Midrange Pt 3: The Heat Death of Magic

Is Magic Better or Worse due to Midrange Dominance?

In a perfect world Magic the Gathering is balanced and fun. All decks are viable, brews are encouraged and everyone gets to 'do the thing' their deck was built to do. However, we do not live in a Magical Christmas Land as Spikes have affectionately named it. The world we inhabit has constant bans, tweaks, powerful strategies that dominate formats and oppressive mechanics that infect (pun intended) eternal formats. If Aggro, Midrange and Control are left untouched, as we discussed previously, Midrange will always rise to the top. There will be powerful Aggro strategies and strong Control decks, but Midrange just has more bases covered and more cards at its disposal. Midrange only grows stronger with time while Aggro and Control need specific cards printed. When more generically powerful cards are added into a large card pool, people will eventually realize that putting all of these cards together will yield wins. Linear decks can crop up and break formats entirely from time to time, but they never last. They get banned and removed and relegated to the history books of magic. Midrange is forever. When broken cards are kept in check, all that remains are the most powerful leftovers.

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So where am I going with this 3 part discussion of midrange? Well it's to say that Midrange, as a strategy, went from fringe playable when magic was first getting its legs to a legitimate meta call which feels right at home at top tables in every format. As the card pool expands larger and larger, midrange slowly becomes not only the best thing to be doing, but also the only play pattern encouraged by Wizards. Fast mana and ridiculous ramp decks? Strongly avoided in new sets, outright banned in modern. Land destruction? Discouraged and rarely printed into new sets. Prison? Good luck finding new pieces. Combo? Better not win before turn 4 or you may face a ban! So where does that leave us? My old aggressive decks sometimes see play in standard rotations and even Pioneer, but Modern hasn't seen a decent aggro deck in years without the likes of hammer, infect or prowess. Tempo? Well there's sometimes a delver deck or two or even a Grixis Death's Shadow deck running around, but good counterspells are a thing of the past. Control? Well the removal and powerful spells seem to grow weaker and weaker with each set while creatures are becoming capable of anything. After all, we can't have coverage of large events show a battlefield of only lands because that would be boring. Which leaves us with the tried and true midrange strategy.

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Format Health December 2022

Vintage: I'm going to gloss over this format. When a card cannot be banned, broken combo strategies will reign supreme over everything else. Funnily enough however, 4 color piles tend to do well in this format anyway and if I remember correctly, one eternal weekend tournament was won by Oko animating a Black Lotus to swing for lethal. Eat your heart out Vintage players, Midrange will eventually be your doom as well.

Legacy: This format really suffers from the sins of Wizards. Printing every stupid commander product and supplemental set straight into legacy has caused things like Minsc & Boo, stickers and the Initiative mechanic to find homes alongside Doomsday and Force of Will. Sure tempo still sit upon the throne with Izzet delver featuring Murktide Regent, but the mere fact that a deck like Naya Depths can compete in this format amazes me. It shows that midrange can beat the best decks that tempo and combo has ever seen. I would argue that the only reason midrange fails to dominate this format like the other we will talk about is due to the nature of how hands-off Wizards is with Legacy. I've also seen a number of pros regard these 4 color good-stuff decks as Control strategies, but that seems like a matter of opinion since the lines between these two archetypes can get blurry in older formats. Given time, I think these Control/Midrange piles will be seen as one of the best options when going to a large Legacy event.

Modern: I have been a huge Modern fan for years and played several decks in this format for years including Burn, Grixis Death's Shadow, Mardu pyromancer, Eldrazi Tron, Jund, Affinity and a few others. In recent years however it appears that Wizards has "pruned" this format into a midrange metagame. This is due to Modern Horizons sets adding powerful answers to the format in addition to banning of certain mechanics and playstyles. When Modern isn't experiencing Eldrazi Winter or Hogaak Summer, it seems like fair decks have started to feel right at home. Without fast mana or broken combos, 4 color piles have taken the throne Jund once sat upon. Wizards did step in and ban Yorion, but that had much to do with shuffling than power level. Without their 80 card decks, we will see if 4 color money piles continue to do well. When broken cards are banned but great cards are allowed to exist, the format eventually becomes "what's the best thing to be doing that isn't bannable?" This approach to banning causes the slow power creep where Lightning Bolt and Path to Exile are replaced with Fury and Leyline Binding respectively. Repeat this cycle over and over and eventually there's nothing outright broken dominating the format, but the rising tide of power level slowly filters out niche strategies and leaves only the 'strong in a vacuum' cards. As stated earlier this trends towards Midrange over time.

Pioneer: See my previous article about Rakdos Midrange and Mono-Green Devotion being the best decks currently. I wouldn't call Mono-Green a Midrange deck, but it definitely has play patterns where it isn't combo-ing that feel Midrange-like. Up next are Phoenix and Mono-White Humans which have good match-ups into Green, but are much worse against Rakdos. Overall the format seems very healthy unless you're looking to play something degenerate. We made the case for banning Fable of the Mirror Breaker, but concluded it would be out of the norm for Wizards. This format is a much more robust Standard-like environment which means it favors Midrange.

Standard: This format seems to go through phases where Wizards accidentally breaks something, it gets banned and then we all go back to playing the best Midrange deck until something else gets broken. I am not the only one who has noted a general uptick in the number of cards banned from this format. Despite this, the format seems to be in one of the best places it has been in years with only a small number of sets to choose from. Taking a brief glance at the meta game websites and it is clear that Midrange is king and will be for a while. Everyone is just trying to go bigger than the next guy.

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Midrange Entropy

To put  a bow on this meandering discussion as best I can is to say that Midrange has been crowned King in many formats with more to follow. The best thing to be doing right now is to play some form of it. "But I hate Midrange! I'd never play it!" If you approach formats with the notion that a strategy is lame and therefore, no matter how good it is, you're avoiding it simply means you lack the conviction to win. If winning is not your goal, then by all means play whatever you want. The Spikes of the world will be jamming Midrange more and more going forward as the defacto best thing to be doing. Even if it wasn't the best strategy in your format, I could argue that Midrange is a great place to start for anyone looking to really improve as a magic player. Something about piloting a deck created to beat everything (an all-comers strategy) allows one to play against the most diverse set of decks and learn the ins and outs of each one. Being good at Midrange allows a player to improve their overall performance because it forces you to become a Jack of all Trades rather than specializing in very specific play patterns.

So is the inevitable heat death of Magic a bad thing? I would say if Midrange becomes ubiquitous there are much worse fates we could experience. I have seen Standard and Modern formats dominated by degenerate decks and they caused many people to leave the hobby. If combo wins every tournament, I can bet you many people do not want to become highly specialized in such a linear deck that lacks good decision making and unique play patterns. Midrange may seem boring, but it encourages different board states, complex critical thinking and rewards those with more skill. If that is the fate of each format it doesn't seem nearly as nightmarish as the alternative. Moreover, fair Midrange still allows room for aggressive strategies and hard control. It doesn't push anything out like a format filled with turn 4 decks. Therefore, I for one, welcome our new Midrange overlords and refuse to adamantly stand in the way of it's domination. I'd rather join the ranks of Midrange grinders than stubbornly refuse to see the writing on the wall from Wizard's themselves. This is the trend of current Magic and it's best to learn to exist harmoniously in a world of Midrange than actively rage against it.