However, to the author, I did click on this expecting an account of getting into the tournament world. "Classic" as a format the way you used it in your teaser usually refers to competitive. Otherwise you're just playing casual where all the cards are allowed. Just like people around a kitchen table are probably technically playing Vintage, you'd never call it that.
I actually have some programming experience and I have not been able to find any good bot tutorials either. I have seen mtgolibrary but my concern with those types of premade bots is that they can have malicious components which might allow the original programmer to gain access to your account. I would try mtoglibrary but I would much rather make my own to increase security.
Seriously, i made an account just to contribute to this troll, which is kind of sad.
But dood, you're telling me that when a card is in HIGHER demand, its price goes DOWN?! Am I reading this correctly? You're telling me, that since everyone wants Jace, the Mind Sculptor, a playset should be 1 ticket? Please explain this. Also please provide said, "article".
To say you know anything about Economics is honestly offensive. This is how Economics works: http://economistsview.typepad.com/economistsview/2008/03/stuck-in-a-bad....
This is a picture of a "fixed supply" curve. Meaning, the number of any given card in the MTGO economy is fixed. What you're describing is a free-market production, where as demand goes up, prices go down, because firms produce more. This is flawed for about 19,876,432 reasons, but I'll name the obvious and important ones.
1) MtGO has no competition. You can't "proxy" online cards, or play a different game in their economy.
This means there is a fixed supply of product, and demand is not linear (see above link)
2) When there is a limited (see: fixed) supply of something, and more people want it, THE PRICE WILL INCREASE (See: Ebay).
3) You said: "Its very simple to quantify a market for a true price." Oh yeah? How do you quantify a market? and what exactly does that mean? Are you trying to assess willingness to pay? Try Ebay, or MTGO traders, or anyother available resource that shows what cards are going for. WHAT PEOPLE PAY FOR THEM IS WHAT THEY ARE WORTH, BY DEFINITION.
4) You mess with Godot, you get the horns bro, he's an authority on all things MTGO. You've dug a troll cave, and now you can sleep in it.
First I have to say that is an interesting deck. I personally would not play it because it is outside "my terms" of a social contract. I think the deck would be best suited for 100 singleton.
As far as the Social Contract goes online, it is hard to inforce. My vision of social contracts involve everyone to be able to have fun, enjoy magic and be sociable to one and another. The hardest part here is the social part since that is very lacking in an online format. Since socialization is terrible in MTGO, then online commander borders the line of Commander and 100 card singleton. I hope for everyone to work towards keeping commander away from that border, but I know in reality it won't happen.
So what do you do to help inforce the social contract? Play casual decks, and there is no need to define casual because we can all spot a casual deck versus a tournament/dickish deck. Avoid playing people you know have a reputation to be outside your view of the social contract. These people do have a right to play commander they way they want, but if it's not your style, avoid them. I often create games with the following in the description "No Mass ld/control/infect". This helps people to know what I am expecting you to sit down with. Sometimes people don't read the descriptions. It's gonna happen. If I join a Pick up game, and someone joins on my blocked list, then they are ussually my first target. I only put people on the block list for being jerks, not playing strong decks. There is a diference in playing a good deck and being polite, and playing a good deck and being a jerk. It's the later that ends on my blocked list.
JBK, opening with shuffler-fixing demands immediately called into question the legitimacy of your opinions on Magic Online in general. The shuffler has passed every serious, statistically-relevant test of its efficacy, so saying, "The shuffler is broken; now believe me about the MTGO economy because I say so" is like saying, "The earth is 6,000 years old; now believe me about climate change because I say so." It's not *impossible* for you to be correct about the second thing just because you are so clearly misguided about the first, but it certainly requires a lot more than your word that your subsequent claims are true.
I pointed that out, then asked reasonable, straightforward questions regarding your theories and claims, giving you a chance to provide valid arguments and support for them; I even suggested a simple way to share your article, on the assumption that it would help us better understand your position.
You respond with vicious, ham-handed ad-hominem attacks, more unsupported, suspect claims, and awkward badge-flashing (if you are at all representative of hedge-fund managers, it certainly goes a long way towards explaining the financial crisis). You have completely discredited anything useful you might have had to say on MTGO economy issues with that response.
In the time it took you to compose that reply, you could have posted your article to blogspot or the like without being "great with making websites" or knowing a lick of html; you just have to be able to cut and paste. In fact, I'll do it for you. Send your article to: jbksarticle@gmail.com. I can post your article to a blog in under five minutes, and share the link here.
At any rate, until you are ready to engage the conversation respectfully and present compelling arguments supported by evidence instead of making crazy-person rants and hurling insults, you're just embarrassing yourself.
@ Jackscifi: I wouldn't block him because he's playing discard but because he's playing a discard lock (and for clarification, I block people purely as a note to myself not to play with them). If my hand is empty and I can't draw anymore cards, all the regrowths, restocks, and/or eternal witnesses in my deck are useless. And the thing about online is there is rarely an indicator of who is playing a broken/mean/unfun deck beyond their general. Sure, it's easy to say kill the guy with Arcum or Sharuum or Uril, but beyond that knowing who the target is is hard. Sometimes you might be playing a novice opponent who has no idea what he's doing, and other times you might be playing an experienced player trying to look like a novice. There are plenty of decks that seem harmless right up until they assemble their combo in a single turn and kill/lock out everyone. I'm sure this deck will seems like a B/W goodstuff deck right before it puts down the lock. And if you don't have an answer in hand, you're pretty much screwed.
@ ShardFenix: You're right, everyone has the right to play the format the way they want. Not only the people who want a casual experience and not only the people who want a competitive, cut throat experience. I think the former group is much larger than the latter, however, so those who want a cut throat experience should be the ones who start their own game with a description explaining their interest. Most people play looking for a fun game and assume others to be doing the same. If you are interested in a slightly more vicious attitude, then make that obvious. Don't go into a game stealthily then start trying to ruin mana screwed opponents or lock people out of their colors. Part of the reason they wouldn't do that to you is because they assume you won't do it to them.
"To my knowledge there isn’t a deck like this out there yet. Whether this is ready for the tournament scene I don't know. However, somehow I doubt since it doesn’t run Force of Will and/or some form of counterspell package it may have a tough time. Having said that I don’t think it is far off. "
As far as tournament level classic goes, this is terrible, and would lose 9 times out of 10. And no the lack of force is not the problem. not a knock on the deck, ill bet its fun in cas/cas. but it would need A LOT of work to even come close to winning games against tournament level classic decks.
I see you make alot of bold claims about how Jund is the deck that's poised to beat the field and ramble off alot of card names but I dont see a suggested decklist and sideboard for Jund here.
A few critiques:
1) Fae while good is NOT the top deck in the format, it might be the most played but that hardly makes a deck the best.(and i would even argue it being the most played right now)
Anyhow if following EXT lately you would know that Bant's new evolution has completely shifted the meta game to the point of even pushing Valakut to be a gamble to play.
2) Quit mentioning cards that don't get used
examples: Bant does not use finest hour or or Hero, hell you didnt have them listed in the deck list you showed.
3) You mention Bant as an "easy" match but then in Naya mention that Stag is a troublesome card, why not just mention that during the Bant review you had right before the naya deck? Infact wouldn't Bant be even more problematic then Naya in the fact that they have 2 Pro black creatures compared to just one?
4) Mentioning a card as stupid never adds to a article it makes you sound jelous or bitter that you cannot afford it and or beat it. Besides Jace isn't nearly as much a problem as Gideon and their respective price movements have been reflecting it.
I was trying to stay out of this, but your comments have really bothered me. I must be of those people who you claim is too lazy or wants everything handed to me, I guess. I have wanted a bot on MTGO for a while, but I know nothing of coding or how scripting works. Twice now you have said "there are programs and tutorials for bots," but have not linked to either of those. If it's so easy, why don't you link them? I'm not trying to flame you or be a troll, but I have been looking for a good tutorial and have not found any. Again, it might have something to do with computer illiteracy issues or not using good searches. But I AM TRYING and do not consider myself lazy. I have even posted on MTG Salvation, the WotC message boards, and asked actual bot owners for help, and have gotten exactly ZERO responses on all of them. I would LOVE a nice tutorial or an easy to use software. If you know of either of those, please post them here instead of just saying "oh they're out there." Sometimes I get the attitude that those that own bots don't want to share that information because they are afraid of competition or something. That, too, is the "me first" attitude, the attitude of, "I got mine, screw everyone else."
The Jund Hackblade's are in there for the control matchups and they do pretty well there but needless to say no one can beat a shuffler that hates you, going game 1 smush opponent game 2 mana screw game 3 mana flood.
Anyhow regardless of all that congrats on your win!
As a Pauper, I totally disagree with your evaluation of "Suture Priest" - that card will be a must kill imo. Backed up with a benevolent bodyguard/flagbearer or even shelter - imagine a goblinwarrens going off with this guy on the board. You'd have a few extra turns to find your board sweepers.
Yeah, that sounds like my story too. I blinked and my rating was up 250+ points.
I know it sounds crazy, but I just played so many tourneys with it for so long, that I craved playing rogue recently. The last 3-4 weeks I've just been toying with 'pet decks' and have at best been going 2-2 in the four rounders. One day this even happened with stompy! - That was quite a shock, but just goes to show how healthy the pauper meta-game is. Because of Stompy, now WW is showing up, because of that - MBC will rise etc.., The format that comes the closest to encapsulating "MAGIC" at its purest is hands-down pauper.
Personally, I think MBC and Burn are top choices for the next few weeks.
Agreed 100%. I think the social contract is great in real life. It serves a function there. Online, it just provides an ability for people to whine about decks they think are unfair. The social contract as explained by sheldon is almost as vague as the concept of what is casual. Even he says it can be changed by each individual playgroup in order to maxmize their fun. So maybe Ith since his deck is so scary, isnt looking for dont play combo, wait til everyone is built up to start attacking, namby pamby, playgroups. Maybe he wants slightly more competitive opponents. If thats the case then so be it. By the words of the formats crator he isnt doing anything wrong. I mean I have a deck that casts Myojin of Night's Reach on about turn five, and then gets me about 30 or so tokens. Not everyone has to play YOUR form of Commander to the original social contract person or what you think proper commander is. Some people want a more competitive than a happy feel good let everyone play their game kinda thing. Which by the way is dumb. Even in the end the goal of Commander is too win. If I can take someone out early to increase my chances or lock them, then by god i will. Struggling on mana? Say hello to a turn 6 Terastodon destroying all of one color of your manabase. Enjoy.
I think the easiest would be to have a functional auction system. Just posting a card up in a server and putting it up for a sale is always nice. Wotc could take a fraction of the sale too. But it would never happen. It's obvious that wotc puts very very few people towards client development side. I understand the problem too. They need to literally check and code 100's of cards every few months. Cross checking them against older card is a daunting task. Not to mention the strict deadline they have to follow.
honestly you can't ignore the cost for leaving a comp on and making sure it stays on. even the electricity cost is hefty really. Using a third party server is not worth the cost for 99% of the people.
First of all, thank you for your time the other day explaining to me the details and nuances of this deck. As an "above average" player (at least I like to think so) I've seen my win percentage go from 60% to 80% with this. I know I can still improve which is exciting.
The issues I have with this deck is the aggresive mulliganing, sometimes I feel like I have a 20% chance of getting flooded or screwed which I just hate. But when I don't it's GG to my opponent.
This deck is consistant, which is really nice. If you want to grind and get your ranking up and make some tix on the side I highly reccomend it. On the downside, is the amount of players who will disconnect making you wait for 10 minutes because they can't believe they lost to such a "pile".
Be nice.
However, to the author, I did click on this expecting an account of getting into the tournament world. "Classic" as a format the way you used it in your teaser usually refers to competitive. Otherwise you're just playing casual where all the cards are allowed. Just like people around a kitchen table are probably technically playing Vintage, you'd never call it that.
I actually have some programming experience and I have not been able to find any good bot tutorials either. I have seen mtgolibrary but my concern with those types of premade bots is that they can have malicious components which might allow the original programmer to gain access to your account. I would try mtoglibrary but I would much rather make my own to increase security.
type /join auction in any chat box, you'll go to auction room, no wotc fees.
Seriously, i made an account just to contribute to this troll, which is kind of sad.
But dood, you're telling me that when a card is in HIGHER demand, its price goes DOWN?! Am I reading this correctly? You're telling me, that since everyone wants Jace, the Mind Sculptor, a playset should be 1 ticket? Please explain this. Also please provide said, "article".
To say you know anything about Economics is honestly offensive. This is how Economics works: http://economistsview.typepad.com/economistsview/2008/03/stuck-in-a-bad....
This is a picture of a "fixed supply" curve. Meaning, the number of any given card in the MTGO economy is fixed. What you're describing is a free-market production, where as demand goes up, prices go down, because firms produce more. This is flawed for about 19,876,432 reasons, but I'll name the obvious and important ones.
1) MtGO has no competition. You can't "proxy" online cards, or play a different game in their economy.
This means there is a fixed supply of product, and demand is not linear (see above link)
2) When there is a limited (see: fixed) supply of something, and more people want it, THE PRICE WILL INCREASE (See: Ebay).
3) You said: "Its very simple to quantify a market for a true price." Oh yeah? How do you quantify a market? and what exactly does that mean? Are you trying to assess willingness to pay? Try Ebay, or MTGO traders, or anyother available resource that shows what cards are going for. WHAT PEOPLE PAY FOR THEM IS WHAT THEY ARE WORTH, BY DEFINITION.
4) You mess with Godot, you get the horns bro, he's an authority on all things MTGO. You've dug a troll cave, and now you can sleep in it.
Well, try mtgolibrary.
First I have to say that is an interesting deck. I personally would not play it because it is outside "my terms" of a social contract. I think the deck would be best suited for 100 singleton.
As far as the Social Contract goes online, it is hard to inforce. My vision of social contracts involve everyone to be able to have fun, enjoy magic and be sociable to one and another. The hardest part here is the social part since that is very lacking in an online format. Since socialization is terrible in MTGO, then online commander borders the line of Commander and 100 card singleton. I hope for everyone to work towards keeping commander away from that border, but I know in reality it won't happen.
So what do you do to help inforce the social contract? Play casual decks, and there is no need to define casual because we can all spot a casual deck versus a tournament/dickish deck. Avoid playing people you know have a reputation to be outside your view of the social contract. These people do have a right to play commander they way they want, but if it's not your style, avoid them. I often create games with the following in the description "No Mass ld/control/infect". This helps people to know what I am expecting you to sit down with. Sometimes people don't read the descriptions. It's gonna happen. If I join a Pick up game, and someone joins on my blocked list, then they are ussually my first target. I only put people on the block list for being jerks, not playing strong decks. There is a diference in playing a good deck and being polite, and playing a good deck and being a jerk. It's the later that ends on my blocked list.
JBK, opening with shuffler-fixing demands immediately called into question the legitimacy of your opinions on Magic Online in general. The shuffler has passed every serious, statistically-relevant test of its efficacy, so saying, "The shuffler is broken; now believe me about the MTGO economy because I say so" is like saying, "The earth is 6,000 years old; now believe me about climate change because I say so." It's not *impossible* for you to be correct about the second thing just because you are so clearly misguided about the first, but it certainly requires a lot more than your word that your subsequent claims are true.
I pointed that out, then asked reasonable, straightforward questions regarding your theories and claims, giving you a chance to provide valid arguments and support for them; I even suggested a simple way to share your article, on the assumption that it would help us better understand your position.
You respond with vicious, ham-handed ad-hominem attacks, more unsupported, suspect claims, and awkward badge-flashing (if you are at all representative of hedge-fund managers, it certainly goes a long way towards explaining the financial crisis). You have completely discredited anything useful you might have had to say on MTGO economy issues with that response.
In the time it took you to compose that reply, you could have posted your article to blogspot or the like without being "great with making websites" or knowing a lick of html; you just have to be able to cut and paste. In fact, I'll do it for you. Send your article to: jbksarticle@gmail.com. I can post your article to a blog in under five minutes, and share the link here.
At any rate, until you are ready to engage the conversation respectfully and present compelling arguments supported by evidence instead of making crazy-person rants and hurling insults, you're just embarrassing yourself.
@ Jackscifi: I wouldn't block him because he's playing discard but because he's playing a discard lock (and for clarification, I block people purely as a note to myself not to play with them). If my hand is empty and I can't draw anymore cards, all the regrowths, restocks, and/or eternal witnesses in my deck are useless. And the thing about online is there is rarely an indicator of who is playing a broken/mean/unfun deck beyond their general. Sure, it's easy to say kill the guy with Arcum or Sharuum or Uril, but beyond that knowing who the target is is hard. Sometimes you might be playing a novice opponent who has no idea what he's doing, and other times you might be playing an experienced player trying to look like a novice. There are plenty of decks that seem harmless right up until they assemble their combo in a single turn and kill/lock out everyone. I'm sure this deck will seems like a B/W goodstuff deck right before it puts down the lock. And if you don't have an answer in hand, you're pretty much screwed.
@ ShardFenix: You're right, everyone has the right to play the format the way they want. Not only the people who want a casual experience and not only the people who want a competitive, cut throat experience. I think the former group is much larger than the latter, however, so those who want a cut throat experience should be the ones who start their own game with a description explaining their interest. Most people play looking for a fun game and assume others to be doing the same. If you are interested in a slightly more vicious attitude, then make that obvious. Don't go into a game stealthily then start trying to ruin mana screwed opponents or lock people out of their colors. Part of the reason they wouldn't do that to you is because they assume you won't do it to them.
"To my knowledge there isn’t a deck like this out there yet. Whether this is ready for the tournament scene I don't know. However, somehow I doubt since it doesn’t run Force of Will and/or some form of counterspell package it may have a tough time. Having said that I don’t think it is far off. "
As far as tournament level classic goes, this is terrible, and would lose 9 times out of 10. And no the lack of force is not the problem. not a knock on the deck, ill bet its fun in cas/cas. but it would need A LOT of work to even come close to winning games against tournament level classic decks.
you talk a lot about playing a jund deck but dont even provide a deck list?
I see you make alot of bold claims about how Jund is the deck that's poised to beat the field and ramble off alot of card names but I dont see a suggested decklist and sideboard for Jund here.
A few critiques:
1) Fae while good is NOT the top deck in the format, it might be the most played but that hardly makes a deck the best.(and i would even argue it being the most played right now)
Anyhow if following EXT lately you would know that Bant's new evolution has completely shifted the meta game to the point of even pushing Valakut to be a gamble to play.
2) Quit mentioning cards that don't get used
examples: Bant does not use finest hour or or Hero, hell you didnt have them listed in the deck list you showed.
3) You mention Bant as an "easy" match but then in Naya mention that Stag is a troublesome card, why not just mention that during the Bant review you had right before the naya deck? Infact wouldn't Bant be even more problematic then Naya in the fact that they have 2 Pro black creatures compared to just one?
4) Mentioning a card as stupid never adds to a article it makes you sound jelous or bitter that you cannot afford it and or beat it. Besides Jace isn't nearly as much a problem as Gideon and their respective price movements have been reflecting it.
I was trying to stay out of this, but your comments have really bothered me. I must be of those people who you claim is too lazy or wants everything handed to me, I guess. I have wanted a bot on MTGO for a while, but I know nothing of coding or how scripting works. Twice now you have said "there are programs and tutorials for bots," but have not linked to either of those. If it's so easy, why don't you link them? I'm not trying to flame you or be a troll, but I have been looking for a good tutorial and have not found any. Again, it might have something to do with computer illiteracy issues or not using good searches. But I AM TRYING and do not consider myself lazy. I have even posted on MTG Salvation, the WotC message boards, and asked actual bot owners for help, and have gotten exactly ZERO responses on all of them. I would LOVE a nice tutorial or an easy to use software. If you know of either of those, please post them here instead of just saying "oh they're out there." Sometimes I get the attitude that those that own bots don't want to share that information because they are afraid of competition or something. That, too, is the "me first" attitude, the attitude of, "I got mine, screw everyone else."
Thanks, Interesting Format
The Jund Hackblade's are in there for the control matchups and they do pretty well there but needless to say no one can beat a shuffler that hates you, going game 1 smush opponent game 2 mana screw game 3 mana flood.
Anyhow regardless of all that congrats on your win!
As a Pauper, I totally disagree with your evaluation of "Suture Priest" - that card will be a must kill imo. Backed up with a benevolent bodyguard/flagbearer or even shelter - imagine a goblinwarrens going off with this guy on the board. You'd have a few extra turns to find your board sweepers.
Stopmy players - If sweepers become a BIG problem, you can always turn to "Wrap In Vigor"
http://www.mtgotraders.com/store/FUT_Wrap_in_Vigor.html
1) Use more pictures to avoid the college essay syndrome
2) Use the PureMTGO decklist... thingy... at http://jamuraa.com/pure/deck_new.php
3) Tell the guys at the shop I'm taking a break from paper magic since my wife's about 3 weeks from delivery
4) Keep writing :)
Yeah, that sounds like my story too. I blinked and my rating was up 250+ points.
I know it sounds crazy, but I just played so many tourneys with it for so long, that I craved playing rogue recently. The last 3-4 weeks I've just been toying with 'pet decks' and have at best been going 2-2 in the four rounders. One day this even happened with stompy! - That was quite a shock, but just goes to show how healthy the pauper meta-game is. Because of Stompy, now WW is showing up, because of that - MBC will rise etc.., The format that comes the closest to encapsulating "MAGIC" at its purest is hands-down pauper.
Personally, I think MBC and Burn are top choices for the next few weeks.
Ok then. Yeah I've played against them, I don know I lost at least one game to their 'nuts' draw, but it was a cakewalk after that.
Yeah communication is key. Unfortunately that is an area of MTGO for a variety of reasons falls flat.
Agreed 100%. I think the social contract is great in real life. It serves a function there. Online, it just provides an ability for people to whine about decks they think are unfair. The social contract as explained by sheldon is almost as vague as the concept of what is casual. Even he says it can be changed by each individual playgroup in order to maxmize their fun. So maybe Ith since his deck is so scary, isnt looking for dont play combo, wait til everyone is built up to start attacking, namby pamby, playgroups. Maybe he wants slightly more competitive opponents. If thats the case then so be it. By the words of the formats crator he isnt doing anything wrong. I mean I have a deck that casts Myojin of Night's Reach on about turn five, and then gets me about 30 or so tokens. Not everyone has to play YOUR form of Commander to the original social contract person or what you think proper commander is. Some people want a more competitive than a happy feel good let everyone play their game kinda thing. Which by the way is dumb. Even in the end the goal of Commander is too win. If I can take someone out early to increase my chances or lock them, then by god i will. Struggling on mana? Say hello to a turn 6 Terastodon destroying all of one color of your manabase. Enjoy.
I think the easiest would be to have a functional auction system. Just posting a card up in a server and putting it up for a sale is always nice. Wotc could take a fraction of the sale too. But it would never happen. It's obvious that wotc puts very very few people towards client development side. I understand the problem too. They need to literally check and code 100's of cards every few months. Cross checking them against older card is a daunting task. Not to mention the strict deadline they have to follow.
honestly you can't ignore the cost for leaving a comp on and making sure it stays on. even the electricity cost is hefty really. Using a third party server is not worth the cost for 99% of the people.
Excellent article olaw, so full and descriptive. I'd like to see you cover next week's event with the debut of Mirrodin Besieged.
First of all, thank you for your time the other day explaining to me the details and nuances of this deck. As an "above average" player (at least I like to think so) I've seen my win percentage go from 60% to 80% with this. I know I can still improve which is exciting.
The issues I have with this deck is the aggresive mulliganing, sometimes I feel like I have a 20% chance of getting flooded or screwed which I just hate. But when I don't it's GG to my opponent.
This deck is consistant, which is really nice. If you want to grind and get your ranking up and make some tix on the side I highly reccomend it. On the downside, is the amount of players who will disconnect making you wait for 10 minutes because they can't believe they lost to such a "pile".
GOOD GAME!