Cavern of Souls, Ponder, Mana Leak and Snapcaster Mage....

Today there's been quite the stir on my Twitter feed, in response to Master Deveoloper @zdch's article. I chimed in a couple times, but mostly been soaking in the awesome discussion. I do have some thoughts on the matter, and it goes something like this:

"Delver/Snapcaster are not the problem in Standard, it's Ponder/Mana Leak"

This is both true and misleading, in my opinion. Sure, Ponder and Mana Leak may be making Delver and Snapcaster much stronger respectively, and the inherent powerlevel of Ponder specifically is much higher than of Delver of Secrets in most formats. So if we want to solve the Ponder + Delver = Unfair problem (and maybe we don't, but if we did...), you'd need to remove either Ponder or Delver. My contention is while Ponder is the much stronger card, Delver would be the one that can go. Delver can't really function as a card in Standard without Ponder, otherwise we have a 1/1 way too often, and a deck with such a low threat density would never be able to close out a game. Ponder on the other hand, is a very good card for a lot of decks. It itself is not broken, it simply gives you tons of choices and as long as those choices don't interact with Ponder in a broken way, it actually increases the diversity of the format allowing for more deck types to be possible. While at the same time, many decks that play Blue don't even need Ponder. So yes, the power of Ponder is what turns Delver of Secrets from an awful card into a reasonable threat in Standard, but without cards like Ponder, Standard as a format (with such a limited card pool) is extremely boring, slow, inconsistent and unbalanced.

"Mana Leak is too good. Creatures should be resolving, and late game threats are important to force through to be able to go over-the-top of Aggro-Control."


Ugh, this one is a tough one for me. "Too good" is a tough statement to support. Mana Leak is arguably one of the worst cards in all the control decks that play it, but one of the best cards in U/x Delver variants. Mana Leak is a perfectly fair counterspell for control decks. Control decks want the game to go long so they need a flexible answer to a variety of threats from turn 2-5 until they can stabilize via Wrath, at which point their plan is to halt the game with a Planeswalker, Utility Land, or large protectable creature. The drawback, is since they intend to take the game long, there's no doubt these Mana Leaks will lose tons of value when drawn later in the game, and they are also unable to deal with spells cast on Turn 1 (and even Turn 2 when on the draw, or when dealing with awkward manabases that don't allow an untapped land all the time on Turn 2). Aggro Control on the other hand, is trying to do something very different. They want to apply a aggressively costed threat and protect it from the control decks using Mana Leak, forcing the control decks to survive until turn 6 or 7 to safely resolve a Sweeper. At the same time, against all-in aggro decks, they can turn the mana leaks into removal once they have advantage on board to prevent additional threats or problem permanents from hitting the board. Since these decks want to win the game before either play hits 6 mana, these Mana Leaks are always amazing for them. It solves every problem they could face, and it does it for a very low cost. The fact that their main source of damage against a control deck comes down on Turn 1 before Mana Leak, and then can be protected by Mana Leak for at least 3-4 turns from spot removal, and even longer from sweepers is why its such a perfect fit in those decks.

I personally prefer reactive control decks, as a result, I get scared when I hear developers say they want to nerf counterspells and blue style control in general. I understand they have metrics that dictate what types of mechanics to buff/nerf  based on sales (among other things), so I have to have some faith that they do these things intelligently. I will say, the more frequently I hear someone from R&D say "We messed that up..." I'm less likely to just blindly trust that this game will still be awesome in a couple years. For quite a while, I never questioned it, but in the last couple years especially, we have Jace, the Mindsculptor, Stoneforge Mystic, Mental Misstep, Mana Leak and Snapcaster Mage all as cards some R&D member has said shouldn't have been printed. Even more so, there's been some reprints that have been mistakes (Titans repeat...) Now, none of these individual "mistakes" are damning to the R&D team (they are obviously awesome), but if it becomes their echoing claim, "Hey we make mistakes, sorry..." I'm going to become a much more skeptical consumer. Especially when you combine that with the fact that they've determined nerfing the major section of the types of spells I personally prefer.... and who knows. I'm not jumping to any radical conclusions, or slipping down any slopes, but it's something to consider. For me personally, if we're going to lose cards like Mana Leak (which already are not that amazing in decks I like to play), I'm hoping I at least continue to get access to the more narrow hard-counters, like Negate. I love Negate. Negate solves tons of problems, yet is extremely efficient. Control decks get sweepers to deal with multiple creatures and they often net huge card advantage. But battling against Planeswalkers is a Control deck's nightmare, and Negate is just the stones against it. Especially with Snapcaster Mage in the format, I'm much happier to have a toolbox off efficient narrow counters that I can use with Forbidden Alchemy/Snapcaster Mage, using other control elements to stop creatures that are "immune" to sweepers (like Primeval Titan or other ETB effects) as there's /tons/ of other ways to build contorl decks to mitigate that power and card advantage.

Who cares?


This is why it matters. If there is no fear of your spells resolving, defining the best deck in the format is just a calculation of which deck can deal 20 damage the fastest. Sure, there will be variance in draws, but ultimately, there's less choices to be made. R&D's Future-Future-League is disadvantaged in the sense they have a limited size to their Developing team. While they are very skilled, the MtG hivemind gets to run through deck iterations at alarming rates, and tuning a deck becomes a consequential detail that a majority of players never even think about. It scares me that if the toughest decision someone has to make is which haymaker to throw, and not how to play around the counterpunch.

Thanks for reading and thanks to everyone who participated in this conversation today.