Okay, so with the arrival of Ixalan, obviously the first thing one would expect would be… right - trying out new decks.
So, I started tinkering and putting up decks that would seem like fun to play. I enter “Training” Grounds with it. Oh! What do you know?! I face nothing but OGW, Oyster Bacon with Olives, etc. So what’s the point of having training Grounds when all you face is Legacy?? Honestly - none if you’re trying to build in Standard. Of course my decks are FAR from perfect or even workable maybe. But if one does not even have a chance to play anything due to the massively OP Legacy cards (in comparison to Ixalan), there’s no proper comparison to make here. Believe me, I love Legacy - when I play Legacy…
Conclusion - Training Grounds is useless, except for rapidly getting your runes and crystals and then head over to story mode… just to cycle stale content and avoid Legacy. But then you face predictable decks all the same time and limited (stale) content.
At this point, I’m almost thinking there ought to be a banned list for certain events/formats. In legitimate magic, especially in standard, if one card has been allowed to dominate a format for too long, it gets hit with a ban hammer. Taking down Olivia, Descimator, Skysovereign, Ulvenwald Hydra, and Part the Waterveil out of the equation would open up decks a bit so that it’s not the same repetitive OP crap every match.
I know this will upset people, but seriously… if you’ve been riding the same card to fast wins for over two years, then I have serious judgy face over your lack of innovation or creativity.
Let the people play their cards.
Two Training Grounds is the way to go.
The Standard format should be Training Grounds.
The Legacy format should be …
…
…
Quick Battle
woahwoahwoahwoahwoahwoahwoah…let’s not go talking about a banned list now. This isn’t like mtg where you can go take your paper cards elsewhere, we’re restricted to the event options in this game.
I’m all for 2 different training grounds events (1 standard, 1 legacy, same rewards for both because it’s an even playing field for whichever event you choose) but telling people they can’t use the cards they earned through money or time-investment will make more players quit this game ohsoquickly, and I wouldn’t blame them for quitting either.
You are not to judge another on their lack of creativity, everyone is free to play whatever they want and noone has to conform to your standards.
So put away your ban-hammer .
The OP makes a good point that there should be a legacy and standard trial grounds. Can we have that please?
Because of the demolish bug, when I first tried to play Training Grounds it wouldn’t accept my deck and I originally thought Training Grounds had become Standard.
I was actually disappointed when that wasn’t the case.
Make the training grounds with rewards Standard only.
Have a legacy one up but with NO rewards, so people can only use it for testing but aren’t rewarded for it in any other way, there is zero need to give people anything free for playing with their fastest easiest to play deck.
I’d like to have tg limited only to Ixalan. Just to test new cards and have slower playground to have fun with them.
Edit: or just consider Training element and rule out all mastered cards
I am totally up for two training grounds events, one for standard and one for legacy. I am in favor of having a place to grind runes with legacy decks, while also having another dedicated place to test and have fun with Standard builds. Totally up for this!
But it will still differentiate the different card sets. You’ll be able to predict what type of card synergy you are up against and cans build for that.
considering the vast majority of decks I see in Training Grounds are Kothlivia into Decimator and Ulrich… standard training grounds would be different.
Across could almost be a standard training grounds except for a few small issues.
There would ideally be a no gimmick node somewhere. And that node shouldn’t have color restrictions.
If that were the case, then yes.
As is isn’t not terrible as a proxy for a standard format TG replacement. It’s just not ideal for testing wacky standard builds (what if I don’t want to be at disadvantage to the AI with something else occurring every turn?).
TG I usually find to be a total non-starter for wacky standard deck build testing/enjoyment. I tried yesterday and had to give up on that. Most drawn opponents gave zero breathing room and were generic highly-tuned legacy builds in unassailable winning position by turn 4 or so. My build wasn’t portable to Across that day due to the color.
