Cycling: A Postmortem of a Dominant Strategy.

TheDragonHermit

So cycling, or at least the parts of it that made it such a strong tactic, has cycled out of standard. This ability was such a strong strategy that not using it was considered for a while to be a self imposed challenge theme. Now it is gone and the effect has been felt. The most recent B4T seemed to have a much poorer showing than previous iterations of the event, which suggests that the tactics made to fill cycling's void were not up to the same task, or even that there was no tactics constructed to address the lack of cycling and the player was blindsided by how dependent they were on the cards that made it work. I will admit to being firmly in the latter camp, I was not consciously aware of how much of a crutch cycling had become where before I had diverse strategy's for each Walker. So let us discuss how cycling became a dominant strategy, how that caused deckbuilding to stagnate, and how Oktagon can identify potential dominant strategies and avoid them to promote more diverse deck strategies.

ElfNeedsFood

Cycling was viewed by many as a huge power creep and an “easy button” from the start. Removing the crutch just creates a “new normal” for scoring, hopefully one that doesn’t have 50 people tied for the top slot with perfect scores...

TheDragonHermit

Well yes, but the point of this is more "how can something like this be prevented in the future?" I would rather that something that creatively crippling not be introduced again. 

Firinmahlazer

TheDragonHermit said:

Well yes, but the point of this is more "how can something like this be prevented in the future?" I would rather that something that creatively crippling not be introduced again. 

The right answer would be to give a wide range of people access to the cards for public input before they're made final.  

Obviously that would never happen so we can just go ahead and forget about it. The real answer, unfortunately is there's nothing we can do besides have faith in the development team. Cycling was an oversight yes. But now it's gone so hopefully everyone has learned their lesson. 

Stormcrow

TheDragonHermit said:

at least the parts of it that made it such a strong tactic

There's really no need to be coy, is there? You can say it. "New Perspectives". "New Perspectives has cycled out of standard." Drake Haven and Faith of the Devoted were probably guilty of aiding and abetting as well, but cycling, even with them, wasn't totally broken without New Perspectives to take it infinite. Most of the cycling cards I used all the time (except my common support destruction, I do miss those!) are mana-ramp cards from Hour and are still perfectly usable. As are Striped Riverwinder, Vile Manifestation, and Razaketh's Rite, to name some other popular cycling cards. If cycling is gone now, it's not due to lack of card with the cycling mechanic printed on them, it's due to the fact that you can't still abuse the mechanic to cycle like eighty cards in one turn, with corresponding benefits.

How can something like this be prevented in the future? Easy, Oktagon can be extremely, extremely restrictive about (or just do away with altogether) cards that offer either broad cost reductions to other cards or give your other cards mana as soon as they are drawn. I mean, we all remember the pre-nerf Baral, right? And there are still endless complaints about Omniscience. And we've even got folks putting together that Immortal Sun/Imminent Doom loop deck, so even the relatively tiny cost reduction from Immortal Sun can be abused. But what do they all have in common? Cards you draw are immediately usable. No delay, no requirement that you make a match to get mana in between drawing it and benefiting from drawing it. Most critically: no chance for your opponent to interact. That's what makes them so powerful in a player's hand and also so frustrating when an AI deck starts looping. Because the flow of a turn in MTGPQ is so simplified compared to paper, being able to chain together draw->act->draw->act however many times in a row like that is basically just like taking multiple turns in a row, and cards which make that possible all need to be balanced accordingly.

Coilbox

New Perspectives was the one and only card that made cycling 'The Crutch'.

In my coallition, even having people with a lot of trouble with freezes, bugs and losing many scores, we managed to end up in the top ten on the last Bo4t. That says a lot of how much cycling was almost everyone's only tactic.

Im glad it's gone to be honest. The card i miss which was in many of my decks was the black support that gave lifelink and +2/+2 to your first creature, can't remember the name now.

Edit: Cartouche of ambition. Just checked it

Stormbringer0

I think the main problem isn't the combination of card draw and automatic mana generation. Weatherlight + Grand Warlord Radha in the current meta for example provides the same issues. It is a mighty combination of cards, but not unbeatable. I'm perfectly fine with combo decks, as they are natural and you can play around them if you know the strategy. It was just a but too easy to put them together with cycling.

The biggest problem with cycling was, that you played around the games most base mechanic. You don't had to match gems in order to cast cards (with New Perspective at least), which means bad swaps were less likely for you or at least they didn't have too much impact on your game strategy. If cycling stays broken in non-Standard formats, Oktagon needs to react. Otherwise, I'm perfectly fine with it, but I'm totally happy that cycling cycled out of Standard. It was mind numbing.

Furks

Any card that draws AND charges mana should be a big red flag during design. Baral was just the same before it got nerfed. 

ArielSira

Without cycling this was the first time I beat Azor's Gateway with both objectives, which was a great feeling.

Some matches do last longer now (already made a comment before on giving the bosses not more than 250 life) but honestly I didn't miss cycling. Just the black cartouche and Shefet Monitor.

Stormbringer0

ArielSira said:

Some matches do last longer now (already made a comment before on giving the bosses not more than 250 life) but honestly I didn't miss cycling. Just the black cartouche and Shefet Monitor.

Oktagon nerved Gilded Lotus, because it's a no-brainer card that gets always included in most decks. I have the same feeling about Shefet Monitor. That card basically has written "get an extra swap and your mana gains improve 1-2 this turn" on it. In 90% of the case, you get Mana out of cycling that card and sometimes a second extra swap (I count cycling that card as an extra swap already). I don't miss it all.

Same is somewhat true for black cartouche. It was nasty with the support that gets bounced by it, but it's even nastier with cards like Chainers Torment, Slimefoot, Lich's Mastery or that mythic pirate, that deals damage to you and your opponent on base of how many black pearls are on the battlefield. This would make the card an auto include in barely every black deck.

ArielSira

That's what I meant yes, they were my auto-includes. If I had Hour of Promise then that would be one as well but I manage fine with Beneath the Sands and Thunderherd Migration instead.

FindingHeart8

I'm actually really surprised so many people were reliant on cycling for their wins.  My coalition jumped up 5 ranks in just this past event.  Cycling really left a historical imprint on this game I guess...we'll be talking about it years in the future.

Anyways, I don't run cycling and I've been getting my butt kicked too. Mostly because of no longer having access to Approach of the Second Sun and Red/White speed-beatdown which is what I used to handle Elenda the Dusk Rose

Mburn7

FindingHeart8 said:

I'm actually really surprised so many people were reliant on cycling for their wins.  My coalition jumped up 5 ranks in just this past event.  Cycling really left a historical imprint on this game I guess...we'll be talking about it years in the future.

Anyways, I don't run cycling and I've been getting my butt kicked too. Mostly because of no longer having access to Approach of the Second Sun and Red/White speed-beatdown which is what I used to handle Elenda the Dusk Rose

For the more difficult nodes, it really was a must to guarantee max points.  Not that there weren't other ways to do it, but they weren't as easy or consistent.

Also, there are a lot of fantastic non-cycling cards (Approach, Manticore, Dual Lands...ect) that we lost as well, making it even harder to perfect events on the first try.

Kyphonis

Honestly I haven’t found that removing cycling has done anything except sped up my game play for the most part. Yes, I’m slightly more inclined to take a bit more damage and not guaranteed to finish a match in x turns but that has felt better for it. The game really isn’t any harder for most nodes if you just understand how they fight and how to counter that.

Unknown

This content has been removed.

Thésée

Mburn7 said:

FindingHeart8 said:

I'm actually really surprised so many people were reliant on cycling for their wins.  My coalition jumped up 5 ranks in just this past event.  Cycling really left a historical imprint on this game I guess...we'll be talking about it years in the future.

Anyways, I don't run cycling and I've been getting my butt kicked too. Mostly because of no longer having access to Approach of the Second Sun and Red/White speed-beatdown which is what I used to handle Elenda the Dusk Rose

For the more difficult nodes, it really was a must to guarantee max points.  Not that there weren't other ways to do it, but they weren't as easy or consistent.

Also, there are a lot of fantastic non-cycling cards (Approach, Manticore, Dual Lands...ect) that we lost as well, making it even harder to perfect events on the first try.

HUF / Approach of the Second Sun was clearly much more powerful to take down bosses in PVE than cycling and it's the disparition of that combo that made the event more difficult for me (and mostly much longer)

Unknown

This content has been removed.

Laeuftbeidir

Ajani using goggles, Huf, approach took for bolas normally 3-5 minutes to finish him

madwren

Interesting. I won faster with N3 cycling into GRs than I ever did with HUF/****.  N3 was gold on those speed objectives.

Well, I guess she was platinum, har har.

The virtue of cycling was that it was extremely customizable. You name the objective, and we could find a way to do it with a cycling deck. Now, I fully agree that New Perspectives was the main culprit, but let's not kid ourselves--I won many games with both Faith and Drake Haven where NP couldn't stay on the board, or wasn't drawn. It was an unholy trifecta.

I'm glad cycling is done, but it makes sense there's an adjustment period while people start experimenting again.

Thésée

Dobby said:

Thésée said:

HUF / Approach of the Second Sun was clearly much more powerful to take down bosses in PVE than cycling and it's the disparition of that combo that made the event more difficult for me (and mostly much longer)

Clearly? I'll have to take your word for that, I didn't have HUF at the time, but I can tell you that the power of cycling to find many, many copes of Gaea's Revenge, *and* produce the mana to cast them, made Nicol-Bolas, God Pharoah something of a push over... he'd kill my stack of GRs every time he got 12 loyalty with his ability, but then I'd just put some more out.

Well "clearly" was maybe not the right word :-). Cycling is insanely powerful of course. But taking the Nicolas Bolas fight for example, in the various speed contests we held the ones who could take him down faster were using Goggles/HUF/Approach or Elspeth with Goggles/Approach.

Azor was also really easy to beat fast with that. And it was clearly less tedious than with cycling :-)

Mainloop25

It was a bad idea for people to be so reliant on cycling in the first place, knowing that it was going to rotate out of standard eventually. I did rely on Shefet a lot though