"Magic:Bracing for the Winds of Change"

"Magic:Bracing for the Winds of Change"

by:

Virgilio F. De leon Jr.

After reading Maros article(Metamorphosis) a couple of times I can honestly say that the winds of change are going to blow and they will blow hard.It is going to be a rough ride at first but the hope is that things will settle down like they always do in the world of Magic. 

While there has been a little howling about the changes to Standard with the 3 Block Standard , the disappearance of the Core Sets and the shortening of the 2 year(24 months) Block Rotation to basically 1 and 1/2 year(18 months).There has been a great acceptance of the changes.

Magic players have taken to social media to voice out their concerns about the changes and though the feeling is general acceptance their is some low rumbling about the changes.

I liked the core sets but I don't think that it was really for beginners to start with since you could make a simple mono red deck from any expansion and get players hooked on the game of magic.I am excited with the changes and I am curious as to how this will all will work down the line and what kind of cards and mechanics will come out in this more stream lined approach to magic. 

There has been concern about the speed that cards would rotate out or rotate in. The official stand is that the faster the rotation the less stale the meta game will be.And since there would be a total of 6 expansions in a year there would be a lot more deck archetypes that would come out.

Yes and Yes. However once a deck list has been released we would instantly see a polarization of players to the said net deck. While Magic is a pool of creative players there is a segment of this population who would look online , choose the strongest deck and go run with it. Now there is no shame in that because for one reason or another we do want to win and sometimes it means we have to sacrifice a little bit of ourselves to do so.Besides having a net deck does not guarantee victory but it does increase your chances. Skills aside you always want to up this percentage.

Budget would also play a big part in this decision.I mean we would want to choose a winner don't we? If we are going to invest on a deck we want that deck to get us the wins and packs and passes and byes that it should right? Now imagine buying a deck almost twice or thrice a year because the meta would be changing so fast.

With that being said it is safe to say that there would still be a dominant meta for a year and half. I have no doubt that Wizards would see this meta and support it because the whole point is retention of customers. If you can't run cards for that a reasonable amount of time then chances are you would get frustrated and lie low for awhile(quitting magic is a myth).

My other concern here is about the prices of Hot/Key cards.EDH and Modern will be happy to see the standard cards rotate out faster and into their loving arms but the Standard people will be paying a lot for cards that would only be available for a shorter amount of time. A shorter meta means that we will then get to see soaring prices of cards since everyone would be looking for those same pieces and chances are they won't reprint those cards in the following blocks so this means that they will be limited. This also means that you would be changing decks much faster.

One player I know of has said that he will try and let go of all his cards right away since they will lose value once they rotate out. So yes it is still a business model and we are all being zombie herded to it. I mean what choices do you have? Quit the game you love? Not likely. I can't quit standard. I haven't played it since Scars of Mirrodin and Infect said goodbye.I could grumble and maybe a lot of others might grumble too but it is still not known how Wizards would react to it. In the meantime a lot of players are playing the "Let's wait and see game".I count myself in this horde.