Very nice series Paul, I truly enjoy reading about other fellow Magic players. Oh and I know I'm causing nothing but trouble to Josh (and he knows this is true) but I'd like to use this opportunity to say hi to him. So, uhm, hi Josh! :))
Looking at the number of Workshop decks in the Top 8s of recent events (see ManaDrain.com or Morphling.de) I expect Workshop to be well over $4 for a while. Sinkhole and Maze as well. The rest suffer a bit from being restricted.
I agree with you about the general value, but it will depend a lot on how much fun this set is, or isn't, for limited. That I cannot assess just from the spoiler. I never have been able to do that. I need to actually play with the cards to figure that out.
That is correct. The good news is that there are more shorter time period events for the old weekend challenge formats.
The bad news is that WotC has gotten rid of the ridiculously generous prizes for those Weekend Challenge Events when turnout was around 24 players. Also, it's going to be very difficult to pull together 65 players for these events to fire for 100cs and standard singleton.
Still, I'm an optimist, and therefore see this change as overall good news.
This is a very nice series of articles. Keep up the good work. It's very interesting to see how other players live and dream inside and outside of this crazy little game.
AS far as I can tell, there are going to be about 20 cards that are going to be the price of a pack
These 18 are sure bets to be $4 for at least a while
10 Duals
Workshop
Sinkhole
Maze of Ith
Time Vault
Wheel of Fortune
Mana Vault
Fastbond
Library of Alexandria
and possibly some of these, though some may only be worth 1-2:
Regrowth
Stasis
Control Magic
Sol Ring
Strip Mine
Balance
Demonic Tutor
Channel
So I really don't think it'll be that tough to open a dual, or even a good card (you got about a 1 in 5 shot)
That being said, if you felt that the whole set is a money grab, Exhibit A is putting Leeches at rare. This is ridiculous pandering.
I just came back to WoW after a few months hiatus and boy did i miss trade chat!! Magic flashes but it be great if you could set it to make an alarm sound if certain criteria are met like if someone sends you a message, a draft fires, or a new rounds starts in a tournament. Then I wouldn't have to sit here and stare at the screen or waste time surfing the web while waiting for certain things to happen in game.
Nice article, I enjoyed it very much :) Only thing though, MTGO does flash when it's minimized, at least for me on Windows 7. Whenever it's my turn, or I get a PM or anything it'll flash... Ah well!
Oh and Josh, if you play WoW you know the LAST thing we want in MTGO is /trade chat XD
I really enjoy this series and I'm glad you're going to continue publishing these articles. Looking forward to the next one with Heath as anything about running a business is interesting to me. When it's speaking about Magic and business, it becomes doubly so.
Josh came across as a very respectable and devoted family man and I have much admiration for this. I like the "soft spoken" nature more than the outrageous persona that some of these players have. There were also a few characteristics of Josh that I could relate to in my own life. The fear of flying (the wife is dreaming of a family vacation to Disney but I keep pushing it back because I'm deathly scared of it) and especially the grey hairs at a young age (under 30 here :(. Good work, enjoyable read!
For someone who consistently does so well in the Tribal tournie I guess you just had a bad day at the office. Of all the mistakes you've mentioned in this article the biggest one is the tilt you went on after the draft. You seem to have labelled all your games after that as either lucky or unlucky all because you felt the draft was poor. This seems to have stopped you planning your turns properly. Rather than going - ok, this is where I am now, how do I win from here? You've gone - oh another land how unlucky I am, hope I get lucky next draw. Nowhere is this more obvious than your mulligan decisions.
Truth be told, your draft wasn't that bad. I agree with StealthBadger I think I would have taken the cyclops too but armored ascension is at least defenceable. I think your biggest mistake in this draft was no focus. As small child said in some comments to another article a little while ago you need to draft with a plan. BREAD is only going to get you so far. It certainly shouldn't be the reason for picks in the 3rd pack. I'm sorry but I don't feel you ever had a plan in this draft other than these are the colours I want. And this meant your deck was somewhat unfocused. Compare this deck to the UB and B decks you played against - both were highly synergistic.
For further reference, here are some other picks that I have questions over (I'm not saying you're wrong, just that I might have done differently - discussion teaches us all!):
a) P1P2 - as you noticed you picked the Specter and regretted it. I think the picks here are between Drake, Pack leader, or Water Servant. Having first picked the ascension your initial thoughts are you are base white to take advantage of the ascension. I'd have thought single colour cards, especially strong ones like drake and pack leader are probably more favourable than double cc cards like specter and servant at this point.
b) P1P5 - I'm not sure I understand the harbour servant pick. You have a solid white card (ascension) that needs lots of plains, you have a solid black card that needs a highish count of swamps (specter) and now you want a blue card that wants a highish count of islands too? Does this mean you were thinking of abandoning one of your earlier picks already? I know you've passed some solid green already but I think I might well have taken the Spined Wurm here. It might be a signal green is open, but even if not at least it's splashable too.
c) P2P4 - You are now solidly WG with a potential splash. You are considering blue but really only have 1 splashable card (Jace's ingenuity is not really splashable!). I know you picked the Spider here and I think it's probably a good choice, but I think I might have considered the doomblade a little more. I'm not sold on your blue splash yet, and while the spider isn't a bad card the doomblade is solid removal which is much more desirable if I'm contemplating a splash.
d) P3P3 - Now I really don't understand this. Why the whispersilk cloak over either the pegasus or the griffin. You mention it'll help your creatures break through citing Serra, Troll and Thief. But the Angel has flying and vigilance and is huge. The troll has regeneration and is huge. Neither needs the help of the cloak to get through. The thief is legitimate but it's one card. I think your deck lacked early threats, at this point I think one of the two flyers may have been better?
e) P3P8 - Augry Owl over Unsummon or Excommunicate. Ok you need creatures and the owl isn't terrible. But it's also not a great splash. The excommunicate is more appropriate and even the unsummon is stronger I think?
As to the games, most of your luck could be put down to the deck building - and your mana base in general. I don't think the blue splash was really worth it. Your splashes are Thief, Owl and Jace's ingenuity (double UU!). The thief is ok with the cloak and the ascension but still not great in this deck. But the owl and the double casting cost ingenuity, with only 3!?! islands. I think that was probably asking for trouble. At least one of your hands may have been playable if the islands had been something else. Also you only have 14 creatures. I'd have thought the inspired charge is really more suited to quick swarms than single creatures such as is the case in your deck. I think at least I may have played the Brindle Boar over one of the splash or the charge.
Again for reference, other game issues I noticed:
a) M1G1 - Cloud elemental can only block flyers. Your white knight is free to continue swinging.
b) M1G1 - Your angel ended up on top because you cast Cultivate which shuffled your library. Now that was unlucky.
c) M2G2 - Black's discard is duress (non-creatures) and specter (your choice) and mind rot (again your choice). The turn before your opponent you cast the griffin with 3 cards in hand. I think I would have used the plummet on his specter rather than cast the griffin that turn, knowing that it was unlikely he would be able to get the rid of the griffin in my hand. Hindsight is 20/20 though right?
d) M2G2 - You equipped the troll with the cloak but I think maybe you should have equipped the cloak to the companion and swung with both! I know you win this game but the two swinging would have left you in a much better position that just swinging with the troll had he have drawn some game swinging card like corrupt the next turn.
e) M2G3 - Man do I understand when you said you regretted discarding the basilisk. You had 3 mana in hand and a cultivate that would have had the basilisk out on turn 4. I appreciate you regretted it, but I just don't understand with only 14 creatures in your deck and an admitted dislike of bounce what possessed you to ditch that rather than the excomunicate? Especially as the only creature on his side that you could bounce was the Specter?!? Oh well.
Thanks for reading Xaos. I've been having a lot of fun in the league, even though I didn't get to play much last week. I'll make another donation to the league for the next week, I'll hit you up online when I see you.
It's a good thing the program has been off the government radar (hopefully) because if they had to do away with the current prize structures, I don't see how it could survive.
Thanks for pointing this out, I didn't even think about it. With the ability to win 5 packs in 2-20 minutes, the pack generating ability for skilled players that week is quite high. The ten ticket buy in, especially for the gold queues could have put a serious damper in some people's ticket reserve. I have that "keep going" mentality and I know I've been at the wrong end of the regular two man queues where it seems like a small fortune is gone in a few hours time if I went on a bad losing streak.
It's too bad that they didn't put a date range on the "Most Tickets Won" feature because they've updated it from yesterday with the leader winning 340 packs up until this point. I don't know if this figure refreshes itself daily/bi daily or for what specific date range it is. Still a neat thing to look at though.
First picking armored ascension over cyclops gladiator seems really really wrong to me. I get that you picked it because the RRR cost seems like a strong commitment to red on your first pick, but armored ascension isn't splashable either (I think it's easiest to imagine that it costs 1WWW, as if you're getting less than +3/+3 from it I don't think it's worth it), so by picking it you're declaring a strong commitment to white.
Personally, I think if I had opened that pack, the two cards I'd be deciding between would be the cyclops and scroll thief. I'm pretty sure I'd end up taking the cyclops, as I regard it as a near-bomb.
Am I the only one getting this wrong or the only one getting this right? Tricky. The way I read the format change announcment is that the weekend challenges are replaced by 12 events. One of them, the Saturday 10 AM one, is a Premier Event which in the new structure has a 65 player minimum. The other ELEVEN events, however, are Daily Events and will have a 24 player minimum.
edit: missed an important point here :-)Thx dunkle_stille for correcting me!
Your comment: "Which is pretty nice, all things considered. The immediate issue of course is what about the fringe formats like Extended? Well, they are probably never going to fire these unless it's also a PTQ.Other than that, the Expected Value of these events is pretty solid if they fire with only the minimum number of players and get progressively worse as more and more join past that minimum. Which is indicative of pretty much every fixed prize structure queue we have." Nothing good about that for me.
Beside that a very good and usefull article as always!
Well, the new system pays out to t32 instead of t8 only... so actually more players win packs. It's a step frontwart - if WotC wouldn't have made 2 steps backwards I mean. A minimum of 65 is way too high. I understood when they changed it for the first time, as a 5 round event doesn't feel premier enough, but now they went a bit over the top. It's hard to always get 65 people for T2 and impossible for any other format ( Pauper could do it from time to time, though ).
Hard to make things perfect on your first go, it's a bit busy looking but very detailed which in balance is better than many of the articles I see online.
It's been awhile for me drafting and I never seem to have the same opinion as others as to what the correct picks are, especially in base sets for some reason (maybe because I rarely play base set drafts) Invariably blue white is the strongest of color combos in these sets so that's never a bad way to go, though I wish it weren't so dominant since I think it gets kind of boring.
With 3 forests I don't think I'd play companion or basilisk. If you can't play it consistently early and late it isn't a huge presence then it's no good imo. Negate and harbor servant seem pretty good instead.
Friggen almost 500 boosters in one week on one account =P, It's a good thing Wizards/Hasbro has enough cash to bribe government officials and keep MTGO alive lol. (I don't know the actual mechanism of this game being kept off of ole Mr. Gov's radar, but hey, not like I want the gravy train to stop, it's the limited gambling that keeps singles flowing into the secondary market =))
I've always liked asymmetrical deck builds (like creatureless decks that can board wipe) though I can't say I've liked control much for awhile.
Surely it's been great having you in the league (sorry for calling you "surely" though =P)
Keep in mind that last week there were the gold and standard queues that surely increased the number of packs that top players won compared to average.
Ok, and if you want to play a game where you dont invest money in the cards, just play poker ... not magic.Once that said, one could just put the discussion level a bit higher and more constructive.
There's 2 importants elements magic is mixing : usage value and exchange value, as related in many economics theories. Your exemple only relates the first one although my reply only relates the second one. Both of these exemples just do not make any sense as mtg logic is a part of the both, not only one of these.
What greyes3 explained just above is perfectly fine. And I could add to that, that one could analyze the consequences of dual reprints : it increases the prices of many other key cards needed to eternal format. It decreases the interest of many eternal player to play med4 drafts. It relativly increases standard card prices so it does not push players to enter into eternal format that much,as it is too risky to get key cards at high price if their price could fall this way, without any form of compensation compared to standard prices. Good move ? I highly doubt of it.
The people who had a lot of duals are generally disappointed (and rightfully so) while the people who didn't have them are happy that they can buy them cheaper. While from a legal standpoint WotC can "print" whatever they want online, from a business standpoint it doesn't always make it the correct move.
The customers that were actually spending more money on duals in the first place are now possibly, more likely to spend less money in the future, knowing that their cards won't retain value. Granted, these cheaper duals might reel in more eternal players (which means more money for WotC), they've lost a bit of trust from their bigger spenders. So the question becomes, which will make the company more money; the group of the bigger spenders, or a lot of smaller spenders?
Interestingly enough, dual lands were hardly the barrier for competitive eternal play. If you want to play anything blue you need a set of Forces, and probably Wastelands. I don't see what this accomplished at all. They literally wasted ME4's design space, when they could have just put up more ME123 drafts if they wanted to get more duals into the system.
When you buy property or play the stock market there are no guarantees they will retain value, just like when you buy Magic cards online there are no guarantees they will retain value. I fail to see the logic in your analogy. Obviously the old duals still have value, it's just a question of how much value.
I think you're exactly right on that - unlike most formats, it's harder to force infect than any 'normal' color/archetype, due to the low numbers of actually playable infect creatures (and few ways to give a counter outside combat). If it's not there, it's just not there.
The weird thing about infect is that you don't need 17 creatures, which seems counter-intuitive for an attack deck - some of the best decks I've had worked with 12 or 13 creatures, possibly a Carrion Call, and enough removal/tricks/proliferate/equipment to force through the 10.
Instead of taking do-nothing Chrome Steeds (see: Mike Jacobs' article today about this, I think he's exactly right) out of dry packs P1P1, I've been yanking Cystbearers instead, because they're surprisingly fine in non-infect "big green" decks too, buying time and altering the way opponents play. Also, Necropede is amazing everywhere. Might be something to consider - it doesn't have to be Hand or Skitheryx or anything to start down the path.
if you want to invest money then play the stock market or buy property...not magic cards. if you are still enjoying playing with your duals then obviously they still have value.
Very nice series Paul, I truly enjoy reading about other fellow Magic players. Oh and I know I'm causing nothing but trouble to Josh (and he knows this is true) but I'd like to use this opportunity to say hi to him. So, uhm, hi Josh! :))
LE
Looking at the number of Workshop decks in the Top 8s of recent events (see ManaDrain.com or Morphling.de) I expect Workshop to be well over $4 for a while. Sinkhole and Maze as well. The rest suffer a bit from being restricted.
I agree with you about the general value, but it will depend a lot on how much fun this set is, or isn't, for limited. That I cannot assess just from the spoiler. I never have been able to do that. I need to actually play with the cards to figure that out.
That is correct. The good news is that there are more shorter time period events for the old weekend challenge formats.
The bad news is that WotC has gotten rid of the ridiculously generous prizes for those Weekend Challenge Events when turnout was around 24 players. Also, it's going to be very difficult to pull together 65 players for these events to fire for 100cs and standard singleton.
Still, I'm an optimist, and therefore see this change as overall good news.
This is a very nice series of articles. Keep up the good work. It's very interesting to see how other players live and dream inside and outside of this crazy little game.
MED2 1:16 (5/80)
MED3 1:14 (5/70)
MED4 1:10.5 (10/105)
It has never been easier to open a dual.
AS far as I can tell, there are going to be about 20 cards that are going to be the price of a pack
These 18 are sure bets to be $4 for at least a while
10 Duals
Workshop
Sinkhole
Maze of Ith
Time Vault
Wheel of Fortune
Mana Vault
Fastbond
Library of Alexandria
and possibly some of these, though some may only be worth 1-2:
Regrowth
Stasis
Control Magic
Sol Ring
Strip Mine
Balance
Demonic Tutor
Channel
So I really don't think it'll be that tough to open a dual, or even a good card (you got about a 1 in 5 shot)
That being said, if you felt that the whole set is a money grab, Exhibit A is putting Leeches at rare. This is ridiculous pandering.
I just came back to WoW after a few months hiatus and boy did i miss trade chat!! Magic flashes but it be great if you could set it to make an alarm sound if certain criteria are met like if someone sends you a message, a draft fires, or a new rounds starts in a tournament. Then I wouldn't have to sit here and stare at the screen or waste time surfing the web while waiting for certain things to happen in game.
Nice article, I enjoyed it very much :) Only thing though, MTGO does flash when it's minimized, at least for me on Windows 7. Whenever it's my turn, or I get a PM or anything it'll flash... Ah well!
Oh and Josh, if you play WoW you know the LAST thing we want in MTGO is /trade chat XD
I really enjoy this series and I'm glad you're going to continue publishing these articles. Looking forward to the next one with Heath as anything about running a business is interesting to me. When it's speaking about Magic and business, it becomes doubly so.
Josh came across as a very respectable and devoted family man and I have much admiration for this. I like the "soft spoken" nature more than the outrageous persona that some of these players have. There were also a few characteristics of Josh that I could relate to in my own life. The fear of flying (the wife is dreaming of a family vacation to Disney but I keep pushing it back because I'm deathly scared of it) and especially the grey hairs at a young age (under 30 here :(. Good work, enjoyable read!
For someone who consistently does so well in the Tribal tournie I guess you just had a bad day at the office. Of all the mistakes you've mentioned in this article the biggest one is the tilt you went on after the draft. You seem to have labelled all your games after that as either lucky or unlucky all because you felt the draft was poor. This seems to have stopped you planning your turns properly. Rather than going - ok, this is where I am now, how do I win from here? You've gone - oh another land how unlucky I am, hope I get lucky next draw. Nowhere is this more obvious than your mulligan decisions.
Truth be told, your draft wasn't that bad. I agree with StealthBadger I think I would have taken the cyclops too but armored ascension is at least defenceable. I think your biggest mistake in this draft was no focus. As small child said in some comments to another article a little while ago you need to draft with a plan. BREAD is only going to get you so far. It certainly shouldn't be the reason for picks in the 3rd pack. I'm sorry but I don't feel you ever had a plan in this draft other than these are the colours I want. And this meant your deck was somewhat unfocused. Compare this deck to the UB and B decks you played against - both were highly synergistic.
For further reference, here are some other picks that I have questions over (I'm not saying you're wrong, just that I might have done differently - discussion teaches us all!):
a) P1P2 - as you noticed you picked the Specter and regretted it. I think the picks here are between Drake, Pack leader, or Water Servant. Having first picked the ascension your initial thoughts are you are base white to take advantage of the ascension. I'd have thought single colour cards, especially strong ones like drake and pack leader are probably more favourable than double cc cards like specter and servant at this point.
b) P1P5 - I'm not sure I understand the harbour servant pick. You have a solid white card (ascension) that needs lots of plains, you have a solid black card that needs a highish count of swamps (specter) and now you want a blue card that wants a highish count of islands too? Does this mean you were thinking of abandoning one of your earlier picks already? I know you've passed some solid green already but I think I might well have taken the Spined Wurm here. It might be a signal green is open, but even if not at least it's splashable too.
c) P2P4 - You are now solidly WG with a potential splash. You are considering blue but really only have 1 splashable card (Jace's ingenuity is not really splashable!). I know you picked the Spider here and I think it's probably a good choice, but I think I might have considered the doomblade a little more. I'm not sold on your blue splash yet, and while the spider isn't a bad card the doomblade is solid removal which is much more desirable if I'm contemplating a splash.
d) P3P3 - Now I really don't understand this. Why the whispersilk cloak over either the pegasus or the griffin. You mention it'll help your creatures break through citing Serra, Troll and Thief. But the Angel has flying and vigilance and is huge. The troll has regeneration and is huge. Neither needs the help of the cloak to get through. The thief is legitimate but it's one card. I think your deck lacked early threats, at this point I think one of the two flyers may have been better?
e) P3P8 - Augry Owl over Unsummon or Excommunicate. Ok you need creatures and the owl isn't terrible. But it's also not a great splash. The excommunicate is more appropriate and even the unsummon is stronger I think?
As to the games, most of your luck could be put down to the deck building - and your mana base in general. I don't think the blue splash was really worth it. Your splashes are Thief, Owl and Jace's ingenuity (double UU!). The thief is ok with the cloak and the ascension but still not great in this deck. But the owl and the double casting cost ingenuity, with only 3!?! islands. I think that was probably asking for trouble. At least one of your hands may have been playable if the islands had been something else. Also you only have 14 creatures. I'd have thought the inspired charge is really more suited to quick swarms than single creatures such as is the case in your deck. I think at least I may have played the Brindle Boar over one of the splash or the charge.
Again for reference, other game issues I noticed:
a) M1G1 - Cloud elemental can only block flyers. Your white knight is free to continue swinging.
b) M1G1 - Your angel ended up on top because you cast Cultivate which shuffled your library. Now that was unlucky.
c) M2G2 - Black's discard is duress (non-creatures) and specter (your choice) and mind rot (again your choice). The turn before your opponent you cast the griffin with 3 cards in hand. I think I would have used the plummet on his specter rather than cast the griffin that turn, knowing that it was unlikely he would be able to get the rid of the griffin in my hand. Hindsight is 20/20 though right?
d) M2G2 - You equipped the troll with the cloak but I think maybe you should have equipped the cloak to the companion and swung with both! I know you win this game but the two swinging would have left you in a much better position that just swinging with the troll had he have drawn some game swinging card like corrupt the next turn.
e) M2G3 - Man do I understand when you said you regretted discarding the basilisk. You had 3 mana in hand and a cultivate that would have had the basilisk out on turn 4. I appreciate you regretted it, but I just don't understand with only 14 creatures in your deck and an admitted dislike of bounce what possessed you to ditch that rather than the excomunicate? Especially as the only creature on his side that you could bounce was the Specter?!? Oh well.
Nice article, nice interview.
Have not seen CRT monitors for years.
Thanks for reading Xaos. I've been having a lot of fun in the league, even though I didn't get to play much last week. I'll make another donation to the league for the next week, I'll hit you up online when I see you.
It's a good thing the program has been off the government radar (hopefully) because if they had to do away with the current prize structures, I don't see how it could survive.
Thanks for pointing this out, I didn't even think about it. With the ability to win 5 packs in 2-20 minutes, the pack generating ability for skilled players that week is quite high. The ten ticket buy in, especially for the gold queues could have put a serious damper in some people's ticket reserve. I have that "keep going" mentality and I know I've been at the wrong end of the regular two man queues where it seems like a small fortune is gone in a few hours time if I went on a bad losing streak.
It's too bad that they didn't put a date range on the "Most Tickets Won" feature because they've updated it from yesterday with the leader winning 340 packs up until this point. I don't know if this figure refreshes itself daily/bi daily or for what specific date range it is. Still a neat thing to look at though.
First picking armored ascension over cyclops gladiator seems really really wrong to me. I get that you picked it because the RRR cost seems like a strong commitment to red on your first pick, but armored ascension isn't splashable either (I think it's easiest to imagine that it costs 1WWW, as if you're getting less than +3/+3 from it I don't think it's worth it), so by picking it you're declaring a strong commitment to white.
Personally, I think if I had opened that pack, the two cards I'd be deciding between would be the cyclops and scroll thief. I'm pretty sure I'd end up taking the cyclops, as I regard it as a near-bomb.
Am I the only one getting this wrong or the only one getting this right? Tricky. The way I read the format change announcment is that the weekend challenges are replaced by 12 events. One of them, the Saturday 10 AM one, is a Premier Event which in the new structure has a 65 player minimum. The other ELEVEN events, however, are Daily Events and will have a 24 player minimum.
see
http://www.wizards.com/magic/digital/magiconline.aspx?x=mtg/digital/magi...
and
pauper:
http://wizards.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/wizards.cfg/php/enduser/std_adp.php?...
classic:
http://wizards.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/wizards.cfg/php/enduser/std_adp.php?...
100cS:
http://wizards.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/wizards.cfg/php/enduser/std_adp.php?...
changes to the Premier Events:
edit: missed an important point here :-)Thx dunkle_stille for correcting me!
Your comment: "Which is pretty nice, all things considered. The immediate issue of course is what about the fringe formats like Extended? Well, they are probably never going to fire these unless it's also a PTQ.Other than that, the Expected Value of these events is pretty solid if they fire with only the minimum number of players and get progressively worse as more and more join past that minimum. Which is indicative of pretty much every fixed prize structure queue we have." Nothing good about that for me.
Beside that a very good and usefull article as always!
Well, the new system pays out to t32 instead of t8 only... so actually more players win packs. It's a step frontwart - if WotC wouldn't have made 2 steps backwards I mean. A minimum of 65 is way too high. I understood when they changed it for the first time, as a 5 round event doesn't feel premier enough, but now they went a bit over the top. It's hard to always get 65 people for T2 and impossible for any other format ( Pauper could do it from time to time, though ).
Very professional article. formating, organization etc.
The interview itself is very interesting with unique details.
Thx for doing it guys!
No worries Flie,
Hard to make things perfect on your first go, it's a bit busy looking but very detailed which in balance is better than many of the articles I see online.
It's been awhile for me drafting and I never seem to have the same opinion as others as to what the correct picks are, especially in base sets for some reason (maybe because I rarely play base set drafts) Invariably blue white is the strongest of color combos in these sets so that's never a bad way to go, though I wish it weren't so dominant since I think it gets kind of boring.
With 3 forests I don't think I'd play companion or basilisk. If you can't play it consistently early and late it isn't a huge presence then it's no good imo. Negate and harbor servant seem pretty good instead.
Welcome to the writer's club =)
X-
Holy online gambling Drbenwayy!,
Friggen almost 500 boosters in one week on one account =P, It's a good thing Wizards/Hasbro has enough cash to bribe government officials and keep MTGO alive lol. (I don't know the actual mechanism of this game being kept off of ole Mr. Gov's radar, but hey, not like I want the gravy train to stop, it's the limited gambling that keeps singles flowing into the secondary market =))
I've always liked asymmetrical deck builds (like creatureless decks that can board wipe) though I can't say I've liked control much for awhile.
Surely it's been great having you in the league (sorry for calling you "surely" though =P)
X-
Keep in mind that last week there were the gold and standard queues that surely increased the number of packs that top players won compared to average.
Apologies on the Title which should say 11/18-11/24. I spent the time to edit the article and then forget one of the most important parts :(.
Ok, and if you want to play a game where you dont invest money in the cards, just play poker ... not magic.Once that said, one could just put the discussion level a bit higher and more constructive.
There's 2 importants elements magic is mixing : usage value and exchange value, as related in many economics theories. Your exemple only relates the first one although my reply only relates the second one. Both of these exemples just do not make any sense as mtg logic is a part of the both, not only one of these.
What greyes3 explained just above is perfectly fine. And I could add to that, that one could analyze the consequences of dual reprints : it increases the prices of many other key cards needed to eternal format. It decreases the interest of many eternal player to play med4 drafts. It relativly increases standard card prices so it does not push players to enter into eternal format that much,as it is too risky to get key cards at high price if their price could fall this way, without any form of compensation compared to standard prices. Good move ? I highly doubt of it.
The people who had a lot of duals are generally disappointed (and rightfully so) while the people who didn't have them are happy that they can buy them cheaper. While from a legal standpoint WotC can "print" whatever they want online, from a business standpoint it doesn't always make it the correct move.
The customers that were actually spending more money on duals in the first place are now possibly, more likely to spend less money in the future, knowing that their cards won't retain value. Granted, these cheaper duals might reel in more eternal players (which means more money for WotC), they've lost a bit of trust from their bigger spenders. So the question becomes, which will make the company more money; the group of the bigger spenders, or a lot of smaller spenders?
Interestingly enough, dual lands were hardly the barrier for competitive eternal play. If you want to play anything blue you need a set of Forces, and probably Wastelands. I don't see what this accomplished at all. They literally wasted ME4's design space, when they could have just put up more ME123 drafts if they wanted to get more duals into the system.
When you buy property or play the stock market there are no guarantees they will retain value, just like when you buy Magic cards online there are no guarantees they will retain value. I fail to see the logic in your analogy. Obviously the old duals still have value, it's just a question of how much value.
I think you're exactly right on that - unlike most formats, it's harder to force infect than any 'normal' color/archetype, due to the low numbers of actually playable infect creatures (and few ways to give a counter outside combat). If it's not there, it's just not there.
The weird thing about infect is that you don't need 17 creatures, which seems counter-intuitive for an attack deck - some of the best decks I've had worked with 12 or 13 creatures, possibly a Carrion Call, and enough removal/tricks/proliferate/equipment to force through the 10.
Instead of taking do-nothing Chrome Steeds (see: Mike Jacobs' article today about this, I think he's exactly right) out of dry packs P1P1, I've been yanking Cystbearers instead, because they're surprisingly fine in non-infect "big green" decks too, buying time and altering the way opponents play. Also, Necropede is amazing everywhere. Might be something to consider - it doesn't have to be Hand or Skitheryx or anything to start down the path.
if you want to invest money then play the stock market or buy property...not magic cards. if you are still enjoying playing with your duals then obviously they still have value.