JDK, you say you came back after a 9 year break? I think it would've been great for the game if you never came back. All you want to do is complain. First you complain about bots, then this website, and now Netdecks and counterspell control decks. No one wants to hear your constant whining.
oh god....i followed AJ's link from the 3/18 SotP. I forgot how eye-rapingly bad v3 was when it started. My corneas almost started bleeding. I remember not being able to play when v3 came out because it all gave me a headache to look at.
lol SOM has 50 or so decks? you ever think people play the decks all the time the same way because they are good?
If you want random match-ups then play in the casual room. But tournament players arent going to run junk just to be different.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but last time I checked, blogs WERE websites where you controlled the content....
As for supply and demand and the prices bots charge:
You have to take in account dollar cost averaging to account for the minimum a person will sell their cards at, moreso for the higher priced cards. For example, someone who buys 2 of CARDx @10, 3 @7, 2 @15, will have an average price paid of 10.143 each, so the lowest they will price it at is above that, even if the price due to demand drops lower than that. (It doesn't hurt them to hold onto them rather than take a loss on them).
I love Hammy's charts, but wish you could find the charts for other items not listed in the current article.
JBK, just checked the SoM Block Premier Event top 8 and there was one deck running Tezzeret. Also the last three Daily Events had only two decks running Tezz in the top 8. So your assessment of SoM block being all Tezzeret and no innovation is just wrong. I am a big fan of block because the metagame shifts so much. Tezz was seeing a huge uptick in play and the metagame responded. Right now it appears that Green Sun Zenith and Koth are the most played cards in Block.
Also, go Wisconsin! Way to beat the cheaters from K-State :)
I'm going to try to make the event today for my second appearance. Your articles are some of the best on this site I think. With the great writing, video content and all of it it really gets me excited about playing! I only noticed this article just now or I would have posted when it went up. I liked Dumb Blund but I have something new to try against the field that I think is pretty strong.
Trying to start a software business selling MTGO Bot software is a terrible idea at this point. There are already several vendors in the marketplace with pretty competitive pricing, and there's a *very* limited market of bot-owners. Is it possible to make a better bot? Sure. Are you going to steal customers from other bot-makers? No way, at least not the good ones who spent lots of money. And the other bot makers aren't sitting still, they're adding new features every month.
Trying to write bot software just for your own use is also pure insanity. You can get bot software for anything from $2-$50 a month depending on what you're doing. People who write software make more than $50 an *hour*. If you spend even one hour a month working on the software, you'd be better off just buying it from someone else. Also, you really *REALLY* want a proven solution that's being used by lots of other people. Trust me, one little mistake can cost you thousands of dollars in the blink of an eye.
It is conceivable that Wizards might implement features that make bot software easier/unnecessary, bots exist for a couple reasons:
1) The primary reason is that the in-game currency is not fine-grained enough. The fact that you can't make change smaller than 1 ticket means that there is essentially no market for player-to-player selling of cheap cards. This will never change due to legal and tax reasons. Bots will continue to exist for their more fluid credit systems. This will continue to let bots compete on selection instead of just price--it's insufficient to have the cheapest price. If your selection is crap, then your credits are worthless
2) 24/7 access to a good selection of cards. Even if Wizards implements some auction system, there is NO WAY they will let the system trade cards while you're offline. That is a whole hell of a lot of liability that they would never touch. Bots are still going to provide selection and availability and convenience.
Honestly i had not played BYOS in a fair amount of time at that point i was getting the invite off the strength of the few showings that i did infact have so i wasn't exactly acclimated with the meta.
Thrun is a insanely awesome card and infact one of my favorite ones but i didnt own any copies of him at that point due to budget reasons.
It might not always look it but i am a budget player at the core (i've currently been unemployed for over 6months so any new cards i get must come from profits made in trades or winning events.)
However i will argue that x4 of any legendary creature unless it flat out houses a match is excessive.
So bummed out - missed the top 8 in today's PE by 1/300ths of a point, finished in 9th. That stings bad! Oh well, at least my secret new sideboard won't be public knowledge :)
I can't respond directly to the comments here without giggling so I'll just speak generally on the topic of bots and an official Wizards clearing house.
A bot chain like MTGOTraders is performing two businesses:
1) bot maker
2) card trader
This is easier to see via someone like MTGO Library who only performs (1) and lets others compete at (2). But even when they are done by the same person it's still two functions and to understand them you have to think of them separately because both have separate economic forces. And available data suggests to me that the profit for (1) is much greater than (2), which makes sense because the competition for (1) is so much less.
There was a recent thread on the Wizards Community site where someone considering at a Library bot setup did some lookups of buy/sell spreads on cards, factored in the percentage taken for the Librarybot rentals, and determined that they were actually making negative profits on each of these trades. This is what should happen in a competitive market: the profit gets competed away. Now I don't think it's universally true - certainly some Librarybot runners are doing fine via intelligent use of prices where it matters. But it indicates that the market is functioning correctly by competing away that margin.
(Why profit remains on lower-supply cards is interesting but a separate issue.)
So the real margin - and the safer one I suspect - is in having created your own bot. And it's noteworthy that while Wizards cannot compete as an individual card trader (2), they could indeed provide an auction system / clearing house (2) that would render unnecessary all the bot programming. They have inside access that would yield competitive advantage even if they didn't explicitly ban bots (which, I give 4:1 odds they would). But the belief that it would have smaller margins is at best wishful thinking. Compared to an OCR bot, a built-in seller would have faster responses and Wizards has monopoly power over this. At no point does superior product + monopoly power = lower prices.
So we can wish for whatever we like, but let's recognize it's just that: wishing. A commission-free Wizards auction house would be nice to experience as a player, but so would a precon with Jace, TMS and Force of Will. I'm not holding my breath on either.
Well, I just played my first Commander game and you know what; I liked it! Two players died and I was so sure that I was going to take out the last one. But all of a sudden, when everything was going okay and I had a very high and nice life total, the game ended suddenly and he won!
*sigh*
Why no one mentioned that Commander rule?!!
Later I found out that taking 21 damage from a commander means a loss. Ah well...
The same thing happened to me. It's a language setting problem: Gatherer assumes (probably from the OS locale or from the geo-location of the IP address of the client or even from the browser language) the default search language. In my case I searched for "Indestructible" but since I'm Italian I should have searched for "Indistruttibile". A click on the Settings tab of Gatherer and after setting English as Search Language everything was back to normal.
My rule of thumb is to stay away from too much land destruction, discard, counterspells, or infinite combo's. A little is okay, but if you use a lot of any of those you tend to piss people off.
Although what constitutes "just enough" and "too much" is up to interpretation.
Yep, but prepare to be blocked by many people. Normally, you have said how much of a Spike you are, but that's not really what the format is about. If you want to play a broken game, maybe try 100 cs. Stuff like Crucible + Strip Mine borders on the dreaded "douche" label.
Correct. Also, you had better get used to the rules (that haven't been implemented online yet) that cards with ANY mana symbols not shared by the Commander will not be allowed. So, for example, you will not be able to use the Tri-lands from Shards block if your deck is two colours.
I agree with hibkir about the auction house model, but the funniest thing - it doesn't have to be run by WOTC. Any major bot chain could create something similar, with web auction interface and the bots of today acting as auction booths. I thought about such a system earlier, but creating this is one thing, and getting people to trust you is another. I believe that MTGOTraders could pull this off.
I always thought This site needed more young adult retired millionaires. Hammy stop working for the man. Heath stop gouging prices. Josh publish young money millionaire guy's article unedited.
I don't think there's ever been an author on PureMTGO that I've liked as much as you. I've read all of your articles and I've loved them all. Period. This is nothing different. I am so glad you are back, and keep them coming!
And did someone say Affinity brews? I am rooting for Frogmite Fanboy article nr. 2!
First of all, the whole "Hammy works for the da man" just made me laugh. He keeps track of prices, he doesn't set them.
Second in line, there is so many niche-format related articles on this site that I rarely read something about the current Tier1 Standard decks; I'm very glad indeed to be able to read such articles since I've got no possibility at all to play with a money deck.
Third, the niche-format related articles I mentioned before are awesome, more often than not.
If you take a step back and read what he says about this site you'll understand that's mainly FUD. Maybe he got some things wrong, but the simpler explanation is: Troll.
Supply and demand is set easily quantified, and seeing as another botchain adjusts in on the fly, and remains very close to this site in pricing, its easy to see his claims are bunk
Have all of JBK's comments been deleted? Oh no, it is a conspiracy by the man!
JDK, you say you came back after a 9 year break? I think it would've been great for the game if you never came back. All you want to do is complain. First you complain about bots, then this website, and now Netdecks and counterspell control decks. No one wants to hear your constant whining.
oh god....i followed AJ's link from the 3/18 SotP. I forgot how eye-rapingly bad v3 was when it started. My corneas almost started bleeding. I remember not being able to play when v3 came out because it all gave me a headache to look at.
lol SOM has 50 or so decks? you ever think people play the decks all the time the same way because they are good?
If you want random match-ups then play in the casual room. But tournament players arent going to run junk just to be different.
Well at least you learned something new! Glad you are trying the format, you should have a ton of fun!
Correct me if I'm wrong, but last time I checked, blogs WERE websites where you controlled the content....
As for supply and demand and the prices bots charge:
You have to take in account dollar cost averaging to account for the minimum a person will sell their cards at, moreso for the higher priced cards. For example, someone who buys 2 of CARDx @10, 3 @7, 2 @15, will have an average price paid of 10.143 each, so the lowest they will price it at is above that, even if the price due to demand drops lower than that. (It doesn't hurt them to hold onto them rather than take a loss on them).
I love Hammy's charts, but wish you could find the charts for other items not listed in the current article.
JBK, just checked the SoM Block Premier Event top 8 and there was one deck running Tezzeret. Also the last three Daily Events had only two decks running Tezz in the top 8. So your assessment of SoM block being all Tezzeret and no innovation is just wrong. I am a big fan of block because the metagame shifts so much. Tezz was seeing a huge uptick in play and the metagame responded. Right now it appears that Green Sun Zenith and Koth are the most played cards in Block.
Also, go Wisconsin! Way to beat the cheaters from K-State :)
I'm going to try to make the event today for my second appearance. Your articles are some of the best on this site I think. With the great writing, video content and all of it it really gets me excited about playing! I only noticed this article just now or I would have posted when it went up. I liked Dumb Blund but I have something new to try against the field that I think is pretty strong.
I fell out of my damn chair, I laughed so hard! Thanks Hammy, Paul and JBK, this is better than surfing for stupid videos on the net :D
Nice article hammy, keep up the good work!
Trying to start a software business selling MTGO Bot software is a terrible idea at this point. There are already several vendors in the marketplace with pretty competitive pricing, and there's a *very* limited market of bot-owners. Is it possible to make a better bot? Sure. Are you going to steal customers from other bot-makers? No way, at least not the good ones who spent lots of money. And the other bot makers aren't sitting still, they're adding new features every month.
Trying to write bot software just for your own use is also pure insanity. You can get bot software for anything from $2-$50 a month depending on what you're doing. People who write software make more than $50 an *hour*. If you spend even one hour a month working on the software, you'd be better off just buying it from someone else. Also, you really *REALLY* want a proven solution that's being used by lots of other people. Trust me, one little mistake can cost you thousands of dollars in the blink of an eye.
It is conceivable that Wizards might implement features that make bot software easier/unnecessary, bots exist for a couple reasons:
1) The primary reason is that the in-game currency is not fine-grained enough. The fact that you can't make change smaller than 1 ticket means that there is essentially no market for player-to-player selling of cheap cards. This will never change due to legal and tax reasons. Bots will continue to exist for their more fluid credit systems. This will continue to let bots compete on selection instead of just price--it's insufficient to have the cheapest price. If your selection is crap, then your credits are worthless
2) 24/7 access to a good selection of cards. Even if Wizards implements some auction system, there is NO WAY they will let the system trade cards while you're offline. That is a whole hell of a lot of liability that they would never touch. Bots are still going to provide selection and availability and convenience.
Oh, and go Butler! Congrats to the underDogs!
Honestly i had not played BYOS in a fair amount of time at that point i was getting the invite off the strength of the few showings that i did infact have so i wasn't exactly acclimated with the meta.
Thrun is a insanely awesome card and infact one of my favorite ones but i didnt own any copies of him at that point due to budget reasons.
It might not always look it but i am a budget player at the core (i've currently been unemployed for over 6months so any new cards i get must come from profits made in trades or winning events.)
However i will argue that x4 of any legendary creature unless it flat out houses a match is excessive.
So bummed out - missed the top 8 in today's PE by 1/300ths of a point, finished in 9th. That stings bad! Oh well, at least my secret new sideboard won't be public knowledge :)
I can't respond directly to the comments here without giggling so I'll just speak generally on the topic of bots and an official Wizards clearing house.
A bot chain like MTGOTraders is performing two businesses:
1) bot maker
2) card trader
This is easier to see via someone like MTGO Library who only performs (1) and lets others compete at (2). But even when they are done by the same person it's still two functions and to understand them you have to think of them separately because both have separate economic forces. And available data suggests to me that the profit for (1) is much greater than (2), which makes sense because the competition for (1) is so much less.
There was a recent thread on the Wizards Community site where someone considering at a Library bot setup did some lookups of buy/sell spreads on cards, factored in the percentage taken for the Librarybot rentals, and determined that they were actually making negative profits on each of these trades. This is what should happen in a competitive market: the profit gets competed away. Now I don't think it's universally true - certainly some Librarybot runners are doing fine via intelligent use of prices where it matters. But it indicates that the market is functioning correctly by competing away that margin.
(Why profit remains on lower-supply cards is interesting but a separate issue.)
So the real margin - and the safer one I suspect - is in having created your own bot. And it's noteworthy that while Wizards cannot compete as an individual card trader (2), they could indeed provide an auction system / clearing house (2) that would render unnecessary all the bot programming. They have inside access that would yield competitive advantage even if they didn't explicitly ban bots (which, I give 4:1 odds they would). But the belief that it would have smaller margins is at best wishful thinking. Compared to an OCR bot, a built-in seller would have faster responses and Wizards has monopoly power over this. At no point does superior product + monopoly power = lower prices.
So we can wish for whatever we like, but let's recognize it's just that: wishing. A commission-free Wizards auction house would be nice to experience as a player, but so would a precon with Jace, TMS and Force of Will. I'm not holding my breath on either.
Well, I just played my first Commander game and you know what; I liked it! Two players died and I was so sure that I was going to take out the last one. But all of a sudden, when everything was going okay and I had a very high and nice life total, the game ended suddenly and he won!
*sigh*
Why no one mentioned that Commander rule?!!
Later I found out that taking 21 damage from a commander means a loss. Ah well...
LE
The same thing happened to me. It's a language setting problem: Gatherer assumes (probably from the OS locale or from the geo-location of the IP address of the client or even from the browser language) the default search language. In my case I searched for "Indestructible" but since I'm Italian I should have searched for "Indistruttibile". A click on the Settings tab of Gatherer and after setting English as Search Language everything was back to normal.
Just for future reference. ;)
My rule of thumb is to stay away from too much land destruction, discard, counterspells, or infinite combo's. A little is okay, but if you use a lot of any of those you tend to piss people off.
Although what constitutes "just enough" and "too much" is up to interpretation.
Actually I want to try a more relaxed format without messing up with people's fun so I'm asking.
Thanks.
LE
Yep, but prepare to be blocked by many people. Normally, you have said how much of a Spike you are, but that's not really what the format is about. If you want to play a broken game, maybe try 100 cs. Stuff like Crucible + Strip Mine borders on the dreaded "douche" label.
Another question: Is Crucible of Worlds okay in the format? I mean, Crucible of Worlds as in "Strip Mine+Crucible of Worlds"?
LE
Correct. Also, you had better get used to the rules (that haven't been implemented online yet) that cards with ANY mana symbols not shared by the Commander will not be allowed. So, for example, you will not be able to use the Tri-lands from Shards block if your deck is two colours.
I agree with hibkir about the auction house model, but the funniest thing - it doesn't have to be run by WOTC. Any major bot chain could create something similar, with web auction interface and the bots of today acting as auction booths. I thought about such a system earlier, but creating this is one thing, and getting people to trust you is another. I believe that MTGOTraders could pull this off.
I always thought This site needed more young adult retired millionaires. Hammy stop working for the man. Heath stop gouging prices. Josh publish young money millionaire guy's article unedited.
I don't think there's ever been an author on PureMTGO that I've liked as much as you. I've read all of your articles and I've loved them all. Period. This is nothing different. I am so glad you are back, and keep them coming!
And did someone say Affinity brews? I am rooting for Frogmite Fanboy article nr. 2!
First of all, the whole "Hammy works for the da man" just made me laugh. He keeps track of prices, he doesn't set them.
Second in line, there is so many niche-format related articles on this site that I rarely read something about the current Tier1 Standard decks; I'm very glad indeed to be able to read such articles since I've got no possibility at all to play with a money deck.
Third, the niche-format related articles I mentioned before are awesome, more often than not.
If you take a step back and read what he says about this site you'll understand that's mainly FUD. Maybe he got some things wrong, but the simpler explanation is: Troll.
Take care. ;)
This guy is nuts.
Supply and demand is set easily quantified, and seeing as another botchain adjusts in on the fly, and remains very close to this site in pricing, its easy to see his claims are bunk