Next Steps in Revitalizing Standard: Play
Next Steps in Revitalizing Standard: Play
Today’s announcement is all about giving players—and stores—enticing events that they want to play in and run to give them something at the end of the rainbow for building up their Standard decks.
Wizards announced new efforts to promote Standard play that start next year. Some highlights:
- Special promos for new weekly Standard events at LGSs
- $75k Standard Open at MagicCon Chicago, which is "the first large, open field Standard tournament in quite some time"
- Pro Tour Outlaws of Thunder Junction (second PT in 2024) will be Standard
Until they do something to make standard more affordable I don't think they'll succeed in this revitalisation. Either you print new standard challenger decks every year that actually contain all the game pieces needed for a Tier standard deck, or people will continue to play non rotating formats where the decks are as expensive as standard but will last them a lot more years than standard decks
@calvinball @andrew adding premium treatments has helped shift the value in packs to less cards, so there are more cheap deck options.
4 of the top 10 decks are under $200, two are under $120. Formats don't get much cheaper.
Standard hasn't been played much recently because people don't have a reason to play it.
You're right about the premium treatments and the pricing. I don't think the fact that 4 out of 10 tier decks are under 200 bucks will bring more people to standard though: if you're on a budget you look at the standard metagame and see that you can sleeve up mono red aggro for under 100$. But at the same time you see that you'll never be able to afford other tier decks like golgari or esper midrange, which are about 500$. If you don't have access to the option of creating the tier deck you want, only the tier deck you can afford, it creates a feeling of being locked out of (part of) the format, and creates resentment toward those that càn afford a golgari midrange deck.
I don't have the most experienced perspective, and for several reasons I prefer standard to the wider formats, but I like the effort they're putting forward. At the end of the day, I'd like it to be less cost intensive to get into competitive play, but I think that's a non trivial problem.