make the formats different. For example on the use of the banlist with DRS, to change the meta a bit.
Personally on this part, I would say I'm on the edge with it in modern. I think sometimes they do the right things, sometimes not really. Though most of the 'not really' was in its infancy and the pre-mature banning of Bitterblossom . As for how DRS plays out, I'll let you know in about 6 months, as of right now, I'm more angry for the given reasoning and not being honest about the change. I would have swallowed it a lot better, if they said, 'we want the format to change a bit, so we're banning DRS', not go into how good it is and say it's ban it because of that. That makes me sad about WoTC management and feels like a cop out.
Also for a deck that I would like to play but probably will never be able to afford, vintage MUD stax and DnT in legacy. Anything else I either play or am building.
February 5, 2014 12:33 p.m.
I think I agree that limited is the best designed and maintained because of how different the usefulness of cards can be, as opposed to when you are playing constructed. Like modern master was made to be draftable, which I thought was pretty cool. Limited is also the easiest place for a new player to hop in. No one will have a crazy deck that a newb cant understand.
Standard is a mess of 4-5 decks made of of cards with fluctuating prices that will, for the most part, never be used again after they rotate. I would not say it is the best maintained.
Modern is definitely my favorite format though, because of the huge card base that you have to work with. Staples are expensive, but not quite as expensive as legacy staples, and most of the used cards in modern aren't going down in value any time soon, so its a fair investment.
February 5, 2014 12:45 p.m.
I love standard, I feel it's overall value of the cards that cycle through it are appropriately priced, not too absurdly high, but high enough to incite feelings of excitment when you pop a $30+ card like a Brimaz, King of Oreskos .
the format can get stale but it always changes, and one players stale can be another's mono-black devotion deck, one see's a tier one, the other see's a deck only a flashstep away from being as cheap as infect or burn, both are correct actually LoL
February 5, 2014 2:05 p.m.
I play and mostly think about deck design in terms of standard. I enjoy Limited prereleases and release events the most and tend to do my best there, but am not sure why. I would play legacy, but don't have enough of the power cards to be competitive, and also have a huge gap in knowledge of the cards that are out there. I would play modern, but don't for the same reasons I don't play legacy. I would play vintage, and even have enough of the cards that are banned in legacy to do so... but no store runs vintage tournaments... So all in all I play and enjoy standard the most because it's the format most available to me.
February 5, 2014 3:05 p.m.
Trollhoffer says... #7
Insofar as constructed play is concerned, I think the only answer here is standard. The original question is asking about how tightly these formats are designed, maintained and balanced, and standard is the only format where two side-by-side blocks interact exclusively from others. We know that each block is designed to interact with the one previous to itself, and while there are some interactions and whatnot that sometimes get missed, design and development largely do a good job ensuring that two adjacent blocks work together with balance and interaction.
A counterpoint to this might be the state of post-Theros, pre-Born of the Gods standard, where only three decks reign supreme, and all of them in some form have dominated nearly since the release of Theros. It's a good point and shows at least a temporary mistake on the part of design and development -- too few correct answers to the metagame they created. So standard isn't perfect, and even though I don't play it, I find it the tightest and most balanced format for the following reason:
The non-rotating formats aren't really "designed" like standard is. Instead, non-rotating formats are a framework to be filled in by the players, with much of MtG's history available to them. They're examples of formats that weren't initially intended to exist in their current state, but were designed more by the playerbase than Wizards. Design and development may have made the cards, but each set is designed first and foremost to interact with itself and adjacent sets and blocks -- not the entire MtG backlog. It's the agency of players that makes these formats what they are. Wizards can ban or restrict cards to shape these formats somewhat, but that power is minimal compared to the influence of the playerbase -- those people who made the decks Wizards had to respond to in the first place.
As a result, I feel standard is the major constructed format that can be said to be designed, maintained and balanced by Wizards themselves. Most other constructed formats are products of MtG constantly moving forward into new design spaces and different schools of thought, and I feel that's a part of what makes MtG such a great game. Wizards designs cards, sets and blocks, but they also embrace the emergent elements of the game and invite us to be part of the game's shape. If they really wanted to, Wizards could just support standard and limited formats, but they go further and support formats that aren't profitable for them directly in terms of card or pack sales. So our eternal formats represent commitment to the consumer base more than they represent designed, deliberate experiences.
But that's just my penny.
February 6, 2014 4 a.m.
Triforce-Finder says... #8
By maintaining eternal formats, WotC manages to keep a base of veteran players that would otherwise stop playing. Those buy new packs, too, and the singles they buy are the reason why traders buy masses of sealed product. Experienced long-time players are also the most effective way to get new players into the game, because they will constantly be looking for others to play with and make the entry easier for the newbies by teaching the game.
WotC has very good reasons to maintain eternal formats, money and marketing. They are very well intended to exist, and not just a gift for the player base.
February 6, 2014 6:01 a.m.
Trollhoffer says... #9
Those are all true points, but I daresay the design team at Wizards wouldn't be using those points as their primary argument. The people who count the cash aren't the people who actually make the game, and those two groups have very different incentives. That's not to say that design and development don't care about money, but my best guess is that they make cards, sets and blocks because they really like doing those things. Those things provide cash at the end of the day, but if you want to make money, there are jobs, places and opportunities far more lucrative.
We're not talking about the profiteers who count the money, after all. Game designers just get the scraps. Just ask a game designer. And they'll always do their best to squeeze in more value for the player, if possible, because game designers are only game designers because they're passionate about it. It's a thankless job, and I can guarantee that the folks at Wizards get paid an incredibly small amount compared to what Hasbro rakes in. Even if there's plenty of scraps to go around, it's not the money that incentivises a game designer first and foremost -- it can't be, because that career is critically undervalued. And even if it wasn't, it's not typical for a game designer to be paid royalties according to the success of the game; they get paid the agreed upon amount at agreed upon intervals like most other jobs.
In short, what I'm saying here is that you're attributing the incentives of one group of people to the labour of a different group of people.
February 6, 2014 8:16 a.m.
@Triforce-Finder: I should clarify. It's not specifically tutors, rather the powerful cards of the format support a plethora of cards that are unplayable outside of Vintage. Or, there are cards that prey upon throwing your opponent's momentum back in their face.
Tutors, for example, allow you to play singleton, silver-bullet answers. Playing Zoo? You still have access to Demonic Tutor via Badlands to search up a Swords to Plowshares to deal with an early Griselbrand .
Similarly, the cheap artifact mana available to the format turns high-casting cost unplayables into early game bombs. Exava, Rakdos Blood Witch hasn't seen much play, even in Standard. But when you can play her in the same deck as Mox Jet , Sol Ring , Black Lotus , and slam her down on turn two, she's a significantly better card. We saw this at Gen Con when 4C Humans used her as an answer to planeswalkers.
The broken cards of the format help low-powered cards become viable solutions. It's one of the cooler aspects of Vintage. All of this is held together by the glue that is Force of Will .
@gufymike: ...and no offense taken. I understand what you mean. Part of the game is luck and variance. It's what allows people to make comebacks or less experienced players beat veterans. You're right in that Standard shouldn't have Ponder , Preordain , fetch lands, Enlightened Tutor , etc. running around all over the place.
However, Standard doesn't offer a whole lot of wiggle room for mulligans or mana problems. For instance, if I'm playing an aggro deck and have to mulligan to four because of no land, two Burning-Tree Emissary , a Forest , and a Stomping Ground won't be enough to win the game unless I draw something like a scry land on turn one, then flip a Gore-House Chainwalker , then draw a third land on turn two, play my creatures, then get a Boros Reckoner on turn three off of the top.
Oh, wait, no. That doesn't get there because I get hit by Supreme Verdict .
Compare that to Modern, where a similar R/G/x aggro deck can play powerful threats early in the game, such as Kird Ape and Tarmogoyf , that a mulligan to four isn't game-ending. People like playing Magic, not flipping coins and revealing cards off the top of their deck to see who drew better cards.
In other formats, you can build decks that can aggressively mulligan and deal with mana screw better than others. I'm going to plug my own decks here as an example. Both decks are similar play styles (large, colorless spells played off of fast mana):
The Tron Combine- Modern U/G Tron
The Man Show- Legacy Forgemaster MUD
In the case of my Tron deck, mulligans are easy to do and don't hurt the deck significantly where going down to five or four is a serious issue. Really, I can mulligan down to four, as long as I get a Tron piece and either some card draw or a threat. That's part of the reason I have the deck built the way I do is for consistency.
The MUD deck, on the other hand, is much less forgiving with its mulligans and is prone to getting blown out by Wasteland . But that's part of what the deck is: high risk, high reward. If my opponent lets me untap with three to five mana, I'm going to be dropping in a Blightsteel Colossus or Wurmcoil Engine or Sundering Titan as early as turn two. Or, if they don't have Daze , Abrupt Decay , or Force of Will , I can lock them out of the game with Chalice of the Void and Trinisphere . I accept that mulligans are harsh on this deck because it allows for incredibly fast, blowout plays.
The equivalent deck to each of these right now in Standard is probably Colossal Gruul. It, too, can power out large creatures like Stormbreath Dragon or Arbor Colossus as early as turn two or three. But every time it takes a mulligan means it has one less card to build devotion off of for Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx activations. Not only does it have to play around similar threats my MUD deck faces in Legacy (having their Elvish Mystic killed on turn one, for instance), it also has to find enablers like my Tron deck.
Colossal Gruul is still inconsistent and still has to play against Thoughtseize , Dissolve , etc. Without any library manipulation, it has trouble finding pieces to form it's mana base. Without the ability to make blowouts or consistently play large threats early, the opponent has time to set up and play too much disruption. In short, the deck has to mulligan to find enablers, but every time it mulligans, it gets less enablers...a genuine catch-22.
But this isn't limited to just Colossal Gruul. It extends to almost every deck in Standard, except to a select few. The reason we only see U/W Control, Mono-Black Devotion, and Mono-Blue Devotion engulfing top eights is because they're the decks who take the fewest mulligans and can lose the fewest die rolls. Decks like Colossal Gruul, Rakdos Humans, and White Weenie get shoved off to the side because of how bad the format can screw them with variance.
Variance shouldn't be removed entirely from Magic. But it also shouldn't be so prevalent.
This doesn't even get into the rock-paper-scissors of Standard caused by decks not being able to find answers to cards. Playing B/W Midrange or Orzhov Humans? Good luck with having only one Thoughtseize and your opponent has two Blood Baron of Vizkopa in their hand.
As a side note, what are people's thoughts on block formats? Does anyone have a favorite block format that they played in or felt was especially well-designed?
Urza's Saga was arguably one of the worst block formats in the history of the game. After they banned everything, Suicide Black was pretty much the only thing left standing.
I'm partial to say the original Ravnica block format was one of the best. There was a wide-variety of archetypes (almost a different tier-one deck for each guild).
Time Spiral block was another interesting block format, but if I remember right, there wasn't much in the way of a mana base, so there were a lot of mono-colored decks floating around.
My favorite, but not necessarily the best designed block format, was Kamigawa. That block played by itself was amazing. Great internal balance and interesting mechanics. Unfortunately, it was dominated by Kokusho, the Evening Star and Ink-Eyes, Servant of Oni , so we didn't see much action from non-black decks.
February 6, 2014 10:46 a.m.
From the best designed point of view I have to say Sealed and EDH. EDH has by far the largest pool of usable cards and it supports very well different playstyles and decks. Sealed on the other hand is almost completely skill-oriented. Sure this is a card game and luck is a factor, but still it's the player that wins the games. And in the Limited enviroment money isn't a factor either.
If I had the money and the time available, I would get myself into Legacy. I don't know why. Perhaps that it's the only 60-card format that gets me interested even little.
February 6, 2014 11:16 a.m.
squadcarxmar says... #12
I can't really say what the best is. I prefer EDH for the main reason of only needing a single copy for a deck. Making it singleton really caught my attention a few years ago. The idea that if you want a deck to do well you need you have to be consistent with different cards is great. You are usually not going to be able to rely on any single card or combo in your deck and you'll need to recover and/or move on without that card or combo. I would play standard but I can't afford to change my deck drastically every year. But I do like how nothing stays in power for longer than that. I don't like Legacy from what I've seen at my local gameshop. Maybe I'm being unfair (I'm not trying to be though!) but I see expensive decks that are "prebuilt." You choose which deck you want to pay and trade for and that's your deck. If you don't run one of these crazy awesome decks then you don't have much of a chance. I just see a lack of personality in the decks. Maybe I haven't paid enough attention to it but that superficial look into made it sound unattractive. I don't much about how any other formats play.
February 6, 2014 2:44 p.m.
As for a favorite format, I am undecided, but I do wish that I could play legacy. I began playing with M11 and therefore do not own many of the cards that would be useful to compete in the Legacy format. Also, and I think many others can agree with me, I don't have nor wish to spend that kind of money.
February 6, 2014 6:18 p.m.
Triforce-Finder says... #14
Lol, I was thinking this post is going off-topic, but I realized that it actually isnt. There is a huge incentive for innovation in Legacy: Money. Highly demanded cards are expensive, so building a rogue deck with less popular cards is usually a lot cheaper. Is that format design? Dunno. But it's factoring into the nature of the format, no matter if it's intended. As they say, the best manipulations are the ones where you just allow things to happen.
@ QuentinD
Well, looking at a 3000$ legacy netdeck can be intimidating, but it's not necessary to spend that much. There are cheaper builds like RDW that can be built for less than 100$. And cards can be reused. My simic manabase (shocks, buddys, etc) for example has served in at least 7 different simic-colored decks, and a part of it in at least 5 other, three-colored decks, not counting experimental decks. For each of those decks, the nonland cards were worth less than 50$ total, and I saved much money by using certain versatile cards in multiple decks. The Manabase is often the most expensive part of the deck, and that can be used over and over again. Many good cards like Phyrexian Revoker are available for less than a dollar. You don't have to play overpriced cards like Noble Hierarch . Except if you got them already before the price went up...
tl;dr: It's possible to play legacy on a budget, if you know how.
My suggestion is to check out the budget section and try something out that you like. Monocolored at best, or if necessary, multicolored with basics, Terramorphic Expanse and Evolving Wilds . Or just proxy it for a kitchen table game if you just want to get the feel of how things are played in Legacy.
February 6, 2014 8:08 p.m.
GlistenerAgent says... #15
Several of the players in my playgroup play Legacy, however only one of them is truly serious about building Tier 1 decks instead of cheaper rogue decks. He owns a playset of Force of Will , dual lands, fetchlands, etc. The nature of the format itself is quite limiting, as all the dual lands and other Alpha and Beta printings are existent in such small numbers that making a consistent deck without them is nigh on impossible or very restricting.
Regarding the deck I would play if I had infinite money, I would likely play Naya with actual Tarmogoyf and Noble Hierarch in Modern instead of the subpar replacements I have to settle for. The fact that several Tier 1 or 1.5 strategies (examples being Tron, B/W Tokens, and Infect) are actually fairly cheap makes Modern the most user-friendly format to me.
February 6, 2014 8:29 p.m.
Triforce-Finder says... #16
I guess there's one of those guys in every playgroup. :)
I'm actually kinda glad that the number of those cards are so small, because I'm less likely to play against them, and have better chances with my cheaper shock/buddy-powered decks. There's still a lot of fast fetches around, though.
I'd like to play a staple-laden bant artifact/exalted deck once, if i ever manage to ignore my sanity long enough to buy pieces of cardboard for 20-40$ each.
iamacasual says... #1
Well of course. But we're not discussing price--besides, some Tier 1 modern decks cost as much as tier 1 Legacy decks.
February 5, 2014 11:30 a.m.