Members of the Magic: The Gathering Play Design team joined Blake Rasmussen on today’s Weekly MTG stream to discuss the lack of action in Monday’s Banned and Restricted announcement.
Jadine Klomparens and Carmen Klomparens fielded questions on the health of the main tabletop formats, touching on meta games as well as the pros and cons of the current state of Standard, Pioneer, Modern, and Legacy.
Jadine Klomparens opened things up with the health of Standard and a resurgence in play now that the format is months away from the dark period shrouded by Cori-Steel Cutter and Vivi Ornitier. There is churn in the format, color balance is back, and there is a wide variety of decks players can choose from — including an “other” section of the meta that often is the biggest representation in the meta of most recent tournaments.
The one concern with Standard is Badgermole Cub, mainly in that it applies too much pressure to the format and requires decks to be built in a way to interact with the powerful two-drop on curve or potentially lose the game on the third turn. This pressure shapes the speed of the format, though Standard is currently comprised of decks that can prey on Badgermole Cub and decks that utilize it to try to win the game early. Jadine Klomparens said that Badgermole Cub does some good things for the format and helps green be relevant in the meta, but it isn’t perfect. She said that in the future Play Design will find ways to achieve those good things without the negatives attached to Badgermole Cub.
Pioneer is a strong example of what a non-rotating format should be, according to Carmen Klomparens. While the top of the format is split up between various red decks and Greasefang decks, the next levels of the format are made up of control, combo, and aggro decks. Players know what decks they need to stack up against, but have a wide variety of options in how they choose to do that.
Modern has also looked relatively balanced, though most recent Magic Online play has shown an overrepresentation of red and white decks — mainly Boros Energy and Jeskai Blink. This high play rate of red and white decks is mostly due to the challenges of executing Amulet Titan on a digital platform, where as in table top play, Amulet Titan feasts on these decks, leading to them being weaker choices in paper. Carmen Klomparens said she is going to watch how future competitive events in tabletop play out, before deciding if action needs to be taken on Boros Energy or Jeskai Blink.
Lastly, Legacy looks to be in a great spot that is still seeing evolution as the format adjusts to the lack of Entomb and Nadu, Winged Wisdom. Carmen Klomparens noted now is not the time to be taking action on the format as it continues to figure itself out. When she was asked about Oops! All Spells, as is often the case with B&R updates, she said the deck is still an access point to the format for many, doesn’t have a worrisome win rate in tabletop events, and is not a deck she is looking to ban.
Read the original announcement from WotC.
