Well I'm depressed (Broken combo in Standard)

Magic: The Gathering - Puzzle Quest MtGPQ General Discussion
1

Standard is starting to look very degenerate to me. I’ve had Ocelot Pride for a couple of weeks and the deck can kill on turn 2 pretty regularly (Last time I played it in a node in a coalition event, 4 of the 6 games I played in that node were turn 2 kills)

And I’ve been working up to coming here and saying something about it… I do like to be comprehensive about these things and it takes me a lot of mental energy to write posts like this one about Ghalta or these ones about Grist.

But now I’m hearing that the deck full of cards that fetch and cast each other that I’ve been positing for a lil while now (you know, Phenomenon Investigators, Genesis Wave, Mystical Teachings, Sylvan Tutor, Tempt with Discovery, and now Brightglass Gearhulk) has, in fact, reached critical mass and is perfectly capable of winning on turn 2.

And outside of that deck, Brightglass Gearhulk ($80, that one, and so unlikely to be nerfed!) is also giving Grist (who, I’ve been told, is a perfect well balanced and not broken PW) the unexpected gift of basically doubling up the number of Ghaltas she can play with.

And oh, boy. Bloodghast. More toys for Grist! Gather the Pack is a card you might want to play there. Give it a go! See what you think! Bloodghast’ll be available in an Elite Pack in a couple of weeks.

So… personally, I feel like we’ve approached the point I’ve been dreading for a while since Webcore started ramping up Power Creep and Standard is becoming Legacy 2.0

What do you think? Am I alone in my desire for competitive Standard to not be a swamp of combo? Maybe y’all have been consistently winning on turn 2 of Standard for months and I just haven’t noticed because I enjoy playing control decks so much. Maybe if Standard is a broken format I’m just wrong to want to play it competitively and I should play it like a big sandbox and just watch pretty colors flying across my screen? Has the last several years of Standard all just been a mistake which Webcore have finally corrected?

2

@Janosik - well I hope you have put on your stab and bullet-proof west. Because boy you are going to be in for a ride with this post!

Firstly, I think that you have articulated your point in an orderly manner, without hyperbole or whatever else is the typical attack when pointing out unpopular problems.

Secondly, the puzzle aspect of this game has become smaller and smaller over the years. Why bother finding a fun deck when everything is about combo deck, preferably one that plays itself. God forbid that you should interact with MTGPQ while playing MTGPQ. We all know the only reason for playing this game is to get all the free stuff as fast as possible.

Thirdly, the full mana dilemma. We have repeatedly seen that cards that give full mana have been a source of problems. Every time we get a new developer this trend shows its ugly head. The moxes are an example where the effect has been reeled in, because it is once per turn. But a card like “Lock and Load” where you can get multiple free cards repeatedly during your turn (especially egregiously when combined with other similar cards) is annoying. The half mana effect has shown itself to be another way of limiting this fault.

Fourthly, I don’t know why we can’t get any access to the developers on this issues. Is it because the devs have decided to bypass these forums and only listen to a subset of players (who enjoys comboing). I don’t know but I sincerely hope that the devs. will make an appearance soon based upon this thread.

3

Well it’s been all quiet so far hasn’t it! I suppose it’s only been a few days…

So after going public with this, some of the deckbuilders got together on my Discord and we started to hammer out some decks. Turns out I’ve maybe been behind the times as to when this deck reached critical mass. Here’s a deck I built with some other existing cards I hadn’t spotted before, suggested by other people:

Planeswalker: The Eldrazi Desolation

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You’ll notice the deck doesn’t even include Brightglass Gearhulk (which I can’t afford to buy!) Remember, the problem is not any specific card: it is simply the total number of Standard-legal cards which immediately play the next card in your deck for free. You’ll also notice that not all of the cards in this deck can be cast without something else setting them up first (Coffin Queen, for example, requires a creature to be in the graveyard, so you’ll probably have needed to cast a Breach, or a Lock and Load first), but most of them can.

Here’s my record with this deck in today’s TG:
Turn 1 kill,
Turn 4 kill,
Turn 1 kill,
Turn 2 kill.
I probably got a little lucky getting 2 turn 1 kills in 4 games, but I very much doubt that over a longer test run the average turn kill for this deck is going to be as slow as turn 3.

This is problematic, isn’t it? I’m not anti-combo (I regularly play a number of Legacy decks that can win this fast!) but this is too fast for Standard.

I would suggest that Webcore need to a) stop making cards like this, and b) either nerf a number of these cards, or perhaps, introduce a banned list so some of these cards can only be played in Legacy.

4

NB: I haven’t looked at this looping deck in Legacy yet, I hope once you add in cards like Summoner’s Pact it doesn’t consistently win on turn 1, because I think that would be a problem…

5

Interesting. I tried to do the same, but I can’t reach a loop before turn 5. But I’m lacking a few cards from your build.

When you started the loop was there any card that was better at starting the loop?

6

The key advantage of this combo deck over other combo decks is that almost any card will start the loop. Combo players who play with Wizard Class, for example, will recognise that despite the power of the deck it can often take you quite a few turns to find a Wizard Class, and without that you can’t combo!

A few pointers if you need them:

Unsurprisingly, given it’s absurd power level, the best card to kick off the loop is Mystical Teachings :slight_smile:

The best way to stop the loop from stalling is play a card which fills more than one card full of mana; in my case that’s Lock and Load or Tempt with Discovery (Another Round won’t fill 2 cards full of mana until you have 2 creatures in play, but once it reaches that level your loop is much more stable).

The next best cards to play would be ones which give you a choice of the next card in the chain (Genesis Wave, Sylvan Tutor.. and Capricious Hellraiser after you’ve played a spell or two).

And the cards you least want to play at the start are cards which give you no choice as to the next card in the loop: That’s Investigators or Breach. Mind you, you’ll want to play a Breach fairly early, as Coffin Queen is likely to do nothing if you haven’t played a Breach (altho it’s possible that discarding cards with Lock and Load will drop a creature in the graveyard for Coffin Queen).

Sometimes the loop stall through no fault of your own, or through a misplay: This happened to me on the game I won on turn 4. I had the loop going sooner, but I ran out of gas and had to pass the turn. Restarting the loop, tho, is as simple as just playing the cheapest card in your hand. And even if you did stall, that might happen after you’d already played 2 very large stacks of creatures to attack with.

7

I’m not necessarily disagreeing with your premise that the power creep of standard has greatly increased with the latest sets, but is it really ideal to show a 5 color deck (thus limiting the PW to colorless), with 5 masterpieces from 5 different sets, plus a PMA card, as your example of how ruined standard is? Honestly, with those kind of resources, I would hope you can fairly easily win a game.

8

I don’t care about loop decks.
As far as I can reach a perfect score with my decks in coalition events, I feel good.

I don’t care about bubbles, grist, Rakdos and so on, too.

I love powerful cards, a good strategy and synergy effects in my decks.
I can find all this in my standard card collection.

I hope you will recover from your depression and if you think ocelot or any other card is unfair or overpowered, don’t use it. It’s your choice.

Happy deck building.

9

To take a step back, can we clarify the concern with power creep? The discussion has led in a few different directions, and it would help get toward an answer that would actually solve the issue.

From what I can tell, the power creep concern falls into three main categories:

  1. Power creep is bad because it makes games harder to win
  2. Power creep is bad because it makes winning much more random
  3. Power creep is bad because it narrows the viable card pool (ie, gameplay becomes boring)

Speaking only for myself (a veteran player in Platinum), I don’t find the first case convincing. The vast amount of events with large volumes of perfect and near-perfect scores suggests that the game is not suffering from an overload of power creep faced. Put another way, there are quite a number of non-meta ways to win in this game - does not playing these cards mean that you lose appreciably more often? Quite simply, if power creep were causing an inordinate number of losses, shouldn’t we be seeing win rates lower than what we actually see?

For point #2, I’m not sure how to distinguish losses from power creep from the many levels of inherent randomness in this game: limited number of matches per event, matchmaking itself, card draw outcomes, gem cascades. You can certainly argue that the power creep eliminates the gameplay randomness so you’re just left with the matchmaking randomness, but then we’re back up to point #1. In that case, it seems like the true power creep issue is a question of how many players have access to all these masterpieces to build these overpowered decks?

Lastly, without the threat of losing from not playing certain cards (point #1), point #3 is a gameplay/style choice more than anything. I’d argue in this case the problem is lack of a challenge, which isn’t solely due to power creep - there are definitely game advantages that tip the scale to the player (more on this in another post), especially without true PvP to inject some unique skill. And every developer has to contend with the tension that while facing more difficult opponents is helpful along the learning curve, ultimately players hate losing and would rather win “poorly” than not at all. This game is not zero-sum - even if you face my deck, your wins are not my losses - so I’m not going to be bothered by your deckbuilding unless I start to see it and lose to it more often (which is an access issue, see points 1 and 2).

TL;DR: We should settle what the complaint about power creep truly is, because “I don’t like how I’m winning” has a very different solution than “I’m losing more”. From my perspective, until there’s a meaningful change in the overall difficulty veteran players face in this game, I’m personally not particularly concerned with power creep in this context.

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Thank you for your post @TheDude1
I fully agree.

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Unsurprisingly, given it’s absurd power level, the best card to kick off the loop is Mystical Teachings :slight_smile:

I was expecting this to be your answer. Because I assume, the best way to start the loop is with a card that cost less that one or two matches. Those two cheap MP are the ones I’m missing. Because of that, it takes me five turns (on average) to start the loop. A second reason is that without those card, I have too few cards that can start the loop, as @Janosik mentions several cards rely on Breach (or LaL) to work. So I argue that for you to get a turn 1 or 2 win, you need full mana cheap or huge cascades.

12

1st
Lets wait and see what happens when people focus on red decks doing more than 200+ damage in one turn easily. Completely overpowered but not yet realized even though “only” rare and mystic cards from standard are needed. (And yes, there is a counter to that)

2nd
The new exclusives for real money add some more full mana cards to be played instantly

Doing stuff that is just copied is one thing but developing new strategies and synergies is the real fun of this game. So as always: don’t whine, shine.

13

This is the sort of toxic positivity that discourages people from posting on the forums. There is a large and vibrant community surrounding this game and I would like to hear more from them, not less.

I find it helpful to let people complain about things that make them feel bad. And losing to these types of decks feels very bad. If you have specific data that points to a premise being wrong then please do share it! But it’s unnecessary to dismiss people bringing up valid concerns as “whiners.”

If we are only allowed to post positive things then there won’t be much to talk about at all.

14

This call for data works both directions. How often do you encounter these kinds of opposing decks? How often do you lose to them? Do you play them yourself? What is your overall win rate? Without that context, the discussion is just venting about how things feel bad with no proposed solution - that may not be whining, but it’s also not constructive.

I’m not saying you can’t feel bad or you need volumes of data to back up every post you make, but it does help get toward an answer of what is actually wrong. Is the feel bad because you only won 17/18 matches in an event and lost out on top rank rewards, or is it because you’re encountering these regularly? Is it bad because facing this deck is an auto-loss, or because the games drag out for a long time as you work through your counter-plays? These all have different solutions, and a lot of the solutions are only partially driven by the card/PW power involved.

There are tradeoffs here. People like powerful cards and like brewing decks to find powerful synergies, but they also hate losing to synergized decks that play well in Greg’s hands. Giving people more resources/access to these cards might allow them to win more, but makes the divide between haves/have nots greater. Not creating these cards makes the game slower, and (speculation!) likely drives up the overall win rate since Greg is a terrible opponent, meaning rank rewards are even more problematic. It would help to get an idea where on these spectrums you believe the tradeoffs should lie.

15

I cant think of a recent time I’ve lost to a loop deck, greg just cant pilot them. I dont care if players can win on turn 1, as long as greg cant. I dont care if players have access to powerful loop decks. There is a set of players who enjoy those types of decks, and I’m not going to pretend like my opinion is the only one that matters and go around calling things broken because I dont like that style of play. If I did, I would be making posts every release about all forms of control decks because I dont like playing with or against them and think they are bad for my enjoyment of the game, and thus the overall health of the game.

What I do lose to frequently is Rakdos, Patron of Chaos and Assimilation Aegis. I lost out on full progression rewards this last coalition event because of these cards. Both cards require dedication to get rid of, and their existence warps deck building around them. These type of cards represent powercreep for me. I can no longer ignore what Greg is doing while deck building like I used to. I always have to account for the potential of these cards, and thus my PW selection and deck is great limited.

This is a mobile game, we should be able to quickly play a match. These cards drag out the game. You cant necessarily quit because you dont know if you have lost right away. At least with combo/loop decks, it’s pretty easy to see you are done and can move on. If you are playing a slow style of deck, you are making that time commitment up front. If greg is playing it, you wont know until it’s too late.

As people have shown in other threads, the amount of events has increased over the year. With this comes an increase demand on our time needed to get those rewards. If card design (and event design) is trending towards longer, more drawn out games, then those rewards arent necessarily attainable by the common person.

16

Ok, i give up being positive.

Hm, it feels wrong. Sorry, I can’t help myself. It’s a game, it should be fun.
I love the new sets, it’s so much to play with.

So, my message to everyone who is new to this forum:
Don’t worry about loops and overpowered cards.
Grep is so dumb, you don’t need to bother at all.
Eventually he my cascade a lot, but this does not hold forever.

17

See goz masters new video Turn 1 Standard win. He has so much fun.

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@Janosik , Turn 2? TOO SLOW! lol Here… Turn 1.

You’re Welcome.

19

Was this a reference to me? That feels like that was me. :tongue:

I Love Loop.

20

You can guess I’m in your same camp of loving powerful cards… However, I also understand, that facing a loop deck that greg can pull off that wrecks a person going for perfect in a weekend event, isn’t fun for , really anyone…

If it takes greg 8 turns, and a SLEW of card decisions that are difficult for the AI to navigate, odds are, he’ll “filth” the bed… and the human will get an easy win.

That said… Ocelot… Oof… Ocelot is BROKEN .

It requires SO Little to make work on greg’s behalf and doesn’t allow the human to do anything about the combo outside of PRAY for the loop timer, that to me, isn’t fun to play against, or challenging enough for TRUE loop-lovers to feel challenged by.

I LOVE loops. But instant 1 card cast wins that require NO decision making… well yeah, I love those too, lol, however I also understand if greg can pull those off, we’ve crossed a line from “loop love” to broken interactions.

So, to make it clear, I don’t beleive there is ANYONE that doesn’t agree that Ocelot needs a nerfing, pronto.

As to the others, I DON’T quite think we’ve crossed that threshold of BROKEN META, simply because, greg can’t pull them off just yet (At least not typically in the first 5 turns outside of Ocelot)…

So if the intent by this post is that ALL powerful cards need to be nerfed, well I FIRMLY sit on the other side of the aisle against that argument…

But there are CLEARLY some cards that are just too strong in this meta, and to me… Ocelot is at the top of the list.

And my gurl Ghalta, is fast approaching that peak.

Loop-Lovers Unite my friend.

GM