tbf, a metagame of 4 decks for 16 players isn't bad at all diversity wise

Simic suffers with the problem that it murders the midrangy decks and has a decent chance vs control, but RDW absolutely crushes it and U/W based control has a lot of answers to it's threats now

Still surprising to me, whatever happened to Cerulean Drake and Shifting Ceratops? The former stops everything in the RDW deck except Embercleave, the latter at worst trades with Dream Trawler.

Drake is still great vs rdw but it isn't enough - Embercleave is a 4 of now, and even if they don't draw it Bonecrusher giant ruins the protection clause on drake meaning it isn't safe

Ceratops also is worse in a world of Elspeth conquers death, banishing light ect ect

Basically i think it comes down to U/G getting a lot of its cards banned, and only really getting Uro from the new set, while the other decks got more powerful tools, like RDW with anax who is just absurd, and control between Intervention, ECD, 4 mana sweepers ect ect

Played 4 games today, faced 4 RDW calamity decks in a row. This is boring af. Think I might skip this set/season, it's either control grinds that go near decking or aggro snoozefests. Or reclamation, which gets to throw mana and cards away, with free untaps and hand refills to support the crappiest plays.

I think the new RDW is so much better than cavalcade RDW. That one had a clock, but pretty weak if not drawing cavalcade. New version of red only needs one card from the new set; little surprised people still running the old one

Yeah Standard looks more and more like vintage or legacy where you're dead on T1 or 2 to some crazy combo. The RDW with Anax as insurance against sweepers is truly scary; I think it could go all the way. I would like to see J-E Depraz's Temur rec build win it all tho.

Yes, we're there again and I guess this time RDW is even stronger.

That might not matter much in Paper, but in the economy of Arena, time is a crucial factor, ergo the fastest and cheapest deck shouldn't be t1 if you care for a diverse meta

You can swing for lethal with Embercleave on t3 now. Well, that doesn't even need Anax, but he gives the deck a backup plan.

What is this christmasland lethal t3?
Edit: I just had a t4 lethal using Mengucci's deck without even using Embercleve but I'm still not seeing a t3 even with it. I mean maybe but it would have to be something easily rolled out and not a odds are 10,000-1 it will happen for me to consider classifying a deck as a t3 lethal.

T1 Fervent Champion (opponent down to 19)
T2 Runaway Steam Kin (opponent down to 18)
T3 Fervent Champion x3, Steam Kin goes to 4/4, attack with five creatures. One Fervent Champion goes to 4/1, another goes to 2/1, and the rest are 1/1. Cash in Steam Kin for 3 mana, cast Infuriate on the 4/1, it goes to 7/3, then cast Embercleave, it goes to 8/4 double strike while Steam Kin remains a 3/3. Opponent takes 22 damage to -4.

Yeowch.

Well that shut me up.
... kind of.
That's still magicalchristmasland.

I don't think the meta's particularly awful, like Eldraine with it's green dominance (seriously, Theros deserves major credit for somehow stopping green's dominance) it's just the top decks have pushed pretty much every midrange deck out of the meta, your choices are embercleave aggro, combo (fires/reclamation) or hardcore control, not much room for brews to shine

Yes, but casting t3 Embercleave off Steamkin's extra mana does happen. It's just not lethal without the other cards being mostly Champions/Infuriate. Also Banedon uses 10 cards, which are only available on the draw - you can cut one Champion though.

Monored exemplifies so much of what I dislike about Magic. On the play I beat it like 80% of the time, and on the draw I lose to it like 80% of the time. Who wants to play a game where the coin flip decides the winner? It's very annoying, Wizards really should add more compensation for the person going 2nd.

Yes. They could use Bo1 modes as a testing grounds for all kind of rule modifications without harming the competitive Bo3 game.

And before that they could smooth out coin flip streaks. We all know statistical outliers exist - but do we need them? Screw being on the draw 5 times in a row. A very simple solution would be a hidden rating, where you get -1 for being on the play, +1 for being on the draw and whichever player has the higher score goes first. I even have an idea on how to solve the case where both ratings are equal /s

Lucky for us RDW keeps Azorious in check, coz then the meta would be all the way miserable.

RDW is always the hero that saves us from full wankers meta

Curious: did those Nyx Lotus (or similar) decks ever take off?

Not competitively. Just meme decks

I'm liking Haven's Gruul deck better than RDW now. All the extra haste, especially QBeast, really gives it the edge.

Is RDW even favored against UW? It sure doesn't feel like it, The Birth of Meletis is a strong defense against RDW and there's also Shatter the Sky later. Feels 50-50ish to me, possibly unfavored post-board.

Gruul has the major weakness of 1) weaker mana base and 2) Anax is worse. Anax added a lot of power to RDW, the gain needs to be worth a lot to give it up, in my opinion. Questing Beast is a good card, but it is GG, and RDW is not short on haste already.

On the play is very favored with max Anax and max Cleaves, game two is as always very dependent to the player skills to SB, I think Tbalt and Frenzy should get the job done.

@DJ not yet but that one is a slepper, I think is just a matter of time before it finds a degenerate deck.