At the risk of alienating some of my readers here, I’m going to talk about Magic: The Gathering again. So, uh, if that’s not going to be interesting to you, then you might just want to come back next week. I’ll be talking about something more general.

Anyway, fuck Oko, Thief of Crowns. I grind my way on the ladder for MTGA every month, and I have had to fight through that card so many times.

Like, I haven’t been a hardcore player during any other time where a truly overpowered and ban-worthy card has been around in Standard (except Field of the Dead. Which happened right before.) and I suddenly have such sympathy for those who had to sit through Mirroden standard and Siege Rhino’s rein.

It got so bad. Slowly, but surely, I just started to assume that every deck I played against was going to be an Oko food deck—and played accordingly.

Let me get this fact straight, I don’t mind a metagame where there are only three or four decks you can really play. The intricate play patterns of defeating and defending against other powerful strategies, the knowing the matchup really well because you’ve had to fight the same deck many times: I don’t mind any of that. It’s a fun dance and a puzzle.

But that’s not happening when there’s only one best deck—and it’s too expensive for me to play it, so I have to fight it with only what I have.

That’s not fun. Fires of Invention isn’t much fun, either, but at least it doesn’t instantly break the board state the second it resolves. So good riddance to Oko rubbish. I predicted that he would get the ban hammer, and some people didn’t believe me—but, on this, I was right, and I am so happy I was right.

And now we can get back to having a diverse metagame with different powerful strategies hitting against one another.

Unless Jeskai Fires just takes over and we have to deal with this song and dance all over again.

–

Special thanks to: Melissa Potter

Did you like the article? Dislike? Tell me about it in the comments. I would love to hear your opinions! If interested in specific articles, or want to write as a guest, you can message me at scifibrandonscott@gmail.com. If you want to help keep this blog going, consider becoming my patron at https://www.patreon.com/coolerbs. Thanks for reading!

—

Want to read something longer by me? How about a whole novel! 

“Just Another Chosen One is a blisteringly paced, action-soaked debut from author Brandon Scott, sure to appeal to those who’ve gotten tired of reading the same old stories about the child of prophecy destined to save the world.”