I've noticed that certain colors and combinations of colors seem to dominate the games.
Shouldn't they be the Same but Different?
Is shifting strengths better for the game in general than a stable balanced environment?

As an example, the latest mono-colored EDH/Commander decks. White and Green are considered weak compared to the others. Wizards has every card made to pull from and couldn't make balanced decks??

With thousands of cards and lots of distributions to consider, there are going to be imbalances.

There was a time when black was pretty much the only color, then red, then black/red. It just varies from block to block, in M:TG, you need to go with the flow.

matters of opinion.

Historically Blue dominated because it happened to have 3 of the power 9 (ancestral recall, time twister and time Walk)

But in reality the most played creature in legacy is Tarmogoyf and its green, the first degenerate deck was 18 mountains and 42 lightning bolts.

So the thing with MTG is that the different formats and the constantly rotating current set means that any point in time a colour, or now a combination of colours will dominate.

My problme with MTG in constructed is The Internet. Now before a set is released its been disected and combined and the best half dozen deck strategies have been drawn up and tested and fianlised. So now everyone uses one of these 6 decks. Constructed is therefore very dull... so I play Booster draft.

I do get annoyed that WotC deliberately release "junk" cards and I have read the various reasons why they do, all unconvincing. And I get annoyed that they design "chase" cards which are deliberately overpowered so as to push the sales of a set, but end of the day they are in the busienss of sellign cards and its still a great game with much fun to be had.

Agreed, the internet totally changed Magic.

I remember in the very early days of Magic, a few guys would get price lists of cards, then run around to all the hobby shops and rip off the little kids in a most shameless fashion.

Granted, now that the internet is ubiquitous, you don't have that, but, as Jibbajabba says much of the mystery of M:TG is gone now. We already know the broken combos and "key" cards of a set within hours of the set's release, if not earlier, and I think the last four constructed tournaments I played in I didn't see a single deck or card that didn't know the layout of and what my player was going to do within a few turns (well, assuming he didn't get mana screwed).

The issues with constructed are why I stick to draft now, or would if I still played (gave it up years ago, just too many things to do in life).

I think the idea now is to reduce the amount of luck in the game to controllable levels. In theory this makes it more of a game of skill on the level of Poker.  

The card rotation keeps it fresh without being a pure gambling style game.

I think they have a good formula but still wonder about color balance. I guess with each rotation specific colors get highlighted.
The "Sins of the Past" leave some cards that will never be matched again.

Quote from: Greentongue;835893I think the idea now is to reduce the amount of luck in the game to controllable levels. In theory this makes it more of a game of skill on the level of Poker.  

The card rotation keeps it fresh without being a pure gambling style game.

I think they have a good formula but still wonder about color balance. I guess with each rotation specific colors get highlighted.
The "Sins of the Past" leave some cards that will never be matched again.

so Luck in card games is a squeeky issue.

its entirely true that in a game of poker its all luck, but in a 1000 games of poker the luck will cancel out.
The same is true of MtG. In fact less so becuase you allowed to load your own deck to make it play how you like.

So the complaint might be that the tournament structure of 3 game matches might need to be 13 game matches to eliminate luck but man tournaments already duller than watching paint dry so lets hope we are spared that.....

Yeah, the tournament structure really isn't a high skill thing. A hand of poker can be over in 30 seconds, so it's easy to play hundreds of hands in a tournament. Toss in that you can have 9 players in a hand, and there's plenty of opportunity for luck to average out (even then, poker tournaments can run for weeks).

On the other hand, M:tG, again focusing on Constructed, can easily take 15 minutes. So, a tournament round, 3 hands, is going to run 45 minutes, and you only play 2 players at a time, and generally only 1 night.

So, much more room for luck in that. Toss in that it's tough to build a deck with sub-20% chance of manascrew, and even a player with dominating skill has a good chance of being manascrewed out of a tournament based on getting a double-manascrew round.

It's pretty much impossible (and probably not even desirable) to take the luck factor out of M:tG at the tournament level.