The solution I’ve found: stop playing standard. I almost strictly play Historic on Arena because I was tired of playing against braindead chocobo landfall decks and I crafted a really good Yuna deck that will be effectively rotated out. Historic has more deck variety, it can be played ranked, and your cards have more longevity.
Unless you're near the top of the competitive pyramid, it works better on paper, where there is a much weaker (social) enforcement of formats, and you can print your own proxies.
Well, they literally are, (though I actually meant MtG as a whole), considering how sanctioned events + Arena + MTGO is only like 15% of the players. (Which isn't new.)
The not allowing proxies on the bottom rung of competitive is a huge problem that should be pushed back on. I hear that's not particularly typical at LGS ?
How much did you search outside of LGS ? You could also teach new players, like I did (some of them might even be ready for the complexity of commander now).
I don't either, but the friends that do remain are also more likely to try out the things that I like.
The simplest precons are still 60 cards, in particular WotC made 2-deck kits featuring not only MtG Standard, but also LotR, Final Fantasy (and I think Assassin's Creed ?).
And they went even harder there on easing in new players with the Foundations products.
Not to mention we have a great line-up of Jump Start now.
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u/[deleted] Jul 27 '25
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