Discussion Forum

Short: creatures are better now and spells are weaker.

Long:

* There are virtually no symmetrical cards anymore. Positive effects are limited to your stuff (Honor the Pure vs Crusade) while negative things are limited to opponents (War's Toll vs Grand Melee).

* Another thing that is rare now is needing to pay upkeep for powerful cards. Especially the "dangerous upkeep" like Lord of the Pit is almost non-existant. If there are upkeeps, they are usually very easily turned into advantages, most of the time they are designed to work with the block mechanic of the day.

* Same is true for abilities, for example shroud => hexproof, persist => undying etc.

* Engines and effects spiral out of control fast because they lack limitations and activation costs. Take Krenko, you just need to tap him and it doubles your army every time, compare that to the old Goblin Warrens. The former costs nothing and the effect grows exponentially, the latter costs mana every use and the progress is linear.

* Same is true for cards that grow with the number of players. They do now implement some cards specifically with multiplayer in mind, however, they still -balance- them for 1-on-1 games! The result are cards that break multiplayer games easily. I can only think of two older cards that get very strong with more players, Congregate and Forgotten Ancient. But today we have tons of them - Luminarch Ascension for example, it may be balanced in 1-on-1 games but in multiplayer it can get active within a single turn. And it's neither fun nor creative to end games with cards like Exsanguinate.

* Creatures are dangerous, so people pack mor (mass) removal than ever. To combat that, Wizards cranked up creatures one notch more: Aside from countermeasures like hexproof and indestructible many creatures assure they do something even if they are dealt with immediatedly. For examplte the Titans (Grave Titan, Primeval Titan etc.) trigger their effect when they attack AND when they CIP. There are also many creatures that trigger just by attacking rather than when dealing damage to the opponent (Brimaz).

* Creatures are often times just strong because they happen to share a creature type. In fact these synergies are so strong that non-tribal creature decks are becoming rare.

* General powercreep regarding creatures. I always love to point at Avatar of the Resolute. There were times where you would be happy to have a vanilla 3/2 for 2 mana. This guy also has trample AND reach AND on top of it an ability that makes him potentially very big. And while I ask myself "How many abilities will they pile on a 3/2 for two mana next expansion?" I realize that Avatar of the Resolute was still so compareatively weak that he hardly saw play and could always be bought for less than a dollar even when he was Standard legal. This should tell you everything you need to know about the power creep.

* We also have planeswalkers and equipments now. Especially planeswalkers are getting more insane each year since they are what drives sales (besides duallands). From nice-to-haves like the first Garruk to deck defining monstrosities like some of the Jaces and Gidion. They are especially dangerous from a Vintage-Casual perspective since we may have hed better spells but only few of them are able to deal with planeswalkers.


Generall put, if you would pit a standard or modern deck against an Legacy deck (that doesn't cost thousands of dollars) it would be a race of spells vs creatures where Legacy would either have to try to keep the superior creatures in check with superior spells until one side can fields something the other can't handle or it would be a race creature beatdown vs combo or lock. Legacy would have the upper hand if it isn't limited by budget.

I think I agree with your assessment on how the nets has evolved. I still wonder though, out of say 10 matches all other things being equal- no budgets, equal player skill vintage vs standard, I think standard wins it 6-7/10. I've got/ had some pretty redicilous vintage builds over the years and they are great but I think the versatility that standard offers is just too much for them. It's a fun debate though. Legacy vs modern I'd put money on legacy all day long; legacy vs standard I think would split pretty even.