Hey Kyle. Slivers were a favorite of mine since they were first released and when I first got into MTGO they were the first cards I got and first deck I made.
Anyway, like you I have been tinkering for some time with Pauper Slivers trying to make them competitive against Delver and Delver/Fiend and whatnot. When they work, they really work. However, one of the biggest problems I always see with Sliver decks are they have a tendency to lose gas after the initial onslaught. My Sliver decks are similar to yours, except that the JTNW's are in the sideboard. I tried something I use in the Pauper Elf deck. Distant Melody. This along with 2 Winged Slivers made for some interesting games in the Tourny Practice rooms. Out of 9 games I played one night I went 7-2 with them. The Winged Slivers during those games were key. All of a sudden the Slivers get off the ground and fly and BAM! But, having between 3 to 6 Slivers out and then cast Distant Melody really made an impact. I had one opponent quit outright after having 5 Slivers out and then casting it.
Have you tried anything along those lines? I mean with the lack of flying creatures in alot of deck archetypes it made for good games.
LOL at the new Wizards forums. So from now on when I want to ask about DnT deck staples or 3.5 Barbarian class features, I'll write a note in a bottle and throw it into the ocean.
Great feature for the deck! I will link to this instead of the old link for the Pauper Gauntlet. Icy Hot Hottie won the voteback and is now back in the Gauntlet.
It's worth noting that they still make money even when the pay outs *do* exceed the entry fees.
While most packs tend to be valued between 3 and 4 tickets on the secondary market by players, the actual cost to wizards to provide those packs is just north of 0.
Provided that they don't ramp up the payout so high that the market crashes and people are no longer interested in playing, there isn't much difference to wizards between people buying 20 packs in the store for 80$ versus a tournament that pays out 20 packs after collecting 75$ in entry fees.
I am not sure it IS in their interests other than long term profit potential. If WOTC goes for the cash grab and they over price the p9 they will lose much in terms of even short term profit and vintage will fail to become a format. If they instead consider how to best maximize profits over time they may still see a huge profit short term assuming lots of players buy-in due to cheaper costs. Yes WoTC mostly profits off of booster sales but they also profit indirectly by reputation, consumer (read: player) confidence, consumer (read: player) excitement, and tourneys where the pay outs do not exceed the entry fees.
Just to play Devil's Advocate, just wondering why is it in WotC's interests for Vintage to thrive, rather than just putting their efforts into Standard.
I can easily see them having financial interests in wanting to mint as much money as possible from releasing the Power 9, but then not really caring about the Vintage format (in much the same way they don't seem to care about Legacy or Classic), because most of their money comes from selling booster packs of the current set.
I can fully see why players interested in Vintage have their viewpoints, and agree some of the solutions players have come up with would help the Vintage format - but if it nets WotC less cash in the short term, I can't see them going for it.
(Disclosure: I don't play any constructed so not really biased towards any formats. Though if I were to start, it would most likely be Standard Pauper or Block constructed as they seem cheaper and less daunting formats to learn).
I share in your concern that the way they release P9 could end up making them too expensive and lead to the format never firing. They need to make P9 affordable and accessible to start to try and attract the most amount of players to join the format at launch!!!! It will be special to have the P9 regardless of price and people are more excited to play the vintage format in daily events than holding the P9 in there collection as gems they never use. I have little faith WOTC realizes the damage that could be done here if they try to make P9 crazy expensive. My opinion is all of P9 should be less than 100 tickets and accessible to all.
I was wrong, the Wizards site was right - you do win both packs and Phantom Points for playing in original Ravinca block drafts. That's great. It is a way to get non-Phantom people (like me) interested in trying out Phantom.
100x $500-1000 vs 5000 x $100. Id hope the simple math favors them NOT selling them too dearly. Now I realize that the numbers here are purely speculative and not based on any data but I do think they aren't really that far from it. If I am wrong (and WOTC has better number ideas than I do so thats possible) then I admit I don't understand the economic situation many players are in as well as I think I do.
Don't expect WOTC to make sense. They make bonehead decisions on a regular basis. The game grows IN SPITE OF them and not because of them; there is a difference.
As for the Power 9, I would not be surprised if they sold the Power 9 as a set in the online store. They could charge as much as they want and pretty much get it. People would pay it just to be able to play fully-powered Vintage online. The only limitations would be the number of people who could afford to buy.
The forums seem to look a little better (they expanded the text boxes so a to get rid of that large white blank space on the right-hand side, and my sig looks better at least. So we'll see what happens in the enar future. I'm still about to use MTGS exclusively for my posting of events and stuff.
My guess is for vintage is it's something we aren't even readily suggested. WotC has been mulling over how to release P9 for years, I highly doubt it would be something as mundane as super mythics or top prizes in a super large super expensive tournament. Those ideas have been floated for years, so if they were the solution it would have happened a while ago.
The Proper way to release the power 9 is as Super-Mythics in a Master's Edition style set. 1 per 24 packs, so 1 piece of power per draft. (They could do 1 in 8, but would have to raise the pack price at least to Modern Masters level.)
I've run all the numbers, and it's the only one that makes sense in the long-term for online Vintage. Releasing them as "prizes" is not only doomed to fail, number-wise - it goes against the 20 year tradition of not making "unique" playable cards available to everyone in some form. Whether it be in a pack or in special sets like Commander/Planechase that are purchasable, everything is available in some form. This would be a huge and tragic departure.
I really miss Vintage. It was such a fun, if slightly misunderstood format. I sold my Power back when it was obvious that the cost and card availability barriers were eventually going to stifle growth in the format. I moved on to Legacy. Legacy may last longer, but I recently sold most of my dual lands because the lack of reprints will eventually create the same barriers to that format's long term sustainability. My love of an Eternal format now leads me to Modern.
I had hoped Magic Online would be a way to save or restore Vintage, but it seems that Wizards doesn't see it that way. Unless they are magically going to find a way to make "Bad" Lotus affordable so that Black Lotus can be too.
And yes, the Negator avatar is from playing Sui Black in Vintage. :)
I posted more and more infrequently under the old forums, because no matter what I posted, and how nicely I said it, the community moderator or an ORC always deleted my posts within 24 hours. His/her name was bubby or bubble followed by numbers? Don't remember. After I got the message my opinion(s) and advice were not welcome I still liked to read other people complain about the same things I did, and infrequently, I learned of special events that were not advertised. Still checked forums monthly.
I only posted when I saw a way the online experience could be somehow improved, and what I took away was that wizards did not care for their customers communicating with them. They view communication as a marketing resource to be managed, not a two-way experience that will improve their business. Unsolicited communication is not welcome, but they will solicit advice once in a blue moon and act surprised that people say the 'same things' in official threads that were said for months and months on the boards. Then the lock/delete the threads when it becomes obvious most people think they are doing a bad job.
These forums are just the latest example of that mentality.
omg Cotton, you may have stumbled on to something big. See Nylea's Pressence:
Enchantment - Aura Common
Enchant land
When Nylea's Presence enters the battlefield, draw a card.
Enchanted land is every basic land type in addition to its other types.
First, I discovered the Dresden Files about a year ago and I've been devouring them ever since. I even got my father hooked on the series. It's nice to see another Magic user promoting the series. It's so good.
The forums are a mess, but I have hope they are going to get better. I'm more disappointed with how many mistakes are made when it comes to phantom prize structures. I was really looking forward to phantom points being awarded as prizes in the retro Ravnica drafts, but then as soon as I mentioned it, it turned out to be a typo.
I think it's a great idea to add phantom point prizes to regular drafts as a prize. That way regular drafters and constructed players can accumulate enough to "try out" things like cube drafts at little to no additional cost. This would be a good cross-promotional plan. Oh well.
I'm an Opera user. The new forums work with Opera (not that I investigated properly, but if there's glitches I didn't see, due to some kind of thing Opera isn't updated to yet, you can trust Opera to update it soon enough, that's the great thing about it).
I'm also a Chrome user. I liked better the way the forums were visualized on Chrome, so I just decided to move them to the things I do with Chrome (which are mostly Magic-related, so it was pretty natural to me). I don't see problems with pasting. In fact, the only thing I appreciate is how you can copy a word that contains a link into a new post, and the link will still be there. Which is useful to me when I have to repeat a weekly announcement about a tournament I run, which obviously includes links (with the old version, I would have to recreate the link from scratch).
The new forums are passably better-looking. I've no other things to say about them, as I don't use them much.
That's an awesome suggestion! I completely overlooked it the Metamorph, probably because I was too focused on the combo or about getting card advantage out of Foundry. I already have a playset of them online, so I'll be sure consider them the next time I look at these builds.
Anybody else find some great artifact that I didn't mention?
I totally agree. I am a big fan of multiple modalities. :)
I wish we had asked about actually taking the next step and tape/video recording the Q&A session so that we could be sure we talked about everything, but hindsight is 20/20.
Hey Kyle. Slivers were a favorite of mine since they were first released and when I first got into MTGO they were the first cards I got and first deck I made.
Anyway, like you I have been tinkering for some time with Pauper Slivers trying to make them competitive against Delver and Delver/Fiend and whatnot. When they work, they really work. However, one of the biggest problems I always see with Sliver decks are they have a tendency to lose gas after the initial onslaught. My Sliver decks are similar to yours, except that the JTNW's are in the sideboard. I tried something I use in the Pauper Elf deck. Distant Melody. This along with 2 Winged Slivers made for some interesting games in the Tourny Practice rooms. Out of 9 games I played one night I went 7-2 with them. The Winged Slivers during those games were key. All of a sudden the Slivers get off the ground and fly and BAM! But, having between 3 to 6 Slivers out and then cast Distant Melody really made an impact. I had one opponent quit outright after having 5 Slivers out and then casting it.
Have you tried anything along those lines? I mean with the lack of flying creatures in alot of deck archetypes it made for good games.
LOL at the new Wizards forums. So from now on when I want to ask about DnT deck staples or 3.5 Barbarian class features, I'll write a note in a bottle and throw it into the ocean.
Yeah, after the bannings today I just feel so happy about everything Pauper :) Go ICY HOT HOTTIE!
A lot of good things ahead for us Dan! And I have a feeling that Icy Hot Hottie will win the Gauntlet! GO GO GO Icy Hot Hottie!
Great feature for the deck! I will link to this instead of the old link for the Pauper Gauntlet. Icy Hot Hottie won the voteback and is now back in the Gauntlet.
It's worth noting that they still make money even when the pay outs *do* exceed the entry fees.
While most packs tend to be valued between 3 and 4 tickets on the secondary market by players, the actual cost to wizards to provide those packs is just north of 0.
Provided that they don't ramp up the payout so high that the market crashes and people are no longer interested in playing, there isn't much difference to wizards between people buying 20 packs in the store for 80$ versus a tournament that pays out 20 packs after collecting 75$ in entry fees.
I am not sure it IS in their interests other than long term profit potential. If WOTC goes for the cash grab and they over price the p9 they will lose much in terms of even short term profit and vintage will fail to become a format. If they instead consider how to best maximize profits over time they may still see a huge profit short term assuming lots of players buy-in due to cheaper costs. Yes WoTC mostly profits off of booster sales but they also profit indirectly by reputation, consumer (read: player) confidence, consumer (read: player) excitement, and tourneys where the pay outs do not exceed the entry fees.
Great article as usual!
Just to play Devil's Advocate, just wondering why is it in WotC's interests for Vintage to thrive, rather than just putting their efforts into Standard.
I can easily see them having financial interests in wanting to mint as much money as possible from releasing the Power 9, but then not really caring about the Vintage format (in much the same way they don't seem to care about Legacy or Classic), because most of their money comes from selling booster packs of the current set.
I can fully see why players interested in Vintage have their viewpoints, and agree some of the solutions players have come up with would help the Vintage format - but if it nets WotC less cash in the short term, I can't see them going for it.
(Disclosure: I don't play any constructed so not really biased towards any formats. Though if I were to start, it would most likely be Standard Pauper or Block constructed as they seem cheaper and less daunting formats to learn).
RE: Vintage
I share in your concern that the way they release P9 could end up making them too expensive and lead to the format never firing. They need to make P9 affordable and accessible to start to try and attract the most amount of players to join the format at launch!!!! It will be special to have the P9 regardless of price and people are more excited to play the vintage format in daily events than holding the P9 in there collection as gems they never use. I have little faith WOTC realizes the damage that could be done here if they try to make P9 crazy expensive. My opinion is all of P9 should be less than 100 tickets and accessible to all.
Sadly, that was just a screwup.
From the forums:
"Hi,
The extra Phantom Points for the 4-3-2-2 Ravnica queues were an error. The article has been updated to reflect the proper prize structure.
Thanks,
Mike Turian"
I was wrong, the Wizards site was right - you do win both packs and Phantom Points for playing in original Ravinca block drafts. That's great. It is a way to get non-Phantom people (like me) interested in trying out Phantom.
100x $500-1000 vs 5000 x $100. Id hope the simple math favors them NOT selling them too dearly. Now I realize that the numbers here are purely speculative and not based on any data but I do think they aren't really that far from it. If I am wrong (and WOTC has better number ideas than I do so thats possible) then I admit I don't understand the economic situation many players are in as well as I think I do.
Don't expect WOTC to make sense. They make bonehead decisions on a regular basis. The game grows IN SPITE OF them and not because of them; there is a difference.
As for the Power 9, I would not be surprised if they sold the Power 9 as a set in the online store. They could charge as much as they want and pretty much get it. People would pay it just to be able to play fully-powered Vintage online. The only limitations would be the number of people who could afford to buy.
The forums seem to look a little better (they expanded the text boxes so a to get rid of that large white blank space on the right-hand side, and my sig looks better at least. So we'll see what happens in the enar future. I'm still about to use MTGS exclusively for my posting of events and stuff.
My guess is for vintage is it's something we aren't even readily suggested. WotC has been mulling over how to release P9 for years, I highly doubt it would be something as mundane as super mythics or top prizes in a super large super expensive tournament. Those ideas have been floated for years, so if they were the solution it would have happened a while ago.
The Proper way to release the power 9 is as Super-Mythics in a Master's Edition style set. 1 per 24 packs, so 1 piece of power per draft. (They could do 1 in 8, but would have to raise the pack price at least to Modern Masters level.)
I've run all the numbers, and it's the only one that makes sense in the long-term for online Vintage. Releasing them as "prizes" is not only doomed to fail, number-wise - it goes against the 20 year tradition of not making "unique" playable cards available to everyone in some form. Whether it be in a pack or in special sets like Commander/Planechase that are purchasable, everything is available in some form. This would be a huge and tragic departure.
-caliban
Re: I would play Vintage, if it were available.
I really miss Vintage. It was such a fun, if slightly misunderstood format. I sold my Power back when it was obvious that the cost and card availability barriers were eventually going to stifle growth in the format. I moved on to Legacy. Legacy may last longer, but I recently sold most of my dual lands because the lack of reprints will eventually create the same barriers to that format's long term sustainability. My love of an Eternal format now leads me to Modern.
I had hoped Magic Online would be a way to save or restore Vintage, but it seems that Wizards doesn't see it that way. Unless they are magically going to find a way to make "Bad" Lotus affordable so that Black Lotus can be too.
And yes, the Negator avatar is from playing Sui Black in Vintage. :)
I posted more and more infrequently under the old forums, because no matter what I posted, and how nicely I said it, the community moderator or an ORC always deleted my posts within 24 hours. His/her name was bubby or bubble followed by numbers? Don't remember. After I got the message my opinion(s) and advice were not welcome I still liked to read other people complain about the same things I did, and infrequently, I learned of special events that were not advertised. Still checked forums monthly.
I only posted when I saw a way the online experience could be somehow improved, and what I took away was that wizards did not care for their customers communicating with them. They view communication as a marketing resource to be managed, not a two-way experience that will improve their business. Unsolicited communication is not welcome, but they will solicit advice once in a blue moon and act surprised that people say the 'same things' in official threads that were said for months and months on the boards. Then the lock/delete the threads when it becomes obvious most people think they are doing a bad job.
These forums are just the latest example of that mentality.
omg Cotton, you may have stumbled on to something big. See Nylea's Pressence:
Enchantment - Aura Common
Enchant land
When Nylea's Presence enters the battlefield, draw a card.
Enchanted land is every basic land type in addition to its other types.
First, I discovered the Dresden Files about a year ago and I've been devouring them ever since. I even got my father hooked on the series. It's nice to see another Magic user promoting the series. It's so good.
The forums are a mess, but I have hope they are going to get better. I'm more disappointed with how many mistakes are made when it comes to phantom prize structures. I was really looking forward to phantom points being awarded as prizes in the retro Ravnica drafts, but then as soon as I mentioned it, it turned out to be a typo.
I think it's a great idea to add phantom point prizes to regular drafts as a prize. That way regular drafters and constructed players can accumulate enough to "try out" things like cube drafts at little to no additional cost. This would be a good cross-promotional plan. Oh well.
I'm an Opera user. The new forums work with Opera (not that I investigated properly, but if there's glitches I didn't see, due to some kind of thing Opera isn't updated to yet, you can trust Opera to update it soon enough, that's the great thing about it).
I'm also a Chrome user. I liked better the way the forums were visualized on Chrome, so I just decided to move them to the things I do with Chrome (which are mostly Magic-related, so it was pretty natural to me). I don't see problems with pasting. In fact, the only thing I appreciate is how you can copy a word that contains a link into a new post, and the link will still be there. Which is useful to me when I have to repeat a weekly announcement about a tournament I run, which obviously includes links (with the old version, I would have to recreate the link from scratch).
The new forums are passably better-looking. I've no other things to say about them, as I don't use them much.
Forgot to turn the comments on :/
That's an awesome suggestion! I completely overlooked it the Metamorph, probably because I was too focused on the combo or about getting card advantage out of Foundry. I already have a playset of them online, so I'll be sure consider them the next time I look at these builds.
Anybody else find some great artifact that I didn't mention?
Suprised I din't see any Phyrexian Metamorph's in either build. A perfect target for Mishra fun.
I totally agree. I am a big fan of multiple modalities. :)
I wish we had asked about actually taking the next step and tape/video recording the Q&A session so that we could be sure we talked about everything, but hindsight is 20/20.