Metagame: Red is the Warmest Color

As the Standard season with Tarkir: Dragonstorm approaches its final weeks, yet another banning debate is raging. This time, regarding Cori-Steel Cutter.

Cori-Steel Cutter

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What sets this conversation apart from the others, however, is that it may have more substance: Izzet Prowess — the main deck running the artifact in Standard — is seeing strong shares in competitive tournaments and in the overall Metagame, and while we've seen similar results in other archetypes that have sparked this debate, it seems that Cori-Steel Cutter has amplified an already existing problem: the speed of red decks compared to the rest of the format.

We're in the middle of Final Fantasy preview season, and as I mentioned in my other article, it's almost scary that cards like Dark Confidant or a half-Stoneforge Mystic with Cloud, Midgar Mercenary are met with skepticism.

Of course, for most Magic players, every card is either absurdly broken or horribly bad until proven otherwise — no one saw Stock Up becoming a staple during the Aetherdrift previews — but whether it's any of these or any other cards in the expansion, the answer seems to be the same for each of them: too slow.

Too slow to deal with Heartfire Hero, too slow to be worth the mana investment when, the next turn, your opponent is creating tokens with Cori-Steel Cutter or attacking you with Screaming Nemesis. Too slow because chump block is punished with Monstrous Rage — red is the best color of this Standard season, even though it's not the only one that has shown significant results: Esper Bounce had already opened discussions regarding Standard's health due to the interaction between Hopeless Nightmare and This Town Ain’t Big Enough, just as Up the Beanstalk is still treated as a design mistake, and the banning discussion has gone so far in another era to the point where Sunfall was considered a bad card for the format because it invalidated Aggro in the Metagame.

Times change, and with them, priorities. A few months ago, everyone wanted This Town Ain’t Big Enough to be banned because it was efficient with ETB effects, and before that, Monstrous Rage and the ease of access to quick wins from the mice package were the format's problem.

Given all the circumstances and Wizards' promise to work on maintaining Standard in the next Banned and Restricted announcement, which will take place on June 30, it's a good time to talk about the format and interventions.

Red has gained many tools in the last two years to become what it is today. It's worth noting that in addition to Standard, Red Aggro is also the most popular and most competitive option in Pioneer, using basically the same structure of spells and creatures as the rotating format.

We can separate these cards into distinct categories since we have different versions of Red Aggro in both formats:

The Prowess variants got their first push with Slickshot Show-Off and then with Cori-Steel Cutter. It is worth mentioning that both are cards that are also playable in Modern and Cutter has reached the level of being a considerably viable card in Legacy. Their power level is above the standard of other cards, and while Slickshot is bad when the Metagame expects it, Cutter remains a powerhouse.

The other version involves the mice package with Heartfire Hero, Emberheart Challenger and Manifold Mouse. In addition to them already interacting well with the red core of Standard and Pioneer, the synergy between them makes Red Aggro considerably resilient in longer games, without giving up the explosive potential that sequences involving Heartfire Hero and Manifold Mouse can provide.

And then there are the two cards that also require discussion around them. The first, Monstrous Rage, is an efficient combat trick that offers permanent Trample. If used with any creature with Prowess or Heartfire Hero, it offers +4/+2 for , a considerable power boost for its cost. Most of the discussion debates revolve around banning Monstrous Rage because it makes blocking much more complex and risky than it ideally should be.

The other, much less discussed, is Screaming Nemesis. There's no problem with red having cards with effects that block your opponent's life gain — it's useful for keeping these archetypes viable — but Nemesis has a design that, at this point, shouldn't exist: the same effect as Stigma Lasher of permanently locking life gain even if it leaves play, with an effect that's easy to forget, and placed on an ability that punishes blocking. Also, any damage triggers Nemesis, allowing "combos" with Witchstalker Frenzy or even Torch the Tower to lock life gain for the rest of the game.

Having all of these tools together in the same season is what makes Red as strong as it is today: there are so many fronts to attack, ways to build your list, ways to play around common hate, and opponents are limited in how much they can prepare against you without creating concessions in the other games — on all fronts, Red Aggro ends up benefiting from the Metagame, and if that wasn't enough, not even an Azorius Control with Authority of the Consuls in the maindeck was enough to stop their advances in last weekend's Regional Championship.

It seems like a distant memory, but red was the best color in Standard before: during the Kaladesh-Guilds of Ravnica season, decks of this color dominated the Metagame due to the combination of Goblin Chainwhirler with Chandra, Torch of Defiance and other efficient creatures like Hazoret the Fervent and Glorybringer, not to mention the golden age of Ramunap Red with Earthshaker Khenra that led to the banning of Ramunap Ruins and Rampaging Ferocidon even when the best deck of the season were Energy lists.

With the rotation, Green gained powerful supports between War of the Spark, Throne of Eldraine and Theros Beyond Death with Nissa, Who Shakes the World and the quickly banned Oko, Thief of Crowns and Once Upon a Time, followed in the next expansion by Uro, Titan of Nature’s Wrath and then green decks started playing Wilderness Reclamation — no matter the intervention, green was the strongest color. You could take away a tool, and it would find a way to remain the best option throughout the entire season, just like it did with Jund Midrange in the Innistrad-Return to Ravnica season, where it had Farseek, Thragtusk and Kessig Wolf Run.

The following season put black in the spotlight. Sheoldred, the Apocalypse, The Meathook Massacre, Invoke Despair — all in two- or three-color bases stacked with Fable of the Mirror-Breaker. Three of the four cards mentioned were later banned, and yet the color remained one of the best in the Metagame, mixed in with Esper, Grixis, or any two-color variant.

Next, it was White's turn: The Wandering Emperor and especially Wedding Announcement, one of the most played cards in the format, were the focus of ban discussions for a long time because they were the key to unlocking several archetypes, from Esper Midrange to Azorius Soldiers and a dozen other strategies in between.

Now, we're back to red as the best color — at least in part — and with a new structure of cards whose most, or all of the most worrying pieces, won't go away with the next rotation.

Balancing colors is hard. Think about Green: despite Eldraine's nightmare in Standard, the consensus among players is that the color currently only serves as support for others, even with bombs like Up the Beanstalk and Overlord of the Hauntwoods.

Perhaps, next season, it or blue will be the predominant colors again that will raise discussions about bans during 2026 — After all, knowing that the color was nerfed in one season, it is natural that the game design will try to give it a “push” in future expansions, while Red may suffer when the pool of cards that make it so strong today rotates and/or is banned, and it does not have as decent tools as in the following season.

Our lack of excitement for Dark Confidant raised a red flag in Final Fantasy preview season: is Standard so overpowered that one of the most powerful staples in the game for over a decade doesn't even have a place in the format?

Unholy Annex may just be a better card and that's why Confidant has no place in the format today, but the other reason we're not excited about the card is that playing it on the second turn in a Cori-Steel Cutter and Monstrous Rage format means it's barely useful.

The same goes for mid-Stoneforge Mystic, Cloud, Midgar Mercenary, or a dozen other cards that would be powerful in less Aggro environments — Sephiroth, Fabled SOLDIER, the first creature to create Emblems, is a good example, but not the only one: Lightning, Army of One can double your creatures' damage and feels too slow despite its keyword combination, and even Vivi Ornitier, with the potential to be broken in other formats, is possibly unviable even when interacting with cheap spells that naturally fit into Prowess decks because Cori-Steel Cutter does almost everything it would do, but better.

There's a dilemma for Wizards that I can't see a clear answer to yet: how does the company intend to manage Standard with Universes Beyond coming into it?

For example, I've been a Final Fantasy fan for 24 years, and collecting this expansion is part of my plan. But I've also been a Magic player for 16 years, and I'm used to how competitive formats behave — despite being the best set of all time for me, Final Fantasy is just another Magic release in the grand scheme of the game, no different from Tarkir or Edge of Eternities.

To the player, it's irrelevant whether Sephiroth will make it into a Tier 1 deck or whether a list with him won't even get a 2-2 at a FNM table at the local store. It's part of the game: some cards are good, hundreds of others aren't. It would be a shame if none of the Final Fantasy characters didn't make it to the competitive tables, but it's only natural that it would happen, as it did with over 200 cards from Tarkir: Dragonstorm.

Can we say the same about those who are coming or returning to Magic because of Final Fantasy, Spider-Man or Avatar?

Last year, I pointed out that the idea of ​​putting Universes Beyond in Standard was good for Magic that year. The logic was that the format needed to be the epicenter of the game, and that the best way to cultivate the competitive scene and the return of Standard as the main focus of Organized Play was to make it more inviting.

The first problem with this proposal arose when the Universes Beyond expansions were priced as premium products, but let's assume that there are people who want to get into Standard through these sets despite the prices — how happy will they be when they discover that their favorite characters are bad for tournaments? Will they run straight to Commander and never look at Standard again? Or will they accept that this is part of competitive play?

To remedy this problem, I figured Wizards of the Coast would push the power level of these sets up a bit. One advantage of working with so many iconic characters is that they have to be legendary, which is usually enough of a drawback to bump up the power level a bit. It's no wonder that almost every seemingly playable card in Final Fantasy, so far (this article is being written on June 18th), is legendary.

However, what we've seen with a good portion of FF are cards that don't impress as much when compared to what we already have in Standard. More than once, I've seen other content creators completely dismiss the possibility of a powerful card being played because it's too slow for a Cori-Steel Cutter and Heartfire Hero environment, and they're probably right.

Now, the outcome will depend on Wizards: is it worth subverting the power level of a format to make Universes Beyond expansions more competitively viable? Is banning a card or two to give Sephiroth or Venom more space on the tables and in front of tournament cameras the best course for competitive Magic and the brand's image?

The idea seems terrible, since it would be subverting the game even further in favor of profits and making competitive play something it is not today. In the same way, starting to increase the power level of Universes Beyond expansions so they would be more competitively impactful would also be an unhealthy proposal for Magic, but we have seen the integrity of the game being challenged by Universes Beyond before on different fronts — their entry into Standard was one of those cases — and it could happen again.

Yes. More for timing than for results.

Standard is a rotating format. Ideally, each release brings a selection of new cards that bring new archetypes to the forefront while others decline because they have become obsolete, or because a good answer to them has emerged. It is in the nature of the format to recycle itself with each set.

The discussion around Cori-Steel Cutter is just one more ban conversation among the dozens we have had this season, all fueled by the addition of Magic Arena play — and if you and If you're playing ranked, you're usually going to play what you win, and preferably what wins quickly to play as many games as possible in the shortest amount of time—and because of the amplification that social media creates around any debate, be it about tariffs or colored cardboard.

The next Banned and Restricted announcement is on June 30th, the last one before Edge of Eternities kicks off the rotation cycle. Ideally, this is the perfect time to set the stage for the new Standard, and understanding which cards bring troublesome patterns with or without the cards that will be rotated would help keep the environment healthy for longer.

Cut Down is a great example. As of now, we don't have an equivalent replacement for the card outside of Stab, which doesn't do enough for the current Metagame. The same goes for cards like Anoint with Affliction, which is leaving Standard this season as well, not to mention Temporary Lockdown. In technical terms, if Final Fantasy or Edge of Eternities don't bring removals as efficient as these, Heartfire Hero and Monstrous Rage will be a problem from the first week.

In this case, wouldn't it be better to remove these cards from the format to prevent them from dominating the Metagame in the future, when they already demonstrate above-average results with the current card pool? The same goes for pieces like Up the Beanstalk that already present that could be an issue in the long run as new cards are released — it's very likely that we'll see more cards with alternative costs that trigger extra draws with it.

Having this kind of management helps keep Standard fresh, and a little more clarity would also serve to calm the community's spirits. Expectations for this type of announcement should be in line with what we saw in January 2018, when Wizards banned Attune with Aether, Rogue Refiner, Ramunap Ruins and Rampaging Ferocidon — in it, the explanations were accompanied by match data, detailed winrates and other elements that made clear how banning red cards was as important as banning Energy cards, despite the latter being the trouble deck at the time.

When we call for bans, we tend to ignore the overall scope of the format and focus only on individual sentiment and benefit, and the ideal would be for Wizards to provide concise explanations such as “Deck X is necessary because of Deck Y”, or “we’re going to ban a piece of Deck Y because without Deck X, it has a great chance of dominating the Metagame”, and other elements that illustrate the cause and effect of each intervention, or lack thereof. Magic requires clearer communication in the age of social media.

If there are no changes to Standard, we need to know why. If these changes are not necessary, we need to be aware of what perspective the company is evaluating so as not to intervene. But the next Banned and Restricted update, however, should be aimed at keeping the format healthy in the long term, rather than just until “we see what happens with the next release”.

Is annual maintenance too long? Would a more aggressive Metagame be worse than a constant grindfest or a format where players are always racing to play the next bomb? How would the Siege Rhino mirrors scene have been perceived back then if Magic Arena existed?

How much of what we're arguing is actually about the format's health and less about "I don't like playing against this deck"? Because there will always be the best deck. It might be an Azorius Control with Teferi, Hero of Dominaria as its only win condition, or it might be a Mono Red Aggro that can win on turn three or four with Heartfire Hero, Monstrous Rage, Manifold Mouse, and Screaming Nemesis — but there will always be the best deck, and it's impossible to please all players at once.

Generally, the ideal Magic format is one that has a diversity of archetypes in all categories: Aggro, Control, Midrange, Combo, Ramp, and Tempo. Sometimes, it's possible to have cycles like this — pre-Tarkir Standard was close to this — and, in other cases, one of these will take a tumble so that others can prevail because they lack tools. Azorius Control, for example, only rose in the current season when Stock Up solved one of the archetype's main problems: the lack of efficient card selection.

These elements and occasional discrepancies are natural in a rotating scenario, and regardless of your preference, it's unlikely that the format you enjoy playing will the same as hundreds of other players. Despite the collective aspect of Magic, it is a card game with very individual perceptions of how the game should be, so we never reach a consensus on what kind of Standard we want to play.

In the current season, it is the moment for Aggro fans, those who prefer fast games. In other seasons, it will be the moment for those who create dozens of tokens with Caretaker’s Talent and end up taking games to five turns because they have too many triggers to keep up with — these two coexist in the same ecosystem, but hate the idea of ​​the other’s deck being the way the format is defined.

So this is the question we can ask ourselves at this point: What Standard do we want? Also, what can we actively do to play the Standard we want that doesn’t just involve complaining a lot on social media — what is missing? How long will it take for you to get to the point where you can play the format the way you like it? And how, exactly, would other people feel about this format?

What are the successes and failures of the current format structure, with annual bans except when something requires emergency intervention, and a three-year rotation to increase the longevity of players' investment?

The numbers for Izzet Prowess are concerning. In other times, with another deck, we would all be screaming that it was broken and unpleasant to play against. Tarkir: Dragonstorm has been out for a while now, and we are in the middle of the Regional Championships season, where Cori-Steel Cutter and friends are already the deck to beat.

Could these same numbers indicate that it is popular and easier/more reliable to pilot, and that is why it has over 35% share? Yes. Could it be that players have chosen the safe route instead of trying to respond to the best deck? Maybe.

Or maybe the amount of high-quality red cards that combine synergy and power level has taken Aggro to a whole new level in Standard, and the format is moving too fast for many new cards to even dream of making it to the tournament table.

We’ll find out on June 30th. Until then, I’ll keep mixing Cori-Steel Cutter, Stormchaser’s Talent, and Stock Up until Final Fantasy releases, where I’ll see Cloud, Midgar Mercenary get burned by a Torch the Tower every time I try to equip a Buster Sword on him because that equipment design is too outdated.

Thanks for reading!