No Impy is "Incredible Maestro of Possible Yens." Vantar has proven to be a master of making certain niche tribes playable but hasn't achieved the impossible the way you have.
"I am wondering what is the significance of 6697"
Then wonder no longer.
Vantar - a name I was know by on few games I played before MTGO also a name that was already taken when I started playing MTGO
6697 - the last 4 digits of my highschool student ID#
I've recently become more interested in competitive constructed play.
Maybe woofie will start coaching me eh? ;)
If not we'll still have to catch some juff room games :)
Hey BDG welcome to Puremtgo. Congrats on your double achievements with Kirin and Nephelim. Your solution echoes the one I proposed but is slightly less consistent perhaps and a lot less expensive. (I proposed using all swamp related dual lands and running spells that are fueled by the number of swamps + swamp fetching.)
In re: your article; I think it is fairly well written, (considering that it is obvious that English is not your first language). It would be helpful if you had someone proof read for you because while there are no (obvious anyway) spelling errors there are quite a few tense related errors. Thanks for writing and keep doing it. Glad to see you got all the little formatting things down such as using the sometimes flawed deck list builder and the (pic=) tags.
I agree that WOTC needs to do some actions to increase the popularity of both Legacy and Classic. Events fire very rarely and format is not growing from my observations. While I also agree that supplying more FOW's into the game will provide some growth more needs to be done. A combination of lowering the overall costs to getting into the format and increasing pay-outs should be considered. I think this is a real issue and WOTC is not maximizing their MTGO opportunities with the current lack of interest in legacy and classic.
I have to toss my vote into the discussion. It's not the price of FOW, it's the prizes. I think the data provided in this article is short-sighted. The analysis of a few cards moving upward cannot fully explain the history of Force. There are definitely factors going on with Force beyond simple supply and demand. Beyond all that, though, I really don't understand the notion of $120 being too high for an entire swath of players. Paper prices for Vintage and Legacy are MUCH higher on average. And there are plenty of players in both those venues. Do they see as much play as Standard? No, but who ever said Vintage NEEDS to have as many players as Standard? Look at the price of the Power 9. Much higher, yet many more people play Vintage. The author makes the case that players have slowly accumulated the cards over 15+ years to play in that format. I think that reasoning is largely bunk (see the number of sales for these cards on ebay, for instance), but even if it's not, what is the difference between what I have been doing on MTGO and those players accumulating? I didn't buy my collection on here at once. Other formats are expensive online to the point that being competitive requires an amount that I would call a barrier to entry, based on the fact that the premise is Force is too expensive. The difference is that most Standard players dump their cards and put the money back into new decks and new sets. That's not possible with Classic. Which means that playing the formats requires a completely different mindset. You have to accumulate cards, not buy and sell decks on a whim. I play MTGO precisely because I am poor and cannot afford to get into Vintage. When I hear people talking about how expensive it is to play Classic, I just laugh at the comparison to paper and then watch as they play in their 8th 6x sealed event of the week. You could spend that cash on Forces if you really want. It's not like people don't have the cash to spend on this game. So in my opinion the reason is something different than price. And the most logical solution is the prize support. Others have outlined it here more thoroughly.
I like this thought, thank you. I only consider EE as a fringe playable card and while testing it in standard and failing I discounted it for limited formats.
I never even considered a build like this, and I really like it. It looks powerful, and I think I did not see this build because I undervalue cards like Explosive Impact.
I look at sealed deck too much like I look at standard. If I think the card is weak in the standard regard I probably do not give it a chance.
If you ignore the mana requirements, you're looking at a roughly 1 in 4 chance of hitting a target with any individual flip. Of course, to get this ratio you need to have X=6 at minimum. X=4 has 8 possible targets, X=3 has 6 (ie: 20% chance and 15% chance respectively). It's also worth noting that several of the targets are only going to be situationally good.
So basically even with a relatively ideal situation of X=6 you're only going to hit an average of 1.5 times which is incredibly bad for an 8 mana spell. X=8 would net you an average of two hits (still not very good) but 10 mana just really isn't realistic even in sealed.
Congrats on winning the Grand Prix trial, but couldn't you have spared us a few details and maybe even (gasp!) a decklist? I'd be interested in seeing what the decklist looked like.
First, I don't mean for this comment to insinuate that Heath is being dastardly. Obviously what he is arguing is something that will, in the long run, benefit his business. His business is his livelihood and he has just as much right to earn a living as the rest of us.
That being said,
If the system were flooded with Force of Wills, the price would drop and more people would come online. MTGOTraders currently has 7 in stock and 5 foils. But they also have thousands of dollars in dual lands. If the number of eternal players prospered, any loss to FOW value would be made up for in the price of duals and other staples increasing to accommodate the other 71 cards the new players will need for their decks. Of course this is good for the sponsor of this site.
So, to players, be careful what you wish for. When cheap FOWs bring the great unwashed masses to Legacy, they'll also buy dual lands and wastelands and vendilion cliques and reliquaries by the fistfull and drive up the prices for them.
**Edit, the article was written by somebody else. Forget the part about Heath. The warning still applies, though.
Making Classic/Legacy events pay out in Modern Masters (worth $7 a pack rather than the $3 core set) would go a long way to make building eternal decks worth it. Not only would the EV be better, but if you wanted to crack your prize packs you might actually get cards you COULD ACTUALLY USE, unlike them paying out in Core Set or Std. packs--What the heck is a classic player supposed to do with the cards in the CORE SET??
Believe it or not, Epic Experiment is playable in your pool. You've got 2x explosive impact, 2x traitorous instinct, inaction injunction, 2x dramatic rescue, annihilating fire, azorius charm, blustersquall, all in your American wedge. All these cards are nice to hit with experiment. It's huge card advantage for you. And with so little card draw (besides experiment) in your pool, you shouldn't have to worry about decking yourself.
Your pool is heavy on sweet instant/sorceries. Unfortunately you don't have stuff like guttersnipe, electromancer, blistercoil to really take advantage of them. Your creatures in general are weak.
41 cards, you know it's a bad habit, so don't do it. No creature here is as good as Deadbridge Goliath, so you want to draw that every time, and adding more cards than you need to lowers your chances for doing it. I would've taken out savage surge in your deck.
My general philosophy in sealed is to run as many bomb cards as you possibly can, even if you're losing out on some consistency (just don't go overboard). It's cards like Hypersonic Dragon and Rix Maadi Guildmage that will be winning you games. This is how I would've done it:
Rogue's Passage
Mountains / Islands / Plains (depends what MODO suggests and go from there)
Izzet Staticaster
Lyev Skyknight
Detention Sphere
Izzet Keyrune
Annihilating Fire
Hussar Patrol
Supreme Verdict
Batterhorn
Voidweilder
Hypersonic Dragon
2 Explosive Impact
Syncopate
Epic Experiment (10 targets!)
I'd need a visual on the colors, and if the manabase was stretched too thin I'd probably cut the double color cost cards for safer choices like instinct or batterhorn.
Maybe I'm in the minority here, but I don't really care about prize support. As a casual player with a history of fondness for the eternal formats (Vintage and Legacy), I'd play random games of Legacy with a collection slowly built over time. I just don't want to start building that collection if I know other people are avoiding the format for various reasons, like the price of Force of Will and the uncertainty around the future of that price. Basically I don't want to jump into the pool if the pool is mostly empty because others are afraid of sharks, even if the sharks may or may not exist. Right now Modern doesn't seem as interesting, but if that's the eternal format that is going to be backed and played, then I guess that's where I'll end up.
But it is still a huge issue that WoTC uses one big brush to paint all constructed events online. They and the lackadaisical software are the culprit in this regard - they don't want to spend the effort to come up with something better, and even if they did, the software they have wouldn't let them.
I don't want to pretend this is the only reason eternal online - the program itself tends to gear toward "grinders", which generally aren't attracted to eternal formats as they are often younger, and the formats themselves and the power level at which they exist also deter, but none-the-less, I agree that tournament structure online is wildly out of whack with what the community's expectations are.
As for FoW - most of the article has good analysis but comes to poor conclusions, and most people who've commented to that effect on this thread have already said what I would anyway.
Let me be the idiot mentioned in the second paragraph. Perhaps the idiot from the "Emperor's new clothes"?
So it seems really altruistic to suggest a ban of force of will or just a hand out of a play-set. Then we can all play legacy.
If I had bought duals for 25k I would also ask Worth to ban force of will. On paper this investment may seem like a success? The value is now what? 50k? But the market is so illiquid that the profit cannot be realized. With a ban of force of will, duals will be more popular and then the profit could be realized? If I could rescue 25k on a bad investment I would indeed suggest the same.
What if the next hurdle becomes duals? Perhaps because someone hoarded them? Why not also hand out a play-set of duals? They will no doubt shoot up in price once force of will is gone. If a play-set of duals goes up by the 4 x 120 tix we saved on force of will, will we then get an article from Ted suggesting to ban duals? No Way!
Who decides which card to ban next? The guy who stands to benefit the most is hardly the right to ask. I am glad that Worth is not a push-over. If Ted stops sending Christmas cards to Worth then he can get one from me instead.
I agree for the most part with your analysis. More FoW online is needed to drop the price (though you correctly point out that speculators and bots are hoarding them which causes the price to remain stagnatn, though perhaps not in those exact words). What I do find curious is that:
1. You fail to mention anything about the prize support. Classic is paid out in Core Set, the absolute worst possible reward for playing with $500+ decks. Legacy is only slightly better in that it pays out in the current block set. Still, for people that want to look at EV ONLY, why would anyone play anything besides Pauper which has better prize support than Classic?!?
2. You mention that there always has to be a "most expensive card", but claim that FoW can't be that card.... yet you opine about how important FoW is to be successful in Eternal formats. Does that not strike you as counter intuitive? If the best and most desirable card is not the most expensive, then what deserves to be the most expensive?
Yeah.. I think the problem is really the janky prize support for Legacy/Classic Tournaments. If there was a regular monthly MOCS type event... or something that had valuable cards as the top prize like say FoW Playsets I bet they could actually fire some events....
No Impy is "Incredible Maestro of Possible Yens." Vantar has proven to be a master of making certain niche tribes playable but hasn't achieved the impossible the way you have.
That's 'Impy'.
Jeez I was expecting that to be a secret code for "Tribal Niche Building Master"
"I am wondering what is the significance of 6697"
Then wonder no longer.
Vantar - a name I was know by on few games I played before MTGO also a name that was already taken when I started playing MTGO
6697 - the last 4 digits of my highschool student ID#
I've recently become more interested in competitive constructed play.
Maybe woofie will start coaching me eh? ;)
If not we'll still have to catch some juff room games :)
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0Amgtf5uuHNBddE1kVFFUOHpSX1N...
In the 2nd tab.
I didn't think to put in Realm Razer in a pod deck. What an interesting idea!
I tried googling for 10 seconds and couldn't find it. Where is a list of the tribal achievements?
Hey BDG welcome to Puremtgo. Congrats on your double achievements with Kirin and Nephelim. Your solution echoes the one I proposed but is slightly less consistent perhaps and a lot less expensive. (I proposed using all swamp related dual lands and running spells that are fueled by the number of swamps + swamp fetching.)
In re: your article; I think it is fairly well written, (considering that it is obvious that English is not your first language). It would be helpful if you had someone proof read for you because while there are no (obvious anyway) spelling errors there are quite a few tense related errors. Thanks for writing and keep doing it. Glad to see you got all the little formatting things down such as using the sometimes flawed deck list builder and the (pic=) tags.
I look forward to seeing more from you.
I agree that WOTC needs to do some actions to increase the popularity of both Legacy and Classic. Events fire very rarely and format is not growing from my observations. While I also agree that supplying more FOW's into the game will provide some growth more needs to be done. A combination of lowering the overall costs to getting into the format and increasing pay-outs should be considered. I think this is a real issue and WOTC is not maximizing their MTGO opportunities with the current lack of interest in legacy and classic.
Boo, math. The ruiner of all my cool ideas!
You're right about EE, not good. I'd take it out for another batterhorn then, or even crosstown courier.
I have to toss my vote into the discussion. It's not the price of FOW, it's the prizes. I think the data provided in this article is short-sighted. The analysis of a few cards moving upward cannot fully explain the history of Force. There are definitely factors going on with Force beyond simple supply and demand. Beyond all that, though, I really don't understand the notion of $120 being too high for an entire swath of players. Paper prices for Vintage and Legacy are MUCH higher on average. And there are plenty of players in both those venues. Do they see as much play as Standard? No, but who ever said Vintage NEEDS to have as many players as Standard? Look at the price of the Power 9. Much higher, yet many more people play Vintage. The author makes the case that players have slowly accumulated the cards over 15+ years to play in that format. I think that reasoning is largely bunk (see the number of sales for these cards on ebay, for instance), but even if it's not, what is the difference between what I have been doing on MTGO and those players accumulating? I didn't buy my collection on here at once. Other formats are expensive online to the point that being competitive requires an amount that I would call a barrier to entry, based on the fact that the premise is Force is too expensive. The difference is that most Standard players dump their cards and put the money back into new decks and new sets. That's not possible with Classic. Which means that playing the formats requires a completely different mindset. You have to accumulate cards, not buy and sell decks on a whim. I play MTGO precisely because I am poor and cannot afford to get into Vintage. When I hear people talking about how expensive it is to play Classic, I just laugh at the comparison to paper and then watch as they play in their 8th 6x sealed event of the week. You could spend that cash on Forces if you really want. It's not like people don't have the cash to spend on this game. So in my opinion the reason is something different than price. And the most logical solution is the prize support. Others have outlined it here more thoroughly.
I like this thought, thank you. I only consider EE as a fringe playable card and while testing it in standard and failing I discounted it for limited formats.
I never even considered a build like this, and I really like it. It looks powerful, and I think I did not see this build because I undervalue cards like Explosive Impact.
I look at sealed deck too much like I look at standard. If I think the card is weak in the standard regard I probably do not give it a chance.
Thank you for the advice!
I'll put up a decklist as soon as possible, I thought about it while writing and thought no one would care about a mono red deck :D
I disagree on the playability of Epic Experiment.
If you ignore the mana requirements, you're looking at a roughly 1 in 4 chance of hitting a target with any individual flip. Of course, to get this ratio you need to have X=6 at minimum. X=4 has 8 possible targets, X=3 has 6 (ie: 20% chance and 15% chance respectively). It's also worth noting that several of the targets are only going to be situationally good.
So basically even with a relatively ideal situation of X=6 you're only going to hit an average of 1.5 times which is incredibly bad for an 8 mana spell. X=8 would net you an average of two hits (still not very good) but 10 mana just really isn't realistic even in sealed.
Congrats on winning the Grand Prix trial, but couldn't you have spared us a few details and maybe even (gasp!) a decklist? I'd be interested in seeing what the decklist looked like.
First, I don't mean for this comment to insinuate that Heath is being dastardly. Obviously what he is arguing is something that will, in the long run, benefit his business. His business is his livelihood and he has just as much right to earn a living as the rest of us.
That being said,
If the system were flooded with Force of Wills, the price would drop and more people would come online. MTGOTraders currently has 7 in stock and 5 foils. But they also have thousands of dollars in dual lands. If the number of eternal players prospered, any loss to FOW value would be made up for in the price of duals and other staples increasing to accommodate the other 71 cards the new players will need for their decks. Of course this is good for the sponsor of this site.
So, to players, be careful what you wish for. When cheap FOWs bring the great unwashed masses to Legacy, they'll also buy dual lands and wastelands and vendilion cliques and reliquaries by the fistfull and drive up the prices for them.
**Edit, the article was written by somebody else. Forget the part about Heath. The warning still applies, though.
Making Classic/Legacy events pay out in Modern Masters (worth $7 a pack rather than the $3 core set) would go a long way to make building eternal decks worth it. Not only would the EV be better, but if you wanted to crack your prize packs you might actually get cards you COULD ACTUALLY USE, unlike them paying out in Core Set or Std. packs--What the heck is a classic player supposed to do with the cards in the CORE SET??
Believe it or not, Epic Experiment is playable in your pool. You've got 2x explosive impact, 2x traitorous instinct, inaction injunction, 2x dramatic rescue, annihilating fire, azorius charm, blustersquall, all in your American wedge. All these cards are nice to hit with experiment. It's huge card advantage for you. And with so little card draw (besides experiment) in your pool, you shouldn't have to worry about decking yourself.
Your pool is heavy on sweet instant/sorceries. Unfortunately you don't have stuff like guttersnipe, electromancer, blistercoil to really take advantage of them. Your creatures in general are weak.
41 cards, you know it's a bad habit, so don't do it. No creature here is as good as Deadbridge Goliath, so you want to draw that every time, and adding more cards than you need to lowers your chances for doing it. I would've taken out savage surge in your deck.
My general philosophy in sealed is to run as many bomb cards as you possibly can, even if you're losing out on some consistency (just don't go overboard). It's cards like Hypersonic Dragon and Rix Maadi Guildmage that will be winning you games. This is how I would've done it:
Rogue's Passage
Mountains / Islands / Plains (depends what MODO suggests and go from there)
Blustersquall
Electrickery
Azorius Charm
Inaction Injunction
Azorius Arrester
Keening Apparition
Pursuit of Flight
2 Dramatic Rescue
Izzet Staticaster
Lyev Skyknight
Detention Sphere
Izzet Keyrune
Annihilating Fire
Hussar Patrol
Supreme Verdict
Batterhorn
Voidweilder
Hypersonic Dragon
2 Explosive Impact
Syncopate
Epic Experiment (10 targets!)
I'd need a visual on the colors, and if the manabase was stretched too thin I'd probably cut the double color cost cards for safer choices like instinct or batterhorn.
Good luck in the future!
Maybe I'm in the minority here, but I don't really care about prize support. As a casual player with a history of fondness for the eternal formats (Vintage and Legacy), I'd play random games of Legacy with a collection slowly built over time. I just don't want to start building that collection if I know other people are avoiding the format for various reasons, like the price of Force of Will and the uncertainty around the future of that price. Basically I don't want to jump into the pool if the pool is mostly empty because others are afraid of sharks, even if the sharks may or may not exist. Right now Modern doesn't seem as interesting, but if that's the eternal format that is going to be backed and played, then I guess that's where I'll end up.
But it is still a huge issue that WoTC uses one big brush to paint all constructed events online. They and the lackadaisical software are the culprit in this regard - they don't want to spend the effort to come up with something better, and even if they did, the software they have wouldn't let them.
I don't want to pretend this is the only reason eternal online - the program itself tends to gear toward "grinders", which generally aren't attracted to eternal formats as they are often younger, and the formats themselves and the power level at which they exist also deter, but none-the-less, I agree that tournament structure online is wildly out of whack with what the community's expectations are.
As for FoW - most of the article has good analysis but comes to poor conclusions, and most people who've commented to that effect on this thread have already said what I would anyway.
Let me be the idiot mentioned in the second paragraph. Perhaps the idiot from the "Emperor's new clothes"?
So it seems really altruistic to suggest a ban of force of will or just a hand out of a play-set. Then we can all play legacy.
If I had bought duals for 25k I would also ask Worth to ban force of will. On paper this investment may seem like a success? The value is now what? 50k? But the market is so illiquid that the profit cannot be realized. With a ban of force of will, duals will be more popular and then the profit could be realized? If I could rescue 25k on a bad investment I would indeed suggest the same.
What if the next hurdle becomes duals? Perhaps because someone hoarded them? Why not also hand out a play-set of duals? They will no doubt shoot up in price once force of will is gone. If a play-set of duals goes up by the 4 x 120 tix we saved on force of will, will we then get an article from Ted suggesting to ban duals? No Way!
Who decides which card to ban next? The guy who stands to benefit the most is hardly the right to ask. I am glad that Worth is not a push-over. If Ted stops sending Christmas cards to Worth then he can get one from me instead.
I agree for the most part with your analysis. More FoW online is needed to drop the price (though you correctly point out that speculators and bots are hoarding them which causes the price to remain stagnatn, though perhaps not in those exact words). What I do find curious is that:
1. You fail to mention anything about the prize support. Classic is paid out in Core Set, the absolute worst possible reward for playing with $500+ decks. Legacy is only slightly better in that it pays out in the current block set. Still, for people that want to look at EV ONLY, why would anyone play anything besides Pauper which has better prize support than Classic?!?
2. You mention that there always has to be a "most expensive card", but claim that FoW can't be that card.... yet you opine about how important FoW is to be successful in Eternal formats. Does that not strike you as counter intuitive? If the best and most desirable card is not the most expensive, then what deserves to be the most expensive?
Yeah.. I think the problem is really the janky prize support for Legacy/Classic Tournaments. If there was a regular monthly MOCS type event... or something that had valuable cards as the top prize like say FoW Playsets I bet they could actually fire some events....