Reflecting Pool should be banned in post-rotation Standard

[MagicDave]

Why Reflecting Pool should be banned in post-rotation Standard
by David Sutcliffe

I was doing event coverage at the final Grand Prix of the Block Constructed season and beforehand I was very interested in seeing what did well because I thought it would massively define the Standard format after Time Spiral and Coldsnap rotate out. What I saw worried me slightly, and I want to share why.



I'm going to make a bunch of broad statements and assumptions here, so try to follow me. Please bear in mind through all this that I've played this game for 15 years and understands that you can't ever 100% predict the future. With that in mind I'm talking broad brush strokes but I think that each of my assumptions is clear and well thought out, and that it leads to a logical conclusion (which other observers at Rimini agreed with, incidentally). I'd like to be wrong and hope to find that everything works out great, but I'm not sure it will.

Here we go:

1) The current standard format is dominated by Lorwyn/Shadowmoor.
At Grand Prix-Rimini half the matches you watched could easily have been Standard instead of Block, there's so little from Time Spiral/Coldsnap in the current standard. Wall of Roots, Rune Snag, a couple of Teferi, a couple of Mystical Teachings... aside from RDW and Reveillark the decks in Standard are 90% Lorwyn/Shadowmoor. I understand a lot of you will argue the toss but I think you have to accept that it's fundamentally true - Time Spiral and it's cards are all over the place, obviously, but the dominant cards come from Lorwyn/Shadowmoor even in the decks that play Time Spiral cards heavily (FoD, Demigod, Gouger, Javelin in RDW for instance, and Reveillark and Runed Halo in, well, Reveillark).

2) The defining card in Lorwyn/Shadowmoor block constructed is Reflecting Pool.
There is no doubt about this. Right now there are two cards in Lorwyn/Shadowmoor and you play one or the other - you either play Figure of Destiny or Reflecting Pool. Aside from the Kithkin and RDW decks EVERY OTHER DECK is best as a five-colour deck. I saw 5-colour Faeries, 5-colour Fish, 5-colour Elementals, 5-colour control, 5-colour Doran, and 5-colour Elves. You could 5-colour everything, and there was basically no compelling reason not to because the mana was never EVER an issue. It's not that these 5-colour decks took losses now and then because of their mana base - they didn't - it worked perfectly well with five colours just as much as it did for the Kithkin that played mono. At Rimini not one of the 700 players at the event asked the dealers for Mutavaults. Not one! When a card as good as Mutavault is sitting at home waiting for the phone to ring something is going wrong.

3) Without Magus of the Moon (or a similar card appearing in Alara) most decks in the new standard will be five-coloured
Bottom line: this is true. It's already true in Block Constructed and adding painlands into the potential land mix only helps people construct strong manabases around Reflecting Pool. As stated the only reason NOT to be 5 colour is that it makes it hard to ramp Figure of Destiny to a 4/4 in 3 turns, and also makes it a little harder to cast Spectral Procession and Flame Javelin. Short of them reprinting something like Price of Progress I think we're heading into a five colour format.

4) Shards of Alara will not encourage mono-coloured decks.
The theme of Shards is 3-colour 'Shards'. The idea being that you pick a shard and play cards from that shard. The two 'mono' decks, RDW and Kithkin, aren't likely to pick up many toys from Shards and may have to join the other decks in playing 5 colours as well. Shards plays into the hands and manabases of Lorwyn/Shadowmoor constructed, and won't act to move decks back to being based around one, two, or even three colours. It's too easy to play five colours and there is almost no reason NOT to play five colours in any deck.

5) Shards of Alara is a small set and is unlikely to transform Standard.
Shards will be 20% of the new card pool (ignoring Tenth Ed because there's always a basic set and it doesn't contribute much), which isn't much at all - Time Spiral was 35% when it rotated in, for instance. Considering how powerful the cards in Lorwyn/Shadowmoor block are it will take something really special in those extra 200 new cards (when you discount basic lands and reprints) to shake the format up. With ANY existing standard deck able to play ANY card it wants from Shards of Alara it's more likely to be a case of slotting improvements into existing deck designs. Obviously this could change depending on what is printed, but from what I've seen from Shards so far there's nothing to stop people playing 5-colour decks and simply picking all the best spells.

6) New Standard will therefore probably look like Lorwyn/Shadowmoor Block Constructed
Any entirely new creations will have to be EXTREMELY good to survive against a Faeries deck that has already dominated Standard for 9 months and just got a lot better when Magus of the Moon left so it can play all 5 colours (in the Semis of Rimini that meant Faeries was playing Doran on turn 3, for instance. Doran!). Or the Quick N Toast deck that's been around for 6 months, or the Kithkin/Doran/Elves decks that have proven themselves time and time and time again and have lost almost nothing in the rotation and potentially gained a couple of new tricks from Shards. Sure, something new will come up, but the simple numbers are against any new archetype... if you're playing 'an Esper deck' you're basing your deck on the 20% Shard of a set that is 20% of the card pool. The chances that you're going to beat the deck that's proven to be successful using 80% of the card pool and added the best cards from your Shard anyway are almost nil.

7) Ban Reflecting Pool in standard.
Grand Prix-Rimini looked, to me, like a Black Constructed format in trouble. Yes there was an incredible diversity of decktypes, but they were ALL playing 4 Reflecting Pool and a bunch of Vivid lands that they never actually had to remove any counters from because the Reflecting Pool does all the hard work. When every deck is five colours and every deck is managing to pay UUU for Cryptic Command as well as the GG for Chameleon Colossus, the R for Firespout, the B for Nameless Inversion and the W for Crib Swap/Sygg/Doran don't we have a problem? It makes the Fish deck play 16 cards the same as the Doran deck and the Faeries deck. Moreover it makes the Shards from Alara entirely irrelevent. While Alara may be divided into five for the storyline, in deck design terms every single deck will be playing with the United Colors of Alara. That's bad.

Ban Reflecting Pool because:
- five colours is easily available with minimal or no drawback
- it allows all the best cards to be played with each other regardless of casting cost, and regardless of deck type or theme
- Cryptic Command is overplayed as a result, because UUU isn't hard to get. Chameleon Colossus isn't far behind and Namless Inversion is as ubiquitous as Swords to Plowshares used to be.
- it is likely to restrict the impact of Shards of Alara to playing only a 'guest star' role in existing decks
- there are no other adequate controls on use of non-basic lands
- it's less impacting than banning all five Vivid lands instead (although that is a viable option).

[Melbourne_junkie]

Cute observations, but there's no actual REASON to ban Reflecting Pool, other than make the cards from Shards of Alara less efficient.

New std always represents old block to a degree.

Still haven't given a reason... "that's bad" does not make for an argument, much less a convincing one.

I hear Mono Red did well in std over the last 6 weeks... I hear Incinerate from Xth Ed is in Mono Red.

Still waiting on a reason...

[MagicDave]

Format health, fundamentally, although I understand your point.

When every player is playing a five colour deck it's a sign that the format is degenerative. It creates problems with cards that shouldn't exist (eg. everyone plays Cryptic Command, and is able to play Cryptic Command without consideration for any of the other 56 cards in their deck). The format becomes less and less distinctive as decks merge together and steal the best bits of each other (Doran adding Cryptic Command, Faeries adding Doran, blurring the line between the two).

Five-colour Magic also breaks fundamental aspects of Magic's game design. It destroys the concept of colour pie because every pie is five colours - that decks do different things through playing different colours. It destroys the value of consistency through simplicity because you can be complex without affecting your consistency. There are resources you no longer have to consider, and decisions you no longer have to make - you just play whatever you want in any mix you want and there are no consequences for doing so.

In the end the proof will be: is it possible to win tournaments consistently without playing Reflecting Pool? I think the answer will be 'no'. Moreover, I think not many people will even TRY to win a tournament without playing Reflecting Pool, unless they don't own any.


RDW:
Mono-Red loses most of all from Time Spiral, more than any other deck. It loses Blood Knight, Magus of the Scroll, Magus of the Moon, Skred, Keldon Megaliths and Greater Gargadon. Getting to 'keep' Incinerate is hardly going to make up for that. I was heartened to see that Demigod Red did so well at the Starcity 5k event in Boston, so I wouldn't write off RDW immediately. But that success wasn't repeated in Rimini and my expectation is that the 5-colour decks will pull further ahead of Kithkin and RDW when they get to incorporate Shards of Alara cards more easily than the mono decks will.

[jritter]

I can see where you're going with this. The current enviroment is going towards 5-colors as far as I can tell. Every block tourney in the past 3 months has been dominated by various 5 color decks. I'm hopeful that Shards may be able to convince people to play 3 color decks but I'm not too sure with it being a small set. Reflecting Pool does seem to be the one card that enables 5 colors the easiest but with that same token so does the Vivid lands. Why not just ban Vivids...it will essentially have the same effect. I'm just not too keen on banning cards especially when they are valued as highly as Reflecting Pool. Hopefully you're wrong on the format after Shards but as of right now its still too early to tell.

[Holiday Djinn]

I like multi color formats. Who really knows what the expansions for shards will look like.

No matter what you believe, it is too early to ban any card in this format.


With that said, i am glad i picked up my tempest ones for cheap. Thanks SCG.

[biomech0020]

I dont think just because a format is Multi-Color is a good enough reason to ban a card or cards. I think the format is very healthy atleast it wont be domminated by Teferi.dec

[MagicDave]

I'll be happy to be wrong, but I think it's the way it's going. As a designer I'd like to see Shards give us new decks, rather than new cards in old decks.

It could be that the Vivid lands are what need to go, and Reflecting Pool is fine without them. But my initial reaction would be that it's less impacting to ban one land than five. You don't want to make 5-colour decks impossible, you just want to make sure that there's a price to pay for that diversity. If they had to remove counters from their lands to play spells I think it would be more balanced, but the Pool means they don't.

I dont think just because a format is Multi-Color is a good enough reason to ban a card or cards. I think the format is very healthy atleast it wont be domminated by Teferi.dec

Is CrypticCommand.dec any better to have dominate the format?

[Melbourne_junkie]

I'll be happy to be wrong, but I think it's the way it's going. As a designer I'd like to see Shards give us new decks, rather than new cards in old decks.

It could be that the Vivid lands are what need to go, and Reflecting Pool is fine without them. But my initial reaction would be that it's less impacting to ban one land than five. You don't want to make 5-colour decks impossible, you just want to make sure that there's a price to pay for that diversity. If they had to remove counters from their lands to play spells I think it would be more balanced, but the Pool means they don't.

I dont think just because a format is Multi-Color is a good enough reason to ban a card or cards. I think the format is very healthy atleast it wont be domminated by Teferi.dec

Is CrypticCommand.dec any better to have dominate the format?

I don't think you an pre-emptively suggest banning/or lament a particular card being the best in a format, whether that's Bitterblossom, Cryptic Command, Reflecting Pool or Reveillark etc.

Given that BB didn't cop a banning in Lp-Sh Block, it seems awfully inconsistent to suggest anything else is overpowered/dominant.

RDW will be fine I think, whether it's back to RG (Gruul) or technically RGW/NayaDW.
Reflecting Pool doesn't make t1 plays in aggro decks either remember.

TBH, I think the format is fine as is. I personally found it depressing when Tarmogoyf was the be-all during the Nationals run last season and up until Lorwyn... and then Shriekmaw came.
I have a funny feeling Fulminator Mage will be seeing a lot more play, and there's usually a hoser for non-basics ever year.

[drscottkelly]

I dont agree that Reflecting Pool should be banned, but some other kind of non-basic hoser similar to Magus of the Moon needs to be printed. Fulminator is OK, but it doesn't quite do the job as Magus.

While I like innovation, I got really aggravated at the end of Ravnica block when it seemed every good deck ran 3-5 colors. IMO there should be some serious risk when you stretch the mana base, but with all the duals that were printed during Ravnica there really was no risk to stretching your mana base. Not to mention the prohibitive costs to some less well funded players in Ravnica block of being able to pay out enough $ to have a mana base that would be competitive.

While they are printing uncommon tri-colored lands and generic basic fetchlands as commons, without Magus, I don't see any real risk right now to running 3-5 colors...which to me limits the amount of competitive decks we see, because everything is able to just run all of the 'good' cards.

[Holiday Djinn]

reprint Wasteland.

[Alhym]

First off, i understand your concern, but i come to a different conclusion. Second, even if i would come to the same conclusion as you i would, if i were Wizards, wait banning the pool without even knowing the new standard. As the synergy between pool and vivids is pretty obvious, i guess they have seen the five color decks coming and still decided to (re)print reflecting pool, so before i call for a banning i'd like to see how it turns out.
1) The current standard format is dominated by Lorwyn/Shadowmoor
That is true, i'd say. However, dominating doesn't mean the few cards of tenth/timespiral have no or little influence. The presence of a card like wall of roots totally changes a deck, and many other cards are also high-impact: Skred, magus of the moon, rune snag, tarmogoyf, slaughter pact or ancestral vision make a huge difference.
2) The definig card in Lorwyn/Shadowmoor block constructed is Reflecting Pool.
I agree.
3) Without Magus of the Moon (or a similar card appearing in Alara) most decks in the new standard will be five-coloured
Here is the point i really disagree. Its hard to predict future decks, with so many things to change, so i might be wrong, esp. as i don't have your experience, Dave. But in the t2 we have now, pretty many decks passed on the five color option and the reason wasn't magus of the moon. Any aggressive deck doesn't like to run cip lands without a real good reason and the eight vivids hurt. I play toast in t2 and the only way to compensate the vivids drawback is playing without one drops, (As 12 lands won't produce any colored mana on the first turn) and wall of roots does a good job to help here.
Playing an aggressive deck you just don't have luxury to cut the one drops from your deck. I think block is a slower format, mostly because of the absence of turn one acceleration and mana artifacts that are available in t2 and maybe some other cards that speed up games like Lord of atlantis or the missing combo elements, so i can't imagine a merfolk or elf deck that doesn't want to make a play on turn 1.
I think for an aggressive deck the multicolor option comes at a high cost, though every control deck should have a good reason not to play five color.
4) Shards of Alara will not encourage mono-coloured decks.
Oviously not.
5) Shards of Alara is a small set and is unlikely to transform Standard.
As i said, i do not think that everything will be five colored from now on. That leaves the possibility that shards has enough linear and powerful cards to produce its own deck(s), especially aggressive ones, though i also think the impact won't be that high, but thats normal.
6) New Standard will therefore probably look like Lorwyn/Shadowmoor Block Constructed
To a certain degree that will be the case, just like everytime (as long as i can remember) but that is not pools fault, as i see it.
7) Ban Reflecting Pool in standard.
Thats the wrong move, i think. If you look at recent nationals decklists, you can see mono red mono green and mono white (kithkin) decks in the top 8, or two colored ones (elves, u/r swans; lark, so i don't think it is unhealthy dominant. I also hope for a bit of nonbasic hate in shards (or non shard hate?) though that is pretty unlikely because of its multicolored nature of the set. While magus is certainly the reason of the recent revival of two color reveillark, the other decks just do better as they are, imo.
Maybe you will prove me wrong, but atm i'm not that worried.
A.

[lilrikki2000]

imo, multicolored decks are alot more interesting to play than a mono deck

[Alhym]

Yeah, but thats a personal liking. If you could play only five color variants of some different flavor, that would restrict deckbuilding pretty much, kill possible shards theme deck, and prevent real innovation. I think that wouln't be healthy for the format. I don't think that will happen though, as i posted earlier. Besides, you will be able to play multicolored decks thanks to various good duals and the new mana fixers from shards anyway. His point is that reflecting pool would make five color so easy doable that every reasonable deck will run all five colors.
A.

[Mono79]

It's almost ironic that reflecting pool was considered a casual card, a bottom of the barrell multicolor enabler prior to its most recent printing.

[Holiday Djinn]

It's almost ironic that reflecting pool was considered a casual card, a bottom of the barrell multicolor enabler prior to its most recent printing.

If you would have told me 10 years ago that both Psionic Blast, and Reflecting pool were going to be reprinted in the future, and that only 1 would be a widely played card in standard fetching $20+ dollars. I would not have guessed Reflecting Pool, and i doubt most people playing back then (tempest era) would either.

[ihatethehackers]

I understand where you're coming from here, and it's a terrible cliche, but...

... why don't we wait til we've seen everything Shards has to offer?

[Eldariel]

The reason Pool is so omnipotent is pretty much the huge availability of 5c lands and the fact that 1-drops aren't very impressive in the format (at least non-aggro 1-drops). Therefore, there's very little drawback to playing Vivid-lands. And of course, a huge number of sweepers doesn't hurt either.

[The_Aardvark]

2) The defining card in Lorwyn/Shadowmoor block constructed is Reflecting Pool.

The defining card is actually Cryptic Command. If Cryptic didn't exist, Pool would not be as prominent, because it allows people to put the best card in Standard into their B/G deck. If it wasn't for Cryptic, you wouldn't have made this thread.

Just saying.

[camphor]

Destructive Flow is being reprinted in Shard of Alara.

[MagicDave]

If that's true it could be exactly the sort of card that may hurt nonbasics enough to circumvent the 5-colour decks and R&D will prove again that they know what they're doing. The casting cost really limits it's usefulness in non-5c decks though... but it's cheap enough to maybe correct the metagame. It makes me more hopeful, if that's really in the set.

The defining card is actually Cryptic Command. If Cryptic didn't exist, Pool would not be as prominent, because it allows people to put the best card in Standard into their B/G deck. If it wasn't for Cryptic, you wouldn't have made this thread.

This is a fair point. The thing is that Cryptic Command is sort of fair taken out of context, because at 1UUU it's supposed to only go in blue decks... that's why it's not 2UU. Reflecting Pool is the card that gets players around the balancing aspect of Cryptic Command at lets them pretend it costs 3U instead. Or you could at it another way... Cryptic Command only goes in blue decks, but Reflecting Pool means that every deck is a blue deck.

And Reflecting Pool not only makes Cryptic Command a problem, it also makes Chameleon Colossus and Firespout a problem. And Cloudthresher. And Kitchen Finks. And Doran. And... and... and...

[CCClark]

I dunno, I remember playing Sliver Queen Control along with Pat C and we both ran 4 Reflecting Pools, 4 Gemstone Mines, 4 City of Brass, and 4 Undiscovered Paradise during Tempest era. It was pretty dominating back then also since you could just pick the best stuff from each color. It also was near the end of the line for Visions to stick around so I can't say on how much it really would have affected things.

With the format just coming in to a new stage and it's common knowledge that going 5 color makes for some amazing options, you might have a valid argument. On the other hand, I don't think I would want to play with hardly a single card in shards without it. Those mana costs are ridiculous as they stand. We may end up just having a 5 color format for a bit.

At least those monster costed spells in the 7 cc range might actually see some play and throw a big cog in the works. Control isn't looking so hot without a 2 cc counterspell now.

[MagicDave]

There's Remove Soul and Broken Ambitions. Neither are amazing, but they exist.

[Alhym]

I just checked the top eight decklists of rimini and found them quite interesting. The half of them played two colors or less, including the eventual winner. (Emanuele Giusti with kithkin) The other half of the top eight played some sort of five color control (The half, i start to get concerned too!) and here are the surprising news: None of the four rainbow decks played a full set pools! I don't have any idea what that means to honest, but it sure looks strange. Thoughts?
A.

[MagicDave]

I found it interesting too, the Top-8 doesn't 'feel' too representative of the tournament. I was there and it was Reflecting Pool-a-rama, yet the unbeaten decklists and Top-8 decklists don't really reflect that (no pun intended) which makes it look like I'm moaning about nothing.

It could be that it's the Vivids that are the problem but myself and another coverage reporter came away pretty fed up of seeing 5-colour decks all over the place. The feature matches seem to involve more of a flavor of the decks I was watching, but perhaps the Top-8 makeup reflects that when it came to the crunch the whole host of 5c decks didn't quite make the grade.

Maybe I'm making a fuss over nothing, but the impression I got was that something would need to change. The 'best players' had got to the 5c decks ahead of everyone else but what 30 Pros play one week is what 300 PTQ players play the week after, and at Rimini virtually all the best players came with 5 colours. Time will tell, I guess.

[Alhym]

Half of the top eight is certainly not "nothing", and your consequence might have been the right move for block constructed, where the possibility to go five color killed many otherwise promising decks (Or so i've heard). I just think t2 will be a different animal, as vivids aren't as playable in any deck there.
A.