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Why Power Creep Is So Bad Now | The Trinket Mage | YouTubeToText
YouTube Transcript: Why Power Creep Is So Bad Now
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Back when I was a baby trinket, I fell
in love with a card game. It had such a
cool aesthetic, TV show, and manga. Now,
of course, I'm not talking about Magic.
I'm talking about Yu-Gi-Oh. I loved this
game as a kid and eventually went to a
game store to play some games. This is
when I first learned about meta decks,
competitive Yu-Gi-Oh, and that whole
side of the game. At first, it was
really fun. I can make a meta deck and
play games and win at my local game
store. But as the game continued on over
the years, it got faster and faster and
stronger and stronger because Yu-Gi-Oh
only has one eternal format. So when new
cards come out, they are designed to be
more powerful than the old cards and
push the game even further. And now
currently, Yu-Gi-Oh is very much a
one-turn format. There are a lot of
decks that can win in one turn or even
on the first turn. And basically, it
comes down to whether or not you drew
the free interaction in your opening
hand. I got sick and tired of the power
creep, the uninteractivity of how fast
the format had gotten. A bad opening
hand just lost you the game. That was
it. And then I heard about this cool
other card game which had a brilliant
solution to power creep. And that
solution to power creep is why I play
Magic today. But in recent years,
Wizards has intentionally given up on
using their solution to one of the
biggest problems facing long-term games
like this. So, I want to talk about
Power Creep today. How it affects the
game, how Wizards fixed it, and then how
they broke it, and also how it harms
commander. Because casual commander is
indeed harmed by power creep even if it
is less than 60 card formats are all of
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the channel. So, what's the big solution
to power creep? Standard and draft.
Draft obviously doesn't need to be
power. As long as you have fun,
interesting draft archetypes and
mechanics, people will play draft. It's
really great for local game stores. They
sell packs and then you get to draft
them. It's really good for new players.
You get to buy new cards and also learn
about the game in a slower, low power
environment. Standard is also really
great for power creep because you don't
need to print a card that's super duper
powerful to see play in standard since
eventually every card rotates out. So
when you print a new card, let's say
it's slightly weaker than what is
currently meta in standard. Well, when
that old stuff then rotates out, as long
as you didn't print anything new that's
too much stronger than that slightly
weaker thing, that now becomes the meta.
and then now it's a set that everybody
wants to buy because it's part of
standard. Or if you print something
that's a little bit stronger than the
current meta, that's okay, too, because
that old stuff was going to rotate out
after a little bit and people would have
to buy new cards eventually anyway. It
doesn't feel like they got pushed out of
the format as quickly. And since you're
always aiming for the same low power
level in standard, if things are
slightly stronger or slightly weaker
than the current meta, that's okay. Of
course, there's always going to be a
best deck, a best archetype, but if
something is a little bit weaker, it can
still be a piece of the metagame pie,
which leads to more deck diversity and
everyone having a lot more options to
play. And then on the off chance you
accidentally make a card that's way too
strong and it pushes all the other stuff
out, instead of waiting for that to
rotate, you can just ban it as a quick
emergency and then get back to the
regular meta. This also benefited
Eternal formats greatly. With a steady
stream of cards that are at about the
same power level, it took a long time
before there were enough interactions
between the new cards to actually make a
big splash in older formats, which means
older formats wouldn't have significant
changes to their decks yeartoear, which
means new players could get into eternal
formats by building a budget version of
the deck and slowly building into it
over time. Also, since the power level
of the budget cards and the non-budget
versions were closer in strength, having
a budget version of the list was
actually not as much of a detriment
compared to the actual full powered deck
list, which meant that a new player's
budget deck just was more competitive.
And because your budget list was more
competitive, you could actually win
games at your local game store and your
budget version of a modern deck could
help you pay for upgrading it into the
full powered version. This ecosystem was
great. It preserved the longevity of the
game, created good entry points for
players, and was excellent for deck
brewing. If your brew was only a little
bit weaker than the meta, it was still
pretty viable. And since the meta wasn't
that strong, it was easy to brew
something that was close enough to
powerful. Then Wizards made a change.
What if they printed a card that was
intentionally powerful into standard?
Enter Fatal Push. This completely
shifted modern. This became the most
defining card in modern, period. That
was just the beginning, though. Wizards
realized they could print cards for
other formats into standard. They could
print modern cards into standard. They
could print commander cards into
standard. By cranking up the power level
of every set, you can make it so every
player needs every set. All you have to
do to do that is make sure that the new
set has something really, really
powerful that pushes out an old card.
So, what's the big deal? Like, why is
this a problem? Why not just keep making
stronger and stronger cards infinitely?
For competitive formats, that's an easy
answer. It's expensive. Remember when
Shieldrid dominated standard? wasn't
that long ago. The card was quite
pricey. Maybe you bought four copies of
it because it was the most dominant card
in standard by a wide margin. You kind
of needed it to be competitive, but then
it got power crept. Shield actually fell
to the wayside before it rotated out.
Meaning all that money you spent was
kind of wasted. And what was it replaced
by? Mono Red, super fast aggro, which
maybe you bought into and then you got
cards banned out of it because it was
too strong. It was too dominant. Hey,
super quick addendum here. Yes, I know
that monor red is like kind of back in
standard, but if you had these cards
banned from under you and you have to
buy new monor red cards, it's still the
same problem. And also, if this mono red
deck is also super super dominant and
then more cards get banned out of it,
it's still a problem. Yes, I am aware
that technically monor red has more
metagame share than vivv at this current
moment in time. So now you're left with
VV, which why would you buy Vive? the
deck's going to get banned, so what's
the point in purchasing it? And we know
this is bad for the game because paper
standard is way down. Paper modern is
way down. Neither of these formats are
nearly as popular as they once were. And
it really all started with the power
creep. It's actually so crazy how I got
pump and dump scammed by the modern
format. Here's my story. I liked playing
artifact decks. I have Mox Opals because
it's a staple of modern, so I can play
affinity and lantern control. Modern
Rises 1 comes out, Öza gets printed, so
I have to buy Öz to keep up. If I'm
playing a non-ursa artifact deck, I'm
losing. So, I spend money on Öza. Then,
oo gets printed. Now, I know this is
going to get banned. So, I'm not going
to waste money on OO. So, instead, I
have to just quit. I take a break from
the format while OO is around. Then, oo
gets banned. Cool. Now, I can go back to
playing my artifact decks, right? Wrong.
Mox Opal gets banned because with Öza,
it's now too strong. But we didn't ban
Öza, we banned Opal. So now I have these
opals which I can't use. And now I have
these Özas that I spent money on which
are now not strong enough for modern
because you don't have Opal to support
the deck. So I sell those to try and
build a Modern Horizon's 2 deck
eventually. And then the one ring comes
out. I'm definitely not going to buy
that. I need it to be competitive, but I
know it's just going to get banned. It's
in every deck, so what's the point? And
then Modern Horizons 3 comes out and I
just don't buy any Modern Horizons 3
cards. I haven't played Modern since.
And to add insult to injury, now after
all of these shenanigans, because Modern
Horizons 3 has power the format so much,
they unbanned Mox Opal. So now I could
reby the Opals at much higher cost. so I
can go back to playing Affinity, which
is the deck I had at the start of this
whole story. Needless to say, I don't
play Modern anymore. And I stuck around
for a lot longer than other people did.
Power creep is expensive. It prices
people out of the game, and that is
really bad for a game like Magic where
you need a lot of people to show up to
play the game. It erodess confidence in
the format. Why buy a card if it's going
to be completely useless the next day?
And to be clear, I don't care about the
monetary value of cards holding as long
as they're still playable. If my
Moxoples got reprinted into oblivion and
fell to $1, that's fine as long as I got
to play the card Mox Opople for the
entire duration of that time. Enough
about competitive formats. Who cares
about that? Let's talk about EDH. Power
creep does not hurt casual commander as
much as competitive formats, but it is
still really bad for EDH. One thing
powerful cards do is they hurt deck
brewing. And this is true for all
formats. If you want to brew a deck in
modern, it has to be strong enough to
compete with Modern Horizons 3 cards. In
Commander, if you want to brew around
with some jank old stuff, it's just not
going to be as powerful as the new
things. Commander has genuinely sped up
a lot. Part of that is the introduction
of these cards designed for commander.
The commanders have lower mana value.
The removal is cheaper as well. And the
power level of these things that are
designed for commander just eclipse the
power level of things not designed for
commander. Smothering tithe is made for
commander. If you want a four mana ramp
option for your white deck, this is the
best option period. And if you were
playing Hedron Archive or Solemn
Semilacrim before that, trust me, those
two are not even in the same ballpark as
Smothering Tithe. And this is a huge
difference from how it used to be. When
Heedron Archive came out, yeah, it
competes for the four mana ramp slot of
Solemn Semlacrim, but it's not so much
more powerful that you needed to buy
that card to be even in a comparable
league to other decks. And as the
average power level of cards go up, the
speed at which the game ends is way
faster too. If previously maybe nine
mana cards ended the game, but as eight
mana and seven mana cards get stronger,
well, they can end the game now. And
then six and five and so on and so
forth, and that makes it harder to play
your old nine mana finisher because the
game ended on turn seven because of the
seven mana finisher. This shrinks the
card pool for you. If four mana cards
are so powerful in commander that they
demand removal instantly or they require
you to keep up on pace, then having a
great six drop is going to feel way
worse. And since these are the new
cards, new casual EDH players are going
to be opening them from packs and
putting them in decks. So, this will
affect the format. I know it's casual
and all that and players will
intentionally play bad cards, but
eventually your bad cards are so bad you
lose every game and it can be very
frustrating. So, you might upgrade the
deck or you just play against new
players who are playing stronger things.
And even if you currently play
intentionally bad cards, your bad cards
today are just last year's broken cards.
And this has the potential to get a lot
worse. We got Jeweled Lotus and Docside
banned by the rules committee in an
attempt to slow down the game. But now
that the format is run by wizards,
what's to stop them from printing Jewel
Lotus 2 and just making it a gamechanger
and keeping it in the format? I also
want to take a moment to dispel the myth
that strong cards are good for new
players. I think this is pretty silly. I
could come up with an obviously
overpowered card and a new player can
crack it from a pack and go, "Whoa,
that's crazy. That's strong. Sure, I
guess." And maybe they get excited for
that. But new players get excited over
lots of things. It doesn't have to
actually be literally unbeatably strong.
As an example, lots of new players
really like the card Forexian
Obliterator. It feels unbeatable until
you realize it's not. But you can be
excited for bad cards. It takes time for
you to learn what is and isn't actually
good, what is actually a strong card.
New players get excited over lots of
things. In fact, there's a really,
really good article about why the game
has and needs bad cards written by Mark
Rosewater, who apparently, I don't know,
forgot about this article. It's one of
the best articles about game design ever
written, and it is seemingly being
ignored. So, no, I don't think powerful,
busted, crazy cards are good for new
players. It's actually really bad for
new players specifically. Let's say
you're a new player coming in because of
Final Fantasy and then you build a I
don't know a cloud deck. You want cloud
in your deck and the Buster Sword. Wow,
so cool. And then you lose every single
game because this VV Cauldron deck just
obliterates you on turn three. Is this
new player having fun? Are they excited
about Cloud or are they annoyed? And
then where's the interesting part? Okay,
Vive looks like a strong card, but it's
so strong it's unbeatable. So, you just
learn, you go VV, Cauldron, whatever
else, and then that's it. There's
nothing else to beat that. This isn't
fun for new players. All the fans of
Spider-Man who want to play standard
with Spider-Man cards are going to get thermonuclearbombed
thermonuclearbombed
by Vivv. It's just not good for casuals.
It's not good for people trying to get
into the game. Whereas, if the format
powers down significantly, you can play
your bad Spider-Man cards that you
enjoy. Spider-Man got a lot of things
wrong as a set, but I really, really
love that it's not a strong set. These
cards are terrible, which is great. This
should be the power level of standard
because then anyone, a new player, can
put their favorite cards in a deck and
then not get blown up on turns 1, 2, and
three. They actually get to four mana to
cast their favorite cards and then five
mana to attack with their favorite
cards. Yes, it might not be meta. It
might not be that strong, but at least
they got to play the game. Power Creep
is just so bad for a long-term game like
this. As the formats just speed up and
speed up more and more and more, what is
the logical end point? Modern becomes a
turn one format. Standard becomes a turn
one format. EDH becomes more of a turn
one format, even in casual play. Like,
what what are we doing here? It it feels
like there's no forethought put into
what is going to happen if we just keep
doing this over and over and over again.
This is going to cause a lot of burnout
for players, and I'm really worried
about it. So, what's the solution,
right? Well, obviously focusing on
standard. They could make Sarah Angel
the best card in standard. Just don't
print anything stronger than Sarah Angel
and bada bing bada boom, that's the best
card. It's really that easy. Standard
solves power creep perfectly. And it
also solves complexity creep, which
could be its own video. But a lot of
these stronger cards are also more
complex. They're not just bigger
numbers, they're also more words on the
text box. They do so many more things
than other cards. Ragavan is not just
stronger than Savannah Lions, it is way
more complex. There's a lot more
decisions that need to be made when you
play Ragavan. I love standard as being a
low power format made of new cards such
that new players buying new cards can
see viable cards in their packs and put
them into decks and actually play at the
local game store. That is a genius thing
Magic does which other card games really
don't. And we just broke that safety
valve of standard. So, why did they do
that? Normally, any game that lasts this
long and has this many pieces would kill
for a solution to power creep, something
to really ensure the longevity of the
game. Well, come on. The answer's
obvious. It's money, right? You see, the
only reason to make a card so strong
everybody playing the game everywhere
would need it is to force everyone
everywhere to buy it. But everyone has
their limit. You can only spend so much
on magic before you either can't or
won't anymore. And every single time a
deck gets banned or power crept, there
are some amount of people who simply
won't buy back into the format. And this
is the reason we are seeing such a
decline in paper formats. It's a lot of
power creep and it's hard to keep up
with, especially with these bans. Like,
oh my goodness, ban windows are so
stupid. Every ban should be an emergency
ban. Just don't print broken cards to
begin with. I feel so bad for the
Wizards design team here. Printing a
balanced card is very difficult to do.
Like making a busted card is easy. I did
one for this video. Making everything
balanced is so tricky. And with seven
sets, that's so much to balance. And if
you want to push the envelope, which
Hasbro wants them to do, it's really
hard to push the envelope with every
card the same amount because it's so
easy to then break something. And I
assume Hasbro did not give them any
extra resources at all, which means
they're probably stretched really thin.
Now, the problem with this solution is
it requires Hasbro to allow Wizards to
use standard for longevity. But the
Hasbro executives do not care about the
longevity of Magic the Gathering. I've
said it in a previous video and I'll say
it again. I just genuinely don't think
they have an actual long-term plan. We
don't know when they're going to reprint
Universal cards. We don't know if
they're going to do anything about Power
Creep. We don't know if they're going
to, you know, tone down the number of
sets every year. All of this stuff. And
the reason we don't know that is they
probably don't have a plan. I assume
they're just going to pocket their seven
figure salary for 10 years and then it's
some other person's problem once they
retire. Now, of course, I would love to
be wrong. I would love love love to be
wrong about that. It would be so awesome
if I am wrong about like everything that
I say in these types of videos. I would
love that so much. But tragically, I
think I'm going to be right, which
sucks. Okay, so what's a solution you as
an actual player can do to fight against
power creep? Well, you could play
standard on arena since that since when
cards get banned, you get refunded wild
cards and then one wild card is the same
price of every card, which is okay. You
know, it's better than the other option,
but if your card gets power and not
banned, you're still just out the wild
card, so it's not perfect. Or you can
play popper, the best 60 card format
right now, period. Additionally, cube
and dandan are ways of playing which are
truly not harmed by power creep, or
embrace it and play CEDH. CEDH is proxy
friendly, so if your deck gets power
crept, who cares? It's pretty cheap to
just build a new proxy deck. I decided
to change up my CEH list and no card
cost me over a dollar. Proxies are
cheap. I do think there's something more
to be said about strong cards and casual
EDH and how to avoid using them, how to
make last year's strong cards good
enough to compete with this year's
broken ones. But I'll save it for its
own video. Thanks for watching and
special thanks to my tier three patrons
whose names you see here. If you want to
join the Patreon and get in on any of
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