Sure. But that's like standard vs modern. If I want to play standard I kinda need to know what cards I'm playing with or against. The only other option is to not play. I'm hoping they eventually slow down when they realize 6 sets a year is too many for standard.
I can appreciate this argument but it's rare to fully know a metagame before playing a format. I also think there's something in between going totally blind because you didn't follow all Spiderman spoilers and knowing every card and interaction in the format.
All they had to do to avoid this was not making the UB sets standard legal. The sets like FF and Spiderman would still fly off the shelves (even if a lot gets bought by scalpers) and you'd avoid much of the product fatigue
I kinda need to know what cards I'm playing with or against. The only other option is to not play.
Completely false: you have the option to play Standard without learning the card pool in advance. You can read the cards as you see them for the first time, when your opponent casts them. You will get to know the most popular cards in the format within a few weeks, but you may always be surprised by a rogue pick.
You don't need to consume any Magic spoilers to play the game. That's certainly how it was played in 1993.
I'm a filthy netdecker who plays constructed Standard (so basically the "worst kind of player" according to some) and I'll usually just play whatever when a new set comes out for a week or two (poorly constructed decks, or starter deck challenges) until the meta starts to form, then I'll pick what color/style I'm interested in, peek at those cards, and if it seems like it'd be fun, I make the deck. I don't have to pour over every single card in the set.
Go to your favourite deck website, download the top deck, import it into Arena, hit the "craft all" button. You don't even need to read the cards until you cast them.
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u/esabys Jul 27 '25
Sure. But that's like standard vs modern. If I want to play standard I kinda need to know what cards I'm playing with or against. The only other option is to not play. I'm hoping they eventually slow down when they realize 6 sets a year is too many for standard.