Thoughts on the B&R Announcement

There was a highly anticipated B&R announcement this past week. If you haven't seen it yet, take a look here!

At the Pro Tour, several friends and colleagues were discussing what they think would, or should, happen in Standard. While that's the only format I'm fresh enough in at the moment, I certainly had my opinions as well.

Let's start with the only format that was really altered, Modern. I don't have strong opinions on the decisions, but I'm glad they removed some banned cards to mix things up, especially with a Pro Tour on the horizon. While the unbanning of Violent Outburst is a head-scratcher, it makes a lot of sense when you realize Mox Opal is once again legal. Right?

Regardless, I know Pro Tour players are excited about the shake-up, and it should make for some interesting new brews in the format, which is great.

Speaking of interesting new brews, let's get into Standard and why things should have changed.

Right now, there's a two-deck squeeze with Landfall and Izzet decks and their many iterations. Both decks are resilient and punishing. They threaten fast kills, and in both cases, we now see ultra-efficient interaction. We had to throw out decks that were too bad against either when testing for the Pro Tour. Guess what? They all were, and we tried a lot.

Landfall is easier to beat than Prowess, and Prowess plays the boogeyman role of scaring away everything interesting that people are brewing. The combination of a fast clock and interaction like Spell Pierce makes four- and five-mana non-creature spells too expensive. The ability to play a cheap crab to tap down big creatures and clock the opponent makes it hard to win with creatures as well.

For well over a year, I've said Stormchaser's Talent is the main culprit behind a lot of Izzet's punishing starts. I still believe that but currently more in theory than practice. Let me explain. Talent into Boomerang Basics is an obscenely powerful start, which I won't knock. Despite this, Stormchaser's Talent is too clunky on its level costs for the way the format is moving.

Our plan at the Pro Tour against Landfall was to cut them from our deck and win with Sunderflocks. However, midrange and control decks struggle to keep up with the value of Stormchaser's Talent. The card offers a sense of inevitability that's challenging to contend with. It pushes players to shorter games, meaning decks like Landfall, Cub, and Izzet Prowess, rather than slower Lessons decks, end up eating a larger slice of the metagame pie than is reasonable.

Stormchaser's Talent should have been banned a while ago, and it definitely should be now. I sympathize that there are upcoming RCs in the next few weeks and not wanting to meddle much. I'm hoping this causes a forced rotation over the summer, which they've done before. It's difficult to perfectly balance a large Standard, as we have now, without occasionally pulling levers. As a company, they should want me to play with new cards, and as a player, I want to play with new cards. It's boring to play with the same 73 out of 75 cards every year. If we want a longer rotation time, it would behoove the community to have a heavier hand on the scale to tip things.

If we banned Stormchaser's Talent, would that make Landfall the best deck that needs fixing, too? That's a tougher question to answer. I believe the answer is yes, but then we have to determine what to eliminate. A friend of mine at the Pro Tour suggested Earthbending Ascension, which is a good callout. It would destroy Landfall but leave other decks alone. The most busted card in the deck, outside of arguably Badger Mole Cub, is Mightform Harmonizer. Even so, Harmonizer with Full Bore was a cool deck that should be available as a potential metagame option.

The most obvious answer is Badgermole Cub, but that card, while powerful, is more exploitable. It would hurt Landfall more than people give it credit for, as it juices the deck's consistency. While it's not there to produce mana, the cheap Earthbend trigger on a Fabled Passage is a massive reason the deck performs so well. Making any single thing harder for Landfall would weaken the deck a lot since alternative options are extremely weak.

I'm on board with any of these three cards getting the axe, but Earthbending Ascension is a good option because it won't bother other decks while shaking up the format.

My primary priority would be banning Stormchaser's Talent and pigeonholing Izzet decks into a more homogenized deck. Then, when building your deck, you won't need to account for unlimited iterations of a similar deck that can all punish you in different ways.

Looking forward, I hope Marvel can stir up Standard, as I've become a bit of a fan of the format ever since playing the AC and would love to dabble again. Regardless, I won't be touching it as long as it's just dual-deck Badgermole Cub against Stormchaser's Talent.

That's my take on how the banning should go down. If not now, then at the next announcement, if Marvel can't shake things up enough.