8/18/2023 0 Comments Mtg elixir of immortality bannedWe had Ravnica, Innistrad, and Zendikar, certainly high points in Magic design. But, luckily, it seemed that Wizards had fine-tuned its internal processes sufficiently to generate fun formats at a reasonable power level. I began playing Magic around 2005, and as I met other players who had been around longer, I often heard stories of the days when mass bannings had taken place to save the game. The article concludes with the hope that “nothing” will be banned for the foreseeable future, which was borne out. We don't want Magic to be about that, especially not that easily.”Ĭan anyone think of any other three-mana permanents that prevent opponents from playing spells? Trinisphere adds to that problem by literally preventing the opponent from playing spells. “Vintage, like the other formats with large card pools, always runs the risk of becoming non-interactive, meaning that the games are little more than both players 'goldfishing' to see who can win first. The article then goes on to discuss the restriction of Trinisphere in Vintage, including this wisdom on format development: “…some vigilant playtesting quickly showed that such a move would have been a mistake… The worst thing that could happen, in our eyes, would be for people to come back to Standard, full of hope and under the impression that Affinity was dead, only to lose to a weaker-but-still-potent Affinity deck in Round 1 of Regionals.” We certainly don't want people to start believing that all the good cards they own are in the crosshairs of the DCI.”įorsythe goes on to discuss a meeting where they planned to ban only the Artifact Lands, leaving Ravager free. “We like to avoid having to solve problems by banning cards, as that leads to a culture of fear. With the banning of Skullclamp still fresh in the player base's mind, Aaron Forsythe expressed that they were afraid that frequent bannings would lead to a loss of player confidence. One of the most damning statements that can be made about a game is that it is not fun, and that's exactly what we've been hearing lately about Standard.” Magic is a game played by human beings that want to have fun. “But in the past three months R&D and the DCI have been reminded that Magic is not a series of balanced equations, spreadsheets of Top 8 results and data of card frequencies. There is foreshadowing of their present-day ban philosophy, along with some interesting lines. In 2005, Wizards banned Ravager Affinity: throwing all six artifact lands plus Disciple of the Vault and Arcbound Ravager on the chopping block. Because of their own bias and perhaps because of the newness of the card type, they missed it. It was a new card type that Wizards presumably struggled to evaluate early on and that began in the file as a truly horrendous card that hadn't even seen play in limited. But we were entrenched in our own internal metagame and this card slipped through the cracks.” We're paid professionals-we're supposed to find and fix stuff like this. “By no means am I saying that Skullclamp's hidden power is an excuse for us missing it. The other part of the problem was that, even without old bias, the card's power is not that easy to parse at first glance.” Part of the problem was that our views of the card were tainted by its earlier incarnations, which were very bad. “In hindsight it should have been obvious. The article in which the banning of Skullclamp is explained is worth a read for all the improvements in internal processes that Wizards of the Coast has made in the sixteen years since, the problems sound remarkably familiar. After the late 90's, there were zero bans in Standard until Skullclamp got the boot in 2004. Relative to Magic's full history, the last five years have stood out as being particularly unusual. This article certainly contains criticism, but I hope it is all constructive.*** ***Disclaimer: I love Magic, have a lot of respect for Wizards R&D, and understand that building formats is tougher than I can imagine.
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