Welcome: From the Editor
PlayingStandard's publisher, rose-emoji, welcomes you to the new site, gives a tour and shares a few other announcements.
Yesterday
It has only been seven months since I wrote an article entitled “Welcome!” for the launch of PlayingPioneer. In that article, I talked about my excitement to launch the website along with a small group of some of my favorite Magic: The Gathering content creators. That excitement has never faded, and it is further renewed by the launch of PlayingStandard.
Since I first welcomed everyone to PlayingPioneer, a lot has changed. We launched with no tier list, no premium content, no Patreon benefits, no Discord server, no meta data and no money. What we did launch with was a team of content creators and web designers who were passionate about the format we were covering.
Not long after that, we launched PlayingExplorer the very day Explorer was announced. Since the format was promised to eventually become Pioneer, PlayingExplorer was a natural extension of our project.
Soon after that, both PlayingPioneer and PlayingExplorer were picked up by the DotGG Network of Magic: The Gathering websites. This acquisition, which was formally and unanimously voted on by a group of core members of the PlayingPioneer team, made it possible for us to pay the team members who have been doing this all on a volunteer basis all along, and the partnership continues happily to this day.
Today
Flashing forward to today, at the launch of PlayingStandard, our plan is to launch with the same spirit as we had for the early days of PlayingPioneer, while making sure to apply some of the things we have learned along the way on day one. We have a team who is passionate about the format – some who have always been and some who are excited about its recent shake-ups; some who play on MTGO, some who play on paper, some who play on Arena; some competitive, some more casual-leaning.
While we’re not planning on diluting the Pioneer or Explorer team by moving team members from focusing on Pioneer or Explorer to Standard, there is one exception in that I myself will be leaving my position as Publisher of PlayingPioneer in the capable hands of ServoToken to focus my efforts on this website and PlayingExplorer for as long as Explorer exists.
Rather, our plan is to grow our existing team of passionate Standard players with new content creators that are focused on the format, and that begins today with our addition of Alessandro Carvallo, who many will recognize from the MTGO Standard and Pioneer challenge results. Alessandro will be writing competitive-leaning content for PlayingStandard in both English and Spanish. We’re all excited to work with Alessandro and bring you the deck guides and competitive tips to get us all through the next RCQ/Pro Tour season.
Patreon
When we launched PlayingPioneer, we didn’t have any Patreon perks outside of the warm fuzzy feeling you get by supporting a small team of content creators. Today, we offer Discord access, the ability to turn off ads on the page, access to premium content and some other fun perks in the higher levels of subscription. Your Patreon subscription applies to all websites in the PlayX Network, which today includes PlayingPioneer, PlayingStandard, PlayingModern and PlayingExplorer.
The PlayingPioneer Patreon also launched with a discounted “founders tier”, which has always been limited to ten Patrons and filled up in one day when we launched it. The Founder’s Tier will always have the same benefits as the “Supporters” tier above it, no matter what we add to it. Today, we are increasing the Patron limit of that tier by ten, so if you think you would like to be a part of our Patreon offerings at any point in the future, now could be the time to get signed up!
Premium Content
On PlayingPioneer, we launched a Premium Patreon tier, which grants access to all Premium content on the website. Once a week, a premium article will be “unlocked” either for everyone or for all Patrons, including Founders and Supporters. In the early days of PlayingStandard, we will be publishing most premium content as “unlocked” for all Patrons, so Founders and Supporters will have access to it.
In the future, more content will be published for Premium Patrons only, but for now I would suggest that a Founder or Supporter tier subscription is the way to go for access to all content.
The Tour
With all of that out of the way, allow me to give you a tour! As I mentioned, we are launching with the principles that we launched PlayingPioneer with, while making sure we have some of our favorite additions we’ve made along the way on day one over here.
This means we will launch with a weekly-updated tier list, which will be updated every Wednesday morning by 11am US EST. The following day, we will publish a detailed meta guide, which will discuss the tier list movements and other meta shifts and constants we saw over the week. While we will maintain a best-of-one and a best-of-three tier list, our primary focus will be on best-of-three, as this is the format for most Standard events leading up to the 2023 Pro Tour and, of course, the format of the Pro Tour itself.
We will also launch with a Budget Hub, which – while a work in progress – is something we added later to PlayingPioneer and became a favorite page on the website rather quickly. Budget lists will focus primarily on paper and MTGO prices, but will also take into consideration Arena wildcard costs as a secondary focus.
PlayingStandard is a content-first website, and as such will feature articles on the homepage and videos on Youtube and Twitch. You will be able to find all articles published on the website when the homepage fills up.
Thank You, Again
Thank you so much for visiting, whether you have been following and supporting PlayingPioneer from the beginning or are coming to us for the first time for Standard content. Either way, we can’t do this without you, and we hope to be the most valuable resource for Standard that we can be. See you again soon!
