What happened to midrange?
Standard forum
Posted on June 14, 2015, 10:51 p.m. by CheeseBro
When khans of tarkir and fate reforged were out, abzan midrange and jeskai wins ruled the standard meta. They were very good decks and were hard to beat.
Now, when dragon of tarkir came out, midrange suddenly died and we started seeing a rise in aggro (mainly mono red) and control.
What caused the dying of midrange decks like abzan and jeskai and the rising of aggro and control?
Please explain!
What happened is when the first set of khans was out they took away 3 other sets of cards (The Return to Ravnica Block) drastically reducing the card pool. When this happens red deck wins has less spells to play so it has to either play crappy cards or splash colors. That's just the most extreme example. Other decks that were 1 or 2 colors also had to add a color or use more expensive spells, or both to be playable.
As the second set came out, Fate Reforged, more options were given to mono 
and midrange which made them both even stronger. This second set purposefully had very few cards that would make a pure "control" deck better. WotC doesn't want to have everyone sit through multiple quarters of the year geting beat by the same control deck after all. It hurts sales because people find the game boring when control is to good.
So anyways the third set came out, control got new cards to play with to the point that it could beat midrange siege rhino type decks. So control was played. Once it established itself there was more reason to play not just mono or red splash 
aggro, but any deck that wanted to play monsters had to have a lower curve, otherwise control makes you lose in every single trade.
Once theros block rotates you're going to see big stupid decks again. Just like how when all of RTR rotated all of a sudden Doomwake Giant was the best thing ever.
June 15, 2015 1:25 a.m.
I forget who linked the article or what thread I read it in, but someone had a link up before from Sam Stoddard's article about Dragons of Tarkir. In the article he talks about some of the things that went into the design of the set and the block. One of the things he mentions is that they specifically waited till the third set to really give control the pieces it needed. This was because they wanted to give people a reason to play slower 3 color decks over mono or dual color decks. If control had been prominent from the first set then people would have likely strayed away from 3 color decks because mono and 2 color decks would be more efficient. By limiting control early, 3 colors decks could come to the forefront and have their time in the spotlight. It also lets them create a changing standard meta, within a single block. By giving control the pieces it needed in the third set, it allows the meta to shift from Midranged based to Control based and prevents the format from growing stale.
So what happened to Midrange? The meta is just shifting and changing the way Wizards intended it to.
Arvail says... #2
Well, traditionally speaking, aggro loses to midrange while control prays upon it. Although control has become more prevalent in the meta in the last few months, midrange is hardly dead. Heck, even some control lists in the meta play akin to midrange decks atm. There's a pretty large number of decks that falls in the catch-all category of midrange atm. Standard tends to be that way for the most part. Anyways, with more control decks in the format, it's easier for aggro to sneak under the greedy land bases of many control decks while control finally has a more stable meta and the tools to do what it wants to do. Traditionally, control tends to be weak in the first set of a block. There is major fluctuations in the meta and much of what goes into piloting control is about possessing knowledge of what your opponent wants to do.
June 14, 2015 11:44 p.m.