Another consideration with shocklands is if you are in a position where maximising your mana every turn is essential, or if you're in a slower, more controlling position where your initial moves are reactive or focused on the long game. If your plan for the early game is stabilisation followed by mass removal, you have the opportunity to play out a few tapped whilst building up to a sledgehammer. It depends how the course of the game is likely to go and the nature of the matchup.
As an aside, likely skipping next week. Singleton ain't worth trying to get back in time for, or building for whilst rebuilding a collection.
I actually love the idea of a 3000 card deck. Although i am quite sure that what they are saying is true. It will probably be a deck that would have more bad hand because the shuffler doesn't seem to always follow the logic of statistics.
"Matte" as I've begun referring to V4 is implemented more poorly than v3. Whether they need to shut off v3 or not to improve it seems debatable. I mean it is more convenient for sure to have only one client to update but it hardly seems mandatory.
And plenty of what they stripped out of the "matte" functionality is not server-side code dependent. In fact most of it isn't. The problem is as they have stated that they have split dev teams. One working on keeping v3 stable and one working to get v4 stable. I simply can't believe that a professional team of coders took one year to go from where "Matte" was pre first wide beta spotlight to the current build. It seems they took 2 steps forward and 10 giant steps backward.
If they need to migrate servers and that is a reason for the focus on shutting down the only client I am currently interested in using then OK but I seriously doubt it. The card engine works. (Except for minor outlier bugs). The game engine works for the most part. The collection servers work but there do seem to be some serious bugs on the client end for "Matte". I am not sure how that could relate to server-side maintenance/upgrading.
I would love to see incredible leaps forward once v4 is solo but I won't hold my breath. And in fact I probably won't be playing at all for a long time to come because of this mess. Though I'll hope for the best I expect the worst here. Once I would have been more optimistic.
I will say I remember v3 having very similarly negative reactions and it was similarly pretty hard to use and unstable to start with. And 2 years later when I upgraded my machine and was able to log in without crashing or lagging to death it was great because many of the things that we hated in the initial build were smoothed away. Some were gone and or sucked still (leagues, chat, clan functionality, etc) but some worked really well and crashes were very far and few between.
For about 3 years and then we started seeing lots of crashes again. And much of them started about the time they started fiddling with an open beta for "matte".
So it may be that by 2016 we will be totally in love with v4 and be glad we don't have to look back at the colossal mess that was v3 and worry it might happen again...
Good ol' crazy MTGO micro-economy.
Does anyone know what happened with Ajani Vengeant? Has been dozing for YEARS around 5-6 tix, and now he's like the 4th most expensive planeswalker all of a sudden?
I don't think they are using different servers implementations (as opposed to different copies of the same server). For example, look at the Pillar of Flame bug: if both clients were connecting to different servers, odds are, you would not have the same bug twice, unless it's the same code.
I'm no expert, but wouldn't it be absolutely impossible to have different servers for Shiny and V3 if they are to be concurrently used? I'd assume that once V3 is shut off, they can migrate to a new and upgraded server for Shiny. Aaron Forsythe has already indicated as much that V3 is holding Shiny back in several regards simply because they need to have both UI's running concurrently. Hence why WotC is focusing on getting Shiny running as well as it can before they can shut off V3 and start adding/improving Shiny. Believe me, I agree that the team in change is not capable of making this run smoothly, but to blame everything on them is also likely incorrect.
Due to a sudden price spike, the Wilt-Leaf Liege prize is now worth over SEVEN TICKETS on mtgotraders. So just a reminder that my Telim'Tor challenge prize is looking VERY good right now, it's probably the best payout available for the tournament all of a sudden.
Agreed that the reduced functionality from V3 is a shame. I personally have no hope anymore that the transition will go well. I also now strongly believe that the team in charge of developing Shiny is not up to the task. Many of the feature that have either been removed from Shiny in the past few months or have been requested by the community are not things that are difficult to code. Very basic features that are standard in any graphical user interface do not work well in Shiny. Just grab the chat window and move it around: the scrolling is not smooth, it jumps around, as if that simple task was too much to handle.
I am also tired of hearing them talk of the Shiny implementation as if it was an incredibly complicated task. This is just a user interface, nothing out of the ordinary for any qualified programmer! Note that the incredible complexity of the game rules and the implementation of the individual cards is not a part of coding a user interface (and I will not go into details, but it is very visible that Shiny uses exactly the same server side as V3). There really is no excuse anymore, not when the team had that much time to work on it.
It is not in Wizards' DNA to set hard objectives and lay off people when they clearly are not producing results. This is quite acceptable on the creative side, it is not for your IT department. Although on the other hand, I am wondering if anyone at Wizards realises how poorly their programmers are performing.
Well i guess it all really comes down to your deck (mana curve, color requierements and strategy). If you have a low curve deck with 1 and 2 drops shocklands are definitely better i think. And also i just like to have that possibility of paying 2 life to make it enter untapped, and as you said shocklands should most of the times be the first ones to search with fetchlands if you don't have anything to do. Normally you can play around the 2 life factor.
Another thing to keep in mind is that shocklands count as 2 basic land type, forest and swamp in overgrown tomb's case, which could be relevant.
But I find that 4 shocklands in a 2-color deck, once you have a robust amount of fetches and a full set of Alpha duals, just help the opponent with the burn deck to take the game. You either have a STRONG reason to take this risk, or it's just masochistic. Your mana progression will start with a land with a basic type almost every time (for first hands that contain at least 2 lands, and otherwise you would mulligan anyway), and at that point any M10 tapland you draw into will just be a dual without any downside.
I'm thinking of a base setup like this, let's say for Golgari:
- 4 Verdant Catacombs
- 4 Bayou
- 4 Woodland Cemetery
- 4 Basic lands
- 1 Overgrown Tomb (that's the first you fetch when you don't have a 1-drop)
- 1 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
- 2 colorless-producing utility lands (more likely Volrath's Stronghold and/or Phyrexian Tower as needed, or LD lands)
- 4 as you like/need: more fetches, painlands, manlands, Reflecting Pool, Gaea's Cradle, more utility based on strategy (but producing colored mana if possible), LD lands, etc.
Now, you can see that the odds of not having a drop with a basic type in first hand are really remote this way (of course, it helps that in most of my builds I rarely have much to do turn 1, so it's actually the right moment for me to drop something that enters tapped).
I forgot to mention in the article that, generally speaking, I subscribe to the use of 4 fetches even in monocolored decks. However, I don't subscribe to a deck design that includes 18 land-based self-inflicted damage, unless something in the deck specifically asks for it (landfall, suicide black, basic types matter, etc.)
For me in a 2 color deck 6-8 fetchlands, 4 duals, 4 shocklands, some basics (path to exile) and maybe 1 or 2 utility lands. Don't like m10 duals or filter lands unless you have a lot of double or triple mana colored costs.
Not sure about splashing red for firespout...
Ive said this elsewhere but Ill say it here too. I really feel that WOTC is screwing this up. I've felt that way before and been wrong so I hold out hope that I am. But that said... I do not even want to play MTGO anymore knowing that it is coming apart at the seems. It is good that they are concerned about stability issues. It is really bad that they have stability issues. It is good that they want the new client to be nominally functional before adding to what works. It is really bad that it is has really reduced functionality from v3.
If this was a matter of my old system not working well with some new fangled toys I would shrug and try to upgrade as I could. But this is a matter of they broke what did not need fixing and now they have a far inferior product I am not comfortable using and while the sky may not be falling it sure looks black from here. I am extremely disappointed as I had high hopes last year that they would spend this year productively. Instead they have basically done NOTHING.
Thanks as always Pete. I really appreciate the summary of the Q&A. I for one don't have the tme to listen to the entire thing, so I'm glad you could summarize for us.
On a side note, if anyone is interested in watching some competitive Classic matches, ClassicQuarter.com is hosting our Classic Invitational on Sat. July 20th at noon EDT (UTC -5). Here is a link to the live steam: http://www.twitch.tv/classicquarterleague
The math says differently. The odds for instance of a no-land are 2.82% in the deck I listed. The odds in a 60 card deck with 24 lands of no-land is 2.16%. The odds of an all land hand 0.16% versus 0.09% with the aforementioned typical deck. So yes the odds are a little worse but less than 1 in 100 worse.
EDIT: I suppose I should add that what I said holds true assuming the shuffler on MODO handles 3000 card decks properly.
I wasn't preposing it as a competitive deck, just a deck for fun. The idea of flipping 1700+ apostles off a thrumming stone is the appeal, not winning tournaments.
Even if I don't play Angelic accord I am sure that someone will use it one time or another and I am also sure that he will choose Solemn Offering as an enchantment destroyer because it would have better interaction with Angelic accord than ray of revelation. The reason Angelic accord would be bad will probably because every known deck in STDSB will be sideboarding an enchantment destroyer but a lot of known deck type in STDSB will have drastic change after M13 rotate out so it's too soon to call if i will be right in my analysis but don't take my word for it.
I am quite sure that a lot of people are thinking of trying to make it work because it's just an interesting card and not whether it's sure to be strong or not.
You give Angelic Accord a 5, but is that because you know personally that you're going to play it (so it's sure to see play), or because it's so powerful that there's no way it doesn't get played? Also, you seem to rate cards higher than normal because of the Accord. Take Solemn Offering for example, you give it a 5, but wouldn't you rather play with Ray of Revelation? You get to take out 2 enchantments for the same amount of mana that you would with Solemn Offering.
I'm willing to be wrong here, but I just don't think Angelic Accord is that great of a card. It's probably the nuts in Turbo Fog though.
I just wanted to say that I <3 reading these articles, and they are always so informative to read.
It would be easy enough to test right now, just substitute another basic land for the apostles and let the system shuffle you up some test hands.
Another consideration with shocklands is if you are in a position where maximising your mana every turn is essential, or if you're in a slower, more controlling position where your initial moves are reactive or focused on the long game. If your plan for the early game is stabilisation followed by mass removal, you have the opportunity to play out a few tapped whilst building up to a sledgehammer. It depends how the course of the game is likely to go and the nature of the matchup.
As an aside, likely skipping next week. Singleton ain't worth trying to get back in time for, or building for whilst rebuilding a collection.
These characteres are really good. I like the idea on this. - YOR Health
Good to know about this one. I like the idea on this. Keep it up. - YOR Health
I like the idea on this. It is really nice. Keep it up. - Scott Safadi
There is some difference though - only on the beta client was Blinding Beam from Modern Masters bugged.
I actually love the idea of a 3000 card deck. Although i am quite sure that what they are saying is true. It will probably be a deck that would have more bad hand because the shuffler doesn't seem to always follow the logic of statistics.
"Matte" as I've begun referring to V4 is implemented more poorly than v3. Whether they need to shut off v3 or not to improve it seems debatable. I mean it is more convenient for sure to have only one client to update but it hardly seems mandatory.
And plenty of what they stripped out of the "matte" functionality is not server-side code dependent. In fact most of it isn't. The problem is as they have stated that they have split dev teams. One working on keeping v3 stable and one working to get v4 stable. I simply can't believe that a professional team of coders took one year to go from where "Matte" was pre first wide beta spotlight to the current build. It seems they took 2 steps forward and 10 giant steps backward.
If they need to migrate servers and that is a reason for the focus on shutting down the only client I am currently interested in using then OK but I seriously doubt it. The card engine works. (Except for minor outlier bugs). The game engine works for the most part. The collection servers work but there do seem to be some serious bugs on the client end for "Matte". I am not sure how that could relate to server-side maintenance/upgrading.
I would love to see incredible leaps forward once v4 is solo but I won't hold my breath. And in fact I probably won't be playing at all for a long time to come because of this mess. Though I'll hope for the best I expect the worst here. Once I would have been more optimistic.
I will say I remember v3 having very similarly negative reactions and it was similarly pretty hard to use and unstable to start with. And 2 years later when I upgraded my machine and was able to log in without crashing or lagging to death it was great because many of the things that we hated in the initial build were smoothed away. Some were gone and or sucked still (leagues, chat, clan functionality, etc) but some worked really well and crashes were very far and few between.
For about 3 years and then we started seeing lots of crashes again. And much of them started about the time they started fiddling with an open beta for "matte".
So it may be that by 2016 we will be totally in love with v4 and be glad we don't have to look back at the colossal mess that was v3 and worry it might happen again...
Ajani sees a lot of play in competitive modern in a form of jund and urw control
Good ol' crazy MTGO micro-economy.
Does anyone know what happened with Ajani Vengeant? Has been dozing for YEARS around 5-6 tix, and now he's like the 4th most expensive planeswalker all of a sudden?
I don't think they are using different servers implementations (as opposed to different copies of the same server). For example, look at the Pillar of Flame bug: if both clients were connecting to different servers, odds are, you would not have the same bug twice, unless it's the same code.
I'm no expert, but wouldn't it be absolutely impossible to have different servers for Shiny and V3 if they are to be concurrently used? I'd assume that once V3 is shut off, they can migrate to a new and upgraded server for Shiny. Aaron Forsythe has already indicated as much that V3 is holding Shiny back in several regards simply because they need to have both UI's running concurrently. Hence why WotC is focusing on getting Shiny running as well as it can before they can shut off V3 and start adding/improving Shiny. Believe me, I agree that the team in change is not capable of making this run smoothly, but to blame everything on them is also likely incorrect.
Due to a sudden price spike, the Wilt-Leaf Liege prize is now worth over SEVEN TICKETS on mtgotraders. So just a reminder that my Telim'Tor challenge prize is looking VERY good right now, it's probably the best payout available for the tournament all of a sudden.
Agreed that the reduced functionality from V3 is a shame. I personally have no hope anymore that the transition will go well. I also now strongly believe that the team in charge of developing Shiny is not up to the task. Many of the feature that have either been removed from Shiny in the past few months or have been requested by the community are not things that are difficult to code. Very basic features that are standard in any graphical user interface do not work well in Shiny. Just grab the chat window and move it around: the scrolling is not smooth, it jumps around, as if that simple task was too much to handle.
I am also tired of hearing them talk of the Shiny implementation as if it was an incredibly complicated task. This is just a user interface, nothing out of the ordinary for any qualified programmer! Note that the incredible complexity of the game rules and the implementation of the individual cards is not a part of coding a user interface (and I will not go into details, but it is very visible that Shiny uses exactly the same server side as V3). There really is no excuse anymore, not when the team had that much time to work on it.
It is not in Wizards' DNA to set hard objectives and lay off people when they clearly are not producing results. This is quite acceptable on the creative side, it is not for your IT department. Although on the other hand, I am wondering if anyone at Wizards realises how poorly their programmers are performing.
Well i guess it all really comes down to your deck (mana curve, color requierements and strategy). If you have a low curve deck with 1 and 2 drops shocklands are definitely better i think. And also i just like to have that possibility of paying 2 life to make it enter untapped, and as you said shocklands should most of the times be the first ones to search with fetchlands if you don't have anything to do. Normally you can play around the 2 life factor.
Another thing to keep in mind is that shocklands count as 2 basic land type, forest and swamp in overgrown tomb's case, which could be relevant.
But I find that 4 shocklands in a 2-color deck, once you have a robust amount of fetches and a full set of Alpha duals, just help the opponent with the burn deck to take the game. You either have a STRONG reason to take this risk, or it's just masochistic. Your mana progression will start with a land with a basic type almost every time (for first hands that contain at least 2 lands, and otherwise you would mulligan anyway), and at that point any M10 tapland you draw into will just be a dual without any downside.
I'm thinking of a base setup like this, let's say for Golgari:
- 4 Verdant Catacombs
- 4 Bayou
- 4 Woodland Cemetery
- 4 Basic lands
- 1 Overgrown Tomb (that's the first you fetch when you don't have a 1-drop)
- 1 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
- 2 colorless-producing utility lands (more likely Volrath's Stronghold and/or Phyrexian Tower as needed, or LD lands)
- 4 as you like/need: more fetches, painlands, manlands, Reflecting Pool, Gaea's Cradle, more utility based on strategy (but producing colored mana if possible), LD lands, etc.
Now, you can see that the odds of not having a drop with a basic type in first hand are really remote this way (of course, it helps that in most of my builds I rarely have much to do turn 1, so it's actually the right moment for me to drop something that enters tapped).
I forgot to mention in the article that, generally speaking, I subscribe to the use of 4 fetches even in monocolored decks. However, I don't subscribe to a deck design that includes 18 land-based self-inflicted damage, unless something in the deck specifically asks for it (landfall, suicide black, basic types matter, etc.)
For me in a 2 color deck 6-8 fetchlands, 4 duals, 4 shocklands, some basics (path to exile) and maybe 1 or 2 utility lands. Don't like m10 duals or filter lands unless you have a lot of double or triple mana colored costs.
Not sure about splashing red for firespout...
Ive said this elsewhere but Ill say it here too. I really feel that WOTC is screwing this up. I've felt that way before and been wrong so I hold out hope that I am. But that said... I do not even want to play MTGO anymore knowing that it is coming apart at the seems. It is good that they are concerned about stability issues. It is really bad that they have stability issues. It is good that they want the new client to be nominally functional before adding to what works. It is really bad that it is has really reduced functionality from v3.
If this was a matter of my old system not working well with some new fangled toys I would shrug and try to upgrade as I could. But this is a matter of they broke what did not need fixing and now they have a far inferior product I am not comfortable using and while the sky may not be falling it sure looks black from here. I am extremely disappointed as I had high hopes last year that they would spend this year productively. Instead they have basically done NOTHING.
Figured out #3. :)
Thanks as always Pete. I really appreciate the summary of the Q&A. I for one don't have the tme to listen to the entire thing, so I'm glad you could summarize for us.
On a side note, if anyone is interested in watching some competitive Classic matches, ClassicQuarter.com is hosting our Classic Invitational on Sat. July 20th at noon EDT (UTC -5). Here is a link to the live steam: http://www.twitch.tv/classicquarterleague
The math says differently. The odds for instance of a no-land are 2.82% in the deck I listed. The odds in a 60 card deck with 24 lands of no-land is 2.16%. The odds of an all land hand 0.16% versus 0.09% with the aforementioned typical deck. So yes the odds are a little worse but less than 1 in 100 worse.
EDIT: I suppose I should add that what I said holds true assuming the shuffler on MODO handles 3000 card decks properly.
I wasn't preposing it as a competitive deck, just a deck for fun. The idea of flipping 1700+ apostles off a thrumming stone is the appeal, not winning tournaments.
Even if I don't play Angelic accord I am sure that someone will use it one time or another and I am also sure that he will choose Solemn Offering as an enchantment destroyer because it would have better interaction with Angelic accord than ray of revelation. The reason Angelic accord would be bad will probably because every known deck in STDSB will be sideboarding an enchantment destroyer but a lot of known deck type in STDSB will have drastic change after M13 rotate out so it's too soon to call if i will be right in my analysis but don't take my word for it.
I am quite sure that a lot of people are thinking of trying to make it work because it's just an interesting card and not whether it's sure to be strong or not.
You give Angelic Accord a 5, but is that because you know personally that you're going to play it (so it's sure to see play), or because it's so powerful that there's no way it doesn't get played? Also, you seem to rate cards higher than normal because of the Accord. Take Solemn Offering for example, you give it a 5, but wouldn't you rather play with Ray of Revelation? You get to take out 2 enchantments for the same amount of mana that you would with Solemn Offering.
I'm willing to be wrong here, but I just don't think Angelic Accord is that great of a card. It's probably the nuts in Turbo Fog though.