This is awesome work, nocturne. I can’t believe you got this much done already. I’m pinning it to the top for a little while and maybe we could even make a separate page on the site to host these rankings with comments.

Wow, this is awesome work you’re doing here. I never would have assumed that but I would say if I were going to buy a precon I would absolutely want to know this ahead of time.

That actually is very important context, not just for beginners but anyone looking to get into Commander with a pre-con. It would be a huge amount of work but honestly it could be something we even try to crowdsource here or Reddit. I would love to see a fan-created list of what the brackets actually are for the pre-cons.

Apologies because I don’t have an answer for your question, but it was my understanding that all pre-cons were Bracket 2. I didn’t think any pre-cons came in higher or lower than that.

It would be a great service to see what the bracket is for the pre-cons, it could be a lot of work - it looks like there are currently 145 of them.

I think its a huge loss to have those players leave MtG but at the same time, there is no real home for 1v1 competitive in Magic anymore. Locally here (Pennsylvania) it seems to be mostly Flesh and Blood and some Lorcana picking up those players, in Baltimore I noticed there was a huge growth in Sorcery. Maybe the diaspora will end up being a good thing overall, technically for as far Magic has swung towards casual play they could technically always swing the pendulum back towards competitive but I am laughing as I’m typing this out lol.

To that end, we’re going to be more aggressive next year with the number of banned and restricted announcement windows and the timing, adding more. We’re still fiddling with that cadence, but our aim is to have one for each major set release (or close to that amount) to maintain a sense of predictability and avoid disruptions during play seasons. It’s not always possible to have that particular cake and eat it too, but we hear loud and clear that we don’t have enough windows of opportunity.

We’re also going to slightly move up our previously announced banned and restricted announcement date from November 24 to November 10. This keeps the basic premise of not interfering with players who had planned their decks and travel for the Standard RCQ season while still moving up the announcement and giving players more time to prepare for the World Championships should something change.

I think it should always be avoided. Fortunately that one is somewhat subtle but I think it should never be done. The text should be the highest layer in the design file. I already think they took things too far with that bordered text on the FCA cards:

This is nearly unreadable for me and it hurts my head to read it.

Yea honestly I can’t believe that card lol just absolutely nuts.

They know that printing activated abilities like 0: and abilities that keep mana floating forever are hyper dangerous yet just don’t seem to care anymore. Or maybe they think they have to do this to sell, who knows.

This is awesome, thank you for posting the deck lists!

This is never going to stop until Hasbro/WoTC change their overall strategy. They’re catering 100% to casual commander, and are either actively or passively forcing competitive constructed formats into the ground.

“You cannot serve two masters” is at play here and the two design philosophies are at odds with each other. It’s Vivi right now, it will be Electro in the next set. After that it will be something Avatar, etc etc etc.

They have two options:

1. Increase the power of cards/sets, specifically legendary creatures, to grow revenue but ruin competitive formats
2. Decrease or maintain the power of cards/sets to save competitive formats but decrease (or risk decreasing) revenue

Since WoTC no longer runs the business of Magic the game, they cannot do option #2 anymore which is what we saw with Masques block and all of the other lower powered sets that re-stabilized competitive formats.

We are forever stuck with #1 until Hasbro sells WoTC.

I think we absolutely have a Vivi problem. Not sure what they were thinking with 0: create mana ever being printed on a card, but it’s clear they (and all of us too) never saw the interaction with Agatha’s Soul Cauldron.

Cauldron will most likely eat a ban to pay for Vivi’s sins, but here we are. They won’t ban the card while it’s being actively sold and opened imo, and certainly not from the FF set.

Thanks for posting this, I totally spaced and missed the whole tournament this weekend! I’m kinda mad at myself about that.

Seeing the Top 8, I’m not surprised and also not that upset I missed it now. Cauldron will die for Vivi’s sins.

This is awesome! I love the gameplay videos and I love that you were running this in mythic too.

I think you unfortunately are right, it definitely seems that Tribute to the World tree is too essential here to lose it. I never actually saw that card before now. Crazy to me that Tribute was never successfully built around, but standard must be too fast or too powerful for any 3 mana cards without ETBs that need something else to generate the value. Which is a huge shame.

I was curious – how did you find this before and after the bans? It seems like you would eat mono red alive but what was the gameplay/success like when Monstrous Rage and Heartfire Hero were being played?

Ok, Seedship Broodtender is a pretty good hit for golgari:

I think all of the abilities added are pretty cool. Generally it seems like Warp, and to a lesser extent Station, are just ways to get value out of the card no matter what the turn is or when you draw it. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but it’s further towards to “no bad topdecks” style of design that’s been going on and increasing.

I like the ideas of creatures tapping the turn they enter to help station, I don’t know if WoTC has playtested that one all the way though, I will say. I feel like this is gonna be pretty bonkers:

Also, if this has a name “Uthros, Titanic Godcore” why is it not legendary? How is this not legendary. I feel this way about the towns in FIN too.

Lander tokens are pretty fun, and Void seems like a lesser Revolt, but it also seems like a great addition.

Link to the top 8 decklists: https://www.mtgtop8.com/event?e=53788&f=ST

Archive page of the tournament coverage: https://web.archive.org/web/20211023053431/https://magic.wizards.com/en/events/coverage/1998wc

I think they hit a wide range of cards to really rebalance and shake up the format. I think that Stormchaser’s Talent probably should have gone instead of This Town, and I think Omniscience should have gone instead of Abuelo’s but I think they hit a wide range of decks with these enough and I’m glad they did it.

Beanstalk hurts because that was driving a LOT of jank and artisan decks, so that is a painful loss. However it is just far too busted with too many cards in Standard right now and it’s too much card advantage for nothing. I just am sad to lose it.

I feel like Jeskai Prowess, Golgari Roots, and Mono Black midrange are doing to start cruising though.

Also I think a lot of people are moving to Arena instead which is further hurting store and paper sales. I’m sorry about your store closing though, that is a huge bummer :( I also have been unable to keep up with the release cycle for the last few years.

I agree with him here, and I think he has a good understanding of Standard.

My personal list is Monstrous Rage, Manifold Mouse, Cori Steel-Cutter, Omniscience, Stormchaser’s Talent, Caretaker’s Talent, and Up the Beanstalk. I think that has a wide band so as not to “bequeath” the crown to another deck, although something in mono-black may need to be hit as well, and if so I think it should be Unholy Annex/Ritual Chamber.

This would get rid of these “hyper efficient engines” that are I think are plaguing Standard right now. Cards that just do too much and are an entire deck in a single card. Even if you slow Standard down by hitting Cori and mono-red, I still think these engines need to go because they we’re a huge problem for Standard before this mess too in my opinion.

I would definitely play this or find a way to play it