On the Knutson thing, I have no idea what effect it had on the format or prices, but it's interesting that the big spec probably hasn't actually made him very much, if any, money. Of the 12 cards he bought, five have gone down in price and seven up. I don't know what proportion he bought of each of the cards in the basket, but the total basket has gone up by a grand total of 6% since he bought in. If you assume that you can sell them at 80% of retail, that's a loss of 15%. If he actually bought a large enough proportion of the total supply that liquidating his stock would have, say, a 5% price impact then he's lost closer to 20% of his investment. And then you'd realistically lose another 2% or more converting tix into paypal. Seems like a pretty silly move to me, completely independently of any effect that it had on the health of the format.
Of course, if he was a genius and bought a lot of volcanic islands and savannas but stayed away from plateus and taigas then he could have made a lot of money, but I don't know whether he did that or not.
Zhuge is a strictly worse Jhessian Balmgiver, but Lady Sun is a powerful card in Commander, where she can become a repeatable Unsummon for 3 when paired with Lightning Greaves. The best Portal: Three Kingdoms legend that's not online is possibly Diaochan, Artful Beauty.
Timetwister is one of the Power 9, the coming online of which is what we're discussing. It's not really legal in Commander, anyway. Commander is defined by the official rules as a MTGO format only, as opposed to EDH, which is the paper format (despite the fact that the EDH site now calls the format Commander as well). Therefore, cards not online are neither legal nor illegal in Commander: they've just not been taken into consideration yet.
It seems the solution is selling packs that aren't meant to be drafted.
Yes, I know that drafting is what drives pack sales, but if the power nine are in the card pool, the packs will sell by the boatload anyway. Even if all 800 unprinted cards are in there. The power nine will ensure these packs sell.
I like Maelstrom enough, in fact I'm always agonizing over the choice. But I found myself too many times with a Maelstrom in hand and a Nexus on the other side of the board (they're way more frequent than planeswalkers within the Blippy's PREs). Or any manlands, or just something that came when I had free mana and could have been dealt with in the end phase. Putrefy is underrated. Decay doesn't kill Nexuses and manlands either. Nor do Wrath/Damnation/BSZ. (Yes, I fear the land menace a lot!)
Yeah, but I meant since when he took over, started doing articles and special events and stuff. I remember the transition.
I missed your host turn, though! How did that event go?
Thank you Kuma though I think you do yourself a disservice with your self deprecation. Your articles are a cut above and should be aspired to as a standard for those writing here.
I know there is some inherently magical about Wurms beating down for some huge number. So we share that enjoyment.
I love Maelstrom Pulse because in Modern it is uniquely able to kill anything but land and protected/shrouded permanents and also hits tokens quite harshly. Abrupt Decay is better of course vs some of the more critical cards like Vats, and Goyfs and Bobs but M Pulse still has a place if only as a sideboard against certain prevalent strategies. Putrify is OK if you don't have pulse but it doesn't hit Planeswalkers, or Enchantments which can sometimes be a big deal in modern.
I was happily surprised to see someone bring a more expensive deck 2 weeks later. Hey the more the merrier. But I do feel that if you can bring a $5 deck and go 3-0 or even 2-1 you are playing the game the way it was intended to be played. Having to stuff a deck full of "good stuff" to place might not be.
It is heartening to see both. And innovations too. I did actually build crazy elves deck today but I suspect it is really just bad. I hope to give it some tests at some point.
Thanks again for commenting and Happy Holidays to you too!
Flippers' reign was really so short? My, I lived through all of it and felt a lot longer than that. Talk about misperceptions.
My first Tribal Apocalypse was in April 24, 2010 (the Pauper event, I did terribly with Cats), which means I just missed 6 months or so. At the time I didn't ask how old it was, and judging from the in-jokes and mythical tales, I thought it was going on for years. :)
Kumagoro asked me to put in a few words here on the tournament, although much of what I was thinking he has eloquently put above. That first ever Tribal Apocalypse coincided with my last (to date) Art of Tribal Wars article, and the first advert for it is in the comments to the debate between myself and Lord Erman here: http://puremtgo.com/articles/art-tribal-wars-rogue-play
As such, I saw it as a passing of the torch, if you will. The Tribal Wars format was better served by a player run event with regular articles than just one player expounding on his own decks. That torch passed again here: http://puremtgo.com/articles/tribal-apocaypse-your-funeral-friend
As to the Blippian era itself, I missed the start due to not having an available computer those first few times. I first took the field at the end of February fielding a poison zombies build, and took my first podium finish of the era with specters in April. Each week, I regale those listening to the Freed From the Real podcast about what I was doing in the previous event.
Tribal Wars as a format is something dear to my heart. It is incredibly flawed and easy to break, but that in itself is part of the charm, the elephant in the room which people do so love to poke. I am delighted that Tribal Apocalypse, the bearer of the Tribal torch still after all this time, is going from strength to strength, and that even with a few rough patches over the years, it has emerged unbowed, keeping the legacy of Kumagoro's, Blippy's, FlippersGiraffe's, Shardfenix's and my own work in keeping the format in people's thoughts going on into the future. Here's to the hosts, and here's to the next hundred events of Tribal Apocalypse!
Nobody can write MTGO articles like yours, Paul. :)
You make the transition between deeply personal, philosopical reflections and lists with big Wurms appear seamless.
My notes are random, instead: I share with you the procrastination (and relative issues) and agnosticism; and you'll be happy to see that your TribAp Human/Bloodbraid deck isn't the most expensive in recent memory anymore, given that RexDart just beat your price.
Also, I need to play with Wurms in Modern. The Wurm concept naturally leaded me to Tribal, but you just made me realize you can have fun with (some of/the best of) them in Modern and free some much needed slots to make them work. I'm trying to find changes that I'd do to that list (Makeshift Mannequin? Why not Zombify? Oh, right, it's an instant), but I can't find any. Maybe that singleton Bloodghast? Since it doesn't block, doesn't seem to do much. Also, I found that once you have a set of Abrupt Decays, 95% of the targets Maelstrom Pulse might find can be dealt with by Putrefy (another case where instant-speed is better). I can also envision 4 Chalices of the Void regularly coming in after Game 1.
You might like Troll Ascetic for its hexproof ability.
For sideboard options, Thorn of Amethyst hoses control and storm like there's no tomorrow.
Not sure what you can do against red deck wins. Chalice of the Void? For me, I can't play Modern unless I'm playing white because Leyline of Sanctity wins games all by itself.
With your persist and undying creatures, a singleton Essence of the Wild might be backbreaking for Jund.
You forgot to mention the cards that they don't want to print online because of political correctness (i.e. they are arguably offensive, or at least insensitive in some way, to an ethnic group.) Invoke Prejudice and Jihad are the two that most come to mind. They both see actual play in EDH and casual, unlike most of the unavailable cards remaining. They are basically just too embarassed of those cards to release them online, and/or don't want to stir up controversy. I also suspect that Earthbind would not be printed now because the art would be considered sexist, and that WotC may have a problem with that one too.
Pete, I can't wait to hear your take on how to solve the "getting the bad cards online without drafting them" problem.
I also agree, they really need an next year ME5 with Legacy/Classic staples and the Power 9 at Mythic. I'm also working on an article along these lines.
I watched your matches last night woof. I was surprised at how slow both your starts where. I don't ever get a break like that against affinity.
Regardless, congrats on taking down the swiss portion.
Andy
As folks will see both my games I had slow hands for affinity, that said I kept the hands:
1) Game #1 I had workshop, tomb, memory jar, lodestone, pest and 2x frogmite. Thinking was I could get PW to counter the lodestone and then hope to get jar to drop. As it turned out I drew a tangle wire to draw the counter. While your trinket mage mistake hurt, I don't think it would matter. If you dropped trinket mage on turn 3 and needled skullclamp, on my turn I would have pest, memnite, 3x frogmite, lodestone, ravanger and 3 chamber tokens. Hard to deal with that with or without clamp...
2) Game #2 I had strip mine, wasteland, gaea's cradle, tangle, mana vault, memnite and lodestone golem. I kept it because I had mana and hoped to get either a golem or tangle wire out to slow you enough to build up. I sb'ed in dismember as I thought you would put in 4x legionnaire and I did not put in thorn as I thought you would sb out fow.
I think you were right countering the tangle wires - they would have slowed you way down and not hurt me much.
That might be the case much of the time, Paul. Unsure.
I know that my deck plays actually more like a tempo list with a lot of counters than a straight-up control-combo list. Frost Titan is there as a disruptive win con that can take advantage of a lot of decks' inability to remove it (with its 'frost shield' ability) and shaky mana bases, and Glen Elendra is straight-up GG against a lot of combo lists. Also, Frost Titan makes opponents' Show and Tell pretty horrible, but that hasn't come up frequently this tournament. Really I just try to play lots of basics to make the opponents' wastelands bad and then try to get off one or two key counters before playing a hard-to-deal with permanent.
Against Affinity, I have to play as a serious control deck, though, and I have very few tools to make it happen: Only EExplosives in the main, really, and I guess Jace.
For the record, I feel like I should explain the horrible 1-off suite of random counters and bounce spells. The goal was to create uncertainty for an opponent capable of seeing my decklist (as is the case in Classic League); hence the specific 1-off answers. It also lets a mid- or late-game Snapcaster become almost like a Mystical Tutor.
Maybe I just didn't play it right but a turn 1 fow vs Lodestone followed by wasteland wasteland stripmine was all she wrote for my game against Blue Control running Aggro Affinity. I suspect that it isn't so cut and dried one way or the other.
Watching that match and knowing there wasn't a quick tinker or vault key combo available for you things felt pretty hopeless for most of the time.
Josh
Havent seen the match yet, but will be watching it tonight so I can comment further PW.
Affinity is Big Blue Controls worst nightmare and is a beast against any type of control deck in general.
I have been struggling against if with my Stax builds since it's inception.
Congrats on a solid swiss and gl in top 8.
Andy
On the Knutson thing, I have no idea what effect it had on the format or prices, but it's interesting that the big spec probably hasn't actually made him very much, if any, money. Of the 12 cards he bought, five have gone down in price and seven up. I don't know what proportion he bought of each of the cards in the basket, but the total basket has gone up by a grand total of 6% since he bought in. If you assume that you can sell them at 80% of retail, that's a loss of 15%. If he actually bought a large enough proportion of the total supply that liquidating his stock would have, say, a 5% price impact then he's lost closer to 20% of his investment. And then you'd realistically lose another 2% or more converting tix into paypal. Seems like a pretty silly move to me, completely independently of any effect that it had on the health of the format.
Of course, if he was a genius and bought a lot of volcanic islands and savannas but stayed away from plateus and taigas then he could have made a lot of money, but I don't know whether he did that or not.
Zhuge is a strictly worse Jhessian Balmgiver, but Lady Sun is a powerful card in Commander, where she can become a repeatable Unsummon for 3 when paired with Lightning Greaves. The best Portal: Three Kingdoms legend that's not online is possibly Diaochan, Artful Beauty.
Timetwister is one of the Power 9, the coming online of which is what we're discussing. It's not really legal in Commander, anyway. Commander is defined by the official rules as a MTGO format only, as opposed to EDH, which is the paper format (despite the fact that the EDH site now calls the format Commander as well). Therefore, cards not online are neither legal nor illegal in Commander: they've just not been taken into consideration yet.
It seems the solution is selling packs that aren't meant to be drafted.
Yes, I know that drafting is what drives pack sales, but if the power nine are in the card pool, the packs will sell by the boatload anyway. Even if all 800 unprinted cards are in there. The power nine will ensure these packs sell.
It was fairly hilarious since Shard showed up halfway through and started taking over lol. I was like...OK.
I like Maelstrom enough, in fact I'm always agonizing over the choice. But I found myself too many times with a Maelstrom in hand and a Nexus on the other side of the board (they're way more frequent than planeswalkers within the Blippy's PREs). Or any manlands, or just something that came when I had free mana and could have been dealt with in the end phase. Putrefy is underrated. Decay doesn't kill Nexuses and manlands either. Nor do Wrath/Damnation/BSZ. (Yes, I fear the land menace a lot!)
Yeah, but I meant since when he took over, started doing articles and special events and stuff. I remember the transition.
I missed your host turn, though! How did that event go?
Earthbind was my favorite art as a kid... I even collected them...
As to DE times.. I believe they are up for 12 hours as well and that other events (8mans) are up for 15 minutes only.
Thank you Kuma though I think you do yourself a disservice with your self deprecation. Your articles are a cut above and should be aspired to as a standard for those writing here.
I know there is some inherently magical about Wurms beating down for some huge number. So we share that enjoyment.
I love Maelstrom Pulse because in Modern it is uniquely able to kill anything but land and protected/shrouded permanents and also hits tokens quite harshly. Abrupt Decay is better of course vs some of the more critical cards like Vats, and Goyfs and Bobs but M Pulse still has a place if only as a sideboard against certain prevalent strategies. Putrify is OK if you don't have pulse but it doesn't hit Planeswalkers, or Enchantments which can sometimes be a big deal in modern.
I was happily surprised to see someone bring a more expensive deck 2 weeks later. Hey the more the merrier. But I do feel that if you can bring a $5 deck and go 3-0 or even 2-1 you are playing the game the way it was intended to be played. Having to stuff a deck full of "good stuff" to place might not be.
It is heartening to see both. And innovations too. I did actually build crazy elves deck today but I suspect it is really just bad. I hope to give it some tests at some point.
Thanks again for commenting and Happy Holidays to you too!
Flippers (and myself for one event) hosted sometimes when Shard wasn't available long before he decided to pass it on permanently.
Thanks, AJ!
Flippers' reign was really so short? My, I lived through all of it and felt a lot longer than that. Talk about misperceptions.
My first Tribal Apocalypse was in April 24, 2010 (the Pauper event, I did terribly with Cats), which means I just missed 6 months or so. At the time I didn't ask how old it was, and judging from the in-jokes and mythical tales, I thought it was going on for years. :)
Kumagoro asked me to put in a few words here on the tournament, although much of what I was thinking he has eloquently put above. That first ever Tribal Apocalypse coincided with my last (to date) Art of Tribal Wars article, and the first advert for it is in the comments to the debate between myself and Lord Erman here: http://puremtgo.com/articles/art-tribal-wars-rogue-play
As such, I saw it as a passing of the torch, if you will. The Tribal Wars format was better served by a player run event with regular articles than just one player expounding on his own decks. That torch passed again here: http://puremtgo.com/articles/tribal-apocaypse-your-funeral-friend
Flippers Giraffe's three-month reign saw quite a few innovations, but just as Flippers had occasionally hosted during Shard's reign, we find that the first Blippian event predated the heralded era: http://community.wizards.com/go/thread/view/75846/25873049/Tribal_Apocal...
As to the Blippian era itself, I missed the start due to not having an available computer those first few times. I first took the field at the end of February fielding a poison zombies build, and took my first podium finish of the era with specters in April. Each week, I regale those listening to the Freed From the Real podcast about what I was doing in the previous event.
Tribal Wars as a format is something dear to my heart. It is incredibly flawed and easy to break, but that in itself is part of the charm, the elephant in the room which people do so love to poke. I am delighted that Tribal Apocalypse, the bearer of the Tribal torch still after all this time, is going from strength to strength, and that even with a few rough patches over the years, it has emerged unbowed, keeping the legacy of Kumagoro's, Blippy's, FlippersGiraffe's, Shardfenix's and my own work in keeping the format in people's thoughts going on into the future. Here's to the hosts, and here's to the next hundred events of Tribal Apocalypse!
Nobody can write MTGO articles like yours, Paul. :)
You make the transition between deeply personal, philosopical reflections and lists with big Wurms appear seamless.
My notes are random, instead: I share with you the procrastination (and relative issues) and agnosticism; and you'll be happy to see that your TribAp Human/Bloodbraid deck isn't the most expensive in recent memory anymore, given that RexDart just beat your price.
Also, I need to play with Wurms in Modern. The Wurm concept naturally leaded me to Tribal, but you just made me realize you can have fun with (some of/the best of) them in Modern and free some much needed slots to make them work. I'm trying to find changes that I'd do to that list (Makeshift Mannequin? Why not Zombify? Oh, right, it's an instant), but I can't find any. Maybe that singleton Bloodghast? Since it doesn't block, doesn't seem to do much. Also, I found that once you have a set of Abrupt Decays, 95% of the targets Maelstrom Pulse might find can be dealt with by Putrefy (another case where instant-speed is better). I can also envision 4 Chalices of the Void regularly coming in after Game 1.
Happy holidays, man.
Earthbind, and Invoke Prejudice, could be fixed with new art. Jihad and Army of Allah might be trickier.
Thanks Andy. My build is a little slower than the typical due to the wires but usually not that slow.
You might like Troll Ascetic for its hexproof ability.
For sideboard options, Thorn of Amethyst hoses control and storm like there's no tomorrow.
Not sure what you can do against red deck wins. Chalice of the Void? For me, I can't play Modern unless I'm playing white because Leyline of Sanctity wins games all by itself.
With your persist and undying creatures, a singleton Essence of the Wild might be backbreaking for Jund.
Two other cards I haven't seen online:
Lady Sun
Zhuge Jin, Wu Strategist
Legacy players might like Zhuge because he makes creatures unblockable. Lady Sun might good in limited. Not sure if the blue would support it, though.
Has Timetwister ever come online? It's legal in Commander.
I believe the goal should be to create a limited environment where new cards are released, but powerful creatures and spells are also present.
Doran, the Siege Tower players might like Pang Tong, "Young Phoenix" as well.
Same goes for Earthbind. But I'm afraid Jihad and Army of Allah will be amongst the cards that never make their way online.
You forgot to mention the cards that they don't want to print online because of political correctness (i.e. they are arguably offensive, or at least insensitive in some way, to an ethnic group.) Invoke Prejudice and Jihad are the two that most come to mind. They both see actual play in EDH and casual, unlike most of the unavailable cards remaining. They are basically just too embarassed of those cards to release them online, and/or don't want to stir up controversy. I also suspect that Earthbind would not be printed now because the art would be considered sexist, and that WotC may have a problem with that one too.
Pete, I can't wait to hear your take on how to solve the "getting the bad cards online without drafting them" problem.
I also agree, they really need an next year ME5 with Legacy/Classic staples and the Power 9 at Mythic. I'm also working on an article along these lines.
I watched your matches last night woof. I was surprised at how slow both your starts where. I don't ever get a break like that against affinity.
Regardless, congrats on taking down the swiss portion.
Andy
As folks will see both my games I had slow hands for affinity, that said I kept the hands:
1) Game #1 I had workshop, tomb, memory jar, lodestone, pest and 2x frogmite. Thinking was I could get PW to counter the lodestone and then hope to get jar to drop. As it turned out I drew a tangle wire to draw the counter. While your trinket mage mistake hurt, I don't think it would matter. If you dropped trinket mage on turn 3 and needled skullclamp, on my turn I would have pest, memnite, 3x frogmite, lodestone, ravanger and 3 chamber tokens. Hard to deal with that with or without clamp...
2) Game #2 I had strip mine, wasteland, gaea's cradle, tangle, mana vault, memnite and lodestone golem. I kept it because I had mana and hoped to get either a golem or tangle wire out to slow you enough to build up. I sb'ed in dismember as I thought you would put in 4x legionnaire and I did not put in thorn as I thought you would sb out fow.
I think you were right countering the tangle wires - they would have slowed you way down and not hurt me much.
That might be the case much of the time, Paul. Unsure.
I know that my deck plays actually more like a tempo list with a lot of counters than a straight-up control-combo list. Frost Titan is there as a disruptive win con that can take advantage of a lot of decks' inability to remove it (with its 'frost shield' ability) and shaky mana bases, and Glen Elendra is straight-up GG against a lot of combo lists. Also, Frost Titan makes opponents' Show and Tell pretty horrible, but that hasn't come up frequently this tournament. Really I just try to play lots of basics to make the opponents' wastelands bad and then try to get off one or two key counters before playing a hard-to-deal with permanent.
Against Affinity, I have to play as a serious control deck, though, and I have very few tools to make it happen: Only EExplosives in the main, really, and I guess Jace.
For the record, I feel like I should explain the horrible 1-off suite of random counters and bounce spells. The goal was to create uncertainty for an opponent capable of seeing my decklist (as is the case in Classic League); hence the specific 1-off answers. It also lets a mid- or late-game Snapcaster become almost like a Mystical Tutor.
Maybe I just didn't play it right but a turn 1 fow vs Lodestone followed by wasteland wasteland stripmine was all she wrote for my game against Blue Control running Aggro Affinity. I suspect that it isn't so cut and dried one way or the other.
Watching that match and knowing there wasn't a quick tinker or vault key combo available for you things felt pretty hopeless for most of the time.
Josh
Havent seen the match yet, but will be watching it tonight so I can comment further PW.
Affinity is Big Blue Controls worst nightmare and is a beast against any type of control deck in general.
I have been struggling against if with my Stax builds since it's inception.
Congrats on a solid swiss and gl in top 8.
Andy