auto include means nerf?

andrewvanmarle

I think the idea of an auto include doesn't hurt the game as long as there are enough to choose from.

Nerfing stuff should be reserved for the truly broken cards imo. 

And as said above, what is an auto include  depends on your level of play. 

FindingHeart8

tfg76 said:

In paper Magic, even really powerful (perhaps even the most powerful) cards are generally not auto-includes in every deck of the appropriate color. This is because the complexity of the game is so high that a deck generally must have good synergy to win.

In MTGPQ, I don't see that much of deck synergy - or at least, you can generally best synergy with overpowered cards. This is partly because of the low number of different cards per deck (10), but also because of the 3-different-creatures limitation. Creature synergies that try to reward you for playing the same creature type often don't become good enough because that bonus can only apply to 3 creatures, whereas an overpowered creature of a different type is just always good without any synergy. 

Similarly, it seems like they find it hard to find a good balance for combo decks, generally either becoming overpowered or not viable. Again, this is due to the low number of different cards, which give great stability to combos. Therefore, if the combo is actually good, it will typically be overpowered.

That being said, though, I like recent attempts to mirror creature synergies with reinforcements. The Vampire theme (where everyone created a 1/1 lifelink Vamp), and the upcoming Saproling theme (with Leader!) seems like they're trying to reward synergies more.

To promote more synergy even with these limitations, I believe that the "raw" power level of the top cards should be reduced, and the power level of synergistic combinations of cards should instead be emphasized. Try not to make too many cards that are overpowered by themselves at any rarity, and try to make most cards (esp commons and uncommons) be playable in some situation.

I agree with you for the most part, except the tangent first paragraph regarding paper magic.  Most good decks run staple cards.  Ex: any multicolor commander would be silly to not run Command Tower, and almost every deck (commander or not) should have Sol Ring.  Formidable dual colored decks almost always run the shock/fetch dual lands or (if you're old school or rich) the original dual lands.  Would be silly to run any black deck without tutors, or blue without cards like Brainstorm.  Elixir of Immortality usually is a staple as well (Feldon's Cane if you haven't bought a new card since Innistrad).  There's a lot of them.

Gabrosin

If there's a category of cards that's "okay" as an auto-include in all decks, it's mana-improving/generating supports.  Making it harder to access larger amounts of mana contributes further towards the "sameness" of decks than adding in staple support cards.  When PWs have no cost-effective means of improving their mana, it downgrades the viability of a great number of more expensive cards, and/or increases the necessity of playing cards that cheat them into play (e.g. Reason // Believe).