I can easily see what you're saying and I think it speaks to what I mean that it's "okay" for me to spend money now. It's all about perspective. My compulsion to keep winning was to recoup my losses because of the dread I felt when it came to actually spending money. I no longer feel that dread - it's all about having fun. So maybe I'll lose anyway and I'll lose a lot, but a loss won't come with that compulsion to play again and try again because I need to win. I'd much rather lose 5 times over a span of 5 weeks rather than one night - then I'm "losing money" at a much more manageable rate.
Basically, if I'm thinking of this game as "how much $ can I win/extract from this game" that's not the perspective I want to be having. And I think I'm farther away from that than I was in the beginning.
**that's to Kumagoro, I was writing this response and didn't see Psychobabble's response.
I'm not quite sure what the point here is, but if you're trying to say that it's dangerous to have "going infinite" or "not spending money" on mtgo as your main goal in playing then I 100% agree with you. People who get so worked up about trading cards, or going infinite, or EV of events because they want to not spend any money are kind of missing the point imo. You should play for fun and regard the financial side of things as a bonus. Set yourself a financial limit of how many events etc. you're willing to pay for over a time frame, and if you get to play more than through winnings - bonus. if you don't, play less, or play free games.
What other way to nerf all those color hosers and CoPs...I sleight your Crusade, now its pumping my blue creatures instead....Lots of fun (right along with Stasis)
I don't know, man, the line "if I have to spend money that’s okay" scares me. A lot. No, it's not okay. And it's not the solution to anything. How can it be? I really don't get your point: your mistake was trying not to spend money? What if you had? Just assume that you didn't care, that you never actually sold cards or boosters to draft, buying everything from the store instead: Do you think you wouldn't have lost all those tournaments in that case?
And by the way, you fail to recognize something. If you put $10 in the game, and after a year of successful drafting you end up with $1000, then after another year of unsuccessful drafting you end up with zero, you didn't lose $10. You lost $990. Because you had that at some point. (More correctly, you lost/had what a retailer would pay you for a $1000 collection, which is still way more than $10). Those were real money, money you earned in digital form (but aren't all money digital nowadays?), through using your time and skills, that are in fact worth money.
"Fun" is a very relative concept. There are people who have fun doing their job (it happened to me several times over the course of my life). Then what, they shouldn't care being paid for it because they had fun?
Still clanless after many years as a "PUREMTGO2" member. Before the Beta sidetracked me from doing anything fun on MTGO I was planning to start a Puremtgo Writers clan and invite all the people who write here to join. The idea was going to be to mentor young/inexperienced writers and pair up players who write with those who don't, in order to encourage learning and creativity.
This is an interesting idea, if a little exotic to me. I never considered the MTGO clan system as something really relevant to keep track of, given how little WotC cares for it and how chaotic it is as a whole (so kudos for sorting it out!). But maybe things are going to change come the Beta? Do you think that will be the case?
You should work on the formatting of those tables, though. Bad alignment doesn't do justice to them and makes them harder to read.
By the way, how did you get the nationality of all those players? I'm highly interested in data about how many players every country has and things like that. It seems that United States don't show up as frequently as one might expect in these kinds of lists. (And yeah, my goal is contributing to stop seeing MTGO as "an American game", therefore starting every official and community-based activity with an international audience in mind, as related to starting time, data formats, prize/promo access, and such.)
Yeah, you guys are totally right. After re-reading my drafts a couple of times, the behaviors I described were like those of someone with a compulsion problem. I definitely see how wanting just "one more win!" can outweigh 20 losses and trying so hard to get there. But, things aren't as bad as they seem. I mean, my collection is laughable now, but I'm enjoying myself, win or lose, and I think that's more important than my attempts to never spend money on a game I really love.
No, I knew that. I was just making a joke about naming a disc after someone who's famous for a ring. Niven's story is actually called The Magic Goes Away, which is really perfect to allude to for the card.
While we're at it, speaking of that link you provided about how they created a bunch of cards at the last minute only because there was unused art, that speaks volumes on the quality control of Alpha. But the best proof is just something like Ancestral Recall. That's the best evidence of the fact that Garfield and co. didn't playtest much, if at all. If they did, they would know that replacing a card with 3 cards can't be done for a negligible amount of mana. It's like allowing for a wish to wish for 3 more wishes. It beats me how he didn't realize that (further proof: he also thought having whatever number of the same card in you deck was okay).
But really, Garfield is a genius and all, he had one of the greatest ideas in the last 20 years of gaming, but developing wasn't his strong suit. I wonder how much he played Magic before the first few sets were released (remember the anecdote: Magic wasn't even his main project, it was sort of another thing that he had and wasn't sure about, and brought out only because the other ideas were rejected).
Bottom line: insisting on playing with Alpha cards is like using the very first version of a software, incomplete and chock full of bugs that make it almost unusable, only because that's the original one and you remember the sweet time when you were young and it came out.
I bet new players that start playing now and never saw early era cards before, if they look at them, they can't believe they were for real, both the good and the bad ones. "Did you seriously used this stuff? Were you on crack and then you got on rehab?" "He, some of us will never be able to clean ourselves up from Alpha."
Yeah, absolutely. This sounds like 1,000s of stories of poker addicts, except they usually end up with the person homeless and with a crack addiction. The fundamental dangers is still there though - chasing losses, feeling entitled to win, spewing value and sending good money after bad. It wasn't mentioned in the article, but I have no doubt that tilt played some part of the above story, it's such an EV killer. You gotta recognise your limits, set rules for yourself and realise when you're on tilt and should step away rather than trying for just one more event.
Hopefully you can learn from losing an MTGO collection what causes many to tragically lose home, wife, and kids on through gambling addictions. It's definitely good to take and pause and gain some perspective. By writing this, it sounds as if you've matured somewhat, but just be careful. Set limits.
Nice play on words, but the inspiration of Nevinyrral's Disk actually comes from one of Niven's stories. The idea is a disk, that is enchanted by two spells. One makes it rotate ever faster, the other keeps the disk in one piece. In Niven's world mana is a finite ressource and taken from the environment. The disk thus consumes all the mana it has access to and destroys all kinds of enchantments, that rely on mana.
Not Aggro (judging by the underwhelming performance of my deck in the tournament). How about control? I vote control.
As for the 4C Fish list that ChrisKool piloted (aka 4-Cavern Moon Hammer Time, aka Tribal Artifact - Troll), the credit should go significantly more to him than to me in building it. It's true that both of us had worked to figure out which creatures we wanted to play (some combination of Leonin Relic-Warders, Leonin Arbiters, Aven Mindcensors, Qasali Pridemages, True Believers, Yixlid Jailers, Magus of the Moon, Magus of the Unseen, Hammer Mage, Trinket Mage, Venser, Vendilion Clique, Stoneforge Mystic, Meddling Mage, mana dudes, Trygon Predator, Caustic Wasps, Snapcaster Mage), Chris was the one bold enough to consider City of Brass, which I was too scared to play. (In the end, I paid dearly for piloting an even narrower deck than the one he did -- I lost horrible matches to two fish decks that had Lightning Bolts in them.)
Larry Niven is the author of Ringworld. Maybe the author of Discworld would have been a more relevant choice, but I guess "Ttehctarpyrret's Disk" was a bit too much.
How is a clerical bell that floats in the sky able to turn swamps into 1/1 guys? And what do those swamp-guys look like? Like Swamp Thing? But he's clearly green. (Not that the actual real-life swamps aren't essentially green too. The idea of swamp = evil has always struck me as very cartoonish. And since when necromancers, vampires and zombies dwell in swamps, anyway?)
Also, they somehow thought that a volcanic eruption DESTROYS the volcano. And it's somehow fueled by the forces of air and water. (Maybe this even makes some scientific sense, but it shouldn't for guys who think swamp = evil).
Do the creature list as a tongue-in-cheek article, please!
Yeah, I love snapcaster and hellrider, they're just exciting and fun cards. The problem with snapcaster/delver last season was 90% down to ponder, he's been basically a fair card post-RTR. Rites would be fine too if it wasn't for thragtusk. It's way harder for a reanimator deck to have a "fair" midrange side plan if their graveyard gets hated out without that ridiculous beast, eg. while the humaniator deck is very severly hurt by RIP etc., junk rites barely cares about it which makes it way stronger.
Ill miss Hellrider. So much fun in a grinding match up where you are trading blows with your opponent and they seemingly have a superior board to slap down this sucker and and swing with your blood artists and other 0/1s for the kill. :)
Ill also miss Snapcaster into unexpected results and other fun shenanigans.
And you know Ill miss Unburial Rites with my Humans of Glories Rise deck. Nothing says "I win now!" like Unburial Rites after a series of self-mills to bring back Angel who brings back a ton of humans and Malcontents for an instakill.
I think my list is only three cards long. Geist, 100% agree with you and then resto and thragtustk. Hmmm, terminus is also pretty tilting. I once had an opponent miracle it on turn 3 and 4 back to back, and another time revelated for 4 with one mana open as their only out and hit it. Wrath should not cost 1 mana...
I agree with your list minus Cavern of Souls. Personally I loathe counter magic and hate playing against control, so I may be biased. I had quite the celebration when Mana Leak went away. Hopefully it got mugged beaten and broken to the point of no return.
I come from a standard pauper perspective so I am bit skewed
10)Haunted Fengraf- This card is good, not great, but good. I will not miss it simply because I am not a fan of the random factor. I do not like taking the game and making it a coin flip on getting a relevant creature.
9) Bloodhunter Bat- Black already has the best removal, good control cards, and generally it trades life for card advantage. In standard pauper so many games come down to races this card would just change that dynamic so much it was direct damage, life gain, and a 2/2 flier for 4 mana. I will not miss seeing this guy hit the table and then start dominating with combo cards.
8) Primal Huntbeast- This guy was not as big of a factor in the competitive standard pauper games as much as he presented a threat so big everyone tried to push as much anti enchantment as you could fit in a sideboard.
7) Silent Departure- Unsummon is a card but as a tempo play with flashback this being gone will hopefully slow down the MuC decks that are surprisingly aggro.
6) War Falcon- White weenie was a deck it dominated the format and putting a 2/1 flier for 1 in their color was just well and attempted answer to delver. it worked a bit to well.
5) Travel Preparations- This card still see play ever since it came out it was 4 +1/+1 counter for 4 mana and could just make your day. I won't miss it simply because it has had its time and this workhorse needs its time in the pasture.
4) Loyal Cathar- The super bear is dead long live the goblin piker. I am glad to see this guy cycle out he was fun but just a bit over powered.
3) Seraph of Dawn- this card has been called the Baneslayer angel of standard pauper, and it lived up to that name people would splash white just for this card 2/4 flying lifelink. This card needed answered when it hit the board or else.
2) Delver of Secrets- Ok there was a big debate over weather this should be number one this card when it came out had way to much strength in a game that had ponders and preordains and mana leek it flew its insect but all over the opponents. Right now in standard there is not one card that lets you manipulate the top of your deck. Delver has turned into a random card so I am glad it is on its way out where it will take its place in modern and Classic with all its cycled friends.
.
.
.
1) Ghostly Flicker- Hail to the king baby! This card first time I saw it I was worried people compared it to momentary blink but blink was much different it exiled itself for the second cast. It is true this card did not make any waves at first but it slowly started to assemble his team Archaeomancer, Bloodhunter bat, both added a great combo Electromancer came along, and finally we got the full set of G.I.Joes in the Gatekeepers. Card with EtB effects and rewarded you for playing color fixing. Yes this deck is not completely dominating but it is so annoying to play against.
These are the top 10 cards I will not miss when Innistrad cycles out.
Great post. Check this out Press Release Service.
My plan for easy tickets is wait for Master's Edition events. Then wreck fools.
But as it happens, that was pretty much what I was saying anyway :)
I can easily see what you're saying and I think it speaks to what I mean that it's "okay" for me to spend money now. It's all about perspective. My compulsion to keep winning was to recoup my losses because of the dread I felt when it came to actually spending money. I no longer feel that dread - it's all about having fun. So maybe I'll lose anyway and I'll lose a lot, but a loss won't come with that compulsion to play again and try again because I need to win. I'd much rather lose 5 times over a span of 5 weeks rather than one night - then I'm "losing money" at a much more manageable rate.
Basically, if I'm thinking of this game as "how much $ can I win/extract from this game" that's not the perspective I want to be having. And I think I'm farther away from that than I was in the beginning.
**that's to Kumagoro, I was writing this response and didn't see Psychobabble's response.
I'm not quite sure what the point here is, but if you're trying to say that it's dangerous to have "going infinite" or "not spending money" on mtgo as your main goal in playing then I 100% agree with you. People who get so worked up about trading cards, or going infinite, or EV of events because they want to not spend any money are kind of missing the point imo. You should play for fun and regard the financial side of things as a bonus. Set yourself a financial limit of how many events etc. you're willing to pay for over a time frame, and if you get to play more than through winnings - bonus. if you don't, play less, or play free games.
What other way to nerf all those color hosers and CoPs...I sleight your Crusade, now its pumping my blue creatures instead....Lots of fun (right along with Stasis)
I don't know, man, the line "if I have to spend money that’s okay" scares me. A lot. No, it's not okay. And it's not the solution to anything. How can it be? I really don't get your point: your mistake was trying not to spend money? What if you had? Just assume that you didn't care, that you never actually sold cards or boosters to draft, buying everything from the store instead: Do you think you wouldn't have lost all those tournaments in that case?
And by the way, you fail to recognize something. If you put $10 in the game, and after a year of successful drafting you end up with $1000, then after another year of unsuccessful drafting you end up with zero, you didn't lose $10. You lost $990. Because you had that at some point. (More correctly, you lost/had what a retailer would pay you for a $1000 collection, which is still way more than $10). Those were real money, money you earned in digital form (but aren't all money digital nowadays?), through using your time and skills, that are in fact worth money.
"Fun" is a very relative concept. There are people who have fun doing their job (it happened to me several times over the course of my life). Then what, they shouldn't care being paid for it because they had fun?
Still clanless after many years as a "PUREMTGO2" member. Before the Beta sidetracked me from doing anything fun on MTGO I was planning to start a Puremtgo Writers clan and invite all the people who write here to join. The idea was going to be to mentor young/inexperienced writers and pair up players who write with those who don't, in order to encourage learning and creativity.
This is an interesting idea, if a little exotic to me. I never considered the MTGO clan system as something really relevant to keep track of, given how little WotC cares for it and how chaotic it is as a whole (so kudos for sorting it out!). But maybe things are going to change come the Beta? Do you think that will be the case?
You should work on the formatting of those tables, though. Bad alignment doesn't do justice to them and makes them harder to read.
By the way, how did you get the nationality of all those players? I'm highly interested in data about how many players every country has and things like that. It seems that United States don't show up as frequently as one might expect in these kinds of lists. (And yeah, my goal is contributing to stop seeing MTGO as "an American game", therefore starting every official and community-based activity with an international audience in mind, as related to starting time, data formats, prize/promo access, and such.)
Yeah, you guys are totally right. After re-reading my drafts a couple of times, the behaviors I described were like those of someone with a compulsion problem. I definitely see how wanting just "one more win!" can outweigh 20 losses and trying so hard to get there. But, things aren't as bad as they seem. I mean, my collection is laughable now, but I'm enjoying myself, win or lose, and I think that's more important than my attempts to never spend money on a game I really love.
-@MTGRookie
No, I knew that. I was just making a joke about naming a disc after someone who's famous for a ring. Niven's story is actually called The Magic Goes Away, which is really perfect to allude to for the card.
While we're at it, speaking of that link you provided about how they created a bunch of cards at the last minute only because there was unused art, that speaks volumes on the quality control of Alpha. But the best proof is just something like Ancestral Recall. That's the best evidence of the fact that Garfield and co. didn't playtest much, if at all. If they did, they would know that replacing a card with 3 cards can't be done for a negligible amount of mana. It's like allowing for a wish to wish for 3 more wishes. It beats me how he didn't realize that (further proof: he also thought having whatever number of the same card in you deck was okay).
But really, Garfield is a genius and all, he had one of the greatest ideas in the last 20 years of gaming, but developing wasn't his strong suit. I wonder how much he played Magic before the first few sets were released (remember the anecdote: Magic wasn't even his main project, it was sort of another thing that he had and wasn't sure about, and brought out only because the other ideas were rejected).
Bottom line: insisting on playing with Alpha cards is like using the very first version of a software, incomplete and chock full of bugs that make it almost unusable, only because that's the original one and you remember the sweet time when you were young and it came out.
I bet new players that start playing now and never saw early era cards before, if they look at them, they can't believe they were for real, both the good and the bad ones. "Did you seriously used this stuff? Were you on crack and then you got on rehab?" "He, some of us will never be able to clean ourselves up from Alpha."
Yeah, absolutely. This sounds like 1,000s of stories of poker addicts, except they usually end up with the person homeless and with a crack addiction. The fundamental dangers is still there though - chasing losses, feeling entitled to win, spewing value and sending good money after bad. It wasn't mentioned in the article, but I have no doubt that tilt played some part of the above story, it's such an EV killer. You gotta recognise your limits, set rules for yourself and realise when you're on tilt and should step away rather than trying for just one more event.
I vote prison/control...
Kessig Wolf Run for me. Not sure why this card never got expensive. It wins games on its own.
Hopefully you can learn from losing an MTGO collection what causes many to tragically lose home, wife, and kids on through gambling addictions. It's definitely good to take and pause and gain some perspective. By writing this, it sounds as if you've matured somewhat, but just be careful. Set limits.
Nice play on words, but the inspiration of Nevinyrral's Disk actually comes from one of Niven's stories. The idea is a disk, that is enchanted by two spells. One makes it rotate ever faster, the other keeps the disk in one piece. In Niven's world mana is a finite ressource and taken from the environment. The disk thus consumes all the mana it has access to and destroys all kinds of enchantments, that rely on mana.
Not Aggro (judging by the underwhelming performance of my deck in the tournament). How about control? I vote control.
As for the 4C Fish list that ChrisKool piloted (aka 4-Cavern Moon Hammer Time, aka Tribal Artifact - Troll), the credit should go significantly more to him than to me in building it. It's true that both of us had worked to figure out which creatures we wanted to play (some combination of Leonin Relic-Warders, Leonin Arbiters, Aven Mindcensors, Qasali Pridemages, True Believers, Yixlid Jailers, Magus of the Moon, Magus of the Unseen, Hammer Mage, Trinket Mage, Venser, Vendilion Clique, Stoneforge Mystic, Meddling Mage, mana dudes, Trygon Predator, Caustic Wasps, Snapcaster Mage), Chris was the one bold enough to consider City of Brass, which I was too scared to play. (In the end, I paid dearly for piloting an even narrower deck than the one he did -- I lost horrible matches to two fish decks that had Lightning Bolts in them.)
I would go with Prison. Another great episode. Keep up the good work.
There is only one choice: Combo.
Good luck.
Larry Niven is the author of Ringworld. Maybe the author of Discworld would have been a more relevant choice, but I guess "Ttehctarpyrret's Disk" was a bit too much.
How is a clerical bell that floats in the sky able to turn swamps into 1/1 guys? And what do those swamp-guys look like? Like Swamp Thing? But he's clearly green. (Not that the actual real-life swamps aren't essentially green too. The idea of swamp = evil has always struck me as very cartoonish. And since when necromancers, vampires and zombies dwell in swamps, anyway?)
Also, they somehow thought that a volcanic eruption DESTROYS the volcano. And it's somehow fueled by the forces of air and water. (Maybe this even makes some scientific sense, but it shouldn't for guys who think swamp = evil).
Do the creature list as a tongue-in-cheek article, please!
Yeah, I love snapcaster and hellrider, they're just exciting and fun cards. The problem with snapcaster/delver last season was 90% down to ponder, he's been basically a fair card post-RTR. Rites would be fine too if it wasn't for thragtusk. It's way harder for a reanimator deck to have a "fair" midrange side plan if their graveyard gets hated out without that ridiculous beast, eg. while the humaniator deck is very severly hurt by RIP etc., junk rites barely cares about it which makes it way stronger.
Ill miss Hellrider. So much fun in a grinding match up where you are trading blows with your opponent and they seemingly have a superior board to slap down this sucker and and swing with your blood artists and other 0/1s for the kill. :)
Ill also miss Snapcaster into unexpected results and other fun shenanigans.
And you know Ill miss Unburial Rites with my Humans of Glories Rise deck. Nothing says "I win now!" like Unburial Rites after a series of self-mills to bring back Angel who brings back a ton of humans and Malcontents for an instakill.
I think my list is only three cards long. Geist, 100% agree with you and then resto and thragtustk. Hmmm, terminus is also pretty tilting. I once had an opponent miracle it on turn 3 and 4 back to back, and another time revelated for 4 with one mana open as their only out and hit it. Wrath should not cost 1 mana...
I agree with your list minus Cavern of Souls. Personally I loathe counter magic and hate playing against control, so I may be biased. I had quite the celebration when Mana Leak went away. Hopefully it got mugged beaten and broken to the point of no return.
I come from a standard pauper perspective so I am bit skewed
10)Haunted Fengraf- This card is good, not great, but good. I will not miss it simply because I am not a fan of the random factor. I do not like taking the game and making it a coin flip on getting a relevant creature.
9) Bloodhunter Bat- Black already has the best removal, good control cards, and generally it trades life for card advantage. In standard pauper so many games come down to races this card would just change that dynamic so much it was direct damage, life gain, and a 2/2 flier for 4 mana. I will not miss seeing this guy hit the table and then start dominating with combo cards.
8) Primal Huntbeast- This guy was not as big of a factor in the competitive standard pauper games as much as he presented a threat so big everyone tried to push as much anti enchantment as you could fit in a sideboard.
7) Silent Departure- Unsummon is a card but as a tempo play with flashback this being gone will hopefully slow down the MuC decks that are surprisingly aggro.
6) War Falcon- White weenie was a deck it dominated the format and putting a 2/1 flier for 1 in their color was just well and attempted answer to delver. it worked a bit to well.
5) Travel Preparations- This card still see play ever since it came out it was 4 +1/+1 counter for 4 mana and could just make your day. I won't miss it simply because it has had its time and this workhorse needs its time in the pasture.
4) Loyal Cathar- The super bear is dead long live the goblin piker. I am glad to see this guy cycle out he was fun but just a bit over powered.
3) Seraph of Dawn- this card has been called the Baneslayer angel of standard pauper, and it lived up to that name people would splash white just for this card 2/4 flying lifelink. This card needed answered when it hit the board or else.
2) Delver of Secrets- Ok there was a big debate over weather this should be number one this card when it came out had way to much strength in a game that had ponders and preordains and mana leek it flew its insect but all over the opponents. Right now in standard there is not one card that lets you manipulate the top of your deck. Delver has turned into a random card so I am glad it is on its way out where it will take its place in modern and Classic with all its cycled friends.
.
.
.
1) Ghostly Flicker- Hail to the king baby! This card first time I saw it I was worried people compared it to momentary blink but blink was much different it exiled itself for the second cast. It is true this card did not make any waves at first but it slowly started to assemble his team Archaeomancer, Bloodhunter bat, both added a great combo Electromancer came along, and finally we got the full set of G.I.Joes in the Gatekeepers. Card with EtB effects and rewarded you for playing color fixing. Yes this deck is not completely dominating but it is so annoying to play against.
These are the top 10 cards I will not miss when Innistrad cycles out.