What's wrong with Magic the Gathering in this day & age

I remember, back in 2004-2005ish, reading an article posted by Magic's game developers, outlining their position on powercreep and the measures they would take against it. They understood what it was, that it was bad, why it was bad, and demonstrated that they cared about maintaining a healthy competitive format for everyone.

Firstly, some might be asking what powercreep is. Powercreep is when a game releases new content, in this case, new sets, that are more powerful than previous content/sets. You see this most egregiously in Pokemon right now, as 99% of the original base set aren't viable anymore.

So I was very glad to see that Magic was actively trying to keep their powercreep to a minimum. Powercreep is inevitable over time if a game is to stay fresh and relevant, but at the same time, it's healthy for the game to keep to a minimum.

For a long time, I was with the "Well some sets are stronger than others, this is fine" group... that is, until the 2011 core set hit and I jumped on the fence. In 2009, they had already given us Gigantiform. Let's think about this. Up until that moment, 6/6 creatures were like Trained Orgg and Vizzerdrix, 7 CMC and likely to have a drawback. The 2011 core set drops and now we have 6/6 titans for 6 CMC with broken abilities. Then 2015 hit and now we have too many Eldrazi to mention, Terra Stomper, and so on. And these are only the raw power to CMC creep that has been happening, let's not even try to get into the cards that are broken on a technical level.

Look, I've been playing long enough to remember Colossus of Sardia, Skyshroud Behemoth, and Phyrexian Colossus being played. So just putting Terra Stomper beside Colossus of Sardia shows the egregious powercreep that has been happening since at least Zendikar.

But if powercreep was my only complaint, I wouldn't have bothered writing this. The next issue I take up is rising costs in competitive play. The price of boosters & boxes hasn't gone up much, yet the price of a viable competitive deck has gone up at least 200% since I started playing. I chalk this up to a combination of Magic reaching a larger audience (And thus, increase in demand) nowdays, set imbalances, and powercreep. So not only is powercreep having adverse effect on formats, it's also contributing to inflated costs... at least compared to when I started playing. I remember when you could bring a well-thought-out $80 deck to a local Legacy tourney and actually have some hope of placing. Nowdays, you're wasting your time if you're running on less than $300.

That leads me to the source of that particular problem, imbalanced cards in sets. Magic sets used to be fairly balanced within each set. As in, there were a decent number of "Best" cards and most of the rest was viable. Also, commons and uncommons were sometimes among the best cards in a set. Nowdays, it seems like they focus on 2-4 really strong chase rares/mythics in a set. What you end up with is everyone chasing them, demand is high, because they're the only cards worth chasing, and prices for those cards are through the roof. This has been happening long enough now that, paired with powercreep, competitive prices are absurd.

I'm not done complaining though. What format can you usually turn to when constructed prices are too inflated? Well, booster-draft, right? Not really. Because those 2-4 chase cards are usually so broken compared to the rest of each set, that the people who pull them have a distinct advantage.

While not quite booster-drafts, I played a few pre-release tourneys a few years ago. The 2015 core set, Khans of Tarkir, Dragons of Tarkir, and the fourth of which I can't remember.

In the 2015 core set, whoever pulled Garruk the Slayer had an advantage. In fact, I recall that 20-something players were in it and only 3 people got them. Those 3 people were in the final 4. Of course one of them won it. Garruk the Slayer might not be that strong in a full format, but within the 2015 core set alone, he was broken.

In Khans of Tarkir, whoever pulled Zurgo Helmsmasher had an advantage. I actually pulled one myself, but got eliminated by someone who just ran him better.

In Dragons of Tarkir, whoever pulled an Elder Dragon at all had an advantage, which were half the players, but Dragonlord Silumgar and Dragonlord Dromoka were particularly the best. A player who pulled two Dragonlord Dromoka (One promo, one in a pack) won that one.

Lastly, I don't recall what the last pre-release I attended was, but I recall there being a mythic Sorin planeswalker in it and that the only guy who pulled it, won the tourney.

It was at that point that I had seen this pattern long enough. I haven't been to any Magic tourney at all since. When you can't even turn to booster-draft, what do you do? Well, nothing short of a casual cube draft with friends. As far as I'm concerned, the competitive Magic scene has become a complete farce.