We Predict the Ban List and Foundations | MTGGoldfish Podcast #498

hello everyone and welcome to episode 498 of the MTG old fish podcast I'm Seth probably better know as zff FR Olive and we have the small crew here this week Richard couldn't be here he's uh off in China at the moment but we have with us Crim how's it going this morning GM morning yeah my my dad's off to China you know so so he's out there hanging out and doing things but I'll I'll gladly hold it down for him uh and channel my most I don't know inner magic Boomer energy I can Channel your inner Richard for this podcast yes yeah my in inner Richard uh so today we have uh some interesting topics so we got Mark rosewater's state of design article from the past year going to talk about that a little bit we have a B&R update coming next Monday so we wanted to get into what we think might change a week from today we got some spoilers from foundations some Arena pre-con news and then some fish mail so that's an overview of the cast for today before we jump into it though a reminder that Today's Show is brought to you by card conduit and card conduit is the easiest way to sell your magic cards if you ever get to to the hassles a buy listing you can skip them with card conduit you can use a cur service where you send in as many cards as you want with a bless value of a dollar or more and pay just a 5% fee and if you want to do a bit of work you can use a sorted service where you list and sort your cards in advance and pay just a 2% fee either way you're going to get a detailed Report with the results and a fast payment once your order is processed and you can even get another 10% off by heading over to card conduit.com MTG goldfish card conduit they're the easiest way to sell your magic card so thank you to card conduit for supporting the show and let's talk some magic and let's start with I think let's start with the big topic which for me is the upcoming BNR update we're going to get into the s design in a minute but being our updates coming we've been kind of counting down the days for the past month or so ever since waty did a stream and said pretty much expect changes at the end of the month on August 26 so that's coming up a week from today and I'm curious GM what you're expecting with this BNR so let's just go kind of through the formats let's work back from standard back through the older formats first off standard do we need to change anything in standard you think with this BNR 100% no uh I I think everything in standard right now is looking great so uh let's just let it ride out and not like do anything yet so I agree with you I think standard's in a good spot there's always going to be things that are like Decks that have really good draws or whatever but that's part of like standard I'm curious out because one card that came up in this past week that people suddenly realized is really strong is inkeeper stent it's like magic Twitter realized a week after everyone in YouTube realized that it it was really busted so people are realizing that you could use use iner stent to like instantly ultimate plains walkers and golgary with iner stent is the most played deck in standard right now I even saw some people saying I think this is going to have to be banned it's too strong not that it needs to be banned like next week but do you actually think inkeeper Talent is a card that in its life in standard could actually require a Banning I see I I don't know I don't think so personally uh I felt like it was strong don't get me wrong uh but I I time I've played against on the ladder it's never really been that big a deal uh mostly just because I am waiting for you know like I I I essentially have have to account for it so I do think it's powerful I do think it's something that you have to respect in The Meta uh but just I don't know I mean it doesn't seem that offensive to me what what's bad about it like cuz you are relying on somebody going turn two play in keeper Talent turn four right level it up cuz you need four mana and then turn five you know they'll they'll drop Vasa uh with the the fian uh whatever reduction but I think one thing that people don't know about that fian reduction is that it is going to be doubling it enters it'll double what it enters with and then it loses two counters yeah so I think that technically to choose which way to apply it right and you'll always want to app it the way that gives you the most counters but yeah that is a weird I missed that at first when I when I started playing the deck actually I thought I had to get to six Mana to C frasa but no you can actually do it for five Mana it is good but it is interactable right like there's many windows you have to play it on turn two you have to pay a Mana to level it up to level two then four Mana to get to level three so there's a lot of time in space for you to actually just answer the talent if you need to so I think it's really good and I think it's one of the strongest things you can do in standard but at this point it's hard for me to see it as like a banable card it seems like a good card but it's I don't know haven't seen it dominating the ladder or anything like I play against it on occasion but I get wrecked by monor red or that flinging your monor red deck way more than I lose to in Keeper's Talent the the ratos deck is I I find way more consistent yes right I what's funny here is like because of that I have f i I've uh got a little bit of a tech in the sideboard which is whatever the three Mana angel from uh oh Metropolis Reg something yeah I played against someone that sideboard that didn't against me I'm like why do they have that in their sideboard but is it really good against the the red decks I mean the red decks cuz like if they don't have hard removal and why would they against my blue white or esper control deck right like so if they keep those in it would only be for Metropolis thingy and if they burn it to get rid of it then I've already gained a bunch of Life which means I'm allowed to handle you know the the damage of of the fling and it gives you hex proof right so until they get off the battlefield they can't just like throw their Mouse at your face and combo kill you that actually seems like sweet Tech that like it's probably fine even against normal monor red too just like bring it in to like eat a big attack and gain some life off of it or like be a good blocker H yeah it's it's been solid in that like against that and aggro like you had mentioned that's when I bring it that's the other matchups I bring it in and because it has flying they don't get to be cute with slick shot and try to just swing in um because it can block slick shot easily are you playing uh like caretaker's Talent control are you playing a more traditional like traditional counter spelly drao control deck like I think the the caretaker talent build is the one I've seen the most of control decks like in the last week or so uh I have played both uh I'm trying the one without caretaker's Talent right now uh caretaker's Talent has been very good I have I've thoroughly liked caretaker Talent so far um I right now I'm trying what it like all of it without caretaker's Talent without the uh simulacrum synthesizers I am just playing like Jace and Jace elth to faery and kind of going with the old school just like plains walkers win that's sweet yeah I've I've been thinking about Jace lately cuz that like four or five color control deck has gotten a little bit more popular and when I play against that deck I'm just like man if I ever had Jace I would kill this deck so like just Mill him out so easily so I think like Jace probably not great against like the aggro deck but against the like mid-ring control decks it's such a good finisher I mean it's still decent against the like as long as it's maybe not mono red but if it's like those fling decks giving something minus three minus o is pretty huge I guess that's true like I guess the against mice or decks like that you are kind of shutting down a threat each turn worst case you can cycle it so I guess it's even not that bad against against AER it's not as good as it is against like the control decks where it's just like a Game ending bomb but still fine yeah so okay the the minus three is solid because you're now forcing the aggro deck to add an additional card to the board thus playing more into your board wipe because they're trying to you know play one maybe two things tops yeah keep swinging until you eventually answer both but this forces them now to either a applying a third threat use a pump spell do something juice them of more cards and just plays into your usually your temporary lockdowns and things like that kind of like braided net does for the artifact e control builds where if you can just tap down a creature every turn it kind of forces your opponent to add to their board and then you sunfall them or whatever unstable glyph them and just get them yeah uh all right so I think we're in agreement nothing needs to change in standard right now standard is actually super fun in a really good spot let's go back to Pioneer so Pioneer if you look at the meta right now and this is explore of course on Magic Arena it's a very interesting spot so there's really three decks I think that are in the conversation for this BNR so number one you got a Malia combo which aalia combo has just proven to be really miserable in part because it can win really quickly on turn three and in part because of we've seen the like draw the game Loops that are really awkward when it comes to paper play where like you have these six match or six game matches or whatever because some games just end in a draw when you make aalia indestructible and it's really weird so I think aalia is one of the deck that's uh in the conversation ratos vampires is like 35% of the meta the like vein Ripper off of saurin play so I think that's in the conversation just because it's so heavily played and again another like I guess it's not a turn three kill deck really but it's does do its big thing on turn three right that's the put the main repper into play can you deal with it turn and then the third deck is is it Phoenix which is at Phoenix I don't think it's as bad as either of the other two decks right now but a lot of people been arguing that if you do something about the first two decks is it Phoenix is just going to be the tier zero deck uh because of treasure Crews and the Phoenix plan so I'm curious Grim what do you think about Pioneer do we need changes if so what would you do and what do you think Wizards is going to do next week with Pioneer I mean first off I don't think Wizards going to do anything to Pioneer just because they don't pay attention to it for some odd reason like they just don't do anything to it and they should they should have done it a long time ago uh do a lot of bandings and I will still like I I'll still advocate for nickos getting the axe none all none of that those three decks even have nickos but I think nickos Lotus field those decks are all a problem um Amalia yeah I I could see where where the problem is with Amalia uh I I guess it does combo pretty easily and it can kind of Coco into it as well uh so it does have some kind of explosive turns so I think something might need to go from that just because that's all you're seeing in Pioneer tournaments uh I what was the other deck after that RTO vampire is this other big one like what do what do we do we've been talking about ratos and Pioneer for like years now even before the vampire package was a thing we've always been like how do you if you do want to ban something from ratos what do you even do to ban it maybe it's easier now that you have the saurin vein Ripper plan if you do need to ban something does that need a Banning like it's powerful it's obviously very powerful but does that need a Banning I'm I'm not sure that it does right like I I don't think so ratos has already been good and it's been good for so long that I guess my M maybe I've been condition to like believe that it's fine because I've seen it for so long and ratos has been so dominant in Pioneer um because it has such a critical mass of card of good cards but as of right now I don't know if that combo needs to go it doesn't feel that bad to me in my opinion um the other what was the last one oh yeah Phoenix the last one Phoenix has been here Phoenix has been here since pretty much Pioneer right it's had treasure cus it's had dig through time I don't know I I think it's a power it's obviously a very good deck it's a very solid consistent deck but it also doesn't feel like it needs a Banning like I don't I don't think that just because it's strong something needs to go uh I I it really comes down to how the tournament scene shakes up and there has to be numbers to back that up because if Phoenix wins like four tournaments in a row then that's probably a sign I've seen a lot of Amalia a lot of Amalia winning all over the place so I think that's probably something now you have to probably like sit down and look at the others I think they're fine so I I will say from my perspective I think Amalia very likely to get banned not not just because of its power level but because of the draw the game thing I think Wizards really doesn't like that that like Decks that mess with how tournaments are run I remember this when uh in modern when eggs was really good or sensei's divining top in various formats where cards end up getting banned because Wizards is like this is just making tournaments take too long like it's dragging on rounds we're not able to finish our tournaments and I think aalia kind of has that same issue because of the draw of the game Loop so I expect that aalia will get targeted I would argue that ratos just being like 35 plus% of the meta for me that's enough to Target it with a Banning I personally would just ban saurin and let I think ratos would still be good right like it would go back to where it was before they started playing ve Ripper sauren combo and it was still a tier one deck back before they had those pieces just playing all the good ratos cards so I think ratos would still be fine but it would lose like the turn three combo kill element is it Phoenix ISM what I'm less sure on I I get what people are saying that like there's a risk of these other two decks get hit by Mannings is it Phoenix becomes too good I would personally rather just see wizards be more active in pioner I know a year ago now almost a year ago when they banned oh no last December I'm trying to remember what they banned last December but regardless part of that announcement they said we're going to more actively manage Pioneer it's when they b k it was when they b k out of pioneer and they said we haven't you know been on top of the format very much we're going to be more active we're going to you know keep track of this format more I would rather see them like deal with aalia and maybe some in and then keep an eye on Phoenix see what happens in this new meta and if you need to ban something ban it like next announcement not a year or two from now because I think that's the biggest issue with Pioneer right is they just like wait so long to make changes and that's been like the story of the format really like that we've talked about this back to like inverter combo days and stuff where they just let the helot combo and inverter combo stay at the top of the meta for like 18 months or something and it almost killed Pioneer at that point cuz people just got so tired of playing against it so overall like in some sense I don't even care what they do I just want them to do something I want them to show that they're actually going to like be more active in managing Pioneer whether they make the changes I really want or not just like just show us that you actually care about Pioneer I mean I I also think that I mean just yes to reiterate on some points uh I think that they definitely haven't I don't want to say that they this is directly the downfall in popularity of pioneer but I do think it is a big part of it right like they like you had mentioned uh to really elaborate on that I I think that is why Pioneer was like this really beloved format at the beginning and everyone was super high on it but then like you know it just kind of started to WAN in popularity and I think it just really had to do with how long it took for them to act on the format and I think it'll at this point now I think the damage has been done um I'm hoping they can still Salvage Pioneer it makes me sad because when I think about what Pioneer is now and like the size of the card pool it's almost exactly where Modern was when modern was my like the best format in my favorite format like if you look at right now going back to when Pioneer started it's like 10 11 years worth of cards or something that's what modern was when it first launched going back to 2003 had like 10 years worth of cards so it seems like pioneer should be at absolutely booming like it seems like it's in that sweet spot where Eternal formats are at their best or non-rotating formats but it just hasn't gotten there I think I would also add I think part of it was the pandemic too ended up like hurting it and losing paper play right when it was like starting to like gain in popularity so I think it was a format that got hurt the worst by that but Wizards like management of it also I think plays a a big role but let's move on to Modern so modern uh the big conversation Nadu I don't know how much there is to say about that there's is going to ban natu right GM there's is there any chance next Monday we get like the shuko ban or something silly like that they got to just kill the bird right yeah I I don't see it being a shuko ban uh shuko ban I don't think shuko was a problem until Nadu right no no if they're trying to do all like get all like the the things around the actual problem then then sure but Nadu is the biggest I think offensive the most offensive card for from Modern Horizons 3 but I mean we all kind of knew that so I guess it's nice you know it got to have its time in the Sun for a little bit but like I think all right all right this the meme is done the joke's over we're good let's go ahead and ban this now and it's even it it's even had enough set releases since its release to where people now can just like it can ride off into the sunset yeah yeah we had we had n do summer now we're done with that we can forget it ever happened I think hopefully this is where they learn from the hog Yak Banning and where they tried to ban Bridge from below instead hog act at first and then it was everyone's mad and then they still had to ban hog act so hopefully this is where they learn from that and they I think they will just B NAU I would be very surprised if they try to ban shuko or something if they do oh boy uh next Monday will be a a wild day because people will be very upset what about Beyond Nadu that's the other question so modern is in just like such a such a wild place and because Nadu has been so dominant and it's turned people even like playing the format in over the last couple of months it's hard to know what if anything else needs to change we saw like energy rebalanced on Arena and we've seen Energy's win rates if you look at uh people who just track like Decks that get top eats in tournaments top 32s in tournaments the win rate for energy decks mardu or boros is actually comparable to Nadu like winning 59 61% of the time so the energy decks are really good the one rings in almost 50% of decks now do you think we'll see anything beyond Nadu or is this one of those like we ban Nadu and then we'll re-evaluate next update I think it's going to be uh ban the bird and then let everything else play out because even the next best thing if it if it were like boros energy cuz like I before without Nadu taking over let's just assume then we're looking at boros energy Jess Sky control which is essentially the boros energy package with you know the Jess Skai control elements and I I mean my personal favorite I know I may not I may meme on Modern but the one deck to make me like kind of forget about my my memory on Modern is blue black frog uh that deck is pretty damn cool uh then you'd have like Titan and all these other things right so otherwise I mean it it is as expected modern Horizon 3 block constructed right the yep they there's no let's be realistic you're not going to see a Banning on energy right as a whole I don't think you're going to see that uh they can ban a few key pieces whatever that new bolt is or the new whatever one mana burn spell is but that seems unlikely right so I don't think any any of these decks are offensive enough to where they need a Banning even because they're all essentially mid-range and fair Decks that are you know grinding you out so if that's the worst place that modern can be I think that's fine whereas Nadu breaks the gameplay pattern kind of ruins tournaments and just overall is like the worst thing to watch uh there's just a lot of things that Nadu is doing that's offensive the rest of the decks seem fine to me so I don't know even like what you have frog you have blue black Merk tide you have so many other things and the format looked relatively cool so I I would say yeah it's it's really tough just because natu kind of casts it Shadow over the rest of the format personally I'm still got to ban the One Ring train like The Meta percentage just keeps ticking up and it's like it's not going away we'll talk about it a little bit later when we talk about the state of design article cuz it does come up in there but I am uh I am firmly in the just like ban the One Ring like I think it's inevitable at some point so you might as well do it now the energy stuff is tougher I think that it's very likely that something from energy will need to be banned eventually I also think it's unlikely that they ban something from energy now and I think it's also very tricky to ban because it's not like there's an overpowered card really even what's the best energy card galvanic discharge skoles like amp rptor like none of those are overpowered cards it's kind of that when you put them all together it's actually kind of funny because it's almost like modern is going through what standard went through when kaladesh came out and you have this uninteractive resource system which I guess it's a little more interactable now because the sun cleanser which is seeing a lot of modern play but this uninter actable resources that just when you put all the cards together it's very that's how we ended up with a tune with ether being banned in standard one of the silliest Bannings like I think one of the least powerful cards to ever be banned as a tun ether but that was actually banable just because of the Synergy of energy together so I don't think they're going to do anything about energy now but I do think when you just look at the metag game and you see like boros Energy number two at 10% J Sky energy control number three at 88.2% muu energy which is Boral energy splashing black for like bow Masters or whatever or cthonian nightmare 7. 3% it's very likely the energy is the best archetype once natu is man so maybe that's good that like I do like the energy plays like a fair deck coming from a world where like grief scamming was the big thing into n comboing at least energy it's like it's plain creatures and it's attacking with them and if you look at the decklist it looks like a very fair agroy deck of magic cards so yeah I guess if you got to have a a best deck maybe energy is not the worst best deck to have in a format like modern again right like just like we talked about like a week ago like when a good format had like a good format having like a mid-range or a fair deck at the top that's usually a good sign yeah uh the other format is Legacy we won't go in depth in Legacy because we don't really play Legacy very much but I will say just based on what everyone is saying about Legacy the people I know who play a lot of Legacy that it's kind of in a almost like historically broken place right now because of the grief decks uh the grief dikes in Legacy are on a whole another level than they were in modern even cuz you have all the force of wills and reanimates and in tbes so they're so much more consistent so I think the Legacy Community is convinced that grief's going to get banned and a lot of people think that psychic frog which has actually been a pretty fun card I think in like Timeless and modern might actually just be too good in Legacy because of just like the da is and force of wills and like how the format works so I've seen some people saying that they think psychic frog might actually have to be banned as well but I think at this point grief is pretty much a given to be banned in Legacy but how could they ban such a little guy like frog is so cute it's such a cute little card it is it is funny to play against I I almost don't mind losing to it but it is funny have you ever had the games where like your opponent plays psychic frog and they just like you try to bolt it or something and they just go all in and just like discard their hand and just like YOLO the Frog then lose well sometimes it works but then sometimes I gu yeah that's fair so anyway that's that's the band list update that's coming on Monday let us know what you think what changes do you want to see do we miss anything anything else that should be banned in any of these formats I don't know about vintage I don't think anything needs to be restricted but I haven't played vintage in a minute so if you have any thoughts on this let us know in the comments we're going to jump into another topic but first a quick word from today's sponsor one thing we've talked a lot about lately is power creep just look at the impact of modern Horizons 3 and Modern Magic cards keep getting stronger in your e-commerce business should too I love playing Magic and building decks and ship station helps give me the time to get in as many games as possible here at MTG goldfish we use chip station to send playmats to members of the Goldfish crew design with a single click of the button helping us get into that next match faster than ever but ship station is even better than that because it also saves US money with discounts of up to 89% off ups and USPS shipping rates ship station's the fastest most affordable way to ship to your customers and easily integrates into whatever services and selling channels you already use so whether you're selling magic cards on eBay shipping from your LGS or sending merch around the world ship station makes it a breeze over 130,000 companies have grown their e-commerce business with shipstation including us here at MTG goldfish lead your e-commerce business into the future with the shipping software that delivers switch to ship station today go to shipstation.com and use the code goldfish to get your 60-day free trial that's shipstation.com Cod goldfish so K we were just talking about modern and I got a question for you so I've been working on a video that involves some Modern from a while ago and part of this has been watching some old modern Pro tours and it got me thinking of how awesome modern used to be when modern was at its peak and it got me feeling very nostalgic about some old modern decks and I was wondering do you have a favorite modern deck from like modern's not right now but like from the history of modern is there a deck that like for when you used to play all the time stands out as just like your favorite modern deck when cons of tarir came out Tasser gmag angler that era grixis control grixis mid-range and believe it or not I was a brave soul and I even top a what is it a rptq pptq back then uh playing that with cruel ultimatum in the deck like like that's right your boy is casting seven hard casting you're not cheating that sucker like that that is that is an actual hard casted seven blue blue black black black red red card right like uh I think that was one of the formats I look upon fondly uh it was such a fun time uh everything felt like the world was just wide open and if it wasn't that I mean even even if death right was there to kind of Be a Menace and Lily was absurd I still like the eras of Jess Sky control uh playing with electrolyze uh you know pinging two things drawing lightning heelix his bolts just playing the Jess guy control win where you essentially kind of are a burn deck um and then if not that a more recent one would be when bitter blossom got unbanned and I got to watch the fairy Lord himself UDA Takahashi win with the you know Jace the Mind sculptors lies and bitter blossom wait did bitter blossom actually win after it got unbanned was there a was there a time when bitter blossom was actually good is it bitter blossom or is it udat Takahashi I'm not really sure like like I can't speak ill like of bitter blossom it is just not in my like like genome but I I I can I can say that it's probably udat Takahashi that won that but that deck was just a work of art just being able to play like spell stutter Sprite Inquisition Jace the Mind scul Jace locking people out again and of course Liliana juicing them of cards it was a beautiful Synergy of I think two of Magic's like relics of like the like of Magic's power levels right like Liliana Jace the Mind Sculptor these are the two big ones when you think plains walkers or used to be yeah that is that is very true W how times have changed I miss that I think they call it American control at the time the Jess guy control Deck with like electroly remember when electroly was like a card you could play in your main deck and you're like three Mana two damage draw a card and then you like Sphinx his rev and Lightning Helix oh man I used to love that deck for me I think one of the coolest modern decks that I actually kind of forgot about to now is a a I think a a sha deck Eternal command do you remember it was like it was like this ether vial deck where you were putting you're putting Eternal Witnesses and snapcasters into play to keep looping your cryptic commands from the graveyard and you had like tago to be down with oh my goodness that deck was so cool there was even a time when SE Rhino was real like literally like AB midrange where like right after seege Rhino came out like tier one modern deck of like lingering Souls into seeg R was just like brim flare was in that deck it was brim flare was in that deck you could play kitchen F to to slow down the and like shambling Mur murderous red oh yeah they're oh man old modern was so incredibly cool and I'm just I've been feeling nostalgic for it I don't know do you think it's kind of funny to think that new players today are probably going to be nostalgic about like raban or something 10 years from now they're going to be sitting around doing a podcast thinking man remember the good old days when we got to play rockaan when we used to we used to NAU each other it was so sweet I miss that N I miss that n deck said no one oh my God I I I also find it funny that like ragavan if it were like you know made currently it might have more toughness and it probably would have it would be a two two probably it'd be a goblin guy stats just a straight up 32 or something because like it's funny that ragavan is just oh it's okay and and remember at one point this everyone was like this is it this is the sky falling this card is absurd it was pretty absurd and then bow Masters yeah and then bow Masters came around well let's move on let's move on for modern into the world of some spoiler action so we're not officially in spoiler season bloomo spoilers are coming I believe in about a week I believe they start like the 30th or something not bloom bro dmor dmor I'm stuck in the past dusk spoilers start I believe the 30th uh so we at like just over a week until spoiler season starts but we have some early Foundation spoilers this week they showed off a couple of Jump Start packs with Foundation cards foundations is this at coming November M that's like the core set that never rotates and overall we didn't see anything too crazy but there was a couple cards that caught my eye they want to bring up and I think one of the most interesting parts of this set is these cards just don't rotate they they don't want to say never that's their hope is that they never rotate they're saying at least until 2029 but these are cards that are just going to form the foundation of standard for at least the next 5 years so one of those cat uh cards is helpful Hunter which is just a two Mana one one cat that when it enters you get to draw a card basically uh spirited companion which saw a ton of play during its life in standard the other one that's even more exciting is vengeful blood witch so a two minuta one1 says whenever this creature or another creature you control dies Target opponent loses a life you gain a life it's a vampire warlock so essentially a blood artist it doesn't trigger on your opponent's creatures but very close to a blood artist or mixed with a zulaport Cut Throat maybe and I think the Intriguing part about this is I definitely remember standard formats where like the pieces for a cool Aristocrat deck or sack deck existed but there was no blood artist for a payoff what do you think about having this Blood Earths effect is just always legal I feel like standard is going to be so sweet once foundations releases like it's already Sweet right now but I feel like just always having these Baseline effects in the format that like if you want to build Aristocrats you're always going to have at least some form of blood artist if you want to build a whatever mono white mid-range deck you're always going to have some form of Spirited companion oh it's going to be so cool what do you think of these spoilers grim and Foundations in general I mean I feel like I've been asking for that right I I like the idea of Foundations so much um having played I okay I know everyone plug your ears if you don't want to hear the HW having played Hearthstone and having like Gone Going competitive with HearthStone for a while right when I was getting sweaty in that game it was nice to know there was a core set of cards I could always have in every every one of my decks would because there was it was set and assigned to certain classes Mages always had Arcane intellect and and you know stuff like that and it was nice like you had mentioned to look into like when you go to deck building you always know there's like a centerpiece that you could play that'll always be legal because sometimes you're worried like look at it right now you look at all the equipment decks you're like okay these equipment decks kind of suck right but imagine okay I'm using this as an example I don't want this to be true Stone Forge Mystic was like yeah you know like was all was always there I know everyone's like sweating right now where you going was he cooking or is he is he meing right now the example might be a meme but like something that is a big engine enabler not as offensive as Stone Forge so maybe something else like maybe card's Aid right something like that it's nice to know that even your the most Niche archetypes will still have something to play with so I'm very interested what they consider to be what like okay safe enough to be in the format for like a comical amount of time um I you know L War elves coming back that's that's scary that's genuinely scary but it also makes sense because green has been a meme color for a while the sweepers have gotten pretty damn good so I guess when I think about L elves it's not like what it once was to me it's still very powerful but it is not going to break the format in half uh so I'm just excited to see what else is in there my question to you Seth is what are the odds lightning bolt comes back oh we were actually so we were talking about this on stream I think last week how we got Lan elves which is like this iconic green card we got D of judgment which I guess it would be better if it was Wrath of God but you can't really because of regeneration but that's kind of like the iconic for Mana white sweeper and we're trying to figure out what other iconic cards could show up for the rest of the colors lightning bolt I am convinced if best of one was not a thing lightning bolt would be okay I think lightning bow would be very strong but I think monor red is just it makes people so like Arena players get so salty about losing to Mono red that I feel like just giving the mono red Decks that are already so good and have like slick shots and Swift Spears a lightning bolt I think Arena players would would end up rioting I think in best of three I think it would be okay though like I think in best of three if you had three game matches I think it would be powerful but fine so I'm going to say it's like 10% I think it's low but not impossible what do you think you think there's a realistic chance I'm only thinking of it because of core sets to be honest with you yeah but in reality I think it's going to be something boring like lightning strike probably yeah like Light Strike is the safe Choice it's the one that you know people always want like the additional reach and it's there and it's appropriately costed I guess so it's probably that and then like blue I was going to ask you about that Crim that's that's my question for you what do you think about Mana Leak could Mana Leak be the be the iconic blue I don't think van go counter spell I think that's too much for wizards to actually go counter spell but we got no more lies we had make disappear we've had like very powerful two Mana counters is Mana Le you think completely off the table still I don't because I thought Mana Le has been okay like has been a solid choice to have in standard for quite some time now and we've seen no more lies which is a beefed up Mana Leak and even right now it's just I know I know in spoiler season I was on on the moon over the moon even uh but it's just okay and it's because Cavern of souls is legal right and on top of that I don't know I mean it's it's a very good card I think it's a staple blue card we remember it and uh like as a powerful card I'm here for it I think I think man Elite could totally be a balanced inclusion into a majority of Standards especially when lanor elves exists yeah that I mean that's the thing right because the power level of standard that they're shooting for is obviously pretty high if you're putting for Mana wrath in the format forever Lanta War elves in the format forever they're obviously not shooting for some low powerered standard like this is going to be a powerful format so I think if you're giving other colors those powerful tools then it's fair and probably necessary for Blue Deck and control de to also have equally powerful tools to be able to like try to keep up with them watch it be disperse I know or consider or something I bet there's a c trip but what about such a like a weak Choice what about black black is also a tricky color the most iconic especially if you're sticking to like cheap spells is th Seas I don't think they would put th seas in standard forever what about Inquisition would Inquisition too good still no I I I don't even think it'd be that I think I think it's going to be Doom blade or like something like that I think it's like a go for the throat a solid removal spell because I think the main the main way I look at it is much like lightning bolt is just too good of a card and and it causes this salt meter to Skyrocket like blood levels it's the same when it comes to discard spells the best we can get is probably duress right I is likely I I think that's the kind of card like that kind of always exists in standard anyway right they just keep printing it in in random supplement or random sets so it's always there I I don't see thought Seas th Seas is definitely something they're going to if they decide to go with it like again in a standard it's going to rotate it's got to rotate because and I think that's an interesting thing to keep in mind too right like if you put thought seas in foundations you could never put a better discard spell into standard and I think they want that ability right they want the ability oh yeah I don't yeah him turac is back or something I don't know o himac boy that would make people salty that would be kind of fun though for for the first week yeah yeah I mean random random random works well on Arena right you don't have to worry about like in paper random is kind of clunky but Arena just does it for you you know for a fact it would be miserable Blood Moon Blood Moon and him please okay all right okay sure and bolt is too strong right okay yeah no I can't have that no I might die before I cast my my blood moon and my HS yeah no I like that we're reasonable I like that we're just being reasonable yeah okay so I don't know we'll see more from foundations in the future I was surprised they gave us the early spoilers because it's not until November it's like two sets in the future but it's going to be super sweet for standard so that's a foundation update Grim Arena Arena news of the week so I don't think we talked about this last week did we talk about the precons did that come out before I think it came out just after after yeah so one thing they announced just after last week's podcast is preconstructed decks coming to Magic arena for the first time so these are decks where you can go in the store and click a button and you get to buy the entire deck and have the tire deck so there's two standard decks a dinosaur deck and a toxic deck and then there's three brawl decks a Zada deck a arot deck and a rayu deck before we get into uh the issues that have happened with this release what do you think about the concept of selling preons on Arena this is huge they have everything in front of them to make to actually generate a lot of Goodwill with the community here like because the issue with like some of the preons they've sold before is we don't know what's going to be popular we don't know what's actually going to be strong right and and so they could print some preon that no one will want like imagine like I don't know just some some random like janky mechanic based deck I mean we've seen that with Challenger decks right where they have to print them like six or nine months ahead and by the time they actually release it's like oh that deck was really good two sets ago or whatever yeah but there just not as good anymore the hazet red was like decent right like that was the only one that they did that was like okay but the other ones were just kind of irrelevant so I think you can get around that with digital so now you know like maybe instead of like 9 months ahead you just need two months you just code in like like a half solid version of whatever a popular deck looks like and with that you also have the time to watch The Meta develop and things like that so there's a lot you can do here and it comes down to how much they charge like do we know what the average price of like is there is there a one price or is it varying prices so the way the prices work on these is kind of interesting and that's where a little bit of the the controversy about these actually came up uh but um so the way the prices work is it's based on the Rarity of the deck so for example uh the toxic deck has quite a few rares in it it's got like a pretty reasonable Mana base with a bunch of dual lands that sells for 16,1 165 gems the dinosaur deck doesn't have near nearly as many rares that one's 9,190 gems but the good news here is they take into account what cards you already have in your collection so if you already have some of the cards in the deck you get a discount based on the cards that you already own so when I went to buy one of the decks it was going to be like 200 Gems or something because I have pretty much all the cards in my collection already so I was just buying whatever the couple of cards I didn't already have access to the one bit of there two bits of controversy that came out with this one is they announced oun prices in the article that announc these precons that ended up being a lot lower than the prices that they say in game like uh in the article it said that dinosaurs was going to be 5,310 gems but then in game it says 9,190 gems Wizards addressed this and said the one in the article was a sale price or something and the one in game is like a not on sale price so it's a little bit confusing but that caught a lot of people by surprise that it was just a lot more gems than the article said the other ISS we ran into is one we run into all the time is that it doesn't take into account card versions so for example there's Botanical sanctum in the Mana base of like the toxic deck but if you don't own The Outlaws of Thunder Junction Botanical sanctum you're still going to have to buy that version of Botanical sanctum with the deck it's not going to give you that discount you have to own the specific version of it which is something we've seen with card Styles and I think that's just like a fla Arena system not specific to these decks but just like every aspect of Arena works that way unfortunately Ely so I think that's just a flaw on the Wild Card system yeah it's just a flaw on the Wild Card system basically so the price is I think we figured it out like if you had zero if you had zero cards in your collection the uh dinosaur deck was going to be like 50 bucks or something in actual money the toxic one was going to be like 80 or 90 bucks think it's worth it Grim no now that I now know the prices I can't believe that you are going to sell me again they they have every opportunity to show arena and like and grow the arena Community get more people in you know how many people I know are just like hard locked out of decks because they just run out of cards and they just need a good starting point $80 would be is is a lot for not real cards I think that even that's like they're somehow rivaling Marvel snap numbers like Marvel snap was pretty predatory with its bundle pricing and this I'm just looking at it like this you these should not be more than like already 40 bucks is like pretty good right I think 40 bucks solid 50 bucks even let's call it there and the fact that these vary that's kind of wild I I think I think it should just be a flat 50 you have every opportunity to grow your player base which I know in the in the like you know upfront it may not read like a lot more money but I promise you having people play your game in the long run is more money so I I I can't believe this is $80 for not real cards and and the dinosaur one okay great that one's what 50 bucks you said yeah I can look up the exact prices but roughly it was around 50 and 80 or 90 were the two prices that I remember yeah for $80 I would like not a half-built tier 1.5 tier 2 deck for $80 I want a either half or three4 built tier one deck I mean am am I am I wrong is that is that is that too ambitious I mean I don't understand yeah so I think you're not you're not wrong you're not wrong there is some confusion based on what price that you go by so with the sale price it's a little bit better if you go by the price that was listed in the article which isn't the price in game uh the sale price has the dinosaur deck at around 30 bucks and the other one around 60 bucks if you go by the price of listed in game it jumps up to 50 and 90 or something like that I think with these decks in specific you want them to be cheap right because these are obviously designed to go to new players like that's the upside of these decks no established Arena player magic player is going to buy that dinosaur deck because it's just it's not really a competitive deck right it's not even especially close to being a competitive deck this is something the upside that I see is you're new to Arena you don't have a deck you can click a button and have this entire deck and you can play it in unranked you can play it in the lower ranks with a click of a button but a newer player isn't going to spend 30 bucks 50 bucks 90 bucks on a deck for like when they're just learning the game that's just way too much to ask the new players are like mostly the freetop playay players so I feel like especially for these decks having the price be cheaper is going to be really really important I think there is room for more expensive decks because one thing I'd love to say you mentioned earlier how they can do so much with this because the time frame is so much shorter than paper precons in my dream world I imagine they do a pro tour and the pro tour top eight goes up and like the deck was published Sunday morning and like Sunday afternoon you can go on Arena and like click a button and just buy one of the decks from the pro tour top eight or something like that would be so cool those decks obviously don't think that's possible those would have to be more expensive right well they would have to program that right into the game that would take more than 24 hours the precon yeah I don't know how hard it yeah I don't know enough about programming I wish I did I don't know how quickly you can program CU all the cards are in the game right so you're just kind of like arranging them and adding prices to them I don't know I don't know how hard or easy it would be but I think there's lots of potential there but the price does have to come down people calculated it it is a discount if you were just going to put together these decks with wild cards like going to the store and buying wild cards this is somewhat cheaper than doing it that way the problem is you have no flexibility right it was I can't remember the exact percentage like it's a discount but it's not like a huge discount the problem is you're buying like this one set deck and you might not actually use all those cards outside of this deck so a lot of people figured if you're just like trying to build a collection you're still better off just buying packs or like drafting or whatever compared to buying the preons just cuz the price is too high so I think it's a really good idea but the price issues gota go to they just got to be cheaper I would almost rather like ah boy I would almost rather have the decks be worse and cheaper if they had to but they shouldn't have to right cuz it's arena they there's no printing cost there's no ink it's just is all in digital so I don't know I wish I remember I didn't play hear I've played Hearthstone on and off like over the last years I didn't log into HearthStone for like a year and I logged back in and they were like hey here's a standard deck and they gave me like just a pretty legit Standard Act just cuz I logged back in for the first time in a year that was it there was no no money no strings detached why can't we do more stuff like and that actually got me to play more Hearthstone cuz I had this deck now I was like hm I can actually like play some constructed now I think stuff like that would make orena so much better right could you imagine if you log back in for the first time in six months and they just give you the toxic deck and they're like hey go play some standard and knowing that it's going to get you hooked and then you're going to give them more of your money because you really love the game and want to keep playing it I wish we would do I wish Wizards and Arena would do more stuff like that like just business-wise that's more money in the Long Haul like there there it's only an upside to grow your player base digitally right like there's there's what is the downside here I I am very curious about that because $80 is what I'm is such a I know that even if it's discounted right we're assuming that $80 is if I own none of the cards which is again if I were a new player right and then on top of that if it's on sale how long is the sale window for right I don't I don't want to deal with the sale window I think just on average you don't even need to give me a sale don't put it on sale yeah just give me a $40 and like to $50 deck I think that is the respectable price because and I and I and I'm saying this as someone who's played a lot of digital games it killed it for me it you know I look I have a Captain America shield I've got like all these Marvel things related I love Marvel and oh my God I love the IP and Marvel snap unfortunately killed itself so fast with predatory bundles and your your economy is already rough with wild cards you got to do something here you got to at least throw a bone to your player base here and potentially newer and future player base so I I just don't see the upside of just having $40 $40 to $50 decks and these aren't even tier one it's not like I'm getting a fourcc color mid-range control deck right maybe then I would pay 80 80 bucks sure and at tier you could you could do that right with digital tier one deck $75 $80 tier two deck $50 tier like three deck 40 30 bucks or give it out like you like for logging back in yeah there's yeah there's just so much that can be done with this system so I hope Wizards My Hope Is this was the first test run and they're figuring things out I know it's probably naive to think Wizards is going to get more generous with something on Arena because there hasn't been a huge track record of that but that's my hope is this is the test run and this system I think could be really beneficial for players and for wizards if they can get the pricing right and like get the decks right so I think there's a lot of potential with preon on Arena although these decks I just don't think really reach that potential because of the pricing issues primarily and even like the decks I was looking at like the amount of rares in the decks and the toxic deck actually has almost exactly the amount same amount of uh rares as like the GRL slick shot showoff deck which is like a legit tier deck like why toxic is not exactly a legit tier deck at this point so I think they even if they wanted to go spiky and try to like here buy a tier one deck I think there's ways they could have chosen different decks to make that a possibility if they wanted to so I like that it's giving people an easy way to get into Arena they just got to they got to get the price down it's it's digital cards and people just can't pay too much and I hope they learn that lesson from snap or whatever that like you can go too far right like with the pricing stuff and eventually people are going to get upset about it any anyway I think that is all of our topics for today but uh one quick one quick fish mail on the way out the door cuz I don't think we've talked about this [ __ ] so this comes from at1 vicious says Gavin announced that as far as he knows mystery boosters 2 will only be at special events at cons this is the first set in a while where I want to buy a case what do you feel about the decision to only have it at events where only a fraction of the player base can enjoy uh quick shout out before we answer this right now actually it might be over by now cuz things so sell out so quick but today is the day that uh the festival in a box which is the other way that you can get mystery boosters too is on sale at the secret layer website so uh By the time this goes live it might already be too late depending on how quickly it sells out but you should check that if you're trying to get cases but Crim what do you think about mystery boosters 2 being convention only essentially outside of this secret layer sale obviously you know this is built on the fomo system right and I'm not surprised in a collectible card game uh I I do I do think that it is totally fine it's not like an essential thing like oh you there are going to be standard legal cards in here right I I think it's totally fine that there is a festival exclusive thing um I I just hope I can grab one at some point U but yeah like I don't know I I I think it's okay that they have Festival exclusive things yeah and one thing that I'll note that Mark rosewater brought up is uh he said if it wasn't a convention only thing the set wouldn't exist that they like convention team or whatever needed something wanted something specifically for conventions to get people to go to conventions so mystery boosters 2 came out of their whatever convention teams budget or something and it was like an extra thing so according Mark rosewater if it wasn't convention only they just wouldn't have made the set at all so I think it's fine I think it's fine that there are special things at conventions I know it's a feel bad my initial Instinct was I really hope they sell in game stores and honestly I still hope that they do I think this happened last time right where convention boosters were a convention exclusive and then like a year later they were like you know what we'll put a retail Edition too so maybe there's some chance they show up in local game stores eventually and that would be cool to give everyone access to them but much like some of the special promos and special pins I think it's okay that there's actually something special for going to cons cuz uh cons they cost a lot of money and it's nice I guess that there's you're getting something different out of them something that you can't just do at your local game store on a Friday night there's there's this reason you can go into this mystery booster draft it's Unique and it's going to be really fun so I see why they're doing it I hope it ends up in local game stores eventually but this isn't some Hill I'm going to die on at this point like if it never shows up in local game stores I think it's also fine anyway I think that brings us to the end of episode 498 of the MTG goldfish podcast Grim thanks for hanging out thanks to everyone for listening thanks to card conduit for supporting the show and we'll be back next week to talk about whatever goes on in the World of Magic so until then have an amazing week everyone and this is the crew signing out [Music]