Great pod-cast guys. Thanks for trying to keep Classic going and all that.
I just had one of the most enjoyable experiences on Magic Online that I've had in a very long time.
Someone was in chat in the "for fun" room talking about how overpowered Planeswalkers are, and how Nicol Bolas was this amazing power-house. I say "Tell me what format, I'd love to see your Nicol Bolas Deck in action."
Well this guy starts talking some real smack, and everyone in the room is getting into the conversation. "I play Classic." He says. He makes some comment about how this is going to be a joke.
"I've played Classic before, even have a couple of decks built." I reply.
He challenges, I accept, and there are three or four people who join to watch. He leads off with Badlands. "You had to mull alot, this is going to be pretty gruesome," He quips.
On turn three I got Elesh Norn into play, along with four or five zombie tokens. To say it was 'gruesome' was an understatement, but I didn't say a word. No smack-talk the whole time. After a mull to three, the stuff spewing out of my graveyard into play was more than my opponent could process. The reaction was probably the funniest thing I've encountered in a long, long time.
The rest of my pool was 4 (decent) white cards, 4 (bad) blue cards, 3 (bad) green cards, Racecourse Fury, Blistercoil Weird, Rakdos Ringleader, and Essence Backlash. I'm fairly certain I was being cut badly on my colors.
In regards to the Deviant Glee, yeah, you may be right about it doing more damage. I have the bad habit of playing aggro as if it were midrange. It's a close decision either way, though.
I didn't think about using the Annihilating Fire to finish off the Golgari Longlegs. Good catch!
star city games has a web site which they sell cards from and post content on. They distinguish the free for all content from paid for content by allowing access to members only. This has led some to feel they are setting up an unfair advantage and yet others to cry foul that they are only selling the appearance of an advantage to those who are inclined to pay to be professionals.
Im somewhere between the "its a good thing if you can afford it" attitude and the "yeah it might not be worth it if you are trying to become a pro and this is your main method of training/getting info" attitude. If the latter is your thinking I'd forget it. It wont get you there. Though it might increase your overall mtg acumen.
I see scg as a supplement to the myriad good practices available as it does feature articles by actual pro tour players some of whom are legendary in their own right (Zvi, Kibler and many of the Channel Fireball crew have done content for them over the years for example.) How much you glean from it and how much you lean on it for correct market information is really a matter of perspective I think.
So, do you pay for SCG premium, or how do you know?
Can you provide a reference for an Author and premium article(s) which you believe to be providing poor MTG content in order to sell cards that would otherwise not sell. Please be specific.
Just started playing on MODO again and found this article a great read. I play mostly modern and pauper with a close friend, but I'm going to try and get him interested in legacy tribal now.
When looking over Malum's A Quest for Birds list I got inspired to create a modern version without a tribal restriction. In addition to Quest for the Holy Relic for cheating into play Aregentum Armor, I also run some Stonehewer Giants. And, in addition to some other changes, I've added Elbrus, The Blinding Blade as an additional equipment tutor target.
I've been crushing people and having fun in the casual room so just wanted to give Alan and Kumagoro credit where it's due. Thanks guys!
Buying into Standard is absurdly expensive, and with Modern you have a huge card pool of powerful stuff that dips in price after rotation... Aside from some post-children of high prices like Tarmogoyf, of course.
It'd be interesting to look at some prices on Modern decks and compare them to prices of Standard decks, see how far apart the delta really is.
Fairly sure a large number of people went into a frenzy when they heard Tarmogoyf is being reprinted in Modern Masters and sold theirs after the announcement. The market adjusted down as this rash of selling allowed bot owners to fill up on goyfs. Then the realization set in that Modern Masters is a long time from now, Tarmogoyf will be a mythic, and there's no certainty to how heavily the set will be drafted or for how long. Between now and then there are many months during which 'goyf will be used in decks, and so the price has sprung back up a good bit. If you grabbed a few during this artificial dip, kudos. Note this isn't complete guess-work, I had several friends and clan-mates contact me and advise that it was time to sell, which I didn't agree with. I also observed people selling on the trade boards, competing with lower postings as they tried to jump-ship.
The same thing happened when Jace TMS was banned and he dropped briefly to the 30 tix range. That's not hyperbole, I picked up several Jace's for 32 tix during the panic. Turns out he's still a card, and he recovered not too long after.
(I've also been burned by holding gold that turned to poo, but that's a less interesting story, ha ha!)
I'm not averse to the occasional off-tribe creature, but it saddens me when that's all you see of a deck, a support card thrown in only because it's one of the best lumps of creature available, with no real connection either to the tribe played or to any clever shenanigans. I stand by 'Play what you like', but it's a bad-taste-in-mouth thing with me sometimes.
(that said, the off-tribe beast-and-Elemental eureka blow up the world combo was a thing of beauty.)
I always check out your articles and I respect your ability to come to sound opinions. Nonetheless I have to completely disagree with the SCG premium content, not because magic content couldn't be worth this amount but because SCG content is not designed for the benefit of their viewers. They are like the Fox News of MTG. Their main objective is to push sales and to distort the perception of the value of cards to give themselves a marketplace advantage at the expense of those that digest their content. If they're going to do that that's fine but to charge people for the privilege of being manipulated? I guess its one way to diminish the savvy from blunting the various campaigns since they won't be paying and tuning in. It's also an old ploy of the conman, get them in for a little and once they feel they have an advantaged market perspective get them for a lot.
Would ChannelFireball be worth 30$ a year? Sure. SCG content? That's not worth watching if they paid me 300$ a year. (Maybe as an insiders guide to which mythics to short lol)
Thanks for doing this. I really enjoy your site. Just a few thoughts I had:
On drafting, I'm curious to what else you had in your pool. Some of the cards like Lizard, Cremate, Slitherhead and Racketeer are borderline unplayable. And no Frostburn Weird? Either you were really trying to push a slim curve, both of your colors were cut fairly badly, or there were just a lot of packs where nothing helped you. You might have been ignoring signals to move into a third adjacent color, like with a Golgari Decoy, Teleportal, or Blustersquall. It would've been quite nice to be able to use those Guildgates for something like that.
R1G2:
I'm not too keen on attacking with Lizard there, just to have a target for Cremate. He is likely to start chump blocking very soon, which will give you the card as soon as you can use it. And Lizard, if he's ever useful, is mainly useful in those situations where the opponent is at 3 or so life and can only effectively block all your creatures except one. A state like that may have happened here.
Also, I think you just Deviant Glee your Chainwalker turn 4. Deviant Glee is worth 5 damage right there, regardless of what your opponent does after that point. He can't even chump block because of trample. When he Voidweilder's your Chainwalker, you just play Giant (one turn earlier than you actually played it, as it turns out). On that turn even with no attacks, that line has done 7 damage, your line against your opponent's correct line (blocking with Voidweilder and Runewing) does 0 damage, and even the actual line does only 5. Then on subsequent turns, he simply can't block your replayed Chainwalker effectively alongside your Ash Zealot and Lizard, which means he's not dead as you feared. It's only on the turns after your opponent has taken lethal damage that your line overtakes that line in damage. Your reasoning process of calculating damage three turns out didn't serve you well. Three turns of your line versus nothing does more damage with the Giant, just because the Giant has 5 power and Deviant Glee + Ash Zealot has 4. Your line against Voildweilder outpaces the suggested line at around three turns, just because the Deviant Glee is gone. But the suggested T4 Deviant Glee + Ash Zealot does more damage against virtually any other play your opponent could've made in that spot. So out of nothing, Voidweilder, and anything else, the anything else is the most likely. In practicality, quantities of damage over 20 and more than 2 turns out should never or very rarely outweigh upfront damage right then. Aggro is often about making decisions that lead to just the right amount of damage as soon as possible, regardless of your damage output peters out after that.
R2G1:
Turn 6 with Spawn and Racketeer v. Longlegs, I think that you do attack there with both. In my eye, it's actually favorable to you if he blocks the Racketeer, because you Annihilating Fire and he goes to 10. You didn't mention whether you'd use the Fire there. Taking that line, you'd have a 2-turn clock just with Spawn, not to mention the Cobblebrute you'd be holding. Even if he trades with Spawn there, adding Cobblebrute gives you 7 power of creature on the board into 14 life, another 2-turn clock and with the Fire still in hand. With 7 into 14 exactly, Racketeer's 2 damage there was significant.
A few other mistakes here that you realized and mentioned yourself. It was really insightful. Thanks.
Man, I can't wait to see Worth condense his announcement of all of that into 140 characters. Then again, he might have the freedom to write a whole paragraph and post it on page 16 of a thread being read by all sorts of person.
Oddly enough, Jund in Modern isn't as strong as it might first appear. You only need to stop the Dark Confidant from drawing cards for its owner and you can beat it. Although it is far past time that they banned Cranium Plating or whatever it is.
Standard is- and always will be- more popular than Modern because people like newer things over older things. That's just human nature.
2. Oh God, I forgot to add it to the announcements: yep, Imp and Werewolf are no more legal for Endangered Prize, thefore not legal in Underdog Weeks too. (Glad people actually read the rule page!)
3. I hate tribal racism so much! All the creatures should be friends with each other! My Druids like Wurms! :)
that is precisely the deck that made me consider trying to put something similar together - thanks for your in-depth response; it sounds like you agree that it's a bit too much for casual but not really ready to be a serious contender (even though a lot of decks are running a risky mana-base) ... I hadn't thought about the fact that you've lost more than you've gained so to speak with the release of more recent sets (Deathrite does hurt more than anything since Faithless Looting helps if I had to guess) - thanks again!
In re juff: Keep in mind this room is filled with people who have no idea from MTG the serious. I mean you get 40 life, 10 card standard offers in the chat all the time, A lot of people feel if you play anything even remotely griefer you are to be admonished, blocked and then reviled later amongst sympathetic listeners. (Nothing wrong with this by the way but it shows the attitude you may have to contend with if you try anything remotely nasty.)
That some players of tribal wars don't understand the depth of possibilities is sad for them but not surprising or unusual. I recommend you invite them to play in the PRE as soon as you see the whines and see how they react to the format when played competitively.
I expect they will either recoil in shock and horror or become intrigued in the additional aspects of the format and find a different way to play. There is nothing you can do about a closed mind except invite it to become open.
on a related note - why is temporal mastery hovering around 11-12 tix? last time I checked (which was when AVR was released...so a while now) it was like 3 tix.
I'm guessing, but I expect that a lot of players who were holding Goyfs paniced when they heard he was being reprinted and sold. A bit later, they read the part about June, 2013 - and noticed that Jund won the last GP. Then they wanted the Goyfs back.
1. I played a Zombie Bombardment list at the Halloween event similar to DirtyDuck's but with a third-color splash of green to use Putrid Leech at the 2 spot. I ran into tough control matchups all day and didn't have much success, finishing a very disappointing 1-2. I think DirtyDuck's use of the 8(12) spot-discard effects, rather than my all-out aggro approach using bolts and chain lightnings in those slots, clearly made a difference in deck performance. It obviously gives him a much better matchup against control and combo decks, though I would guess (without having seen the match) that burn spells would have been more welcome against the Paladin deck in the final showdown. One tournament doesn't tell the whole tale, of course, but I'm betting Dirty's use of the spot-discard and off-tribe Bloodghasts, more like Sam Black's legacy zombie deck, is probably more optimal than a pure aggro-combo build like I tried to force.
2. I was kinda surprised, to be honest, that all the active players in the Top 8 (as far as I know) had no problems with the "lockout rule". There are a couple folks near the top of the rankings that don't have very many different decks in their regular rotation and I would have expected them to be against it. I like the added deck diversity, and agree 100% with the adding of Imp to the banned tribe list for endangered events (I assume that's correct, I saw it on the rules sheet I believe). Granted the "lockout" is unlikely ever to affect me, as it looks like I'm holding onto top 16 by the skin of my teeth and don't get to play as often (or as successfully) as some.
The great thing about the "lockout rule" is that it doesn't affect new players, so it's not an additional "barrier to entry" for anybody wanting to start playing in the PRE. New players already have to do a bit of homework with our special banned list -- I see Aether Vial all the time when I play tribal wars in the casual room, for instance -- and they don't have a huge stable of decks built for a niche format right out of the gate. Restricting it to people who are regular successful players in the event allows it to only apply to people with a lot of familiarity with the format and the PRE.
3. If anybody else plays legacy tribal wars in the casual room, I'm curious if you ever get remarks from non-PRE players complaining about off-tribe creatures. I've been getting alot more of it recently, like "I thought this was tribal!" and "well that's not tribal then!" and so forth. Of course, it's only the cards that beat them than they complain about. But I had a guy basically refuse to play me when my Angel-flicker deck cast an FTK on him. We went through our own little tribal purity phase here when we banished SFM to the Kor/Artificer decks, but that was more about stopping every weenie aggro deck from splashing her than it was about a hostility to offtribe creatures. It's just curious to me, because it's an attitude I never see in the PRE but see all the time in the casual room.
Great pod-cast guys. Thanks for trying to keep Classic going and all that.
I just had one of the most enjoyable experiences on Magic Online that I've had in a very long time.
Someone was in chat in the "for fun" room talking about how overpowered Planeswalkers are, and how Nicol Bolas was this amazing power-house. I say "Tell me what format, I'd love to see your Nicol Bolas Deck in action."
Well this guy starts talking some real smack, and everyone in the room is getting into the conversation. "I play Classic." He says. He makes some comment about how this is going to be a joke.
"I've played Classic before, even have a couple of decks built." I reply.
He challenges, I accept, and there are three or four people who join to watch. He leads off with Badlands. "You had to mull alot, this is going to be pretty gruesome," He quips.
On turn three I got Elesh Norn into play, along with four or five zombie tokens. To say it was 'gruesome' was an understatement, but I didn't say a word. No smack-talk the whole time. After a mull to three, the stuff spewing out of my graveyard into play was more than my opponent could process. The reaction was probably the funniest thing I've encountered in a long, long time.
And that's when I realized I'm a bit of a troll.
Thanks for the intro!
Pete, thanks for mentioning the Vivat Centum tournament! It turned out really great, and I hope even more new faces decide to show up next time.
Hi! Glad you liked my article!
The rest of my pool was 4 (decent) white cards, 4 (bad) blue cards, 3 (bad) green cards, Racecourse Fury, Blistercoil Weird, Rakdos Ringleader, and Essence Backlash. I'm fairly certain I was being cut badly on my colors.
In regards to the Deviant Glee, yeah, you may be right about it doing more damage. I have the bad habit of playing aggro as if it were midrange. It's a close decision either way, though.
I didn't think about using the Annihilating Fire to finish off the Golgari Longlegs. Good catch!
star city games has a web site which they sell cards from and post content on. They distinguish the free for all content from paid for content by allowing access to members only. This has led some to feel they are setting up an unfair advantage and yet others to cry foul that they are only selling the appearance of an advantage to those who are inclined to pay to be professionals.
Im somewhere between the "its a good thing if you can afford it" attitude and the "yeah it might not be worth it if you are trying to become a pro and this is your main method of training/getting info" attitude. If the latter is your thinking I'd forget it. It wont get you there. Though it might increase your overall mtg acumen.
I see scg as a supplement to the myriad good practices available as it does feature articles by actual pro tour players some of whom are legendary in their own right (Zvi, Kibler and many of the Channel Fireball crew have done content for them over the years for example.) How much you glean from it and how much you lean on it for correct market information is really a matter of perspective I think.
I always like to read the opinion section.
But I am a noob so I have never heard of scg premium. Maybe because Im European?
A little introduction might have been useful.
So, do you pay for SCG premium, or how do you know?
Can you provide a reference for an Author and premium article(s) which you believe to be providing poor MTG content in order to sell cards that would otherwise not sell. Please be specific.
Great news all around!
The Quest deck was also played with Kor in the past (SBena won a couple events with it).
Hope we'll see you in the tribal room!
Just started playing on MODO again and found this article a great read. I play mostly modern and pauper with a close friend, but I'm going to try and get him interested in legacy tribal now.
When looking over Malum's A Quest for Birds list I got inspired to create a modern version without a tribal restriction. In addition to Quest for the Holy Relic for cheating into play Aregentum Armor, I also run some Stonehewer Giants. And, in addition to some other changes, I've added Elbrus, The Blinding Blade as an additional equipment tutor target.
I've been crushing people and having fun in the casual room so just wanted to give Alan and Kumagoro credit where it's due. Thanks guys!
Nope, my time is worth a lot more than it would take to watch all their shows, hopefully most people's is.
Buying into Standard is absurdly expensive, and with Modern you have a huge card pool of powerful stuff that dips in price after rotation... Aside from some post-children of high prices like Tarmogoyf, of course.
It'd be interesting to look at some prices on Modern decks and compare them to prices of Standard decks, see how far apart the delta really is.
Great points, something to think about for sure.
So... just to be clear: You wouldn't watch the SCG content if you were paid $300 per year to watch it.
Fairly sure a large number of people went into a frenzy when they heard Tarmogoyf is being reprinted in Modern Masters and sold theirs after the announcement. The market adjusted down as this rash of selling allowed bot owners to fill up on goyfs. Then the realization set in that Modern Masters is a long time from now, Tarmogoyf will be a mythic, and there's no certainty to how heavily the set will be drafted or for how long. Between now and then there are many months during which 'goyf will be used in decks, and so the price has sprung back up a good bit. If you grabbed a few during this artificial dip, kudos. Note this isn't complete guess-work, I had several friends and clan-mates contact me and advise that it was time to sell, which I didn't agree with. I also observed people selling on the trade boards, competing with lower postings as they tried to jump-ship.
The same thing happened when Jace TMS was banned and he dropped briefly to the 30 tix range. That's not hyperbole, I picked up several Jace's for 32 tix during the panic. Turns out he's still a card, and he recovered not too long after.
(I've also been burned by holding gold that turned to poo, but that's a less interesting story, ha ha!)
I'm not averse to the occasional off-tribe creature, but it saddens me when that's all you see of a deck, a support card thrown in only because it's one of the best lumps of creature available, with no real connection either to the tribe played or to any clever shenanigans. I stand by 'Play what you like', but it's a bad-taste-in-mouth thing with me sometimes.
(that said, the off-tribe beast-and-Elemental eureka blow up the world combo was a thing of beauty.)
I always check out your articles and I respect your ability to come to sound opinions. Nonetheless I have to completely disagree with the SCG premium content, not because magic content couldn't be worth this amount but because SCG content is not designed for the benefit of their viewers. They are like the Fox News of MTG. Their main objective is to push sales and to distort the perception of the value of cards to give themselves a marketplace advantage at the expense of those that digest their content. If they're going to do that that's fine but to charge people for the privilege of being manipulated? I guess its one way to diminish the savvy from blunting the various campaigns since they won't be paying and tuning in. It's also an old ploy of the conman, get them in for a little and once they feel they have an advantaged market perspective get them for a lot.
Would ChannelFireball be worth 30$ a year? Sure. SCG content? That's not worth watching if they paid me 300$ a year. (Maybe as an insiders guide to which mythics to short lol)
Thanks for doing this. I really enjoy your site. Just a few thoughts I had:
On drafting, I'm curious to what else you had in your pool. Some of the cards like Lizard, Cremate, Slitherhead and Racketeer are borderline unplayable. And no Frostburn Weird? Either you were really trying to push a slim curve, both of your colors were cut fairly badly, or there were just a lot of packs where nothing helped you. You might have been ignoring signals to move into a third adjacent color, like with a Golgari Decoy, Teleportal, or Blustersquall. It would've been quite nice to be able to use those Guildgates for something like that.
R1G2:
I'm not too keen on attacking with Lizard there, just to have a target for Cremate. He is likely to start chump blocking very soon, which will give you the card as soon as you can use it. And Lizard, if he's ever useful, is mainly useful in those situations where the opponent is at 3 or so life and can only effectively block all your creatures except one. A state like that may have happened here.
Also, I think you just Deviant Glee your Chainwalker turn 4. Deviant Glee is worth 5 damage right there, regardless of what your opponent does after that point. He can't even chump block because of trample. When he Voidweilder's your Chainwalker, you just play Giant (one turn earlier than you actually played it, as it turns out). On that turn even with no attacks, that line has done 7 damage, your line against your opponent's correct line (blocking with Voidweilder and Runewing) does 0 damage, and even the actual line does only 5. Then on subsequent turns, he simply can't block your replayed Chainwalker effectively alongside your Ash Zealot and Lizard, which means he's not dead as you feared. It's only on the turns after your opponent has taken lethal damage that your line overtakes that line in damage. Your reasoning process of calculating damage three turns out didn't serve you well. Three turns of your line versus nothing does more damage with the Giant, just because the Giant has 5 power and Deviant Glee + Ash Zealot has 4. Your line against Voildweilder outpaces the suggested line at around three turns, just because the Deviant Glee is gone. But the suggested T4 Deviant Glee + Ash Zealot does more damage against virtually any other play your opponent could've made in that spot. So out of nothing, Voidweilder, and anything else, the anything else is the most likely. In practicality, quantities of damage over 20 and more than 2 turns out should never or very rarely outweigh upfront damage right then. Aggro is often about making decisions that lead to just the right amount of damage as soon as possible, regardless of your damage output peters out after that.
R2G1:
Turn 6 with Spawn and Racketeer v. Longlegs, I think that you do attack there with both. In my eye, it's actually favorable to you if he blocks the Racketeer, because you Annihilating Fire and he goes to 10. You didn't mention whether you'd use the Fire there. Taking that line, you'd have a 2-turn clock just with Spawn, not to mention the Cobblebrute you'd be holding. Even if he trades with Spawn there, adding Cobblebrute gives you 7 power of creature on the board into 14 life, another 2-turn clock and with the Fire still in hand. With 7 into 14 exactly, Racketeer's 2 damage there was significant.
A few other mistakes here that you realized and mentioned yourself. It was really insightful. Thanks.
Man, I can't wait to see Worth condense his announcement of all of that into 140 characters. Then again, he might have the freedom to write a whole paragraph and post it on page 16 of a thread being read by all sorts of person.
Nice work, Pete!
Oddly enough, Jund in Modern isn't as strong as it might first appear. You only need to stop the Dark Confidant from drawing cards for its owner and you can beat it. Although it is far past time that they banned Cranium Plating or whatever it is.
Standard is- and always will be- more popular than Modern because people like newer things over older things. That's just human nature.
2. Oh God, I forgot to add it to the announcements: yep, Imp and Werewolf are no more legal for Endangered Prize, thefore not legal in Underdog Weeks too. (Glad people actually read the rule page!)
3. I hate tribal racism so much! All the creatures should be friends with each other! My Druids like Wurms! :)
that is precisely the deck that made me consider trying to put something similar together - thanks for your in-depth response; it sounds like you agree that it's a bit too much for casual but not really ready to be a serious contender (even though a lot of decks are running a risky mana-base) ... I hadn't thought about the fact that you've lost more than you've gained so to speak with the release of more recent sets (Deathrite does hurt more than anything since Faithless Looting helps if I had to guess) - thanks again!
it is seeingh play in the Epic Experiment decks.
In re juff: Keep in mind this room is filled with people who have no idea from MTG the serious. I mean you get 40 life, 10 card standard offers in the chat all the time, A lot of people feel if you play anything even remotely griefer you are to be admonished, blocked and then reviled later amongst sympathetic listeners. (Nothing wrong with this by the way but it shows the attitude you may have to contend with if you try anything remotely nasty.)
That some players of tribal wars don't understand the depth of possibilities is sad for them but not surprising or unusual. I recommend you invite them to play in the PRE as soon as you see the whines and see how they react to the format when played competitively.
I expect they will either recoil in shock and horror or become intrigued in the additional aspects of the format and find a different way to play. There is nothing you can do about a closed mind except invite it to become open.
on a related note - why is temporal mastery hovering around 11-12 tix? last time I checked (which was when AVR was released...so a while now) it was like 3 tix.
I'm guessing, but I expect that a lot of players who were holding Goyfs paniced when they heard he was being reprinted and sold. A bit later, they read the part about June, 2013 - and noticed that Jund won the last GP. Then they wanted the Goyfs back.
My few thoughts for this week:
1. I played a Zombie Bombardment list at the Halloween event similar to DirtyDuck's but with a third-color splash of green to use Putrid Leech at the 2 spot. I ran into tough control matchups all day and didn't have much success, finishing a very disappointing 1-2. I think DirtyDuck's use of the 8(12) spot-discard effects, rather than my all-out aggro approach using bolts and chain lightnings in those slots, clearly made a difference in deck performance. It obviously gives him a much better matchup against control and combo decks, though I would guess (without having seen the match) that burn spells would have been more welcome against the Paladin deck in the final showdown. One tournament doesn't tell the whole tale, of course, but I'm betting Dirty's use of the spot-discard and off-tribe Bloodghasts, more like Sam Black's legacy zombie deck, is probably more optimal than a pure aggro-combo build like I tried to force.
2. I was kinda surprised, to be honest, that all the active players in the Top 8 (as far as I know) had no problems with the "lockout rule". There are a couple folks near the top of the rankings that don't have very many different decks in their regular rotation and I would have expected them to be against it. I like the added deck diversity, and agree 100% with the adding of Imp to the banned tribe list for endangered events (I assume that's correct, I saw it on the rules sheet I believe). Granted the "lockout" is unlikely ever to affect me, as it looks like I'm holding onto top 16 by the skin of my teeth and don't get to play as often (or as successfully) as some.
The great thing about the "lockout rule" is that it doesn't affect new players, so it's not an additional "barrier to entry" for anybody wanting to start playing in the PRE. New players already have to do a bit of homework with our special banned list -- I see Aether Vial all the time when I play tribal wars in the casual room, for instance -- and they don't have a huge stable of decks built for a niche format right out of the gate. Restricting it to people who are regular successful players in the event allows it to only apply to people with a lot of familiarity with the format and the PRE.
3. If anybody else plays legacy tribal wars in the casual room, I'm curious if you ever get remarks from non-PRE players complaining about off-tribe creatures. I've been getting alot more of it recently, like "I thought this was tribal!" and "well that's not tribal then!" and so forth. Of course, it's only the cards that beat them than they complain about. But I had a guy basically refuse to play me when my Angel-flicker deck cast an FTK on him. We went through our own little tribal purity phase here when we banished SFM to the Kor/Artificer decks, but that was more about stopping every weenie aggro deck from splashing her than it was about a hostility to offtribe creatures. It's just curious to me, because it's an attitude I never see in the PRE but see all the time in the casual room.