Growing Pains

Did you know that there has been as 51 1 or 2 mana value rare and mythic red creatures printed into standard in since 2020? Hot on the heels of The Last Airbender, they have just spoiled another one even. When people talk about the state of standard for the last couple years of years there’s a lot of blame thrown at Commander or Universes Beyond influencing card design but no one seems to think about the number of cards being printed into Standard.

Why is that Significant?

Well, compare the number of red 1 and 2 drops released into standard in the last 5 years to the number before. It’s almost just as many! Almost one half, of the total number of red 1 and 2 drops was released in the last five years. At the rate we’re going, there will be as many red aggro cards released into standard between 2020 and 2029 as there were between 1993 and 2020.

If you consider the 3 year rotation, I don’t think it’s crazy to assume that there are way more low to the ground value creatures in standard than ever before. Cards that give you several free moxen per turn aside, it’s easy to surmize why the standard meta might have taken a hard shift towards aggressive early game strategies. There’s so much consistency and value there now! I think Kai Buddge has the right of it. There needs to be a shift in design in order to accomodate the change in standard rotation. It’s not likely Wizards of Coast are going to juice up the power of other archetypes in standard though, more likely we’re going to see Red aggro get a little juiced down. We might even already be seeing a little bit of that – we’ve had 4 limited formats this year where red aggro either wasn’t an archetype or just plain sucked! Instead we’re seeing mana dorks every set, a new sneak attack and a card that is literally a mana battery.

Ultimately, if Wizards wants to balance standard, they’re going to have to balance the number of viable early game strategies across sets. Time will tell if they succeed but I have a feeling it will work itself out. These are just growing pains.