I differ in opinion from the first two posters in that F&L certainly had quite a number of not that easy to obtain cards in it that made it well made imho. I obtained one at $13 when it first came out and then sold the Figure for $12 and the Grim for $4.
Slivers on the other hand was mainly junk and I avoided it until the 10th anniversary gifts. I did open the ones I was given and enjoyed getting them.
Graveborn had a number of interesting cards and some that were ???? as a deck it was far from good imho but I did like getting 4 entombs for very cheap. The other cards were just bonuses.
I think F&L showed that WOTC sometimes hears us when we ask for good content in our special edition packs. The Commander series imho also bears this out despite the fact that the valuation tended to be less than the msrp of those packs.
They were at least not too far below it.
FTV Realms is not bad and I did obtain one but I feel they missed a few hits by not including workshop and library in it. Not that I wanted my shops to drop in price even further but I think Id rather have seen them instead of the uncommon ancient tombs.
Squids were certainly a Challenge, But AJ you neglected to mention that 3!! people showed up with them.
Tribal is a great and fun event. I would suggest more people show up and have fun :)
I'd like to see some data about the value of Mirage and Tempest block money cards over the past several years. I was watching some mvw drafts on youtube the other day and I was surprised to see that some cards were worth less 1-2 years ago than they are worth now.
I don't really know what WotC was trying to accomplish with the PDS. Every one except the last was completely terrible (and even then it was 5 worthwhile cards and chaff) and had nothing in it worth the MSRP. What was their target market for these? Veteran players don't want that much useless chaff for 29.99 and newer players probably didnt care about them being all-foil enough to shell out for them instead of building their collections. It seemed like WotC just picked 100 cards that sorta fit the theme (burn, slivers, reanimation) and threw darts at the pile of cards until they got to 60 and called them decks. It seems like a major wasted opportunity. Instead of killing them they should give them to the dev team that made the commander decks to build. Commander was amazing not because they all had expensive cards, but because they were...DECKS and not random piles.
Answer of the week: No, I didn't buy any of the Premium Decks in paper or online, I only got the ones that came free with my account. Although they're sold as "decks" they're just a pile of foils containing one or two old, valuable cards, as opposed to the Commander decks, which many people actually played as decks.
Hey man, since you seem to like Tribal a lot, come and play in the only Tribal PRE on the face of Earth! :) (I'd link to it, but the spam filter would probably stop me. Just look for my Tribal Apocalypse articles here and you'll find everything you need to know about the tournament).
Good Elephant fun, anyway. And those decks are just this far from being Tribal Wars legal.
Btw, what I was alluding to when I wrote here of the chance of having Underdog every month was Blippy's retiring plan. I had hoped to talk him out of this, or at least having him on charge until the end of the year, but this failing, I'll work on a schedule with 12 Underdog events and 4-6 Singleton events per year.
I'm fixing the rating now. It was a great article. Chalk it up to a noob mistake on my part, should have went with "no rating" for the first comment, I think.
Don't discount Primal Huntbeast in sideboard for post/fissure storm matchup - gamewinner. True, the 4cc is hard to reach, but it happens at just the right time in the game vs. post...usually a hardcast mulldrifter or research draw. It can't be answered nearly as easily as silhana, and between the two, you have 6 hexproof fatties, (hoping silhana's backside is larger than one!)
I can't imagine running Iona as more than a 1-of in Angels. I do think you could run a fairly nice Angel ramp deck, as there are plenty of bombs in the 5-7 cmc range, and Iona would just be a miser's curve topper there probably. In the reanimator decks, she would just be a one-of as well. Only in S&T decks would you want 4 of her maybe.
Progenitus seems to be a 2-of in Natural Order decks, but I could see running more copies in other shells.
Emrakul will likely be played as a 4-of in S&T/Sneak Eldrazi decks. That will be a pricey deck to play, even if Tempest block drafts bring down the price on Lotus Petal, City of Traitors and Ancient Tomb. S&T itself is a big money legacy staple these days.
Since I'm in charge now (Blippy!!! What will I do without a boss to give all the blame to?), and I seriously prefer not to get stuck in an endless discussion about this, I thereby decree that they are all unrestricted and can be used, within their tribes, as a 4-of. There, done, bless you.
I want to go on record, though, with saying that I see through your evil plan, my dear AJ, since you needed 4 Progenitus for your Avatar deck. :P
(And there's shenanigans to be done with 4x of them, too. Possibly WORSE. Show and Tell, anyone? Oh, that's so much preferable as a deck archetype than just NO-Prog, I suppose. So fun to have a Shown-and-Told Emrakul on turn 2, isn't it?) (I'll be absolutely trigger-happy with the Trifecta, anyway. They're not like Doomsday, they WILL be played. First signs of general discomfort, they go back in jail and we throw out the key. They will be specially watched. Details on that will follow).
Oddly enough, the monetary reason might be a good one in Paul's favour.
Going by MTGOTraders prices, Progenitus is about 7.1 each, Iona closer to 19 each, Emrakul about 6 for the promo version. Which one is most susceptible to entomb-exhume shenanigans? The expensive one. Let's require a commitment for those trying to run these cards. All or nothing.
Your article made me download the new client, "Good job, you!"
I have to mention some things you didn't.
CONS:
There are no draft replays.
I can't see who is playing and what game they are in between rounds.
I can't see who has submitted decks for the draft or in the middle of a match. That is a worry when you haven't seen the client before.
PROS:
I do like the countdown to starts between matches.
The replays all saved, and I love the format in which they are stored.
The underdog change is all right, but restricting the three big bads to one per deck? My oath, are you missing the point. :( You DON'T WANT more than one or two if you're tying to cheat with them. You've just made it good for decks planning to do things with them alongside tutor cards to fetch them or other components, and pretty much useless for anyone else. Whoever came up with that one-of restriction needs to rethink it.
Ah well. Starting the three month campaign for the OTHER three Progenitii here.
Thanks guys :) I'll try to improve on those topics. I didn't mention the much-discussed cards I didn't want to talk about because those are mainly the planeswalkers, the uncounterable wrath, etc. I know people want to hear about Jace at least 10 times before hearing about Teleportal but I tried to do something that people wouldn't have reasons to say "oh this guy said the same thing 20 pros and half the community have already said in articles or forums".
I started by red because it had more cards I wanted to talk about than any other color. After that I went to the lands because I was excited about them but I should have followed the usual order.
I always like reading people's opinions about new cards, helps me think about things. DOn't pay attention to naysayers, its a good topic and your opinions are well thought out.
Don't listen to the haters, you did a good job. Since I don't play Limited, I much prefer reading this kind of articles (after all, everyone has opinions and every opinion is good, and when a new batch of cards arrives, one needs to digest all of them slowly, and being reminded of the good ones is always useful) than reading about some guy's draft.
Only thing is: you maybe should have given some kind of clear structure to the article (like, why did you start with red, then did a land? Seems random), and explained which much-discussed cards you weren't covering, otherwise your reader is left wondering if you just failed to recognize their favorite cards' relevance, or something.
I differ in opinion from the first two posters in that F&L certainly had quite a number of not that easy to obtain cards in it that made it well made imho. I obtained one at $13 when it first came out and then sold the Figure for $12 and the Grim for $4.
Slivers on the other hand was mainly junk and I avoided it until the 10th anniversary gifts. I did open the ones I was given and enjoyed getting them.
Graveborn had a number of interesting cards and some that were ???? as a deck it was far from good imho but I did like getting 4 entombs for very cheap. The other cards were just bonuses.
I think F&L showed that WOTC sometimes hears us when we ask for good content in our special edition packs. The Commander series imho also bears this out despite the fact that the valuation tended to be less than the msrp of those packs.
They were at least not too far below it.
FTV Realms is not bad and I did obtain one but I feel they missed a few hits by not including workshop and library in it. Not that I wanted my shops to drop in price even further but I think Id rather have seen them instead of the uncommon ancient tombs.
Have as yet to listen, will do so, soon.
Squids were certainly a Challenge, But AJ you neglected to mention that 3!! people showed up with them.
Tribal is a great and fun event. I would suggest more people show up and have fun :)
I'd like to see some data about the value of Mirage and Tempest block money cards over the past several years. I was watching some mvw drafts on youtube the other day and I was surprised to see that some cards were worth less 1-2 years ago than they are worth now.
I don't really know what WotC was trying to accomplish with the PDS. Every one except the last was completely terrible (and even then it was 5 worthwhile cards and chaff) and had nothing in it worth the MSRP. What was their target market for these? Veteran players don't want that much useless chaff for 29.99 and newer players probably didnt care about them being all-foil enough to shell out for them instead of building their collections. It seemed like WotC just picked 100 cards that sorta fit the theme (burn, slivers, reanimation) and threw darts at the pile of cards until they got to 60 and called them decks. It seems like a major wasted opportunity. Instead of killing them they should give them to the dev team that made the commander decks to build. Commander was amazing not because they all had expensive cards, but because they were...DECKS and not random piles.
Answer of the week: No, I didn't buy any of the Premium Decks in paper or online, I only got the ones that came free with my account. Although they're sold as "decks" they're just a pile of foils containing one or two old, valuable cards, as opposed to the Commander decks, which many people actually played as decks.
You mean this:
http://community.wizards.com/go/thread/view/75846/27012861/Tribal_Apocal...
?
Hey man, since you seem to like Tribal a lot, come and play in the only Tribal PRE on the face of Earth! :) (I'd link to it, but the spam filter would probably stop me. Just look for my Tribal Apocalypse articles here and you'll find everything you need to know about the tournament).
Good Elephant fun, anyway. And those decks are just this far from being Tribal Wars legal.
Btw, what I was alluding to when I wrote here of the chance of having Underdog every month was Blippy's retiring plan. I had hoped to talk him out of this, or at least having him on charge until the end of the year, but this failing, I'll work on a schedule with 12 Underdog events and 4-6 Singleton events per year.
you can edit prior comments and change the rating then. :)
I'm fixing the rating now. It was a great article. Chalk it up to a noob mistake on my part, should have went with "no rating" for the first comment, I think.
I was hoping theyd be restricted TO 4 ofs. Despite the benefits of duplication they can somewhat mitigate those by being duplicated.
I and my evil plan thank you for your magnanimity.
Don't discount Primal Huntbeast in sideboard for post/fissure storm matchup - gamewinner. True, the 4cc is hard to reach, but it happens at just the right time in the game vs. post...usually a hardcast mulldrifter or research draw. It can't be answered nearly as easily as silhana, and between the two, you have 6 hexproof fatties, (hoping silhana's backside is larger than one!)
http://www.wizards.com/Magic/Digital/MagicOnlineTourn.aspx?x=mtg/digital...
http://www.wizards.com/Magic/Digital/MagicOnlineTourn.aspx?x=mtg/digital...
I can't imagine running Iona as more than a 1-of in Angels. I do think you could run a fairly nice Angel ramp deck, as there are plenty of bombs in the 5-7 cmc range, and Iona would just be a miser's curve topper there probably. In the reanimator decks, she would just be a one-of as well. Only in S&T decks would you want 4 of her maybe.
Progenitus seems to be a 2-of in Natural Order decks, but I could see running more copies in other shells.
Emrakul will likely be played as a 4-of in S&T/Sneak Eldrazi decks. That will be a pricey deck to play, even if Tempest block drafts bring down the price on Lotus Petal, City of Traitors and Ancient Tomb. S&T itself is a big money legacy staple these days.
Since I'm in charge now (Blippy!!! What will I do without a boss to give all the blame to?), and I seriously prefer not to get stuck in an endless discussion about this, I thereby decree that they are all unrestricted and can be used, within their tribes, as a 4-of. There, done, bless you.
I want to go on record, though, with saying that I see through your evil plan, my dear AJ, since you needed 4 Progenitus for your Avatar deck. :P
(And there's shenanigans to be done with 4x of them, too. Possibly WORSE. Show and Tell, anyone? Oh, that's so much preferable as a deck archetype than just NO-Prog, I suppose. So fun to have a Shown-and-Told Emrakul on turn 2, isn't it?) (I'll be absolutely trigger-happy with the Trifecta, anyway. They're not like Doomsday, they WILL be played. First signs of general discomfort, they go back in jail and we throw out the key. They will be specially watched. Details on that will follow).
Oddly enough, the monetary reason might be a good one in Paul's favour.
Going by MTGOTraders prices, Progenitus is about 7.1 each, Iona closer to 19 each, Emrakul about 6 for the promo version. Which one is most susceptible to entomb-exhume shenanigans? The expensive one. Let's require a commitment for those trying to run these cards. All or nothing.
For monetary reasons if nothing else i can't say i can agree with this logic.
Better would be to restrict them to 4x per deck.
Your article made me download the new client, "Good job, you!"
I have to mention some things you didn't.
CONS:
There are no draft replays.
I can't see who is playing and what game they are in between rounds.
I can't see who has submitted decks for the draft or in the middle of a match. That is a worry when you haven't seen the client before.
PROS:
I do like the countdown to starts between matches.
The replays all saved, and I love the format in which they are stored.
The underdog change is all right, but restricting the three big bads to one per deck? My oath, are you missing the point. :( You DON'T WANT more than one or two if you're tying to cheat with them. You've just made it good for decks planning to do things with them alongside tutor cards to fetch them or other components, and pretty much useless for anyone else. Whoever came up with that one-of restriction needs to rethink it.
Ah well. Starting the three month campaign for the OTHER three Progenitii here.
Nicely done and well written! :)
Thanks guys :) I'll try to improve on those topics. I didn't mention the much-discussed cards I didn't want to talk about because those are mainly the planeswalkers, the uncounterable wrath, etc. I know people want to hear about Jace at least 10 times before hearing about Teleportal but I tried to do something that people wouldn't have reasons to say "oh this guy said the same thing 20 pros and half the community have already said in articles or forums".
I started by red because it had more cards I wanted to talk about than any other color. After that I went to the lands because I was excited about them but I should have followed the usual order.
I always like reading people's opinions about new cards, helps me think about things. DOn't pay attention to naysayers, its a good topic and your opinions are well thought out.
One question... How exactly do you cast Shared Triumph with no White mana in the Sundial of the Infinite Tokens deck?
Don't listen to the haters, you did a good job. Since I don't play Limited, I much prefer reading this kind of articles (after all, everyone has opinions and every opinion is good, and when a new batch of cards arrives, one needs to digest all of them slowly, and being reminded of the good ones is always useful) than reading about some guy's draft.
Only thing is: you maybe should have given some kind of clear structure to the article (like, why did you start with red, then did a land? Seems random), and explained which much-discussed cards you weren't covering, otherwise your reader is left wondering if you just failed to recognize their favorite cards' relevance, or something.