I always try very hard to offer criticism that does no fall into a territory of blind, emotional complaining. I try to support my claims with evidence, so that even if you disagree you can still see where I am coming from. I also hate more than anything the idea of "yucking someone's yum" and try only to make videos like this when they are on an extremely important issue, and not just some personal distaste of mine. I hope very much I succeeded in those goals here.
i feel like unless you are in a situation where you either find a specific card or die, you would not put yourself below 4 against any red deck, let alone mono-red.
@@alecazam6755 it occured to me : why would a deck that runs normal red Mana run gut shot over Shock or Lightning Bolt? It saw use is non-red decks because phyrexian Mana OP
2 life is cheaper than one mana, sure, but is a 1 damage non-permanent worth the card slot over Shock or Lightning bolt in the 1 mana cost. the burn deck i have as it stands has 12 burn cards in the 1/2 mana range that can go face (i don't run shock in that deck), i think i would be better served having that slot be a Browbeat or Risk factor, which either lets me reload or chunk my opponents health total. though maybe im missing an archetype that would actually be well served by gut shot
@@cammuz53 so then you can duplicate the deck and run it twice? It does feel like a more doable format with arena and sb doesnt make a lot of sense either. Id say wish cards can let you grab cards from your second deck.
@@jaffetchacon5797 theoretically yes, but I think that the rules for Duo Standard say the decks must be different. You could still run two very similar decks, with the second one being the same as the first one but with a few different cards
@@cammuz53 Nope, the two decks can just be the same one twice. Quoting from Marshall Sutcliffe: " They can submit the same exact lists" magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/competitive-gaming/duo-standard-and-mythic-invitational-2019-03-26
@@thepants1450 they will shuffle your cards and watch which card is going on top. They will shuffle their own cards and assess land distribution, put certain cards on top. Sleight of hand to put cards on top. Draw extra cards, timing fudges, sneaking extra land into play, not manage their life total honestly. Arrange their cards in a specific order, then pile shuffle in a way that ensures an exact and predetermined draw order. And countless other ways of cheating.
@@thepants1450 you can look up paper magic tournaments and, at the highest levels, there's almost always somebody getting caught cheating. They cheat in a variety of ways by intentionally missing triggers, misrepresenting the board state, putting cards back into their hand that should never be there, etc. Etc.
Best format to me was "The Stack" - big ol' stack of singleton junk rares in the middle with a shared draw and graveyard. Play any card in your hand face down as a "land", and there you go. The rares are bad, but tend to have a lot of effects, which makes games interesting really quick.
When they first announced that the format was gonna be duo standard someone (I think SaffronOlive) on Twitter described it as "A solution to a problem that was already solved". Reflecting on that post invitational that rings very true lmao
Very true. In fact, Hearthstone is going through growing pains in solving this very problem for themselves. And their solutions are awkward because they're trying to avoid just copying the one that's proven to work the best, the one MTG already discovered decades ago.
word of advise Wizard: If "gaming" history has taught us anything, do not try to mimic Blizzard. So many company tries to mimic WOW and they all fail. What you need to do is to be your own beast and stay true to yourself. Only that will give you a fight chance.
I wouldn't normally respond to a comment this old, but how do you feel about the "be your own beast and stay true to yourself" part now that they've a) done the exact opposite, and b) raked in record profits from doing so? I'm now officially an ex-player because I hate what they did to my game, and it'll never be fun to play again. What about you?
Competing in the Mythic Invitational was one of the highlights of my life really, the atmosphere was incredible and there was a real sense of Magic being propelled to the forefront, we had the strongest presence at PAX & the two worlds of pro & community colliding and hanging out was such a joy. I think the format is terrible, and it's unlikely we'll see it again in my opinion, but I think WOTC didn't help themselves with the choices of feature matches at times. There were unique decks there, but often the feature match would be yet another Esper/Red v Esper/Red mirror. A prime example of this is I believe Sjow v Savjz was featured over myself & Reid Duke, so viewers got another Esper mirror instead of Grixis Midrange v Golgari Explore. I think Duo Standard could probably put forth an entertaining tournament to watch, but no action was taken to not feature the same problematic matchups coverage wise again and again. Or you know tournaments could just use bo3 with sideboards haha.
also - didn't you say in your video that the decks were chosen for you for the first match? The Prof says you get to choose but I seem to remember you saying otherwise.
Yes and no. Paper magic very much so. I think they were hoping that the wild cards being able to turn into any needed card would be enough to allow any desired cards to come in, underestimating the strain that can put on players who don't put that much money into the game. It depends on the deck you use. A standard pauper player probably wouldn't be very inhibited by cost, but a deck that runs 12 shock lands plus 20 other rares and 8 mythics is going to be a pain to make, especially if you have two different lists that do that
@@Ianthe22 It would probably cost a couple hundred dollars. Seems a bit excessive for a bunch of .png files, especially for a tournament that you were personally invited to participate in.
The game is good, would be great if they designed a new way to implement mana because the whole, "ahh... Well that could have been a fun game, if I'd drawn a damn land!", situation really does drag the game down. There's a difference between not performing so well due to luck, and physically not being able to play the bloody game because you weren't lucky enough to draw the very thing that makes the game function.
Greg The Veggieburger land flood/screw is really the only major luck based element of the game. That, and obviously drawing from a set of 60 different cards (but deck building comes into play there to minimize the luck of top decking) But tbh, compared to hearthstone (the most popular tcg game) magic is so much less luck based it’s not even funny. It’s impossible to create a card game wholly based on skill; but magic is the closest it gets. And really , from my experience running good decks, mana screw/flood comes into account like maybe 1/8 games. It’s not that huge of a deal
@@gregtheveggieburger9543 thats part of the beauty of Magic. The game doesnt care about you. It doesnt hold your hand. Put too few lands in the deck and you will get mana screwed more. Its hard to see from an individual perspective, but sometimes you get mana screwed or mana flooded and it sucks. But, this Also happens to your opponent as well. So it balances out. Its another chance to show your play skill by switching up your style as necessary. Ie if you are light on mana, maybe you change to playing defensively and hold out until your mana comes.
@@gregtheveggieburger9543 statistically mana screw and flooding is extremely unlikely if the deck is correctly built, it absolutely contains a chance that you have a rough game but the biggest issue with mana is people being greedy and not learning how to pick the right number of mana for their deck costs
This reminds me of a concept I came up with at my last gaming night. Where say you have four players, and each one of them brings anywhere between 2-5 decks with them, depending on how long you want this to go. Basically as soon as you go down to zero and are out, you pull out your next deck and when your turn comes around again you play that instead of just being out. I think it would be an interesting mix up of the game. Obviously you'd have to have mostly different decks. And if you don't want the game to go on forever you'd keep it to 2-3 decks per person, but it could be fun.
Introducing Duo Baseball! Each MLB team must now sign on TWO complete rosters of multimillion-dollar-contract players and coaches. In the first three innings you field one roster, in the second three you field the second, and if you make it to the last three innings you get to choose which roster to play!
I get it now. It's not about putting two decks together, it's about the pay to win factor. It's hard to put two together because everyone wants the expensive cards. Glad I understand now.
You overestimate the cost of decks in arena. With optimal distribution of resources and regular play you can literally get all the competitive decks with less than 200$. Considering how much they paid for simple participation, participants should be able to afford it without any problem.
Andrey Protas care to site sources or state where you found these facts? I don’t mind spending money on arena to be fair I’ve spent somewhere north of $400 and have most competitive decks but friends and streamers asked about $ also seem to say that they have spent well over $200
@@Da5kone001 Well, it's based on my personal experience. I'm F2P player, and I have 95+% of cards from both RNA and GRN and most crucial rares from older sets. If I spent 50$ on each of the older sets, I would likely get enough WCs to get all the rares from them I'm missing. And I didn't even play optimally, e.g. I skipped days and even weeks of gameplay when I wasn't in the mood to play. Basically, if you play every day, you will get most cards from the set by the time new set comes out.
The new competitive format for hearthstone is called specialist. You bring a main deck and secondary and tertiary deck. You can change up to 5 cards from the main deck.
My questions for Wizards is this. Were the bizarre interactions with sideboards brought on by use the use of Mastermind's Acquisition, for example grabbing Clear the Mind to prevent decking in the Esper Mirror, really less convoluted and difficult to explain than sideboarding? The coverage team had to discuss these weird adaptations and interactions many, many times. They also had to explain the intricacies of how matchups worked in duo standard...etc. This is not even taking into account the insane consistency with which Esper, Red aggro and White aggro appeared on-screen. This was a missed opportunity for what marketing professionals refer to as "training your customer". Customers may not see the value proposition of your product because they do not understand it, not because it is inferior to another offering. If the coverage team had been able to use the time and energy they expended to explain the weird corner cases of this untested format to explain sideboarding, the huge audience they were essentially guaranteed by the event hype could have been shown why sideboarding is great and made the concept less daunting to new players. Imagine setting up a between-game look at each player sideboarding. Rather than the simultaneous sideboarding we get in standard arena, we could have set it up so that each player sideboards individually on camera. Great magic minds like Paul Cheon could then explain to the audience why the player currently sideboarding is taking out what they are taking out and why they are bringing in what they are bringing in. Best of 3 standard occasionally has convoluted transformational sideboard plans, but for the most part it boils down to easy-to-understand stuff like "Shock is coming out against this control opponent because they don't have creatures to kill. The player is bringing in Duress because it is more effective against decks that don't play creatures." Boom. It's really that simple. Rather than defaulting to best of 1 because it's easier to understand, take these opportunities to introduce players to the sideboarding concept. I came back to Magic after a long absence after Arena came out, and I was never more than a kitchen table player before that. I started out jamming mono red in Bo1 because sideboarding scared me. When I finally dipped my toes in, copying the mono black t2 zombie list that was running around at the time, I used a sideboard guide for training wheels. I was delighted to find that post-board I could actually put up a fight against Grixis Midrange, a fairly hopeless game 1 matchup. I never looked back, and I suspect that many Arena players who haven't yet taken the plunge yet wouldn't look back either. Prof said it best. Don't dilute your product, take advantage of possible teaching moments to demonstrate why its great. People are migrating to magic from other games for a reason, let's stay true to that reason, at least in professional, tournament level magic.
I think this format was purely born out of them not having the challenge feature not at 100% so they came up with duo standard as a way for them to still play best of three without there being room for cheating while they had their whole collection open while editing decks for side boarding. A X player cheated scandal is much more harmful to the community than a watered down format.
Honestly, I have to agree completely. Something about Arena has always bugged me and it really feels like WOTC is shying away from the things that make Magic Magic. Which at the end of the day isn't a problem with the Arena platform itself, but how they're trying to "fix" things that don't need to be fixed. I'd love to see WOTC go back to being proud of the ways in which it's different from other things and lean into the parts of Magic that have kept it going for the last 25 years.
There is a difference between offering a good product and something fun to watch. Duo Standard was (at least for me) way more fun to watch, and held my attention all weekend.
There are constantly people playing BO1 complaining that X deck is unfair, they just concede as soon as they see it's that deck, etc. Sideboarding solves that issue for the most part. You lose your game 1 and then you sideboard to have a chance against that deck that you can't deal with in your initial 60. And if something truly busted comes along and represents 80% of the decks played even in a Bo3 format with sideboards? You can safely bet that something in that deck will be banned. Unless you're playing Hollow One in Modern, then you know you're safe because no matter how busted Faithless Looting is they'll never ban it when they could keep that spot on the banlist reserved for Stoneforge Mystic. Remember to keep Stoneforge Mystic banned in Modern and also WOW. FUCK. TRON.
Prof, 'smörgåsborg' directly translates to 'sandwich fortress'. I was about to critique you on your Swedish, but I think you just felt that a sandwich table (smörgåsbord) was too small to fit all formats. I applaud your inventive use of the Swedish language!
It's not the simplest of words, and it has our strange extra letters. We also pronounce most vowels differently (also, Y is a vowel, dammit), and our j's don't start with a d. I'm not surprised people have a hard time with singular Swedish words, completely removed from the rest of the language. In fact, I'd say it's more of an English word than a Swedish word these days. I haven't heard anyone use the word smörgåsbord in Sweden for years, and I haven't seen an actual smörgåsbord in more than a decade. But I thought it was pretty funny that the thing he actually said was still a word in Swedish.
In the US, and probably other English speaking countries, we just use smorgasbord to mean a large selection in front of you. like a food buffet or a large selection of cards that you can pick from Holiday dinner with family and a lot of food to select from can be called a smorgasbord
One of the reasons of heartstone's long term decline is the amount of rng. I can't believe they would want to imitate that especially now woth the success of arena.
Prof, i got to hand it to you for putting my thoughts and feelings so eloquently into words. While I enjoyed the invitational, I kept getting the feeling I was watching 'magic lite'. I don't want magic lite, I want magic
Yeah... this format would work fine for some other card games, but for MTG, where decks are often built hyper specific, this becomes kind of chaotic... I feel sorry for players in this tourney.
@@jacobcain9008 If you are interested in starting, I'd recommend going on tappedout.com and using their filtered deck search function. You can find a deck that is super cheap (20-30 bucks) that is still good and playtest it for free to get the hang of it. Either that, or you can find decks built around the Legenedarys you have an be inspired to fill out your own version. You can get a hold of all the cards you dont have through cardkingdom.com for a good price. And dont be concerned about the large price tags that show up on decks. While the decks can get pricey quick (100 card singleton does that, lol), it's easy to cut costs by using basic lands and simple duals. Any deck you find online can probably be cut down to 50 bucks and still keep the theme and style intact. Whether or not you expand to commander, keep having fun playing magic, my friend.
@@jacobcain9008 if you are interested in commander please reach out to your friends who also play commander. Many of us would gladly help you build a starting budget deck by donating you cards that would be relevant to one of your legendary creature's gameplan. Else, there are literally thousands of lists where a solid commander deck can be purchased for as low as $17 and is still very fun to play. Lastly, the precon decks are always a solid option for those looking to enter the format, and with a little tuning they can prove to be very powerful out of the box.
@@grxberserker6135 Hahah, thanks! Sadly though I have a single friend who will play MTG, and he prefers Yu-Gi-Oh. I'll stick to watching commander content for now.
I like the idea of invitational tournaments having weird one off formats, especially if the invitees are not there based on pure competitive merit. My only issue with it was putting such a huge money prize on the line for pure spectacle. Save that for true competitive events in the traditional tournament formats, so we can believe the winners earned the prize (mostly) by skill and dedication.
"When looking at different formats, we're trying to balance several levers." Because clearly they don't already have a format that does that. Nope, none at all, they needed a new one. Regular old Magic in *no way* fills that criteria. /sarc
To be completely honest, it doesn't. It's far from perfect in many ways, that's why they are constantly trying to improve it, introducing new mulligan rule, for example. They should also find a way to address going first vs going 2nd problem, since going first in game one generates quite significant unfair advantage. Duo Standard obviously didn't solve any of those problems, but at least it tried to solve some of them (at least opening hand algorithm eliminated situations where you have to mulligan to 4, because you got 0 lands 3 times in a row).
@@InsanoRider777 Well, that's exactly the problem with BO3 I mentioned. It almost never happens to me in BO1. I still need to deal with manaflood, but at least I can cast my 1 and 2 drops 99% of the time. Also I still won quite a few games where I mulliganed to 4 cards, but that's more of an exception than the rule. There are a bunch of other minor problems, Nexus of Fate existence is one of them. You don't want to show new players games involving this card, believe me.
I didn’t know in the US the life total rule wasn’t used. Here in Costa Rica life total to determine a winner after time, turns had run out is the standard way for both casual and competitive play
Sure, the rulebook always included that, but How do you manage to get in such situations? The tournament rules usually suggest you play Swiss where you can just draw, or Top 8 KO, where you don't run out of time.
There is no point in dual standard on paper. It was only chosen because it resembles MTGA BO1 format. Most MTGA players don't really care about paper magic.
With no sideboard? :/ I doubt it would be interesting. It's like trying to build a 60 cards deck in draft.. In draft the sideboard is really important, and even with 45 cards (3 packs) you can do a new deck using only your sideboard between two games.
@@theofftaskforce6546 is it though? I have no idea what coverage is like anymore, or what people like watching. I stopped being able to follow coverage around the time they disbanded the pro tour in like 2018. I know most of my friends and I enjoy watching draft more than standard, but that could also be due to the fact that standard has sucked for the past couple years.
Here here, Prof! Edit: As a Commander player primarily, this was a great event! But. It totally threw me off when they switched decks mid game. For them to not have a sideboard I think further cements unintentionally the idea that one specific deck is the only way to win. Side boarding shows new players that even when I had a disadvantage, there is a way to come back with the deck that you were already playing and even come back to win. Now I think some people will just look at these decks and think that there is only one deck to build to win
That's something strange and paradoxical. While the professor is burning down the Wizards for what he thinks is their mistakes all I can see is how this man loves Magic and cares for it!
We need some kind of lifegain stax deck to abuse this time out rule. So instead of reducing the life of your opponent to 0, you focus on gaining life and prolonging the game.
I had read about this on reddit and my boyfriend, who played MTG in the past, tried to explain to me (new player) why this was such a problem, but I couldn't understand very well, having never played in a tournament. But you explained it very well, thank you, Professor!
@grim triX Yep and this will mean a drop in deck variety because now people will have to build decks that have an answer to everything at once. Welcome cheese and cookie cutter decks :)
I just enjoy sideboarding. Call me old fashioned. I don't enjoy the deck restrictions best-of-one puts in place. Oh, you didn't build your deck to have this answer to this one deck? Guess your out of luck. But it's for like every deck in the format
@@Zspear234 Well, it literally is, also the name is slightly misleading. Since BO1 is standard arena format, so BO1 with 2 decks is Duo Standard. Someone just has a horrible naming sense, that's not the same Standard we know.
@@Vessarian I disagree. I play Jeskai control in BO1, and I had 67% winrate in CEs with that deck, which is roughly on par with all T1 decks. You can build ton of good decks in BO1 that don't see much play in BO3 because Nexus exists. People just missed their opportunity, since everyone decided to be boring and just go with monored, instead of thinking about a good deck themselves.
I'd like to note that the problem wasn't using an all new format; the Magic Invitationals were similarly centered around experimental formats. Duo Standard, however was not thought through so well. Asking for two separate standard decks was too much.
I can't watch this because it's "Video Unavailable" but I can imagine it's great and talks about my outstanding Rock, Paper, Scissors performance at the mythic invitational and how it was at least best of three 🤔 I'll shut up, Just Take My Like!
Cube is one of my favorite formats. I love it that I can play my favorite cards that are not played anywhere else. Also I am able to play draft matter cards that I own and love. Another cool thing is I can had custom cards to my cube.. I also sometimes add planechase making it more chaotic than a normal draft but at a lower power level
All i want to watch is a faithful recreation of paper magic on arena. Bo3 sideboarding it all goes together to make the game great. Chess clocks would work too! If time constraints are and issue i would be willing to sacrifice earlier rounds to bo1 if it meant when we got to the later matches it became a true display of the understanding of mtg. Maybe that would cause deckbuilding issues but im certain its better than duo standard.
My first competitive rel event the life total tiebreaker rule actually came up. It was a tournament grinder the night before GP Ottawa, single elimination khans sealed. Last round they ran out of time and were closing the venue. I remember watching one table in the process of sideboarding for game 3. A player sided into as many duo lands as possible, and mulled to 3 cards before playing a dismal backwater, gaining one life, and winning the series.
What if, instead of two decks per player, there was only one deck? This would alleviate the need to purchase multiple decks. And rather than randomly selecting the first deck to be played, they just played the single deck? It's much more straightforward. And it would still be a best of 3 match, but they could alter their deck's contents between games to better adapt to their opponent's strategy? I think this is what really elevates my suggestion; rather than decks simply playing out their strategy, players use their meta knowledge and understanding of their opponent's play to change their deck. This would enable an incredibly high skill ceiling for competitive Magic, even if each deck only had access to 15 or so additional cards. A shame no such format exists, though.
Stopped playing Heartstone years ago because it's bad development. Recently started playing Magic and love the complexity and the ability to play in real life. The only thing which could make me stop playing Magic now I think is to turn in to Heartstone
@@papernes Yeah after posting this comment my friend told me that. Why didn't they use it for esports then? Because they want it to resemble Best of 1 as that is how most people play Arena??
@@ashadeofnight Because they want it to resemble Hearthstone. The corporate overlords don't want to make a great game, nor do they understand how to. They are only concerned with making money, and when they see another game is profitable, their only thought is "why isn't our game more like that?" And this, capitalism crushes creativity and individuality in its endless, short-sighted lust for personal gain. That or everyone at WotC is literally retarded.
I'm most intrigued by the concept of the pros and cons of having 2 different decks. I used to play the Star Wars CCG when I was a kid, in which you ALWAYS had two decks, dark side and light side, and each game would pit two decks of opposing sides against each other. This isn't an exact 1:1 correlation, obviously, since that game was designed with this 'format' baked into the game design itself instead of tacked on a quarter-century in, but I'd be interested in seeing what a sort of 'fixed' duo standard might look like.
I disagree with you, professor! The viewership numbers WOULD NOT HAVE BEEN THE EXACT SAME if they played a more traditional best of three standard format. The numbers WOULD HAVE BEEN HIGHER. I tuned out the moment LSV was eliminated by a series of "coin flips". I realized "what's the point?" of watching if the tournament was not going to showcase the best Magic had to offer and, therefore, decided not to watch. I am sure other people did the same.
Hello Prof., I was an old magic grinder back in the day and I just found your channel a couple months ago when you put up an analysis video about Legends of Runeterra. Runeterra is my go-to game atm but if I were ever to come back to magic fulltime I would hope that the major tournaments are best of 3 Swiss with sideboard. I personally think they came up with this format to present familiarity with how Hearthstone does tournaments which is fine for a game that relies on RNG and has limited player interaction. It just doesn't translate well to a game as nuanced as MtG.
Would a Warmachine style two list format work? Bring two decks. You and your opponent can read each others lists, and choose the deck you want to play in secret.
I think it was the same problem as Brawl, 2 teams working without comunication. The mythic invitational was announced before the patch with Bo3 ranked ladder and Bo3 direct matches was released. What does this mean? That e-sport/marketing team came up with the format thinking the the Bo3 modes weren't going to be online and created a format that used Bo1. Why? Something important to note is that the mythic invitational was market as "everyone can be a pro on Arena" with the top 8 of the ladder being invited (wich is also quite bad but is what they have to use since they don't have tournament modes like MTGO). This meant that whatever format they used HAD to be already implemented on Arena already. Of course this could have been prevented if the e-sport team simply comunicated with the dev team asked if they were going to have Bo3 ready by that time.
We used to play what we called unlimited in school where there was no ban list, decks between 60-100 cards, limit of 3 copies unless legendary/planeswalkers where you can have one copy. Fairly similar rules to standard/limited otherwise.
As a Judge on the topic of timed single/double elimination matches: It's not as uncommon as you might think, I've had to enforce this rule during 2018 and 2017. The Nationals Last Chance Qualifier and Trials were being held in this mode (although one of them changed for 2018, iirc). We announced the "Sudden Death" rule, as we called it, during each flight, and players always had some funny reactions to it.
sort off, smorgasbord (or smörgåsbord, how it's spelled in sweden) means sandwich table. It's more off a appetizer table. you usually see them on big family event (holidays like easter) or on big other events like churchs etc. there is no rule on what you can have on the table. but it's to have fruits, small sandwiches, ham and chess. and something called smörgåstårta (means sandwich cake) which is a shrimp cake. Edit: just for fun, smörgås is based on the word smör (butter) and gås (which is goose). so sandwich in swedish if you translate it 100% means butter goose
I've been rewatching your old videos recently (mainly your podcasts while playing EDH on Moto) and youtube recommended this one. I assumed it was about Alchemy before looking at the release date
I just want the MTGO's timer implemented in Arena. I understand that MTGO's timer isn't as dynamic as the current one, and the game would be harder to get into, having a slow opponent may bore you out of it. But at least I would like it to be the timer in Traditional (best of three), so that the noobies can get hooked into the game, but the current paper and mtgo players can have a format where you can take your time in a convoluted and difficult decision. The one we have at the moment just makes it so I can't think straight while it is ticking down. Also I think that Swiss with top8 Best-of-three with mtgo's timer (and with sideboard, of course) would be the right format to have an event on Arena, so that we can watch high skill and thoughtful gameplay.
Hey, I'm in this video at 3:00 in the camera behind Cedric on the far-right :D . Live show was amazing. Definitely the highlight of PAX for me. Edit: Also, as for Duo Standard, I think the point they were going for was to maximize the amount of time viewers are watching games getting played. Sideboarding can be interesting to new players so long as it's quick and explained in simple terms, as is usually the case.
I've seen one example of a round of time elimination rounds - it was during the european modern masters 2 GP (or better said in a "side" event before the actual GP) The day before the actual GP started there were sealed mini tournaments which allowed you to get a bye if I remember correctly. The tournament was single elimination and the judge had to keep the games inside a certain timeframe to ensure it would finish in time. One game was decided in the last turn of extra turns making the match 1:1. The judge informed both players (befoire sideboarding) that lifetotal will decide the match after 3 rounds played in the 3rd game if I remember correctly (BTW the game was decided by a vapor snag returning an 1 mana 1/1 which attacked on the last turn etching out a 1 life advantage)
Duo standard sounds awesome! It would be great to break out another deck at FNM but because it's a "tournament" I gotta sit and play the same one for four hours. My decks are usually budget price range but it would be really unfair to players with less money though. When I sit down across a 16 year old kid I always think about how cool it would be if wizards gave out high powered promos to kids that get good grades. The video store where I grew up would give you a free rental for every A on your report card, Was nice.
The argument I heard from some WotC employees is that Arena ranked is best of one, and a lot of new players are coming to Arena and playing best of one, so they were trying to come up with a way to include best of one in a tournament setting. I don't think Duo Standard is it. And hopefully there will eventually be rankings in best of three as well.
My video was interrupted halfway through by an ad for Hearthstone, RIGHT as you were telling Wizards to stop making their game look/seem like Hearthstone. That's just priceless.
And it encouraged everyone in Arena to play esper control this week. Made me switch to draft after I finished my dailies. It's a good deck but not when everyone is playing it.
@@pipsdontlie3031 I'm speaking as a Control player here where I say that is incredibly immature and not remotely accurate. I've played with and tested mono-red aggro and burn decks, various flavors of midrange, combo decks, and I'll say that they all take brains to play. An aggressive red deck looks simpler because it has a proactive game plan, but that doesn't mean it requires less thought than Control, just that the lines of play are OFTEN clearer. Don't believe me? Try watching the coverage of PT Fate Reforged, where Lee Shi Tian and Seth Manfield made Top 8 with burn lists, and had to carefully manage their resources (a standout being Tian facing off against an Abzan player with Kitchen Finks in his deck to really disrupt the burn plan).
@@maileesaeya3614 I've played much aggro, and the closest thing that aggro get's to big thonk plays is having to play against a control deck. Otherwise you jsut slam down everything you can. If lines of play are clearer, it is simpler to play. I'm not insulting the archetype, but any format without control to counter aggro is not the format I want to be in, because aggro mirror matches are basically just a coin flip and take no thought. This isn't entirely true for every aggro deck of course, but especially for mono red, that's just what the deck is. Then again, I'm a control player generally so of course I'm a bit biased, and obviously I don't disregard players who play aggro decks or even think that control always requires the most amount of thought, but it is pretty naive or disingenuous to imply that the amount of thought that goes into holding back some attackers because they might have settle in hand, vs having to evaluate if you should counter the threat or wait for a sweeper to get rid of it because you need removal for their bigger threats and so on. Add that to considerations of cards that WotC has been printing like hot cakes for anti control, because people don't like watching interactive long matches but rather short or slightly less short "flashy" aggro matches. Carnage Tyrant etc. I'm just not sympathetic that Esper Control is able to beat aggro decks, because I like control and personally feel that most people who don't, don't really want to play magic, they just wanna play a coin flipping simulator with a little extra though into it.
@@pipsdontlie3031 I don't like control or aggro, they are the most unfriendly and not fun decks to play against, I want to be able to actually play my deck when playing magic not die after putting out 2 cards or sit there for 40 minutes watching All my cards go directly into the graveyard.
Although this is a terrible standard format, it could be very fun in a format similar to limited. You use about ten packs and make two decks. Then you play duo standard with those. This is fun because it allows has you make more decks and if you have a preferred color or colors it forces you to get out of your comfort zone.
Duo Standard brings out my worst thoughts about Magic which is the removal of choice. Yeah you can play whatever you want and the players could have chosen different decks, but we saw almost every set of decks being a combo of WW, Mono-Red, and Esper Control. The format and the randomness of what deck you get to play in game 1 was incredibly annoying to watch. Duo Standard forces players to play only certain types of decks and that was extremely disappointing.
skipped out on this event but i can probably guess how it went. most people played mono red no brain aggro and either drew a good starting hand or just lost. sounds very interesting and fun to watch.
Turns out no sideboards when i'm just popping into magic arena for some quick fun games is a lot different than no sideboards for a competitive esport event, who could've guessed.
those "cry of the carnarium" draws in esper mirrors. i had to stop watching for a short while but didnt miss out anything - they were staring at each other with 4 creature removal spells doing NOTHING
I’m not a standard player. I’m strictly commander. However when my lgs tried this format out before the mythic invitational and told us the conditions like no sideboarding I immediately thought “yeah this will never be requested by anyone for FNM” and it hasn’t since. It’s just classic standard. Though for next year’s invitational maybe they could do modern or even brawl.
Standard Cardfight Vanguard has been trying a 2 deck format, but instead you have to play different clans, and you have to win with both decks (so once you win, you stop using that deck and try and win with the other one for the rest of the match).
The fact that I can play league of legends without my computer overheating and not MTGA is repugnant. A card game should not take more resources than a MOBA.
@@ziongray7880 My point is that a card game shouldn't be overheating my computer. where a real time game doesn't. There can be steps taken so that the game can be accessible.
@ 2:16. Gonna stop here and say I loved the idea of Duo standard, and think it has a great way to grow. More remarks will be said after I watch your full video
How bout... Standard. Bo3. Like Mister Garfield intended. Yeesh... had to go play PTCGO for a week it was so bad. :v ... 10/10, would watch and gripe along with again. Cathartic af. Thanks. :3
Look at how innocent this video is, no Oko, no Uro, no companions. It really puts perspective on things. We may think now that magic is in ruin, but it could be so much worse. This might've been the most uplifting video I have seen. It gives me hope. You probably didn't mean for it to give me this hope in such a way professor. But thank you, not only for this, but everything else you do for this community.
When I first learned how to play magic, my brothers and I used a format they called "Lunchroom Rules" 40 card deck, no sideboard, and on your first turn you play all the lands in your hand, but you only get 1 land drop after your first turn. Games were really fast, and I got to learn how to play fairly quickly while having a lot of fun. We haven't played like that in years, but I think a fast format similar to that would be a fun experiment.
@@danacoleman4007 We played around Unlimited to Ice Age decks at the time, casting costs were a lot higher back then so it kind of evened out actually. Plus none of us played Red either so nobody had haste.
You spent the first 8 minutes of the video just saying that the mythic invitational had pro players and streamers, repeatedly in slightly different ways.
As a yugioh player new to magic I found your channel and have been enjoying it,and the new time rule sounds like what yugioh implemented half a year ago where higher life wins at time.
I think the main reason why wizards used duo standard format is they didn't think direct challenge best of 3 would be out yet by the time the mythic invitational format was announced.
I always try very hard to offer criticism that does no fall into a territory of blind, emotional complaining. I try to support my claims with evidence, so that even if you disagree you can still see where I am coming from. I also hate more than anything the idea of "yucking someone's yum" and try only to make videos like this when they are on an extremely important issue, and not just some personal distaste of mine. I hope very much I succeeded in those goals here.
Tolarian Community College
It shows that the video is unavailable. Did you take it down to change it? I really like your take on MTG.
I've tried coming back to watch the video eight times now, waiting a few minutes each time, and it keeps saying the video is unavailable....
It’s working now.
@@The_E_Paladin It is a youtube bug, have it on some videos and some not.
omg duo stand was sad.....only ozorius and rdw...boring has hell...
"Your life total is a resource, use it as such"
Monored: Yes, use it.
USE IT AND I GET TO BURN WHAT YOU LEAVE BEHIND!
Dimir player who might be holding a force of will in hand: *necropotence down to 1 life*
Mono red: uwu *gut shot*
i feel like unless you are in a situation where you either find a specific card or die, you would not put yourself below 4 against any red deck, let alone mono-red.
@@alecazam6755 it occured to me : why would a deck that runs normal red Mana run gut shot over Shock or Lightning Bolt? It saw use is non-red decks because phyrexian Mana OP
2 life is cheaper than one mana, sure, but is a 1 damage non-permanent worth the card slot over Shock or Lightning bolt in the 1 mana cost. the burn deck i have as it stands has 12 burn cards in the 1/2 mana range that can go face (i don't run shock in that deck), i think i would be better served having that slot be a Browbeat or Risk factor, which either lets me reload or chunk my opponents health total. though maybe im missing an archetype that would actually be well served by gut shot
How to play duo standard.
1) Buy the same deck twice
2) Buy the same deck twice
3) ????
4) Wizards profits.
but doesn't arena not have a limitation on the cards you own in your collection
?
@@jaffetchacon5797 You can own at most 4 copies of each card. But you can put 4 copies of the same card in every single deck you make
@@cammuz53 so then you can duplicate the deck and run it twice? It does feel like a more doable format with arena and sb doesnt make a lot of sense either. Id say wish cards can let you grab cards from your second deck.
@@jaffetchacon5797 theoretically yes, but I think that the rules for Duo Standard say the decks must be different. You could still run two very similar decks, with the second one being the same as the first one but with a few different cards
@@cammuz53 Nope, the two decks can just be the same one twice. Quoting from Marshall Sutcliffe: " They can submit the same exact lists" magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/competitive-gaming/duo-standard-and-mythic-invitational-2019-03-26
There are many ways to play magic the gathering, but there is only one way to say "Many Magic the Gathering players"
Many Magic the Gathering players read this phrase and hear it in the same way in their heads ^^
Many Magic: the gathering players ask the question, "Why is it that the Professor's voice helps me sleep at night?"
Many magic: the gathering players asks: why do I say "many magic: the gathering players asks" this way?
Many Magic the Gathering players play Magic the Gathering in many ways.
@@sebastianortega1938 we need an abreviation "MMTGP" that simply refers to how The professor says "Many Magic... Players"
Galaxy Brain: wizards purposefully chose an unbalanced luck-based format so that the streamers could compete with the pros.
Well the "pros" can't cheat so they're already at a disadvantage on arena.
@@northernlad4486 your not wrong
@@northernlad4486could you elaborate? Honest question, how do they cheat?
@@thepants1450 they will shuffle your cards and watch which card is going on top. They will shuffle their own cards and assess land distribution, put certain cards on top. Sleight of hand to put cards on top. Draw extra cards, timing fudges, sneaking extra land into play, not manage their life total honestly. Arrange their cards in a specific order, then pile shuffle in a way that ensures an exact and predetermined draw order. And countless other ways of cheating.
@@thepants1450 you can look up paper magic tournaments and, at the highest levels, there's almost always somebody getting caught cheating. They cheat in a variety of ways by intentionally missing triggers, misrepresenting the board state, putting cards back into their hand that should never be there, etc. Etc.
In my experience, the best format is, always has been, and always will be "whatever format your friends are playing".
"But only if they're playing EDH. Otherwise, find new friends."
@@futureboy314 I'm sure all your past non EDH playing friends were *soooo* sad to see you go... ;-)
Best format to me was "The Stack" - big ol' stack of singleton junk rares in the middle with a shared draw and graveyard. Play any card in your hand face down as a "land", and there you go. The rares are bad, but tend to have a lot of effects, which makes games interesting really quick.
@@dracodominus2800 I was only kidding. I don't have any friends.
@@KingBobXVI that sounds ridiculous and awful, and I love everything about it
Well Prof, it has been said that “Magic the Gathering is the best game made by the worst company”
You've never had to deal wit games workshop I see.
@@DaDunge Don't say this name again or you'll summon a devil. (also, Ea exists soooooooo)
Ill one plus this, I bet none of you never had to work or deal with Konami???
Psilord87 was gonna say Konami myself XD
What about Komoney
When they first announced that the format was gonna be duo standard someone (I think SaffronOlive) on Twitter described it as "A solution to a problem that was already solved". Reflecting on that post invitational that rings very true lmao
Very true. In fact, Hearthstone is going through growing pains in solving this very problem for themselves. And their solutions are awkward because they're trying to avoid just copying the one that's proven to work the best, the one MTG already discovered decades ago.
word of advise Wizard: If "gaming" history has taught us anything, do not try to mimic Blizzard. So many company tries to mimic WOW and they all fail. What you need to do is to be your own beast and stay true to yourself. Only that will give you a fight chance.
This advice aged like fine wine... don't ever try to mimic Blizzard.
@@AgusSkywalker ... And this is what they exactly do in 2023.
I wouldn't normally respond to a comment this old, but how do you feel about the "be your own beast and stay true to yourself" part now that they've a) done the exact opposite, and b) raked in record profits from doing so? I'm now officially an ex-player because I hate what they did to my game, and it'll never be fun to play again. What about you?
Competing in the Mythic Invitational was one of the highlights of my life really, the atmosphere was incredible and there was a real sense of Magic being propelled to the forefront, we had the strongest presence at PAX & the two worlds of pro & community colliding and hanging out was such a joy.
I think the format is terrible, and it's unlikely we'll see it again in my opinion, but I think WOTC didn't help themselves with the choices of feature matches at times. There were unique decks there, but often the feature match would be yet another Esper/Red v Esper/Red mirror.
A prime example of this is I believe Sjow v Savjz was featured over myself & Reid Duke, so viewers got another Esper mirror instead of Grixis Midrange v Golgari Explore. I think Duo Standard could probably put forth an entertaining tournament to watch, but no action was taken to not feature the same problematic matchups coverage wise again and again.
Or you know tournaments could just use bo3 with sideboards haha.
Caught your game at PAX, but I couldn't agree more. Once I saw a couple of the games I figured I pretty much saw them all.
Hopefully we'll be able to see your matches one day! Hope they give you the footage like you discussed in your Invitational vlog.
also - didn't you say in your video that the decks were chosen for you for the first match? The Prof says you get to choose but I seem to remember you saying otherwise.
You should've used priest of the forgotten gods in your golgari, smh
@@jamesbygames5336 she's my waifu
Mtg is already prohibitively expensive for most formats, the idea of needing two decks is ridiculous.
So is having about 3432438 mono-red decks.
@@resdraon
Every arena player ever
Yes and no. Paper magic very much so. I think they were hoping that the wild cards being able to turn into any needed card would be enough to allow any desired cards to come in, underestimating the strain that can put on players who don't put that much money into the game. It depends on the deck you use. A standard pauper player probably wouldn't be very inhibited by cost, but a deck that runs 12 shock lands plus 20 other rares and 8 mythics is going to be a pain to make, especially if you have two different lists that do that
It's not cheap, but it wont financially ruin you will it?
@@Ianthe22 It would probably cost a couple hundred dollars. Seems a bit excessive for a bunch of .png files, especially for a tournament that you were personally invited to participate in.
You nailed it with the whole “being ashamed of magic” thing. The game has always been great and they should show confidence in it
The game is good, would be great if they designed a new way to implement mana because the whole, "ahh... Well that could have been a fun game, if I'd drawn a damn land!", situation really does drag the game down. There's a difference between not performing so well due to luck, and physically not being able to play the bloody game because you weren't lucky enough to draw the very thing that makes the game function.
Greg The Veggieburger land flood/screw is really the only major luck based element of the game. That, and obviously drawing from a set of 60 different cards (but deck building comes into play there to minimize the luck of top decking)
But tbh, compared to hearthstone (the most popular tcg game) magic is so much less luck based it’s not even funny.
It’s impossible to create a card game wholly based on skill; but magic is the closest it gets. And really , from my experience running good decks, mana screw/flood comes into account like maybe 1/8 games. It’s not that huge of a deal
@@gregtheveggieburger9543 thats part of the beauty of Magic. The game doesnt care about you. It doesnt hold your hand. Put too few lands in the deck and you will get mana screwed more. Its hard to see from an individual perspective, but sometimes you get mana screwed or mana flooded and it sucks. But, this Also happens to your opponent as well. So it balances out. Its another chance to show your play skill by switching up your style as necessary. Ie if you are light on mana, maybe you change to playing defensively and hold out until your mana comes.
@@gregtheveggieburger9543 yup, mana screw/flood is the only objectively bad thing in magic
@@gregtheveggieburger9543 statistically mana screw and flooding is extremely unlikely if the deck is correctly built, it absolutely contains a chance that you have a rough game but the biggest issue with mana is people being greedy and not learning how to pick the right number of mana for their deck costs
I thought the worst Format was Banding...
*Whisper, Whisper.*
Wait, Banding wasn't a Format? It was a Mechanic?
How does Banding work again...?
Oh come on. Its simple! Banding is.... Well its...it works like........ Judge?!?!?!?
Wasnt banding this weird spinoff they tried to shove down our throats disguised as a magic set?
Ah yes, reverse menace
No no no. That was horsemanship. Banding was.............. Um............ I........ Yes you're right.
Wait, wasn't banding like a text-based RPG video game they made back in the 90's?
This reminds me of a concept I came up with at my last gaming night. Where say you have four players, and each one of them brings anywhere between 2-5 decks with them, depending on how long you want this to go.
Basically as soon as you go down to zero and are out, you pull out your next deck and when your turn comes around again you play that instead of just being out. I think it would be an interesting mix up of the game.
Obviously you'd have to have mostly different decks. And if you don't want the game to go on forever you'd keep it to 2-3 decks per person, but it could be fun.
Neverending commander night
Introducing Duo Baseball! Each MLB team must now sign on TWO complete rosters of multimillion-dollar-contract players and coaches. In the first three innings you field one roster, in the second three you field the second, and if you make it to the last three innings you get to choose which roster to play!
You just invented Blernsball
ua-cam.com/video/GpTPm1R4_AM/v-deo.html
I get it now. It's not about putting two decks together, it's about the pay to win factor. It's hard to put two together because everyone wants the expensive cards. Glad I understand now.
You overestimate the cost of decks in arena. With optimal distribution of resources and regular play you can literally get all the competitive decks with less than 200$.
Considering how much they paid for simple participation, participants should be able to afford it without any problem.
Andrey Protas care to site sources or state where you found these facts? I don’t mind spending money on arena to be fair I’ve spent somewhere north of $400 and have most competitive decks but friends and streamers asked about $ also seem to say that they have spent well over $200
@@Da5kone001 Well, it's based on my personal experience. I'm F2P player, and I have 95+% of cards from both RNA and GRN and most crucial rares from older sets. If I spent 50$ on each of the older sets, I would likely get enough WCs to get all the rares from them I'm missing.
And I didn't even play optimally, e.g. I skipped days and even weeks of gameplay when I wasn't in the mood to play.
Basically, if you play every day, you will get most cards from the set by the time new set comes out.
I would still love to see that "best magic format" video going over the uniqueness and appeal of every format.
Hearthstone is making format with sideboards. while MTG is trying to make one without? MFW copying goes all the way to swapping properties.
Hearthstone with SB's would be pretty cool
Woah, where did blizzard say this?
@@Ensivion The new tournament format, where you bring a few version of one deck is functionally side board
The new competitive format for hearthstone is called specialist. You bring a main deck and secondary and tertiary deck. You can change up to 5 cards from the main deck.
1:00 "The best format in Magic is the one you enjoy the most"
Woah....
Amecareth Qc he ain't wrong.
My questions for Wizards is this.
Were the bizarre interactions with sideboards brought on by use the use of Mastermind's Acquisition, for example grabbing Clear the Mind to prevent decking in the Esper Mirror, really less convoluted and difficult to explain than sideboarding? The coverage team had to discuss these weird adaptations and interactions many, many times. They also had to explain the intricacies of how matchups worked in duo standard...etc. This is not even taking into account the insane consistency with which Esper, Red aggro and White aggro appeared on-screen.
This was a missed opportunity for what marketing professionals refer to as "training your customer". Customers may not see the value proposition of your product because they do not understand it, not because it is inferior to another offering. If the coverage team had been able to use the time and energy they expended to explain the weird corner cases of this untested format to explain sideboarding, the huge audience they were essentially guaranteed by the event hype could have been shown why sideboarding is great and made the concept less daunting to new players.
Imagine setting up a between-game look at each player sideboarding. Rather than the simultaneous sideboarding we get in standard arena, we could have set it up so that each player sideboards individually on camera. Great magic minds like Paul Cheon could then explain to the audience why the player currently sideboarding is taking out what they are taking out and why they are bringing in what they are bringing in. Best of 3 standard occasionally has convoluted transformational sideboard plans, but for the most part it boils down to easy-to-understand stuff like "Shock is coming out against this control opponent because they don't have creatures to kill. The player is bringing in Duress because it is more effective against decks that don't play creatures." Boom. It's really that simple.
Rather than defaulting to best of 1 because it's easier to understand, take these opportunities to introduce players to the sideboarding concept. I came back to Magic after a long absence after Arena came out, and I was never more than a kitchen table player before that. I started out jamming mono red in Bo1 because sideboarding scared me. When I finally dipped my toes in, copying the mono black t2 zombie list that was running around at the time, I used a sideboard guide for training wheels. I was delighted to find that post-board I could actually put up a fight against Grixis Midrange, a fairly hopeless game 1 matchup. I never looked back, and I suspect that many Arena players who haven't yet taken the plunge yet wouldn't look back either.
Prof said it best. Don't dilute your product, take advantage of possible teaching moments to demonstrate why its great. People are migrating to magic from other games for a reason, let's stay true to that reason, at least in professional, tournament level magic.
I think this format was purely born out of them not having the challenge feature not at 100% so they came up with duo standard as a way for them to still play best of three without there being room for cheating while they had their whole collection open while editing decks for side boarding. A X player cheated scandal is much more harmful to the community than a watered down format.
Honestly, I have to agree completely. Something about Arena has always bugged me and it really feels like WOTC is shying away from the things that make Magic Magic. Which at the end of the day isn't a problem with the Arena platform itself, but how they're trying to "fix" things that don't need to be fixed. I'd love to see WOTC go back to being proud of the ways in which it's different from other things and lean into the parts of Magic that have kept it going for the last 25 years.
What sideboard guide did you use?
There is a difference between offering a good product and something fun to watch. Duo Standard was (at least for me) way more fun to watch, and held my attention all weekend.
There are constantly people playing BO1 complaining that X deck is unfair, they just concede as soon as they see it's that deck, etc.
Sideboarding solves that issue for the most part. You lose your game 1 and then you sideboard to have a chance against that deck that you can't deal with in your initial 60. And if something truly busted comes along and represents 80% of the decks played even in a Bo3 format with sideboards? You can safely bet that something in that deck will be banned.
Unless you're playing Hollow One in Modern, then you know you're safe because no matter how busted Faithless Looting is they'll never ban it when they could keep that spot on the banlist reserved for Stoneforge Mystic.
Remember to keep Stoneforge Mystic banned in Modern and also
WOW.
FUCK.
TRON.
Prof, 'smörgåsborg' directly translates to 'sandwich fortress'. I was about to critique you on your Swedish, but I think you just felt that a sandwich table (smörgåsbord) was too small to fit all formats. I applaud your inventive use of the Swedish language!
I don't think anyone in native English speaking countries can pronounce it properly. I know my pronunciation for it is all over the place.
It's not the simplest of words, and it has our strange extra letters. We also pronounce most vowels differently (also, Y is a vowel, dammit), and our j's don't start with a d. I'm not surprised people have a hard time with singular Swedish words, completely removed from the rest of the language. In fact, I'd say it's more of an English word than a Swedish word these days. I haven't heard anyone use the word smörgåsbord in Sweden for years, and I haven't seen an actual smörgåsbord in more than a decade. But I thought it was pretty funny that the thing he actually said was still a word in Swedish.
In the US, and probably other English speaking countries, we just use smorgasbord to mean a large selection in front of you. like a food buffet or a large selection of cards that you can pick from
Holiday dinner with family and a lot of food to select from can be called a smorgasbord
To be fair, the only reason I know Borg means fortress is because the TRPG Mörk Borg.
I laughed so hard by imaging a snow-covered fortress on top of a snowy and steep mountain but built up with sandwiches rather than stones
XD
"The one you enjoy the most"
Thank you, professor
One of the reasons of heartstone's long term decline is the amount of rng. I can't believe they would want to imitate that especially now woth the success of arena.
Prof, i got to hand it to you for putting my thoughts and feelings so eloquently into words. While I enjoyed the invitational, I kept getting the feeling I was watching 'magic lite'. I don't want magic lite, I want magic
“Do you hope we get another invitational next year?”
Such an innocent question at the time but hearing that at the end kinda stung
The best format in Magic is opening booster packs.
@@vegas_party_animal7737 in my LGS if u pulled a foil tree in you box you would get a refund
Maaaa! I found the shady salesman, don't answer the door next time the bell ring okaaay?
You are quite engaging, feels like you are in the same room. Subscribed.
Teferi and red agro and white agro decks took down the video
Teferi put it 3rd from the top of videos he was uploading to UA-cam.
What about Boros agro with a focus on Mentor? :P
I am here to blame simic nexus of fate decks, they are just not passing the turn to The professor.
To be honest, I'm bad at this game as is, my co worker beats me constantly. Duo Standard wouldn't help me "get good" lol
Yeah... this format would work fine for some other card games, but for MTG, where decks are often built hyper specific, this becomes kind of chaotic...
I feel sorry for players in this tourney.
I am a die hard commander player. I play nothing else. To anyone who plays a different format:
Your format is amazing! It is as cool as you are!
Dude, no need to insult draft so much.
I'd play commander if I could, but I only have a few hundred cards. Only 3 of those are legendary, so I don't have many options
@@jacobcain9008 If you are interested in starting, I'd recommend going on tappedout.com and using their filtered deck search function. You can find a deck that is super cheap (20-30 bucks) that is still good and playtest it for free to get the hang of it. Either that, or you can find decks built around the Legenedarys you have an be inspired to fill out your own version. You can get a hold of all the cards you dont have through cardkingdom.com for a good price. And dont be concerned about the large price tags that show up on decks. While the decks can get pricey quick (100 card singleton does that, lol), it's easy to cut costs by using basic lands and simple duals. Any deck you find online can probably be cut down to 50 bucks and still keep the theme and style intact. Whether or not you expand to commander, keep having fun playing magic, my friend.
@@jacobcain9008 if you are interested in commander please reach out to your friends who also play commander. Many of us would gladly help you build a starting budget deck by donating you cards that would be relevant to one of your legendary creature's gameplan. Else, there are literally thousands of lists where a solid commander deck can be purchased for as low as $17 and is still very fun to play. Lastly, the precon decks are always a solid option for those looking to enter the format, and with a little tuning they can prove to be very powerful out of the box.
@@grxberserker6135 Hahah, thanks! Sadly though I have a single friend who will play MTG, and he prefers Yu-Gi-Oh. I'll stick to watching commander content for now.
Also getting a “video is unavailable” error
I'm getting this here and on GLHF's new video today. I'm in Canada. Maybe there is some new youtube 'feature' blocking international?
I just now got to watch this video.
Back for me too
I like the idea of invitational tournaments having weird one off formats, especially if the invitees are not there based on pure competitive merit. My only issue with it was putting such a huge money prize on the line for pure spectacle. Save that for true competitive events in the traditional tournament formats, so we can believe the winners earned the prize (mostly) by skill and dedication.
"When looking at different formats, we're trying to balance several levers."
Because clearly they don't already have a format that does that. Nope, none at all, they needed a new one. Regular old Magic in *no way* fills that criteria. /sarc
To be completely honest, it doesn't. It's far from perfect in many ways, that's why they are constantly trying to improve it, introducing new mulligan rule, for example.
They should also find a way to address going first vs going 2nd problem, since going first in game one generates quite significant unfair advantage.
Duo Standard obviously didn't solve any of those problems, but at least it tried to solve some of them (at least opening hand algorithm eliminated situations where you have to mulligan to 4, because you got 0 lands 3 times in a row).
@@Derael imo if you mulligan more than once, chances are you've already lost.
@@InsanoRider777 Well, that's exactly the problem with BO3 I mentioned. It almost never happens to me in BO1. I still need to deal with manaflood, but at least I can cast my 1 and 2 drops 99% of the time.
Also I still won quite a few games where I mulliganed to 4 cards, but that's more of an exception than the rule.
There are a bunch of other minor problems, Nexus of Fate existence is one of them.
You don't want to show new players games involving this card, believe me.
I didn’t know in the US the life total rule wasn’t used. Here in Costa Rica life total to determine a winner after time, turns had run out is the standard way for both casual and competitive play
Sure, the rulebook always included that, but How do you manage to get in such situations? The tournament rules usually suggest you play Swiss where you can just draw, or Top 8 KO, where you don't run out of time.
WotC, if you ever force your players to play dual standard in magic the gathering paper tournament, a lot of your players will quit this game.
There is no point in dual standard on paper. It was only chosen because it resembles MTGA BO1 format.
Most MTGA players don't really care about paper magic.
Duo could be an interesting draft format, draft 5 packs and build 2 decks
With no sideboard? :/ I doubt it would be interesting. It's like trying to build a 60 cards deck in draft.. In draft the sideboard is really important, and even with 45 cards (3 packs) you can do a new deck using only your sideboard between two games.
Draft by itself isn't an interesting format
@@theofftaskforce6546 Except to all the people who think draft is an interesting format.
@@spooplegeist Yeah. But even that's kinda fading out.
@@theofftaskforce6546 is it though? I have no idea what coverage is like anymore, or what people like watching. I stopped being able to follow coverage around the time they disbanded the pro tour in like 2018.
I know most of my friends and I enjoy watching draft more than standard, but that could also be due to the fact that standard has sucked for the past couple years.
Here here, Prof!
Edit: As a Commander player primarily, this was a great event! But. It totally threw me off when they switched decks mid game. For them to not have a sideboard I think further cements unintentionally the idea that one specific deck is the only way to win. Side boarding shows new players that even when I had a disadvantage, there is a way to come back with the deck that you were already playing and even come back to win. Now I think some people will just look at these decks and think that there is only one deck to build to win
That's something strange and paradoxical. While the professor is burning down the Wizards for what he thinks is their mistakes all I can see is how this man loves Magic and cares for it!
We need some kind of lifegain stax deck to abuse this time out rule. So instead of reducing the life of your opponent to 0, you focus on gaining life and prolonging the game.
MonoWhite Prison ft. Ajani's Pridemate and the Gang
Nah just do Bant Turbo Fog with life gain.
Drag the game out until you win.
iKonic Flow Pridemate is such a bullshit card.
This is kinda my thing: "Don't kill, don't die." Blue players can end up milling themselves to death with draw spells. Watch for tilting.
Hyper Cancer 3 😁😁😁😁
I had read about this on reddit and my boyfriend, who played MTG in the past, tried to explain to me (new player) why this was such a problem, but I couldn't understand very well, having never played in a tournament. But you explained it very well, thank you, Professor!
Why make such a ridiculous format!? The traditional standard has always been a strong and fun format as well as being the backbone of the game.
Duo Standard should just be called best-of-one with two decks.
@grim triX Yep and this will mean a drop in deck variety because now people will have to build decks that have an answer to everything at once. Welcome cheese and cookie cutter decks :)
I just enjoy sideboarding. Call me old fashioned. I don't enjoy the deck restrictions best-of-one puts in place. Oh, you didn't build your deck to have this answer to this one deck? Guess your out of luck. But it's for like every deck in the format
@@Zspear234 Well, it literally is, also the name is slightly misleading. Since BO1 is standard arena format, so BO1 with 2 decks is Duo Standard. Someone just has a horrible naming sense, that's not the same Standard we know.
@@Vessarian I disagree. I play Jeskai control in BO1, and I had 67% winrate in CEs with that deck, which is roughly on par with all T1 decks. You can build ton of good decks in BO1 that don't see much play in BO3 because Nexus exists.
People just missed their opportunity, since everyone decided to be boring and just go with monored, instead of thinking about a good deck themselves.
this guy is such a nerd for magic lol, i love it. You can hear the enthusiasm in his voice. Subbed.
I'd like to note that the problem wasn't using an all new format;
the Magic Invitationals were similarly centered around experimental formats.
Duo Standard, however was not thought through so well.
Asking for two separate standard decks was too much.
Did they even test it? I think not!
0:08 I'd still want that video to be made
I can't watch this because it's "Video Unavailable" but I can imagine it's great and talks about my outstanding Rock, Paper, Scissors performance at the mythic invitational and how it was at least best of three 🤔 I'll shut up, Just Take My Like!
Cube is one of my favorite formats. I love it that I can play my favorite cards that are not played anywhere else. Also I am able to play draft matter cards that I own and love. Another cool thing is I can had custom cards to my cube.. I also sometimes add planechase making it more chaotic than a normal draft but at a lower power level
I recommend commander for the next mythic championship personally... although it would be the longest event ever.
how the hell do they still not have a spectator mode
All i want to watch is a faithful recreation of paper magic on arena. Bo3 sideboarding it all goes together to make the game great.
Chess clocks would work too!
If time constraints are and issue i would be willing to sacrifice earlier rounds to bo1 if it meant when we got to the later matches it became a true display of the understanding of mtg. Maybe that would cause deckbuilding issues but im certain its better than duo standard.
My first competitive rel event the life total tiebreaker rule actually came up.
It was a tournament grinder the night before GP Ottawa, single elimination khans sealed. Last round they ran out of time and were closing the venue.
I remember watching one table in the process of sideboarding for game 3. A player sided into as many duo lands as possible, and mulled to 3 cards before playing a dismal backwater, gaining one life, and winning the series.
Pauper pro tour (I’m not calling it a mythic championship, that’s dumb) please
That would be cool
It would be double dumb if it was pauper, because you wouldn’t be able to play any mythics.
Snazzeo The only problem with Pauper becoming popular is that the card prices will then go up, so sssshhhhh
What if, instead of two decks per player, there was only one deck? This would alleviate the need to purchase multiple decks. And rather than randomly selecting the first deck to be played, they just played the single deck? It's much more straightforward. And it would still be a best of 3 match, but they could alter their deck's contents between games to better adapt to their opponent's strategy? I think this is what really elevates my suggestion; rather than decks simply playing out their strategy, players use their meta knowledge and understanding of their opponent's play to change their deck. This would enable an incredibly high skill ceiling for competitive Magic, even if each deck only had access to 15 or so additional cards.
A shame no such format exists, though.
love your comment. it will probably fly right over the heads of the idiots duo format was meant to court though :)
trashing on hearthstone
midrole ad for new hearthstone set
Stopped playing Heartstone years ago because it's bad development. Recently started playing Magic and love the complexity and the ability to play in real life. The only thing which could make me stop playing Magic now I think is to turn in to Heartstone
Bad development how?
The new expansions got you into a rut?
All this is due to the fact WOTC took the decision not to get sideboarding programmed into Arena early in it's inception.
Tom Padget Best of 3 with sideboarding was available on Arena prior to this event. It was already programmed in and worked properly.
@@papernes Yeah after posting this comment my friend told me that. Why didn't they use it for esports then? Because they want it to resemble Best of 1 as that is how most people play Arena??
@@ashadeofnight Because they want it to resemble Hearthstone. The corporate overlords don't want to make a great game, nor do they understand how to. They are only concerned with making money, and when they see another game is profitable, their only thought is "why isn't our game more like that?" And this, capitalism crushes creativity and individuality in its endless, short-sighted lust for personal gain.
That or everyone at WotC is literally retarded.
I'm most intrigued by the concept of the pros and cons of having 2 different decks. I used to play the Star Wars CCG when I was a kid, in which you ALWAYS had two decks, dark side and light side, and each game would pit two decks of opposing sides against each other. This isn't an exact 1:1 correlation, obviously, since that game was designed with this 'format' baked into the game design itself instead of tacked on a quarter-century in, but I'd be interested in seeing what a sort of 'fixed' duo standard might look like.
I disagree with you, professor! The viewership numbers WOULD NOT HAVE BEEN THE EXACT SAME if they played a more traditional best of three standard format. The numbers WOULD HAVE BEEN HIGHER. I tuned out the moment LSV was eliminated by a series of "coin flips". I realized "what's the point?" of watching if the tournament was not going to showcase the best Magic had to offer and, therefore, decided not to watch. I am sure other people did the same.
You’re a hardcore fan though. Most fans of anything are casual.
Hello Prof., I was an old magic grinder back in the day and I just found your channel a couple months ago when you put up an analysis video about Legends of Runeterra.
Runeterra is my go-to game atm but if I were ever to come back to magic fulltime I would hope that the major tournaments are best of 3 Swiss with sideboard. I personally think they came up with this format to present familiarity with how Hearthstone does tournaments which is fine for a game that relies on RNG and has limited player interaction. It just doesn't translate well to a game as nuanced as MtG.
Everytime he says, "many Magic the Gathering Players," it sounds prerecorded
Would a Warmachine style two list format work?
Bring two decks. You and your opponent can read each others lists, and choose the deck you want to play in secret.
I think it was the same problem as Brawl, 2 teams working without comunication.
The mythic invitational was announced before the patch with Bo3 ranked ladder and Bo3 direct matches was released.
What does this mean? That e-sport/marketing team came up with the format thinking the the Bo3 modes weren't going to be online and created a format that used Bo1.
Why? Something important to note is that the mythic invitational was market as "everyone can be a pro on Arena" with the top 8 of the ladder being invited (wich is also quite bad but is what they have to use since they don't have tournament modes like MTGO). This meant that whatever format they used HAD to be already implemented on Arena already.
Of course this could have been prevented if the e-sport team simply comunicated with the dev team asked if they were going to have Bo3 ready by that time.
We used to play what we called unlimited in school where there was no ban list, decks between 60-100 cards, limit of 3 copies unless legendary/planeswalkers where you can have one copy. Fairly similar rules to standard/limited otherwise.
“No sideboarding”
Y I K E S
As a Judge on the topic of timed single/double elimination matches:
It's not as uncommon as you might think, I've had to enforce this rule during 2018 and 2017. The Nationals Last Chance Qualifier and Trials were being held in this mode (although one of them changed for 2018, iirc).
We announced the "Sudden Death" rule, as we called it, during each flight, and players always had some funny reactions to it.
First time I ever heard the word "Smorgasborg". Is that an all-you-can-eat Startrek Borg restaurant?
It’s a Swedish meal (Smörgås = sandwich)
@@hugoeriksson6524 I know. I'm Swedish. My reaction was that it was pronounced SmorgasborG and not SmorgasborD. :D
And it's not really a meal. Smörgåsbord refers to plenty of options, it could be a buffet, but it could also be a lot of in-game options.
sort off, smorgasbord (or smörgåsbord, how it's spelled in sweden) means sandwich table. It's more off a appetizer table. you usually see them on big family event (holidays like easter) or on big other events like churchs etc. there is no rule on what you can have on the table. but it's to have fruits, small sandwiches, ham and chess. and something called smörgåstårta (means sandwich cake) which is a shrimp cake.
Edit: just for fun, smörgås is based on the word smör (butter) and gås (which is goose). so sandwich in swedish if you translate it 100% means butter goose
Subsistence is futile.
I've been rewatching your old videos recently (mainly your podcasts while playing EDH on Moto) and youtube recommended this one. I assumed it was about Alchemy before looking at the release date
I just want the MTGO's timer implemented in Arena.
I understand that MTGO's timer isn't as dynamic as the current one, and the game would be harder to get into, having a slow opponent may bore you out of it. But at least I would like it to be the timer in Traditional (best of three), so that the noobies can get hooked into the game, but the current paper and mtgo players can have a format where you can take your time in a convoluted and difficult decision. The one we have at the moment just makes it so I can't think straight while it is ticking down.
Also I think that Swiss with top8 Best-of-three with mtgo's timer (and with sideboard, of course) would be the right format to have an event on Arena, so that we can watch high skill and thoughtful gameplay.
Hey, I'm in this video at 3:00 in the camera behind Cedric on the far-right :D . Live show was amazing. Definitely the highlight of PAX for me. Edit: Also, as for Duo Standard, I think the point they were going for was to maximize the amount of time viewers are watching games getting played. Sideboarding can be interesting to new players so long as it's quick and explained in simple terms, as is usually the case.
its like EA designed the format... burn it with fire. right now.
If EA created this, it would have an entry fee and a special Sidebouard DLC for only 99,99$
Agreed. Also, Wizards please show Pauper more love . I really like the idea of Wizards producing a pauper deck like you said in other video
0:35 He did it! He said the thing!
I've seen one example of a round of time elimination rounds - it was during the european modern masters 2 GP (or better said in a "side" event before the actual GP)
The day before the actual GP started there were sealed mini tournaments which allowed you to get a bye if I remember correctly. The tournament was single elimination and the judge had to keep the games inside a certain timeframe to ensure it would finish in time.
One game was decided in the last turn of extra turns making the match 1:1. The judge informed both players (befoire sideboarding) that lifetotal will decide the match after 3 rounds played in the 3rd game if I remember correctly (BTW the game was decided by a vapor snag returning an 1 mana 1/1 which attacked on the last turn etching out a 1 life advantage)
Thank god, I thought you were going to say Brawl.
Me too XD far too many people talking shit about it for no reason was one of the reasons it failed I believe, really don't need more of those
Same 😂
Duo standard sounds awesome! It would be great to break out another deck at FNM but because it's a "tournament" I gotta sit and play the same one for four hours. My decks are usually budget price range but it would be really unfair to players with less money though. When I sit down across a 16 year old kid I always think about how cool it would be if wizards gave out high powered promos to kids that get good grades. The video store where I grew up would give you a free rental for every A on your report card, Was nice.
A great review of a shitty format. Thanks prof!
Nice pfp
The argument I heard from some WotC employees is that Arena ranked is best of one, and a lot of new players are coming to Arena and playing best of one, so they were trying to come up with a way to include best of one in a tournament setting. I don't think Duo Standard is it. And hopefully there will eventually be rankings in best of three as well.
I think it would be fun and amazing if they did a Commander invitational Pro tour-
My video was interrupted halfway through by an ad for Hearthstone, RIGHT as you were telling Wizards to stop making their game look/seem like Hearthstone. That's just priceless.
I couldn't get through the second's day broadcast. It only made my dislike for esper control grow more.
And it encouraged everyone in Arena to play esper control this week. Made me switch to draft after I finished my dailies. It's a good deck but not when everyone is playing it.
Esper control is way more healthy than mono red. Control actually takes brains to play.
@@pipsdontlie3031 I'm speaking as a Control player here where I say that is incredibly immature and not remotely accurate. I've played with and tested mono-red aggro and burn decks, various flavors of midrange, combo decks, and I'll say that they all take brains to play. An aggressive red deck looks simpler because it has a proactive game plan, but that doesn't mean it requires less thought than Control, just that the lines of play are OFTEN clearer. Don't believe me? Try watching the coverage of PT Fate Reforged, where Lee Shi Tian and Seth Manfield made Top 8 with burn lists, and had to carefully manage their resources (a standout being Tian facing off against an Abzan player with Kitchen Finks in his deck to really disrupt the burn plan).
@@maileesaeya3614 I've played much aggro, and the closest thing that aggro get's to big thonk plays is having to play against a control deck. Otherwise you jsut slam down everything you can.
If lines of play are clearer, it is simpler to play. I'm not insulting the archetype, but any format without control to counter aggro is not the format I want to be in, because aggro mirror matches are basically just a coin flip and take no thought. This isn't entirely true for every aggro deck of course, but especially for mono red, that's just what the deck is.
Then again, I'm a control player generally so of course I'm a bit biased, and obviously I don't disregard players who play aggro decks or even think that control always requires the most amount of thought, but it is pretty naive or disingenuous to imply that the amount of thought that goes into holding back some attackers because they might have settle in hand, vs having to evaluate if you should counter the threat or wait for a sweeper to get rid of it because you need removal for their bigger threats and so on. Add that to considerations of cards that WotC has been printing like hot cakes for anti control, because people don't like watching interactive long matches but rather short or slightly less short "flashy" aggro matches. Carnage Tyrant etc.
I'm just not sympathetic that Esper Control is able to beat aggro decks, because I like control and personally feel that most people who don't, don't really want to play magic, they just wanna play a coin flipping simulator with a little extra though into it.
@@pipsdontlie3031 I don't like control or aggro, they are the most unfriendly and not fun decks to play against, I want to be able to actually play my deck when playing magic not die after putting out 2 cards or sit there for 40 minutes watching All my cards go directly into the graveyard.
Although this is a terrible standard format, it could be very fun in a format similar to limited. You use about ten packs and make two decks. Then you play duo standard with those. This is fun because it allows has you make more decks and if you have a preferred color or colors it forces you to get out of your comfort zone.
Duo Standard brings out my worst thoughts about Magic which is the removal of choice. Yeah you can play whatever you want and the players could have chosen different decks, but we saw almost every set of decks being a combo of WW, Mono-Red, and Esper Control. The format and the randomness of what deck you get to play in game 1 was incredibly annoying to watch. Duo Standard forces players to play only certain types of decks and that was extremely disappointing.
Life Totals were used for the first year of the Pro Tour. It was later removed.
What do you mean KBPTL isn't the best format in Magic?
skipped out on this event but i can probably guess how it went. most people played mono red no brain aggro and either drew a good starting hand or just lost. sounds very interesting and fun to watch.
totally agree prof. the tour was a pure coinflip
Turns out no sideboards when i'm just popping into magic arena for some quick fun games is a lot different than no sideboards for a competitive esport event, who could've guessed.
those "cry of the carnarium" draws in esper mirrors. i had to stop watching for a short while but didnt miss out anything - they were staring at each other with 4 creature removal spells doing NOTHING
A strange game.
The only winning move is not to play.
Overflowing insight your opponent ftw.
I’m not a standard player. I’m strictly commander. However when my lgs tried this format out before the mythic invitational and told us the conditions like no sideboarding I immediately thought “yeah this will never be requested by anyone for FNM” and it hasn’t since. It’s just classic standard. Though for next year’s invitational maybe they could do modern or even brawl.
I'm probably alone in this but I like the idea of a two deck format. My preference would be something like double sealed though, or 40 card singleton.
Standard Cardfight Vanguard has been trying a 2 deck format, but instead you have to play different clans, and you have to win with both decks (so once you win, you stop using that deck and try and win with the other one for the rest of the match).
The fact that I can play league of legends without my computer overheating and not MTGA is repugnant. A card game should not take more resources than a MOBA.
Especially a moba with, usually, 10 people simultaneously interacting with each other in real time, whereas mtga is just... you and me.
League doesn’t take much to run tbh tho.
@@ziongray7880 My point is that a card game shouldn't be overheating my computer. where a real time game doesn't. There can be steps taken so that the game can be accessible.
Code much?
@ 2:16. Gonna stop here and say I loved the idea of Duo standard, and think it has a great way to grow. More remarks will be said after I watch your full video
How bout... Standard. Bo3. Like Mister Garfield intended. Yeesh... had to go play PTCGO for a week it was so bad. :v
... 10/10, would watch and gripe along with again. Cathartic af. Thanks. :3
Doctor Garfield, be respectful. :p
Look at how innocent this video is, no Oko, no Uro, no companions. It really puts perspective on things. We may think now that magic is in ruin, but it could be so much worse. This might've been the most uplifting video I have seen. It gives me hope. You probably didn't mean for it to give me this hope in such a way professor. But thank you, not only for this, but everything else you do for this community.
I really thought this was gonna be about brawl
Me too and I like brawl
When I first learned how to play magic, my brothers and I used a format they called "Lunchroom Rules"
40 card deck, no sideboard, and on your first turn you play all the lands in your hand, but you only get 1 land drop after your first turn. Games were really fast, and I got to learn how to play fairly quickly while having a lot of fun. We haven't played like that in years, but I think a fast format similar to that would be a fun experiment.
That would probably result in a lot of first turn kills.
@@danacoleman4007 We played around Unlimited to Ice Age decks at the time, casting costs were a lot higher back then so it kind of evened out actually. Plus none of us played Red either so nobody had haste.
You spent the first 8 minutes of the video just saying that the mythic invitational had pro players and streamers, repeatedly in slightly different ways.
As a yugioh player new to magic I found your channel and have been enjoying it,and the new time rule sounds like what yugioh implemented half a year ago where higher life wins at time.
The best format: Commander
The worst format: Not Commander
I think the main reason why wizards used duo standard format is they didn't think direct challenge best of 3 would be out yet by the time the mythic invitational format was announced.