The great thing about games is that you can reach flow state. What is that exactly? Well, hard to say what it is exactly, but in general it is a positive feeling of being energized while being fully immersed in some activity.

So, how can you get there if games last three turns and your game actions are often just forced? There is a deck in current standard that wins on turn two 20% of the time and even when it can’t win on turn two, it has probably dealt enough damage to finish the game soon enough anyhow. With the lack of one mana interaction and a lot of dual lands coming into play tapped, if you are on the draw, your only game action might have been to play a land. At least you had the opportunity to surveil some of the time, but that might have been it.

And since you know that a lot of the people playing Bo1 are there to just get quick wins or rank up quickly, this deck is overly represented on the ladder. So, you have to build your deck to be able to interact on turn 1. However, what often happens now is that your opponent just concedes when their fast kill plan doesn’t work out. So, you are still not getting the actual experience of playing a game.

Of course, the fast red decks have always been around, but they used to be on the lines of turn four or five kills and that’s fine. Sure, it was bothersome when you would meet these decks on every round of a tournament, but you could still win a lot of those rounds by thinking it through. You might have to bluff or think through at which point of the game do you play Mana Confluence or do you pay the two life for a shock land. Now your decision is basically whether to mulligan against an unknown deck to find that one mana answer.

Now, you could say that you just need to play more limited. That’s where the flow states live. Well, sort of, but not really. You can actually get there, but in so many cases it gets disrupted by some rare bomb (especially now as there is more rares per pack). Just when you get into the groove of the game, this thing just appears and that’s it. All the fun is gone. Even if you can answer it, it disrupts your flow, because you know it is one of those cards that’s making the game so much worse or your opponent already managed to get value from it because of ETBs or Ward or something.

Why do they keep making their game worse? Well, we know the answer. Capitalism. Because you can’t have a game just thrive for decades. At some point you have to step in and drain the fun to make some money now, even if that means you’ll be making less money in the future. Although that doesn’t come into play, because they think we’ll buy any slop they put out (see M30). They think longevity just happens. Despite all the evidence to the contrary, they think they can grow forever – which is clearly just mathematically impossible.

So, find the format that gives you that flow. The official formats have been pushed to oblivion, but maybe you can make yourself a cube you can enjoy or maybe the new card classifications for Commander will help you find a group you can enjoy games with (although right now the whole thing seems very poorly thought out, because why would Vampiric Tutor be in itself a problem, if you don’t have anything overly upsetting to tutor for) or maybe just play Pre-Modern (although I don’t think that’s accessible to most).

I would still like to love the game and you can always see the game as a framework to build it in a way you enjoy. Of course, you still have to find the people to play with you…