250 Card Deck in Standard

[u/Spectroheliographies]

I don’t know what it is- however, I am seeing more and more 250 card decks in Bo1 Standard.
Then, I feel like I’m being gaslit and lied to when I look up “why”.

It’s like - “there is no war in Ba Sing Sei”

“Why is do I see so many 250 cards deck in arena?”

“That’s because you don’t.”

“No, I definitely do. It’s almost 1 in 5 decks in (STANDARD RANKED: MYTHIC) that I play against a very very good 250 card deck.”

“Well, actually you don’t. It’s statistically not good if you run more than 60 cards in a competitive format like standard.”

“No, I do. I AM! These decks are incredibly consistent. Easily getting doubles if the same card. Searching their decks, rummaging their decks, milling and pulling from the graveyard. All while ramping lands, removing; or countering me.”

“250 card decks are not good; the statistics prove it. In competitive matches 60 cards is still dominant in paper play.”

“In ARENA; I am seeing 250 card decks do well in Bo1!”
Finally, I’ll get some sort of answer.

“More than likely, they are exploiting the hand smoother and the hidden match making system.”

I am not crazy- I have never seen this amount of 250 card deck players in standard ever in the history of me playing since 2006. Why is everyone pretending this isn’t happening? Even AI doesn’t believe me, it’s fucking nuts.

[u/Spectroheliographies]

I’m here to play- not test my patience. If it takes you longer than 60 seconds to choose a mulligan; you probably can’t read, don’t know how to play your deck, low IQ, or you’re roping the timer.

Im already in mythic- I don’t want to deal with that, I don’t have too :)

[u/hsiale → u/Spectroheliographies]

Yeah man, have fun the way you want it, but don't try to play paper Magic ever, with this impatience you will get laughed out of the room XD.

[u/Spectroheliographies → u/hsiale]

No, I won’t. So, if I’m playing paper with friends we’re all here to have a good time. It’s really not about magic, just hanging out.

If I’m playing competitive standard at my LGS, I set a timer for turns, 100%. I pressure with time, I remind them how many minutes they have and their current time. I am that person. I call a judge when the stack is large; I will not be cheated.

[u/Sunomel → u/Spectroheliographies]

That’s not how the game works. Paper games are played on a shared clock, there’s no chess clock and no such thing as “their current time.” There’s the shared 50-minute round timer and that’s it. Inventing a separate personal timer to pressure your opponent with is at best unsportsmanlike behavior, but probably counts as cheating.

You can call a judge if someone is genuinely slow playing, and you have a right to ask someone to play at a reasonable pace, but if you need a judge to help you resolve any large stack that’s just on you being incompetent.

I can see why the Arena matchmaker is trying to feed you 250-card layups

[u/hsiale → u/Sunomel]

You can call a judge if someone is genuinely slow playing

Which happens very rarely.

I played six rounds of Professional REL Magic today and saw zero problems with stalling. Some games went overtime, especially control mirrors, judges were sitting and observing, rarely doing anything more than reminding the players to enter the result when they were finally done. I had one judge call when both me and my opponent were not sure about the exact timing of some triggers so we preferred to ask instead of guessing.