The problem is...once upon a time UZ drafts were not firing all that much and packs were not being busted so the prices of the chase cards were through the rough. Once people realized that UZ was a good way to sneak in a profitable rare draft if that was their thing the prices started plummeting. That is the corrective nature of the game.
Thank you for the round up. Consecrated Sphinx was the one that caught my eye first, then Gruesome Encore. Often lots of yummy things in graveyards.
I had to read Knowledge Pool a couple of times when I saw it played. Any instant in your hand for the biggest, baddest spell in the pool? Yes please... I'd always kill it if I can, though.
I've done two different Glissa decks. One just a lot of GB good stuff with a preference for artifacts (e.g. Wayfarer's Bauble nor Sylvok Replica wouldn't normally go in my green decks) and the other more Voltron style. A tooled up Glissa with Darksteel Plate and a sword (or two) can be very awkward to deal with. I prefer the Voltron deck, but doesn't win as often. Executioner's Capsule is obvious but Voyager Staff has been MVP more than once.
She's also a Zombie. Must do a tribal version, though I suspect Balthor remains the best option for that.
Just as a point of interest for those would-be entrepreneurial drafters out there, I calculated the average value of an Urza's Saga rare using the prices posted in MTGO traders. It turns out the average Urza's Saga rare is worth about $1.43, so your average take-away in rares in a draft of like-minded players will be about $4.30. Of course, there are some uncommons and commons that you can get some value for, and I didn't factor in the foil aspect, but still, it's really not a cornucopia of riches. It's just a little better than some heavily overdrafted formats.
I did liquidate my collection but I don't intend to fully quit MTGO. However, I don't intend to maintain guaranteed weekly articles as I've done for the last eight months or so.
I too enjoy the paper shops a whole lot more. So much of what is great about magic can not be recreated online. Hope you can go out and play more, possibly even get in a paper Commander game (which is a worlds difference from the cluttered, not very social, waiting every 10 minutes because some disconnected online version.)
I was there filming coverage of it but not playing. B/R vamps won it, though from our interviews even it struggled against kuldotha. The guy who won talked about trouble with U/W. I am not that knowledgeable about the current standard format but I think the vamps was kind of a mid range aggro deck where it used recursion of the blood ghasts to finish people off where other aggro decks would stall. I am not sure if U/W is something that could be quick enough to stop kuldotha or not but it may be a possibility.
I feel koth is stronger in a mono red or a ramp deck but I don't know about having him in a U/R deck. Seems a bit odd but I guess with the control you have you could stall out long enough to make strong use of him.
I just played Knowledge Pool when Hive Mind and Grip of Chaos in play. Knowledge Pool grabbed diabolic tutor from opponent's library and grabbed Fiery Gambit from mine.
I too enjoy playing at FNM. The reality is that I have five kids so going every Friday is not an option. MODO is still where I devote most of my funds. I am actually grateful for Kuldotha as I can now play a real deck at FNM every couple of weeks since UW is out of my reach irl.
Did you liquidate your entire collection? Glad you found a place to play live!
It has been almost 15 years since I played in a paper tourney but articles like these that make me wish I still had a paper collection. A new shop opened up about 10 minutes from where I live and I have yet to step inside. Maybe I should rectify that. Good stuff.
I played UB Control at the SCG in Indy. Started off hot going 4-0, then lost, then won, sitting at 5-1 I felt good about my chances, thats when tilt set in. I ended up 5-4 overall on the day. UB just gets owned by kuldotha tbh. I faced it in Indy and can honestly say it's such a tough tough matchup. Good news is, the deck is easily hated.
I am going to be sleeving up cards this friday myself with the sole intention of destroying kuldotha and aggro decks. Look at this list see what you think.
This isn't a professional publication. It is an open mic if you will. The reason the rules for publication here are lax is because the ptb want to encourage people to participate. Also keep in mind no one involved directly with this site is getting paid for editing. Josh is the content manager and imho he does a credible job at that but even so it isn't his responsibility to police articles for homonym abuse, typos and misspellings.
Could it be a little more organized and filtered? Perhaps. Would that cost someone time and money? Yep. You willing to fork over the difference? I doubt it. I'm not either. I would volunteer for the job but frankly I don't think I'd hack it for more than a month before shoving it off on someone else or just plain dropping it. Without pay it would be a headache day in and out.
Now that said I think authors owe their readers some semblance of readable formatting. If an author isn't disciplined enough to provide good formatting for their articles they should seek help with that and be willing to share some credits for the effort.
It would also be nice if there were more people who took care to find topics and content that are both interesting to read and have perhaps some in-game value. I don't mean pro-level stuff either. Casual articles on how to build for fringe formats are great for a wide segment of the Pure readership.
One other comment: Some people just lack the skill or inclination to write well in English. They are still welcome here though they may find their work excoriated by those who read it and are disappointed. That is both a benefit and hassle to writing on such a site. The instant feedback helps writers see where they err and where they excel. Unfortunately for the readers this means you get the bad with the good.
In summary, this is an entry point for magic writers. It is a needful thing that there be such points to avoid community stagnation. I am grateful to Heath and Josh and Jamuura and everyone else who is involved in the operation of pure for keeping it going. In the 2.6 years I have been reading articles here I have rarely had a day where I was completely disappointed in the content. It seems every time I turn around new articles are coming up. Not all are interesting to me but I am OK with that.
Even 6 months ago, pauper had the same price structure -not many of those cards listed in Erman's post have moved much in value in the last 6 months. In fact, Crypt Rats were 4.5 ea at one point (this time last year, if memory serves), so a pset at 7 these days is a steal!
Definitely try to research more and raise the writing bar in your articles - this one was all over the place, very choppy and not very instructive. Check out the "Welcome to Hotel Infinite" series that had a fresh article right around the time yours came out, for a better idea of what to shoot for, he designs his articles extremely well.
I think part of the reason people are being (perhaps overly?) hard on you is that this article is indicative of how often articles are getting fired out without sufficient editing/filtering on the site. Ideally someone should have responded to your first attempt with constructive suggestions for what they'd like to see in a revision, and encouraged you to resubmit with those changes in mind. But there's kind of a "everything goes" policy on here, and no editorial process to speak of (evidenced by how many misspellings right in article titles get through the editing process- Mirrodin in your title for example, but seems to be one up every couple of weeks with a blatant error).
Regardless I think the PureMTGO community needs to get a little more stringent with article requirements - ultimately we'll get more traffic, a more loyal readership, and put out a better quality publication. The lack of structure at the moment is confusing to newcomers, and when things can get through without revision and still yield 20 tix, the stage is set for encouragement of rushed articles, which isn't healthy for the site.
It's certainly viable to build a competitive Pauper deck for around $20. For each of the other formats, SudekiCd was listing the cheapest deck, not the "best" deck. True, a lot of decks that are winning tournaments are in the $40-60 range (still not bad considering what a single Jace costs), but recently MBC has been putting up a good showing and it's a $20 deck. MUC is also cheap, not very good right now but you'll see it in prizes regularly enough. Deluxeicoff's stompy deck that won the last Pauper PE is not terribly expensive either. There are myriad singles in other formats going for quite a bit more than the value of the entire deck.
I'm not trying to be a troll and my comment was aimed at anyone (and not only and especially you) who says that Pauper is cheap. As I said, it is absolutely not.
To be honest, the last time I played pauper was 6 months ago. What was meant to be said was there is competitive decks less than 20 tickets. Guess I've been out of the loop too long.
Research will be made on all accounts before submission of any type of published material.
Sorry dude but I stopped reading the article right after seeing this: "Pauper: Everything is cheap…it’s commons - Less than $20"
Really? Let's see. A playset of Ancient Spring costs $10,68. A playset of Sulfur Vent costs $7,56. A playset of any of the following cards costs $8,00: Armadillo Cloak, Rancor, Cloud of Faeires, Deep Analysis, Frantic Search, Fireblast or Diabolic Edict. A playset of Snap costs $5,00.
So with 4 Cloud of Faeries and 4 Frantic Search in your deck, you're already at $16,00. Then you add 4 Snap and your at $21,00. And you still have to add 48 more cards to your deck!
Didn't you just say in your article that everything costs less than $20,00?!
Oh and I'm not finished yet. A playset of Exclude costs $11,76. A playset of Gorilla Shaman costs $15,00!!!! A playset of Gush costs $11,00 and a playset of Lotus Petal costs $18,00!!! And finally a playset of Crypt Rats costs $7,00.
Oh and I'm not talking about Daze, Rhystic Study or Yavimaya Elder...
So people, please stop saying the same thing even though it isn't true. "Pauper is cheaper than water" is an urban legend and nothing more! Competitive Pauper IS NOT cheap; as a matter of fact, it is quite expensive.
If you say "Everything is cheap…it’s commons" then one of the following is tue:
a)You have no idea what you're talking about.
b)You are lying.
c)You are lazy and don't do a proper price search before publishing an article and making assumptions.
Now which one is it?
LE
PS: Sorry if this came harsh but I'm really sick of hearing that "Pauper is cheap" nonsense. Because it is ABSOLUTELY not!!!
Not a classic player but, it seems to me that adventuring gear seems a tad poor in this deck. My instinct is to have bonesplitter in its place but maybe I'm wrong. Anyways enjoyed the cast keep it up! :D
I have to wonder why you felt the need to flame at all. I can see not appreciating the content or the casual (read: unprofessional) nature of the article but aside from the poor formatting (a technical issue to be sure) is it really that awful you felt you must be a troll? I seriously don't see it.
The problem is...once upon a time UZ drafts were not firing all that much and packs were not being busted so the prices of the chase cards were through the rough. Once people realized that UZ was a good way to sneak in a profitable rare draft if that was their thing the prices started plummeting. That is the corrective nature of the game.
Thank you for the round up. Consecrated Sphinx was the one that caught my eye first, then Gruesome Encore. Often lots of yummy things in graveyards.
I had to read Knowledge Pool a couple of times when I saw it played. Any instant in your hand for the biggest, baddest spell in the pool? Yes please... I'd always kill it if I can, though.
I've done two different Glissa decks. One just a lot of GB good stuff with a preference for artifacts (e.g. Wayfarer's Bauble nor Sylvok Replica wouldn't normally go in my green decks) and the other more Voltron style. A tooled up Glissa with Darksteel Plate and a sword (or two) can be very awkward to deal with. I prefer the Voltron deck, but doesn't win as often. Executioner's Capsule is obvious but Voyager Staff has been MVP more than once.
She's also a Zombie. Must do a tribal version, though I suspect Balthor remains the best option for that.
I guess it was closer to a 3 than a 2. Vote a 4 here to average it out.
Just as a point of interest for those would-be entrepreneurial drafters out there, I calculated the average value of an Urza's Saga rare using the prices posted in MTGO traders. It turns out the average Urza's Saga rare is worth about $1.43, so your average take-away in rares in a draft of like-minded players will be about $4.30. Of course, there are some uncommons and commons that you can get some value for, and I didn't factor in the foil aspect, but still, it's really not a cornucopia of riches. It's just a little better than some heavily overdrafted formats.
I did liquidate my collection but I don't intend to fully quit MTGO. However, I don't intend to maintain guaranteed weekly articles as I've done for the last eight months or so.
Does this mean you are no longer playing online?
Funny. There's chaos, and then there's CHAOSSS!!!!1!!!1! Sounds like you are a fan of the latter.
I too enjoy the paper shops a whole lot more. So much of what is great about magic can not be recreated online. Hope you can go out and play more, possibly even get in a paper Commander game (which is a worlds difference from the cluttered, not very social, waiting every 10 minutes because some disconnected online version.)
I was there filming coverage of it but not playing. B/R vamps won it, though from our interviews even it struggled against kuldotha. The guy who won talked about trouble with U/W. I am not that knowledgeable about the current standard format but I think the vamps was kind of a mid range aggro deck where it used recursion of the blood ghasts to finish people off where other aggro decks would stall. I am not sure if U/W is something that could be quick enough to stop kuldotha or not but it may be a possibility.
I feel koth is stronger in a mono red or a ramp deck but I don't know about having him in a U/R deck. Seems a bit odd but I guess with the control you have you could stall out long enough to make strong use of him.
Knowledge Pool is the most awesome addition imo.
I just played Knowledge Pool when Hive Mind and Grip of Chaos in play. Knowledge Pool grabbed diabolic tutor from opponent's library and grabbed Fiery Gambit from mine.
I too enjoy playing at FNM. The reality is that I have five kids so going every Friday is not an option. MODO is still where I devote most of my funds. I am actually grateful for Kuldotha as I can now play a real deck at FNM every couple of weeks since UW is out of my reach irl.
Did you liquidate your entire collection? Glad you found a place to play live!
It has been almost 15 years since I played in a paper tourney but articles like these that make me wish I still had a paper collection. A new shop opened up about 10 minutes from where I live and I have yet to step inside. Maybe I should rectify that. Good stuff.
I played UB Control at the SCG in Indy. Started off hot going 4-0, then lost, then won, sitting at 5-1 I felt good about my chances, thats when tilt set in. I ended up 5-4 overall on the day. UB just gets owned by kuldotha tbh. I faced it in Indy and can honestly say it's such a tough tough matchup. Good news is, the deck is easily hated.
I am going to be sleeving up cards this friday myself with the sole intention of destroying kuldotha and aggro decks. Look at this list see what you think.
Lands (25)
4 Tectonic Edge
4 Scalding Tarn
1 Terramorphic Expanse
1 Halimar Depths
7 Island
8 Mountains
Planeswalkers (7)
4 Koth of the Hammer
3 Jace, the Mind Sculpter
Spells (23)
4 Lightning Bolt
1 Slagstorm
2 Pyroclasm
4 Mana Leak
2 Stoic Rebuttal
2 Ratchet Bomb
4 Sphere of the Suns
4 Preordain
Creatures (5)
4 Inferno Titan
1 Wurmcoil Engine
SB (15)
3 Arc Trail
2 Corrupted Conscience
2 Mindbreak Trap
1 Ratchet Bomb
2 Shatter
1 Pyroclasm
1 Slagstorm
1 Stoic Rebuttal
2 Spell Pierce
6-3 online in 2mans with is so far. All 3 losses were to GW GlintHawk or Mono White Glinthawk. Luckily don't think my local meta has much of that.
why give the article a 2 star....clearly a 4 or 5 star article
The thing is...
This isn't a professional publication. It is an open mic if you will. The reason the rules for publication here are lax is because the ptb want to encourage people to participate. Also keep in mind no one involved directly with this site is getting paid for editing. Josh is the content manager and imho he does a credible job at that but even so it isn't his responsibility to police articles for homonym abuse, typos and misspellings.
Could it be a little more organized and filtered? Perhaps. Would that cost someone time and money? Yep. You willing to fork over the difference? I doubt it. I'm not either. I would volunteer for the job but frankly I don't think I'd hack it for more than a month before shoving it off on someone else or just plain dropping it. Without pay it would be a headache day in and out.
Now that said I think authors owe their readers some semblance of readable formatting. If an author isn't disciplined enough to provide good formatting for their articles they should seek help with that and be willing to share some credits for the effort.
It would also be nice if there were more people who took care to find topics and content that are both interesting to read and have perhaps some in-game value. I don't mean pro-level stuff either. Casual articles on how to build for fringe formats are great for a wide segment of the Pure readership.
One other comment: Some people just lack the skill or inclination to write well in English. They are still welcome here though they may find their work excoriated by those who read it and are disappointed. That is both a benefit and hassle to writing on such a site. The instant feedback helps writers see where they err and where they excel. Unfortunately for the readers this means you get the bad with the good.
In summary, this is an entry point for magic writers. It is a needful thing that there be such points to avoid community stagnation. I am grateful to Heath and Josh and Jamuura and everyone else who is involved in the operation of pure for keeping it going. In the 2.6 years I have been reading articles here I have rarely had a day where I was completely disappointed in the content. It seems every time I turn around new articles are coming up. Not all are interesting to me but I am OK with that.
Even 6 months ago, pauper had the same price structure -not many of those cards listed in Erman's post have moved much in value in the last 6 months. In fact, Crypt Rats were 4.5 ea at one point (this time last year, if memory serves), so a pset at 7 these days is a steal!
Definitely try to research more and raise the writing bar in your articles - this one was all over the place, very choppy and not very instructive. Check out the "Welcome to Hotel Infinite" series that had a fresh article right around the time yours came out, for a better idea of what to shoot for, he designs his articles extremely well.
I think part of the reason people are being (perhaps overly?) hard on you is that this article is indicative of how often articles are getting fired out without sufficient editing/filtering on the site. Ideally someone should have responded to your first attempt with constructive suggestions for what they'd like to see in a revision, and encouraged you to resubmit with those changes in mind. But there's kind of a "everything goes" policy on here, and no editorial process to speak of (evidenced by how many misspellings right in article titles get through the editing process- Mirrodin in your title for example, but seems to be one up every couple of weeks with a blatant error).
Regardless I think the PureMTGO community needs to get a little more stringent with article requirements - ultimately we'll get more traffic, a more loyal readership, and put out a better quality publication. The lack of structure at the moment is confusing to newcomers, and when things can get through without revision and still yield 20 tix, the stage is set for encouragement of rushed articles, which isn't healthy for the site.
I am thinking anyone who didn't know this stuff already is not going infinite anyways. I love the series.
It's certainly viable to build a competitive Pauper deck for around $20. For each of the other formats, SudekiCd was listing the cheapest deck, not the "best" deck. True, a lot of decks that are winning tournaments are in the $40-60 range (still not bad considering what a single Jace costs), but recently MBC has been putting up a good showing and it's a $20 deck. MUC is also cheap, not very good right now but you'll see it in prizes regularly enough. Deluxeicoff's stompy deck that won the last Pauper PE is not terribly expensive either. There are myriad singles in other formats going for quite a bit more than the value of the entire deck.
I'm not trying to be a troll and my comment was aimed at anyone (and not only and especially you) who says that Pauper is cheap. As I said, it is absolutely not.
I hope you do better in your future articles.
LE
To be honest, the last time I played pauper was 6 months ago. What was meant to be said was there is competitive decks less than 20 tickets. Guess I've been out of the loop too long.
Research will be made on all accounts before submission of any type of published material.
I appreciate the constructed criticism.
http://www.wizards.com/Magic/Digital/MagicOnlineTourn.aspx?x=mtg/digital...
Lost the VERY first round to MBC, but won after that - quite a stressful tourney begining like that :)
They'll probably keep it up til destiny comes out and then until the next old set (Masques?) is released.
Sorry dude but I stopped reading the article right after seeing this: "Pauper: Everything is cheap…it’s commons - Less than $20"
Really? Let's see. A playset of Ancient Spring costs $10,68. A playset of Sulfur Vent costs $7,56. A playset of any of the following cards costs $8,00: Armadillo Cloak, Rancor, Cloud of Faeires, Deep Analysis, Frantic Search, Fireblast or Diabolic Edict. A playset of Snap costs $5,00.
So with 4 Cloud of Faeries and 4 Frantic Search in your deck, you're already at $16,00. Then you add 4 Snap and your at $21,00. And you still have to add 48 more cards to your deck!
Didn't you just say in your article that everything costs less than $20,00?!
Oh and I'm not finished yet. A playset of Exclude costs $11,76. A playset of Gorilla Shaman costs $15,00!!!! A playset of Gush costs $11,00 and a playset of Lotus Petal costs $18,00!!! And finally a playset of Crypt Rats costs $7,00.
Oh and I'm not talking about Daze, Rhystic Study or Yavimaya Elder...
So people, please stop saying the same thing even though it isn't true. "Pauper is cheaper than water" is an urban legend and nothing more! Competitive Pauper IS NOT cheap; as a matter of fact, it is quite expensive.
If you say "Everything is cheap…it’s commons" then one of the following is tue:
a)You have no idea what you're talking about.
b)You are lying.
c)You are lazy and don't do a proper price search before publishing an article and making assumptions.
Now which one is it?
LE
PS: Sorry if this came harsh but I'm really sick of hearing that "Pauper is cheap" nonsense. Because it is ABSOLUTELY not!!!
Not a classic player but, it seems to me that adventuring gear seems a tad poor in this deck. My instinct is to have bonesplitter in its place but maybe I'm wrong. Anyways enjoyed the cast keep it up! :D
I have to wonder why you felt the need to flame at all. I can see not appreciating the content or the casual (read: unprofessional) nature of the article but aside from the poor formatting (a technical issue to be sure) is it really that awful you felt you must be a troll? I seriously don't see it.