r/magicTCG • u/Edoardo_Beffardo COMPLEAT • 18h ago
General Discussion Planar Standard turns ONE year old!
Hi everyone, today we celebrate 1 year of the Planar Standard format! It's been exactly one year since the original format proposal, back when we were still known as Type 2, and so much has happened since then!
During this first year we:
- Evolved from the Type 2 proposal into the fully fledged Planar Standard format
- Created a dedicated Discord channel, the beating heart of our operation, now very close to 2000 participants!
- Got together multiple teams of amazing people handling both the format itself and the 80+ online events in the last year alone, with well over 100 as the target for the coming one!
- Created a whole official website for Planar Standard, recently updated with three new sections (News, Community and the much-anticipated decklist page)!
- Created a dedicated subreddit and Twitch channel
- Created a recurring Monthly Championship AND a Seasonal League, both entirely free and sporting real prizes provided by the community!
- Created two new exciting recurring event series, Mid-Month Madness and Legality Fracture
- Held our very first public ban vote for Jeskai Revelation and Tablet of Discovery, which after a lot of in-depth discussion and analysis, ended with both cards remaining legal
- Became officially recognized on Melee.gg, now the main platform of our Monthly Championship
- Got noticed by Mark Rosewater himself, who confirmed that the mothership is indeed keeping an eye on us!
This year has been a truly awesome journey: it's been great seeing the format develop into its own ecosystem, and I'm forever grateful to all of the fantastic people who helped every step of the way. Our community has grown into something really special, driven by our proactive spirit and our welcoming attitude, and that makes me so happy.
The mission remains the same, adamant since day 1: provide a slower, tighter and overall more sustainable alternative to Standard, closer to what the Standard experience felt like before the switch to the current 13 to 20 sets card pool.
Personally speaking, I was able to fully immerse myself in the three in-universe sets we got this year, with ample time to experience their Limited environment and playtest and explore a bunch of the new strategies they featured. I even managed to collect the two less recent ones (Lorwyn Eclipsed and Secrets of Strixhaven) to near completion on Arena, without having to spend every day grinding rewards, like I no doubt would've been required to do, had I attempted the same with the entire yearly schedule.
As someone who felt overwhelmed by the ever-increasing pace of releases, it's been downright liberating, and I can't wait to discover what the coming year will bring us, since all three of the upcoming in-universe sets appear incredibly exciting.
I can't help but recommend the same experience to everyone out there! If you wanna play fun Magic with great people, hop on aboard the Planar Standard train, we're just getting started and it's going to be a [[wild ride]] !
Extra answers for those still curious:
- What's "Planar Standard" again? Kudos for getting this far into the post without knowing: Planar Standard is a community-run format, inspired by the way Standard used to work : it encompasses two years of Universes Within Premier Magic sets (currently 2025 and 2026), along with Foundations, as an evergreen stand-in for the old Core Sets.
- Is any card banned in Planar Standard? Yes, currently Cori-Steel Cutter is the only card banned.
- What's the meta like thus far? Quite varied, our latest Top 8 featured Sultai Midrange (feat. Tarmogoyf), Esper Superfriends, 4c Control, Rakdos Aggro, Azorius Surveil, Golgari Midrange (feat. Vraska, the Cutting Glare), Izzet Opus Combo and Gruul Midrange (feat. Hexhaven Invigorator), which ended up winning. Since Reality Fracture just came out, the format is wide open, so who knows? Your hot new brew might just be the next deck to beat.
- I started playing with a Universes Beyond set, so I don't have a big in-universe collection yet, how can I get a taste of Planar Standard? This has been a bit of a blind spot during our first year, but thankfully we recently introduced a new Monthly event, Legality Fracture, where you can play your Universes Beyond brew alongside our Planar Standard decks! Wondering how? You can find out in detail over here
- Do you have a Scryfall link with the whole format on hand? Sure do+-name%3A%22Cori-steel+cutter%22&unique=cards&as=grid&order=color)
- Anything else? Keep an eye on our subreddit later in the day for a little surprise!
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u/Blaze_1013 Jack of Clubs 18h ago
One of Magic’s biggest strengths over other card games is how receptive the community is to other ways to play. As far as I know none of the other major card games have much in the way of alternate formats, let alone community driven ones so I just think it’s really cool that this exists. With rotation presumably coming with the next in universe set in January that should make for some exciting times in the near future too.
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u/Scarecrow1779 Mardu 18h ago
Yeah, the alternative format scene is absolutely booming right now, too
- Canadian Highlander
- Premodern
- Pauper Commander
- Dandan
- Planar Standard
At magiccon vegas, we had 5 tables playing pauper commander, while simultaneously, there was a canlander meetup 30 feet away that looked like it had 20+ people playing.
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u/YonatanShofty Wabbit Season 17h ago
Not to mention edh uaed to be an alternative, community driven format. Also pauper as far as i remember
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u/MatsuzoSF 14h ago
I thought pauper was made to promote MTGO.
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u/smully39 Duck Season 12h ago
It's tough - while a lot of modern discussion of it starts with the MTGO Pauper community, I have to go through some old magazines I have from when I was a kid, because I distinctly remember it being older than that.
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u/Nvenom8 Mardu 13h ago
Idk how much of a scene there is for it, but my playgroup has been really enjoying Oathbreaker lately. It's a completely bonkers and broken format, which leads to much quicker games than EDH and some big and flashy (if perhaps not exactly "fair") moments.
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u/Scarecrow1779 Mardu 12h ago
My feeling is that a lot of the current popular alt formats are specifically popular because they solve one of three problems people regularly complain about:
- high $ cost (includes rotation and concerns about too many new cards per year)
- too broken (both faster standards and people not liking the wide power gaps within an EDH bracket)
- dislike of UB (i think this is the least impactful of the three, but it does come up a lot specifically with premodern and planar standard)
All of the above mentioned formats (and others like penny dreadful, value vintage, etc) all solve one or more of these issues, and that is what has allowed them to stand apart and grow successfully. Oathbreaker and Tiny Leaders feel to me like the whole reason that they fell off is because they were ultimately trying to be variety for variety's sake and weren't answering big communal frustrations like these. Even pauper and EDH started out based upon fixing these issues, with both being pretty budget and slower, even if they eventually evolved to speed up and gained enough popularity that many decks got more expensive.
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u/cadwellingtonsfinest Duck Season 15h ago
yeah canlander has been growing faster than I've ever seen the past year or two
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u/tylerjehenna 4h ago
LoadingReadyRun/Ben Wheeler has been a big part of that growth, between the North 100 showdown series to CanLander being a monthly part of FNPF, to the Ben vs Angel series on Wheeler's twitch/youtube.
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u/-darknessangel- Duck Season 15h ago
Highlander... That's a name I haven't heard for a loooong time.
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u/A_Wholesome_Comment Dân 2h ago
I'm going to start a new Format called 'Post-Modern Non-Standard Mid-Commander'. It's Commander with only Non-premodern sets allowed, but not anything in current Standard Rotation.
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u/ChemicalExperiment Chandra 17h ago
(probably because a decent amount of other card games don't care about their gameplay and are only in it for the
gamblingcollecting)13
u/CrustyBarnacleJones Shuffler Truther 17h ago
Yugioh has several that started as community formats and eventually became popular enough to receive a bit of recognition from Konami (Goat and Edison are probably the most popular, but there are other smaller ones that see play as well)
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u/SliverQween COMPLEAT 15h ago
I still think making a set of Goat decks as an official product would be really cool, and maybe even sell okay for Konami. Like just release like a 4 pack of the most dominant decks in the format, and have the card printings use the official rules text as it is in goat format. They prob will never do this but its a dream of mine lol.
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u/Blaze_1013 Jack of Clubs 17h ago
I want to say those retro formats are part of the Time Wizard branding Konami tried. And I know they have a decent following, but I’d still categorize the retro formats (GOAT, Edison, Tengu, TOSS) as more niche. Not to mention “much” was me allowing carve outs for stuff like Genesys which is an active push by Konami to give people something major outside of Advance.
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u/CrustyBarnacleJones Shuffler Truther 17h ago
Originally they were all community formats and then Konami saw the popularity and made “official” versions (although there are some issues they’re currently ironing out regarding ruling changes and card errata)
Genesys is the only one made from the ground up by Konami, everything else was just some players who said “I think the game was pretty cool with the banlist and set legality of insert tournament, let’s play with those parameters” (Edison format is literally just named after the city that hosted the tournament they picked lol) but I get what you’re saying
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u/d7h7n Michael Jordan Rookie 4h ago edited 4h ago
Edison isn't that niche anymore. It's far and away the second biggest Yugioh TCG format. Since Konami dropped Time Wizard in the US, a handful of organizers have taken upon themselves to run their own tournament circuits. Turnout has averaged between 256-400+ which is good for a 100% community ran format. There's gonna be a 10K in December.
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u/Alucart3927 Dandadan 16h ago
didn’t they Kill time wizard format for time travel?
basically Konami doesn’t support The format that uses OLD rules for those format. but instead it uses modern rules.
pretty sure that was the big stink last year that koanmi did and Cimoo was saying konami killing community loved formats
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u/Blaze_1013 Jack of Clubs 16h ago
I THINK Konami retreated on that when the community pushed back. Not 100%. Though with Genesys launching any care about the changes, and Time Wizard in general, seems to have fall off a bit.
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u/Alucart3927 Dandadan 16h ago
yes genesys was their way of basically controlling any retro like format by replacing them.
But Also Konami has 2 genesys formats, as JPN has a separate point list soo… who knows wtf they doing.
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u/Blaze_1013 Jack of Clubs 16h ago
The OCG/TCG divide is honestly one of the biggest points of frustration with Yugioh. Between having to wait almost a year for some cards (the rivals stuff released in Japan in March and comes out in November here), and also just having a good read on knowing what decks will be good which eats away at one of the best parts of card games, exploration of new stuff, the fact they don’t bother to line up set releases in 2026 when I think all the other major card games do is just so confusing. Watching YugiTubers just speak with dread for November and Toons releasing really puts a dark cloud over the game.
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u/Alucart3927 Dandadan 14h ago
i mean gameplay is a joke,
80% win rate going first and bans dont address it. only basically 1 deck gets to have a higher than 20% win rate going 2nd. And basically any strat that helps lock down your oppt is banned out right cause noone plays S/T removal.
So its no point in playing the game in advanced.
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u/Blaze_1013 Jack of Clubs 9h ago
I find it very funny we were having this discussion just a few hours before Konami announced a 34 ban 8 limit list dropping this weekend. I wonder if that is the record for most changed in a card game because that’s a lot.
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u/Alucart3927 Dandadan 9h ago
i believe so but this also is straight because the last ban list did nothing And needs to at least ban excessive amount of cards build up for a couple years.
But also it’s kind of cringe on how it’s being presented. 5 ban lists over the weekend
soo you see the first sell your cards, switch deck last minute, watch that deck get banned day 2, sell them again for a lost, buy inflated prices after 5th banlist end of day so you actually can play
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u/d7h7n Michael Jordan Rookie 4h ago
Nah they killed it. They reprinted everything they could for Edison to sell their products then cut Time Wizard as the UTW tourneys at YCSs were pulling big numbers making Genesys look bad. A lot of the YCS judges were not familiar with retro rulings so that was another reason to drop it.
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u/YashaSkaven01 Dan 3h ago
Genesys as well has been a huge success. Yesterday's cards, today's gameplay
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u/MiraclePrototype COMPLEAT 10h ago
It's amazing how vocal the outcry is in Yugioh communities for variant, ideally simpler formats, but the numbers in sales and in competition just do not add up for that. The normie duelist just passionately refuses any such variance.
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u/jtv123 Wabbit Season 18h ago
There are dozens of us
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u/Grumpiergoat Jeskai 18h ago
Kicking this post off with an image from Aetherdrift doesn't help. There's never going to be a time I'm excited by a format that allows Aetherdrift but not Avatar.
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u/ItzBoshNet Dân 16h ago
I use verge lands in most if not all of my multi color decks. I don't use any avatar cards.
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u/Amansaysamen Duck Season 18h ago
Unpopular opinion: Avatar really wasn't that good of a set.
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u/Lua_CW Dan 16h ago
I'd go the other way and say that Avatar was a fine set and so was Aetherdrift. I thought it was dumb at first but it grew on me.
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u/KKilikk Izzet* 11h ago
I will never get over them building a racetrack in Amonkhet. Just felt disrespectful. Waiting for years to get a set on a plane you love and it essentially gets turned into a meme. Hazoret has "Start your engines!" on her card. I am crashing out just thinking about all this again.
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u/driver1676 Wabbit Season 17h ago
This is wild to me. I've been playing since New Phyrexia and I think it may be my favorite set ever. Everything about the set does it for me
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u/LefTurn629 Dân 15h ago
I think generally Avatar was a great Magic set, but it really should have been direct-to-Modern a la LotR or Assassin's Creed. It was pushed enough in power that it broke Standard for most of this year with multiple shells becoming problematic enough to need Avatar cards banned.
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u/sorany9 COMPLEAT 17h ago
Genuinely, none of the UB sets have been anything to write home about unless you were already very predisposed to liking the IP.
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u/Blaze_1013 Jack of Clubs 17h ago
My understanding is that Final Fantasy is considered one of the best draft formats in the last 5 years. I also think the reception around LotR was good too. Honestly the main issue is that of the I want to say 7 released UB sets 3 have been small sets which have not been received well.
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u/rib78 Karn 17h ago
I think 'last 5 years' is doing it a pretty significant disservice.
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u/Blaze_1013 Jack of Clubs 17h ago
Fair. I don’t follow limited reaction too closely. I’ve obviously have heard nothing but good things and some talk of it being a GOAT, but I don’t have a good read on the communities placement of it in the all timer list.
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u/Jaccount 17h ago
I think you're not giving the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles set enough credit.
It was a small set, but still had a reasonable limited format, and has introduced some cards to a number of formats. I'd argue it was better as a product than Lorwyn Eclipsed, and it didn't even have shocklands to lean on.
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u/serpentrepents Storm Crow 11h ago
I am a certified UB hater but even I can recognize FF and the original LOTR sets were well done. (Lotr's of course has the two glaring mistakes.)
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u/Beneficial_Pin5295 Dandadan 17h ago
Neither have a lot of the in-universe sets recently?
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u/PM-Me-Nerdy-Facts Dân 17h ago
Last 3 years we’ve had 13 in universe sets (including foundations), only 3/13 could be considered flops - OTJ, MKM & DFT (and that’s from general consensus, I personally enjoyed all 3). I’d even argue that 8/13 would be considered great by most people. We’ve had a really good run of in-universe sets recently, it’s just sort of scarred by the “hat” sets.
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u/sorany9 COMPLEAT 17h ago
I mean that’s just not the case, all of the in universe sets have been good for a little while now. Your last like dud was Aetherdrift but even then we got Foundations just a few months before that and that was also a banger.
All of next years sets also look like home runs.
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u/Beneficial_Pin5295 Dandadan 17h ago
"Write home" to me implies more than just being good, to be fair.
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u/sorany9 COMPLEAT 17h ago
Sure, you could make that argument but then every UB set kind of sucks by that measure since none of them are anything more than “HEY! Do you like Character? Well, here’s this character you like on a card with mediocre art.” and that’s every UB set ad nauseum.
There’s no story, there’s no significant interplay between art and design it’s just here is thing on card, buy more please.
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u/shinjisaberntr Dân 16h ago
So we outright lying now to justify our hatred lmao
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u/Dupileini Dân 15h ago
Regardless of whether you agree or not, stating an opinion is not lying.
If they were trying to back said opinion up with untruthful or made up facts, then you'd have a point, but they aren't.
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u/Ok-Palpitation8843 Rakdos* 14h ago
one is Magic the Gathering and one is Nickelodeon, hope this helps
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u/Extension_Plant7262 Dân 18h ago
give it time. the UB hate is so steep that you have a lot of people defending the hat sets these days
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u/PippoChiri Temur 18h ago
I have not seen anu significantly amount of people defending hat set beyond talking about how hat set is basically a thought terminating cliché that doesn't actually convey coherent information nor explains the flaws of those set.
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u/r_lucasite Simic* 18h ago
I’ll see people usually defending the stories or the limited environments but I’ve never seen them defended in totality (unless it’s something like calling Edge a hat set)
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u/PippoChiri Temur 17h ago
And both of those stuff are very much unrelated to the problems that the majority of people generally combines into the words "hat set"
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u/Extension_Plant7262 Dân 17h ago
do this thought experiment next time you get a "UB is all slop" post. Mention how the hat sets were slop and see what the replies are. I do it and its amusing to see people push back and say edgey mario kart wasn't actually that bad and totally fits the magic cannon
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u/mattsav012000 Can’t Block Warriors 17h ago
the reason that aether drift fits magics cannon is that magic cannon fits anything. This is the power of magic as a game and setting. seriously look at what a probably the 3 most popular settings in magic. We have European Renaissance(Ravnica) Japanese Cyberpunk(Kamigawa) and European Colonial gothic horror(Innistrad). Other popular settings. Mezo American fantasy (Ixalan), High fantasy europe(Dominaria) Celtic Methology(Lorwyn/Shadowmoor). Look its ok to say a set was poorly designed or its theme and aesthetic did not work for you or the player base. But Magic is as the used to say a Multiverse of Infinite Possibilities. Thus anytheme works in magics setting just not all themes work for the game of magic.
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u/Extension_Plant7262 Dân 16h ago
Except not superheros apparently lol
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u/SleetTheFox 8h ago
Magic has always had superheroes. They were called planeswalkers. The difference is they were keyed to fit the broader aesthetic of the worlds.
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u/PippoChiri Temur 17h ago
and its amusing to see people push back and say edgey mario kart wasn't actually that bad and totally fits the magic cannon
Because that's the problem. For a lot of people UB sets are inherently problematic, their existence is an inherent negative for what they care about. On the other hand, most people have a few very specific problems (that can often be very significant), but instead of actually discuss them, they attack everything about the set, completely ignoring a lot of the good that is present there that does not have those problems.
This is all because "hat set" is repeated at nauseam and doesn't mean anything, so it ends up meaning everything.7
u/Extension_Plant7262 Dân 17h ago
Pretty much. The discussion requires a lot of nuance that reddit just isn't capable of. Especially since what is "core" magic has radically shifted over the decades too.
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u/Jaccount 17h ago
That's the thing. I could understand when people who are backing something like Premodern get kind of up in arms about Universes Beyond.
But anything recent? The design is basically the same, it's just the window dressing that's different.
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u/PippoChiri Temur 17h ago
And the window dressing is very very important to how a lot of people enjoy the game.
One window dressing is what I'm here for, the other is an ad.
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u/Extension_Plant7262 Dân 17h ago
And that's perfectly fine. Different design aesthetics appeal to different people. Where it gets crazy is when redditors start making broad proclamations that x doesn't fit magic at all. like you calling UB a glorified ad. Sure, but what are they advertising with the labrynth secret lair? That you should watch a 40 year old movie?
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u/otterguy12 Liliana 17h ago
Or point out how Innistrad and Amonkhet fit the most common definitions of hat set and just wait for the fireworks
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u/Kaprak 17h ago
Been my statement since day one. Tarkir and Theros are even thinner.
Only reason hat set started is because people were more aware and online
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u/SleetTheFox 8h ago
The original criticism was actually a very narrow criticism, which only applied to a very small number of sets. The idea that you just took a character... and added a hat. The gargoyle is a detective! The weird is a detective! Vraska is a cowboy! Rakdos is a cowboy! Etc. It didn't actually just mean "genre-based plane."
By how the original criticism went, there were only 4 hat sets. Murders, Outlaws, Duskmourn, and Aetherdrift. And even then, Duskmourn had enough going on that the hat set elements were much less loud than the other 3. So did Aetherdrift, to a lesser extent.
WotC heard loud and clear that players generally didn't like that, and they pulled back, and now no more hat sets. There really is no utility in calling anything a "hat set" anymore.
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u/SleetTheFox 8h ago
That's just really a sign that the term "hat set" has drifted so far to where it isn't even useful anymore.
People adore using "the new term" and end up forcing it where it doesn't belong, to where it loses meaning. See also: gaslighting, enshittification, etc.
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u/Lion_From_The_North Dandadan 1h ago
The problem with hat sets imo isn't being based on tropes, but them taking existing characters from other sets and putting them in the hats instead of being self-contained (minus planeswalkers) like the planes you mention are. "Wild west world" is one thing, but do we need to see Rakdos and Marchesa in cowboy hats literally LARPing?
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u/Extension_Plant7262 Dân 17h ago
personally I wouldn't go that far lol, but yeah. People also lose their shit when you point out that the gatewatch superfriends are essentially super heroes and fairly antithetical to old school magic.
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u/otterguy12 Liliana 17h ago
That's kinda crazy cause I know people hated hated hated the "Jacetice League" when it was contemporary but now that it's all but over they can look back on it this way
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u/CoolAngelsThesis Dimir* 13h ago
At the store I worked at during the time, everyone just kept talking about how Magic was just chasing that Avengers money.
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u/Extension_Plant7262 Dân 17h ago
yep. though I think its more a generational thing, you had a big resurgence in play after the guildwatch was well established so a lot of today's players just grew up with it.
The entire UB hate thing going on can honestly just be chalked up to "I hate change" to a large extent.
It is infuriating when you have people insist that the superfriends were never hated though. Like, people are still alive during that time.
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u/RudeHero Golgari* 16h ago edited 16h ago
that's ignoring half the pitch of this format. the other half being there are too many cards/releases in standard
plucking out UB is just more efficient than arbitrarily voting/determining which sets are in and which sets are out
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u/hawkshaw1024 17h ago
On the other hand, I've seen cases where UB hate gets strong enough that it ends up hitting the nominally in-universe Mario Kart set and the 1980s Haunted House set too.
(It's me, I'm cases.)
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u/BobbyFischer724 Dan 17h ago
UB Hate is like 3% of the player base and that makes up like 86% of Reddit. I think there are fewer than you think.
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u/Extension_Plant7262 Dân 17h ago
well yeah, or we'd be having materially lower UB. People forget how fast Hasbro u-turned on aftermath sets when the backlash made its way to sales. If UB was killing the playerbase, they wouldn't be cramming it wherever they can
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u/BobbyFischer724 Dan 16h ago
UB sets are different since they involved out of house contracts. It will be at least 2-3 years before we would see any real change in the amount of UB sets per year. An in-house set like Aftermath is much easier to swap.
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u/Extension_Plant7262 Dân 16h ago
Sets yes. I'm more talking about secret lairs since with MH it seems clear Hasbro has discretion to pull things that don't work. And they're cramming as much UB into those lairs as humanly possible rather than backing off
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u/Olipod2002 FLEEM 17h ago
Congrats from fighting against becoming "the 13th new solution to fix standard" and turning into a real community-driven format, can’t even imagine how hard it’s been at times
It’s pretty telling that there’s only one banned card in Planar Standard. Though, I just looked at the standard banlist after typing the previous sentence and realized that outside of Cori-Steel Cutter, all the UW cards have simply rotated out of Planar Standard because they were printed in 2024 or earlier. Huh.
This diverse meta is beautiful, btw.
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u/Xenasis Sultai 17h ago
It’s pretty telling that there’s only one banned card in Planar Standard.
The reason is that there's no competitive pressure on this format. It's the same reason that after RCs/the Pro Tour are usually when bans happen. There is no incentive for anybody to try and break the format.
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u/Dumblec0re Urza's Saga 13h ago
As someone who has played the format a fair amount I can say that's definitely the case. The strongest decks in Planar Standard have always been the ones with the fewest missing cards from existing Standard decks, like 4c Control or Mardu Discard. That being said not having a ton of competitive pressure made the format feel a lot more welcoming to people who just like to brew different decks. And we do have regular tournaments with a bit of price money to get a little more of a competitive feeling.
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u/RegalKillager WANTED 17h ago
I think a good way to point out the fallacy in 'This format is balanced. It must be the UB sets' fault things are broken.' is that Postmodern also only has one banned card, The One Ring. When there's low incentive to actually prioritize breaking a format any format looks balanced.
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u/Burger_Thief Selesnya* 15h ago
I mean that's a fallacy in itself cause at least for Standard the only banned UB cards are Vivi and Badgermole.
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u/Tuss36 16h ago
On the other hand if folks aren't playing degenerate stuff in an effort to do everything they can for the prize money, that's kind of a win in its own way. Can more play what you like rather than it being only the optimized and stuff teched against the optimized.
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u/RegalKillager WANTED 15h ago
The cool part is you're right; the uncool part is that any format trying to do this is likely doing a worse job of it than Commander.
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u/DevelopmentOverall93 Dandadan 16h ago
Yeah this is pretty clearly the driver if you analyze the situation with sober eyes. It's great that the format is working for those that play it, but there are probably 0.01% (maybe less?) of the brains looking to break this format as there are normal standard. And even then, they aren't that motivated to actually break it, since there's no money or prestige on the line. I don't think there are any larger lessons to be learned about balance from this except smaller formats are under considerably less stress than larger ones.
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u/Superbomb-122 Simic* 16h ago
Part of it really is that the lack of 2024 or UB cards cuts out almost all of big Standard's banlist. Whether it stays that way is TBD but with rotation coming there will soon not be a single banned Standard card eligible for the format
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u/Tasonir Azorius* 15h ago
I imagine this is just coincidence, but damn if it doesn't make it seem like UB sets are intentionally pushed
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u/sirknight_mordred Duck Season 15h ago
It's more cutting the 2023-2024 cards that does it. Wilds of Eldraine has as many cards banned in current standard as UB collectively
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u/AliasB0T Chandra 11h ago
Also specific synergies with cards available in three-year standard breaking cards that wouldn’t exist together in two-year standard. Vivi is a very powerful card, but the deck/card that broke it was Cauldron, which in two-year standard would have rotated by the time FIN released. Similarly, Gran-Gran was a centerpiece of the lessons shell, but a lynchpin card for the deck being top-tier was Artist’s Talent, which rotated from Planar just a couple months after TLA’s release (admittedly before the change to rotation happening at the start of the calendar year, they would’ve shared standard for longer).
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u/zokka_son_of_zokka Dân 17h ago
Well, we're doing a midmonth event where you pick a set and build a deck out of that, which is almost the same thing (if you ignore DFT and FRA)
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u/Beneficial_Pin5295 Dandadan 18h ago
Which actually would have been cooler lol
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u/PippoChiri Temur 17h ago
If you think that would be cool then just make it yourself.
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u/liforrevenge COMPLEAT 17h ago
Maybe you could have phrased this in a way that didn't have "if you love it so much why don't you marry it" energy.
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u/PippoChiri Temur 17h ago
That's fair, the intent was "if you think something and there isn't is cool, then go and make it so you and everyone can have the cool thing".
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u/Beneficial_Pin5295 Dandadan 17h ago
no? who gives a shit?
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u/PippoChiri Temur 17h ago
You? Because you thought it would be cool? This post is the proof that these kinds of format have a chnace of succeding.
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u/Beneficial_Pin5295 Dandadan 17h ago
firstly, I didn't share the idea? someone else did and I just agreed it was a cool idea? why so fking antagonistic lool??
secondly, where did u get the vibe that I hope this format doesn't succeed? bc I thought another idea was cooler? you seem incredibly sensitive
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u/PippoChiri Temur 17h ago
why so fking antagonistic lool??
I was trying to be supportive, incentivizing to create and iterate beyind the structure created/supported by wotc. Arts creates art kinda deal.
where did u get the vibe that I hope this format doesn't succeed?
I never said nor meant that.
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u/Beneficial_Pin5295 Dandadan 17h ago
Nah, you were clearly bothered that I thought their idea was cooler than Planar Standard.
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u/inkWanderer 17h ago
As a completely neutral third party, I just want to say: maybe try taking a deep breath; have you had enough water today? It seems like you’re reading antagonism where there isn’t any. Hope you have a good one!
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u/LazarusRises Colorless 17h ago
he wasn't antagonistic, you were. you said "who gives a shit," which is rude and weird, considering the thing you were asking about was something you said would be cool.
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u/Beneficial_Pin5295 Dandadan 17h ago
because
If you think that would be cool then just make it yourself.
was him clearly being sensitive over me thinking another idea was cooler than planar standard.
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u/LazarusRises Colorless 17h ago
projecting much? that doesn't read as sensitive to me at all, he was making an earnest suggestion.
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u/CrovaxWindgrace COMPLEAT 16h ago
I mean maybe? But it would be unbalanced as fuck, dominaria would...ahem, dominate the format. The only other plane that could rival would be ravnica and is not close.
Still, not the point of the post, I shouldn't have commented that.
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u/Nostalg33k Wabbit Season 18h ago
I remember the first post was an AI mess. Of it led to a community led format then good for all of us and congratulations!
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u/Bravo__Whale Duck Season 17h ago
OP took that post down and made it right, put forth some of their own money as a small prize for a tournament. Pretty good all things considered imo.
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u/Edoardo_Beffardo COMPLEAT 17h ago edited 17h ago
Yeah, as a non-native speaker that original post was definitely an important lesson in trusting my own writing abilities more, for those curious I asked for a grammar check and let it add a couple of paragraphs in my wall of text, here's the prompt i used at the time: https://ibb.co/zVHfLXtT.
It led to the removal of the OG post and I learned never to use AI when writing posts for the format.
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u/ChemicalExperiment Chandra 16h ago
It always makes me happy seeing people learn from their mistakes and grow. I love seeing this format blossom, the community grow, and your promotion of the format improve.
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u/Robtom_5 15h ago
It would be awesome if the Scryfall team could add planar standard as a supported format for the format search, especially when they have formats for tiny leaders and oathbreaker, and support the canlander points list.
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u/SleetTheFox 12h ago
If anyone knows the name of anyone on the team, maybe someone could ping them!
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u/UndercoverHouseplant Wabbit Season 17h ago
Really cool to see so much drive and passion for a format. Hope you guys keep growing!
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u/taphead_31 Urza's Saga 17h ago
This gets an upvote from me. More grassroots community stuff is what we need instead of people calling out the death of magic once every month. Thanks for your work!
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u/10leej 14h ago
If only you didn't do everything through discord but somewhere I can independently archive your discussions on format management using open standards.
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u/Jamonde Dan 9h ago
huh?
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u/Serpens77 COMPLEAT 8h ago
Discord works for live discussions, or stuff like notifying a lot of people at once about things like events, but is terrible at being a repository or archive for static or historical information like forums or messageboards used to be.
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u/FikariHawthorn Duck Season 17m ago
Hard agree there, discord is a bane for the conservation and archiving of community content.
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u/SharpDrink2724 Dân 13h ago
Reading that Tarmogoyf was in a top 8 is enoyto interest me enough to try the format
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u/pwntahontas Dân 10h ago
I miss block constructed. Some of the most fun I've ever had playing Magic was playing Scars of Mirrodin block constructed.
I thought from the name of your format that it was going to be similar :(
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u/Spider_MBI COMPLEAT 15h ago
It's been a truly great year of Magic for me thanks to Planar, and I'm really looking forward to the next year of sets as a result. I'd highly recommend the format to anyone who's feeling a bit burned out by Standard for any reason.
Here's to another year of Planar Standard.
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u/Koloss17 Duck Season 17h ago
Hell yeah! Love seeing community formats grow. We surpassed 3,000 members on the TLR discord not to long ago! (Tiny Leaders: Reborn, for any curious). The community in small formats are simply amazing and I love them.
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u/Edoardo_Beffardo COMPLEAT 16h ago
Happy for you! I always wanted to check out Tiny Leaders
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u/Koloss17 Duck Season 16h ago
Let me know if you ever want to cross pollinate a bit and promote each other’s formats :3 I know our community is a big fan of supporting other community formats, and we have a lot of UB haters running around.
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u/Koloss17 Duck Season 16h ago
We got a lovely discord and a fun YouTube channel! You can check it out on our website, official-tlr.com <3
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u/Zealous217 Twin Believer 14h ago
Congratulations! Planar is actually something my friends and I have been playing at my place every week. I'm hoping to propose it to my LGS as (another) event for me to run to grow a community around it locally. Here's to many more. Magics strength is diversity and options and this has been mine lately.
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u/patronusman Universes Beyonder 13h ago
"Legality Fracture" as a regular event is super cool to me. I like that.
Has anyone asked about starting a Planar Commander format? Seems like a natural branch
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u/Ok_Community_383 Dan 11h ago
They should do an Arena event and see how participation is. I bet it would blow them away.
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u/Altruistic_Photo_142 Dân 12h ago
What is the largest Planar Standard tournament held in the last year?
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u/HardCorwen Daxos 3h ago
we've GOT to get that logo centered, please!
Do the stacked method vs this single line layout you have.
Honestly it makes the whole presentation look sloppy, and it hurts your cause.
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u/BlueMerchant Sultai 15h ago
Really happy for you guys! I keep meaning to check it out again sometime
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u/Kashyyykonomics Dan 17h ago
I would have a little more respect for this format if it wasn't blatantly anti-UB hidden with a veneer of "we don't hate UB, we just want a slower set pace - but also no UB sets ever".
Good for people who like it, but I just wish it was a little more honest. If it's just to be slower, why not do only UB sets? Or half and half? Because the slower set pace is only half of the point.
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u/Edoardo_Beffardo COMPLEAT 17h ago edited 17h ago
Hi there! This is a frequently asked question, I chose the UW/UB divide specifically because the sets are already set up in an alternating fashion in the release schedule, and it's way easier to tell what's legal and what isn't on a dime, compared to something arbitrary like only skipping even sets or something along those lines.
But hey, good news! You can still play UB cards in our Legality Fracture event, and you can also use any UB printing of a Planar Standard legal card, so as you can see, the format isn't opposed to Universes Beyond on any ideological grounds, it's just by far the most sensible way to create a smaller subset of cards while also slowing down the release schedule.
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u/2ndPerk Duck Season 17h ago
If it's just to be slower, why not do only UB sets?
I imagine fewer people want to play a rotating format with only UB sets. People who want to play primarily UB want to play with their favourite IP and not have it rotate, so a functional UB only format should probably be a non-rotating/eternal format.
Or half and half
Because this would be an organizational mess and nightmare of arbitration. How would you decide which sets are in and which are out. Choosing only UB or UW is an already provided and clean method to split the sets in half, and does not rely on arbitrary decisions.
Fundamentally, yes, UW only makes anti-UB people happier and gives them a place to play the game they want to play. It is also the cleanest solution to maintaining a format that behaves the same way that standard has for most of the games history, which is something that there is an audience for.
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u/SleetTheFox 12h ago
UW only makes anti-UB people happier and gives them a place to play the game they want to play
And also... cool! There's a certain subset of the community that seems virulently against people not liking UB, as if being a "UB hater" or whatever was a personal failure. If there are people who don't like UB who flock to this format, why would that be a bad thing? As long as they're not being jerks to people who like UB.
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u/ChemicalXP Wabbit Season 13h ago
Luckily for you, every official format has universes beyond cards legal in it! If it was the opposite would you accuse them of being anti universes within? Somehow I dont think so.
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u/AdaptiveHunter Duck Season 17h ago
See I used to think this, and I still disagree with the “most sensible way” line I see every time this comes up, but actually looking at it and spending an afternoon in the discord changed my mind. There is still some anti-UB sentiment but that’s just the magic community now, aside from those it’s a pretty decent community and the format seems interesting. I’d rather play this than standard, my only issue is that this seems to be arena only, I’d much rather play this in paper
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u/Finnthedol Wabbit Season 17h ago
This is how I know you haven't actually tried planar standard. If you've ever interacted with the community, while it certainly has its share of people who prefer the game without UB, planar standard is by no means just a UB hate club.
The way your comment supposes that you already know the true intent of a group of people with diverse perspectives and intentions with the format is absolutely insane. Do some self reflection.
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u/planeforger Brushwagg 17h ago
The players might have different reasons for playing the format, but the format itself was obviously designed to be anti-UB.
I agree with the previous poster. I wish they'd stop pretending that they picked the UW sets for balance or convenience. It always comes across as insincere.
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u/Edoardo_Beffardo COMPLEAT 17h ago
I mean I'm sorry but it really wasn't designed to be anti-anything, I would literally be lying if i told you otherwise.
Using the UW/UB line was by far the neatest way to create a subset of cards and space out releases: I could choose to either include all UW sets or all UB sets, and I anecdotally found there was more interest in the former than the latter among standard players, that's really all there is to it.
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u/Old-Ad3504 Wabbit Season 15h ago
so if in the future they started releasing 2 uw and 4 ub sets a year would yall start including some of the ub sets in the format?
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u/Edoardo_Beffardo COMPLEAT 15h ago edited 15h ago
It's an interesting scenario to ponder, I guess on the surface level a reasonable pivot would be to go for all UB instead of all UW, since 2 sets per year is likely too few to keep things interesting, but at the same time, you gotta understand people invested in the format would've already gathered a collection of UW cards and would pretty much have to start from scratch, so it would probably be akin to starting a new format anyway.
If we view it as more of a thought exercise, we can imagine a fictional starting point where I have to once again choose whether to use UW or UB in a world where we only get 2 UW sets per year and 4 UB sets per year, and that would honestly be kind of hard, UB would likely be the better candidate, but at the same time anecdotally I don't really think the Standard community in particular is as interested in UB as the rest of the magic community is, so that might be a bit of a non-starter.
What I don't really think would work is having both cards printed in UW sets and cards printed in UB sets legal in the same decks, the dividing line is what defines the format and what makes telling what is and isn't legal so immediate, which is why in our Legality Fracture variation, I put Planar Standard decks against Beyond Standard decks, which is basically a mirror format where UB sets are used to compose decks instead of UW ones. The Line remains the same, you see, so the cardpool is still smaller on both sides, achieving a similar end state, although the complexity of explaining the rules makes it a better fit for a monthly event rather than a whole format IMO.
To answer your question, any change to the current UW/UB set distribution would be a big challenge to overcome, since part of the balancing act rests on both card pools getting equal attention, and that's true for either direction, so even if we were to receive more Universes Within sets compared to Universes Beyond ones.
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u/InvestmentForsaken16 Dân 10h ago
So your answer is to not answer?
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u/Edoardo_Beffardo COMPLEAT 6h ago edited 6h ago
I mean i feel like that's as far from a non-answer you could ever get, since i highlighted multiple possible scenarios, but if you need a more condensed answer, it's unlikely, for the reason I highlighted.
The format works because it's very easy to tell what's legal and what isn't, the moment you introduce some Universes Beyond sets, but not others, it's going to come off as arbitrary, no matter the logic used to justify which set gets included, and which get left outside of the legality.
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u/InvestmentForsaken16 Dân 4h ago
What sets are included and excluded is already arbitrary though? The only non arbitrary way to divide sets is [all sets] anything else is making an arbitrary decision based on some criteria.
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u/Edoardo_Beffardo COMPLEAT 2h ago
Of course, that's what a format is, but arbitrary as a pejorative is used to denote a weak or absent criteria.
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u/Gbrew555 Dân 16h ago
I mean, if the intention was to go back to old standard release cadence… could just make Planar Standard the last year of releases instead of excluding UB.
I hear yall and how it isn’t supposed to be anti-UB. But calling it Planar Standard and specifically excluding UB can kind of give it that impression.
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u/Edoardo_Beffardo COMPLEAT 16h ago
The main problem with the solution you suggest is that it doesn't really fix the pacing of releases, it still means most sets only get a handful of weeks each to be relevant.
Still, i understand what you mean; as i said elsewhere, names are meant to do a lot of things, and while ours is great at describing our legality, it probably doesn't do as good of a job at getting across our format philosophy, it's a bit of a compromise.
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u/Finnthedol Wabbit Season 16h ago
Once again, insanely supposing you understand the intents and perspectives of people you've never talked to or interacted with
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u/therealflyingtoastr Elspeth 11h ago
I mean, if you spend five minutes on their subreddit or Discord it's pretty blatantly obvious that there's a huge portion of their enfranchised playerbase that is there because "UB bad updoots to left." It's not well concealed, even if the OP of this post continues to advocate that they personally don't care. It's very "wink wink" from them, down to the name they chose for the format.
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u/AdventurousGur5495 12h ago
you seem personally upset about the lack of universe Beyond. just like op, you could make your own, much more successful UB only format! maybe call it marvel the gathering?
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u/Malkavon Duck Season 15h ago
Even if it was blatantly, explicitly anti-UB ... so what? Why would that be a problem?
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u/MatsuzoSF 14h ago
This is the first I'm hearing of an explicitly non-UB format, but I'm not surprised it exists.
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u/mtgcf Keeper of the Mox 18h ago
wild ride - (G) (SF) (txt)