The consternation felt by the 100cs crew was also felt by others (TWL for example, Moat? Really? Disenchant disagrees with this banning.) put in the same bucket by the randomness of the current ban list. Not only were they inexplicable from any common sense point of view, no justification was forthcoming. Love the arrogance involved in that.
It is not at all hard to check for legality in Heirloom. Merely look up the fairly well maintained list on this very site (in the forums) or at the site set up by Nagarjuna. Both sites have the legal list for the month. Some updates do occur but they are handsful and easily tracked once you see what is currently legal.
I mentally group "promos" with "duel decks/theme decks" in my head in that they're both non-draftable ways to get cards online. I hadn't realized that they did draw a distinction for pauper.
Frankly, I think non-draftable sets should have no impact on pauper whatsoever. I can see allowing Gush, Daze, and Invigorate, etc. simply because we know we are guaranteed to get them in the next 18 months or so as commons. But allowing Serrated Arrows always rubbed me the wrong way. When exactly was that ever common online?
I don't know if there are others like that - printed at common in special sets, but with zero plans to release them online as a common in a draftable set. Some of the Ice Age/Alliances cards, I bet. I wish WotC would take a hard look at those, or we're going to be at the mercy of their arbitrary made-up rarities for these sets forever.
Thanks for clarifying about the difference, though!
I went from going to "draft like crazy" (if MED4 included Power 9) to "not going to draft at all". Surely someone of these "higher ups" should have realized most people would feel this way and just went forward with printing the P9. This is an unmitigated disaster for WoTC. MED sets were already terrible limited formats and not including anything of significance to the car pool other than LoA, Workshop and a couple others is not enough to drive sales. If I have any interest in those cards, I'll simply buy them from MTGOtraders or another bot using the money I had considered allocating for drafting to those few cards that are any good. Talk about getting coal in your stocking!
I also fall into the middle class spike category, but I think in a totally different direction than you. For me, I want to win all the time, but not only do I want to win, I want to win on the biggest stage that my personal life allows. I don't see those fringe formats you mentioned satisfying my hunger for not only being the best, but also beating the best at the formats most played by the highest competition. For the longest time my passion fell with Legacy, but lately I've been on a standard kick. Playing in daily events is very difficult due to life circumstances, but I find I can be highly competitive in the standard environment playing in 2 mans and 8 man tournaments.
Good article as usual, just don't think I agree with your thought process about fringe formats and PRE, they just don't seem to quench my thirst like mainstream formats do.
I was looking at the top 8 decks of recent SoM Block Daily and Premier events yesterday. There were a lot of Blue/White Control decks similar to yours, a couple artifact tempered steel builds, some variations of Red using Koth, some Red/Black, a couple poisen decks, and some Mono Blue Artifact. I would say that Blue/White control was over 50% of the decks.
Love your articles and I'm glad you are back, one thing though about pauper legal cards. Blue elemental blast is not pauper legal because it is only released online as a promo at common. Same thing with Kird ape, and fireball. The policy right now now is that promo printings do not effect pauper legality. Duel decks and theme decks are fine however, which is how we get snuff out, blastoderm, invigorate, gush, daze and others.
Man I love entertaining deductive reasoning! But I think the reason duals were included wasn't just to round out the set, but to make them easier to get to sell packs and make eternal formats more accessible.
Alchor's a bad card in general, and near useless in this set... but it does do something unique. No other card in Magic can change the color of something else permanently to any color, except Prismatic Lace, and that's not repeatable. I think it deserves a place online, though I think it would have been fine as an uncommon in a set with more uncommon color hosers. (*cough* Virtue' Ruin and Nature's Ruin *cough*)
It's kind of an administrative nightmare in paper. "Let's see, these 3 swamps are Christmas colors, Red, Green, and White. I have 3 black tokens, 2 saprolings and a camarid, then two white camarids and a red eldrazi token. Got all that?" Here online, we'll actually be able to see what it's doing.
Great article. Your thoughts on Magic Online and the whole Big Fish in a small pond is pretty much the same as mine. I like creating Big Hairy idea decks that catch people by surprise. You simply can't do that in standard unless you have a playtest group and more free time than any of us with jobs and kid(s) can afford. Standard deckbuilding is also all about tweaking a couple cards or creating the perfect sideboard plan. That's just not really how I want to spend my time.
The bannings of Survival, Top, and Mind Twist came in less than a day after I submitted this article. I'm actually in the process of writing another article on the 100 singleton bannings along with how I predict the metagame will shift because of them.
The short story is that the bannings are at best inconsistant and at worst random. I believe 100 singleton should have powerful game-changing cards in it. Certainly these three cards fit into those categories as do many other cards that are equally strong. We have a metagame with viable decks of every color combination that appeal to everyone, why mess with that? Top and Mind Twist probably won't shift the meta-game around much as they are often just added to every deck that can support them. Survival on the other hand has roughly 3-4 separate and distinct decktypes that build around that card. Banning survival will mean that the players playing those decks (myself included) will simply move to other major decktypes such as Naya or Elf Armageddon or Scapeshift. It will constrict the metagame and you will see less variety in the decklists.
If you want to look on the bright side of things, banning Top will probably speed up games. :-)
Rpitcher, deck building for Heirloom is a subject I will write about next week. I will have a few nice tips for those who want to build some quick decks for the format.
For now all I can say is that I built my very first Heirloom deck within 10 minutes just before the tournament was about to start and went 2-1 that day. Had I more time to prepare, I would definately ended up with a nice 3-0. I don't want to get into that subject too much now, but there are ways to build quick Heirloom decks (which I'll write about next week).
Good article here, I like the breakdown of the decks in the beginning (great for a new player) and then the focus on the two decks later in the article. I know there is a lot of commotion that Survival should be banned in Vintage but I was wondering what do you think about new 100 Singleton Bannings? Top, Survival, and Mind Twist?
The Tribal Apocalypse PRE starts at GMT 18:00, asuming you are in Taipei (GMT +8) the event starts at 2 AM... But keep in mind that it is not THAT long. Only 3 Rounds, and tribal is pretty fast, the event would probably be over by 4 AM.
Nice article. Much of it should be interesting/useful for lot of readers, as (I beleive) the Magic Middle Class is the biggest demographic in the game. A lot of Casuals and Pros edge into the Middle Class during their Magic lives at some point, too.
Hierloom is for real, but I don't agree that it's a format for someone with limited time to play Magic. Well, not if they enjoy coming up with their own decks or tweaks. (We know you do!) Checking for legality in the format is tedious! I guess as one becomes more experienced at Heirloom, it becomes easier to know which cards are allowed or not. I'm not knocking the format! It's way-cool, but outside of "borrowing" a recent hot Hierloom deck, the format (imho)is not for "those who like to win but have only a limited amount of time."
I'd add Alchor's Tomb to your list of card that don't make the cut. It's a pretty crappy rare to begin with that doesn't even seem to have a purpose for limited in the set. There just aren't that many cards included that care about color. The knights and the elemental blasts are about all I can find.
"The more I play online the more I realize I am not the spike I used to be. If I ever really was." <-- This really resonates with me. I love to rip people apart with unfair decks in the TP room, but I'm not so much a Spike that I need to enter tournaments. Also, I get just as much a kick out of cheesy Pauper decks and crazy Commander shenanigans. My trouble is that I want to do and try everything and end up playing very little. Like others, I haven't the time to play all too much and when I do have time, I find I'm building decks, watching others play cool new formats I'm interested in, or reading about Magic. =/ I need to change that.
PREs sound like a lot of fun, but for me living in East Asia, they're usually beginning around midnight. =/
The more I play online the more I realize I am not the spike I used to be. If I ever really was. So much of this article is not directed towards me but I identify with most of it anyway. Grats on winning the 17(??!!) tix. You certainly play hard enough to have earned every last one.
Nice title bar logo. The only change I would make perhaps is to add beveled corners to the outside to match the bevels inside. (And probably add a rounded border around that in a light but not white color. Nice break downs. :) Good to see you writing again.
I think that while you're justifying the picks reasonably, you need to step back and think about this: Turn to Slag kills 98% of the format. Artisan is not quite a bomb, and dies to virtually every removal in the format. Shield/Staff is more subjective, but I love shield a ton.
Finally, think about how the rest of the draft played out:
If you'd taken Slag, Arc trail becomes a windmill slam (and PROBABLY) should have been anyway. It is better than Scrapmelter at getting you to turn 5+, when your theoretical 5+cc bombs and removal can take over and dominate.
I think that I would have drafted my entire deck around living long enough to wreck people with the 2-3 amazing 6CC+ cards; Arc Trail, Slag, and Shield all focus on that more than the picks you made (in my opinion).
When the Turn to Slag came around, I was still mistakenly thinking I was heading towards green/blue splashing red, when I should have already realized my deck was meant to be red/green.
That said, in both the case of the shield and the slag, I at least got a card for my deck that was at a comparable power level, not something way below. If the Artisan isn't killed, he can actually hold back multiple attackers by sitting there with open mana, whereas the Turn To Slag just shuts down one (and sometimes a two for one if they have equipment). The Artisan also did win me my last game - though if I'd had Turn to Slag in that slot, it likely would have put me in a winning position in some game too.
The shield over lifestaff is a strong case, I think. Put on a good blocker, it can again be holding back multiple defenders in some situations, which will often be better for buying time than the lifestaff will be. I think Accorder's Shield is better than most people realize, and should be picked a bit higher than most people are taking it now.
I do love to put Lifestaff on a Tangle Angler, though. Also it goes up a little in value in a deck that has multiple sacrifice effects. I agree Shield looks better in this draft, though, in hindsight. I think Turn to Slag edges out Artisan slightly as well, though that's a closer call. Sometimes Artisan is a bomb. Slag is one of the few answers to some of the biggest bomb creatures, and it's still very good against anyone that doesn't have those.
I would say "Glad to hear it's not just me", but I would rather not see more people having problems with it. I would rather everybody get just exactly the results they intend out of the card!
I agree the declare attackers style interface would be better. Hope you'll manage to get both uses out of it next time you have one, and I hope I will also!
Oh god, really? What horrible user interface design! Maybe if there were a huge popup in the MIDDLE of the screen that says "I AM AUTOADVANCING YOU TO THE SECOND PROLIFERATE EFFECT NOW" that could be "less bad", but I assume any mode change indicator is over in the text window on one side, or the modal stuff indicator at the other side, whereas your attention is focused on the middle of the screen where you'll likely miss it.
But this interface is still unacceptable, because you might have times when you pick 5 out of 5 targets, think a little more, and want to unselect one of them and just do 4 and then click ok.
Knowing that the interface is that bad, and I really and truly didn't click twice, I'm almost tempted to file for event compensation. But I'm not going to, and hey I got two boosters out of it - really what I want is for them to fix this bad interface design to work better and cause fewer user screwups.
The consternation felt by the 100cs crew was also felt by others (TWL for example, Moat? Really? Disenchant disagrees with this banning.) put in the same bucket by the randomness of the current ban list. Not only were they inexplicable from any common sense point of view, no justification was forthcoming. Love the arrogance involved in that.
It is not at all hard to check for legality in Heirloom. Merely look up the fairly well maintained list on this very site (in the forums) or at the site set up by Nagarjuna. Both sites have the legal list for the month. Some updates do occur but they are handsful and easily tracked once you see what is currently legal.
I mentally group "promos" with "duel decks/theme decks" in my head in that they're both non-draftable ways to get cards online. I hadn't realized that they did draw a distinction for pauper.
Frankly, I think non-draftable sets should have no impact on pauper whatsoever. I can see allowing Gush, Daze, and Invigorate, etc. simply because we know we are guaranteed to get them in the next 18 months or so as commons. But allowing Serrated Arrows always rubbed me the wrong way. When exactly was that ever common online?
I don't know if there are others like that - printed at common in special sets, but with zero plans to release them online as a common in a draftable set. Some of the Ice Age/Alliances cards, I bet. I wish WotC would take a hard look at those, or we're going to be at the mercy of their arbitrary made-up rarities for these sets forever.
Thanks for clarifying about the difference, though!
I went from going to "draft like crazy" (if MED4 included Power 9) to "not going to draft at all". Surely someone of these "higher ups" should have realized most people would feel this way and just went forward with printing the P9. This is an unmitigated disaster for WoTC. MED sets were already terrible limited formats and not including anything of significance to the car pool other than LoA, Workshop and a couple others is not enough to drive sales. If I have any interest in those cards, I'll simply buy them from MTGOtraders or another bot using the money I had considered allocating for drafting to those few cards that are any good. Talk about getting coal in your stocking!
I also fall into the middle class spike category, but I think in a totally different direction than you. For me, I want to win all the time, but not only do I want to win, I want to win on the biggest stage that my personal life allows. I don't see those fringe formats you mentioned satisfying my hunger for not only being the best, but also beating the best at the formats most played by the highest competition. For the longest time my passion fell with Legacy, but lately I've been on a standard kick. Playing in daily events is very difficult due to life circumstances, but I find I can be highly competitive in the standard environment playing in 2 mans and 8 man tournaments.
Good article as usual, just don't think I agree with your thought process about fringe formats and PRE, they just don't seem to quench my thirst like mainstream formats do.
I was looking at the top 8 decks of recent SoM Block Daily and Premier events yesterday. There were a lot of Blue/White Control decks similar to yours, a couple artifact tempered steel builds, some variations of Red using Koth, some Red/Black, a couple poisen decks, and some Mono Blue Artifact. I would say that Blue/White control was over 50% of the decks.
Love your articles and I'm glad you are back, one thing though about pauper legal cards. Blue elemental blast is not pauper legal because it is only released online as a promo at common. Same thing with Kird ape, and fireball. The policy right now now is that promo printings do not effect pauper legality. Duel decks and theme decks are fine however, which is how we get snuff out, blastoderm, invigorate, gush, daze and others.
Man I love entertaining deductive reasoning! But I think the reason duals were included wasn't just to round out the set, but to make them easier to get to sell packs and make eternal formats more accessible.
Alchor's a bad card in general, and near useless in this set... but it does do something unique. No other card in Magic can change the color of something else permanently to any color, except Prismatic Lace, and that's not repeatable. I think it deserves a place online, though I think it would have been fine as an uncommon in a set with more uncommon color hosers. (*cough* Virtue' Ruin and Nature's Ruin *cough*)
It's kind of an administrative nightmare in paper. "Let's see, these 3 swamps are Christmas colors, Red, Green, and White. I have 3 black tokens, 2 saprolings and a camarid, then two white camarids and a red eldrazi token. Got all that?" Here online, we'll actually be able to see what it's doing.
Great article. Your thoughts on Magic Online and the whole Big Fish in a small pond is pretty much the same as mine. I like creating Big Hairy idea decks that catch people by surprise. You simply can't do that in standard unless you have a playtest group and more free time than any of us with jobs and kid(s) can afford. Standard deckbuilding is also all about tweaking a couple cards or creating the perfect sideboard plan. That's just not really how I want to spend my time.
The bannings of Survival, Top, and Mind Twist came in less than a day after I submitted this article. I'm actually in the process of writing another article on the 100 singleton bannings along with how I predict the metagame will shift because of them.
The short story is that the bannings are at best inconsistant and at worst random. I believe 100 singleton should have powerful game-changing cards in it. Certainly these three cards fit into those categories as do many other cards that are equally strong. We have a metagame with viable decks of every color combination that appeal to everyone, why mess with that? Top and Mind Twist probably won't shift the meta-game around much as they are often just added to every deck that can support them. Survival on the other hand has roughly 3-4 separate and distinct decktypes that build around that card. Banning survival will mean that the players playing those decks (myself included) will simply move to other major decktypes such as Naya or Elf Armageddon or Scapeshift. It will constrict the metagame and you will see less variety in the decklists.
If you want to look on the bright side of things, banning Top will probably speed up games. :-)
Hi guys and thanks for the comments.
Rpitcher, deck building for Heirloom is a subject I will write about next week. I will have a few nice tips for those who want to build some quick decks for the format.
For now all I can say is that I built my very first Heirloom deck within 10 minutes just before the tournament was about to start and went 2-1 that day. Had I more time to prepare, I would definately ended up with a nice 3-0. I don't want to get into that subject too much now, but there are ways to build quick Heirloom decks (which I'll write about next week).
Thanks again for the comments.
LE
Good article here, I like the breakdown of the decks in the beginning (great for a new player) and then the focus on the two decks later in the article. I know there is a lot of commotion that Survival should be banned in Vintage but I was wondering what do you think about new 100 Singleton Bannings? Top, Survival, and Mind Twist?
The Tribal Apocalypse PRE starts at GMT 18:00, asuming you are in Taipei (GMT +8) the event starts at 2 AM... But keep in mind that it is not THAT long. Only 3 Rounds, and tribal is pretty fast, the event would probably be over by 4 AM.
Give it a try ;-)
Nice article. Much of it should be interesting/useful for lot of readers, as (I beleive) the Magic Middle Class is the biggest demographic in the game. A lot of Casuals and Pros edge into the Middle Class during their Magic lives at some point, too.
Hierloom is for real, but I don't agree that it's a format for someone with limited time to play Magic. Well, not if they enjoy coming up with their own decks or tweaks. (We know you do!) Checking for legality in the format is tedious! I guess as one becomes more experienced at Heirloom, it becomes easier to know which cards are allowed or not. I'm not knocking the format! It's way-cool, but outside of "borrowing" a recent hot Hierloom deck, the format (imho)is not for "those who like to win but have only a limited amount of time."
I'd add Alchor's Tomb to your list of card that don't make the cut. It's a pretty crappy rare to begin with that doesn't even seem to have a purpose for limited in the set. There just aren't that many cards included that care about color. The knights and the elemental blasts are about all I can find.
"The more I play online the more I realize I am not the spike I used to be. If I ever really was." <-- This really resonates with me. I love to rip people apart with unfair decks in the TP room, but I'm not so much a Spike that I need to enter tournaments. Also, I get just as much a kick out of cheesy Pauper decks and crazy Commander shenanigans. My trouble is that I want to do and try everything and end up playing very little. Like others, I haven't the time to play all too much and when I do have time, I find I'm building decks, watching others play cool new formats I'm interested in, or reading about Magic. =/ I need to change that.
PREs sound like a lot of fun, but for me living in East Asia, they're usually beginning around midnight. =/
The more I play online the more I realize I am not the spike I used to be. If I ever really was. So much of this article is not directed towards me but I identify with most of it anyway. Grats on winning the 17(??!!) tix. You certainly play hard enough to have earned every last one.
Nice title bar logo. The only change I would make perhaps is to add beveled corners to the outside to match the bevels inside. (And probably add a rounded border around that in a light but not white color. Nice break downs. :) Good to see you writing again.
Compare Mox Mirror to Khalni Gem and you will understand, why it is broken.
I think that while you're justifying the picks reasonably, you need to step back and think about this: Turn to Slag kills 98% of the format. Artisan is not quite a bomb, and dies to virtually every removal in the format. Shield/Staff is more subjective, but I love shield a ton.
Finally, think about how the rest of the draft played out:
If you'd taken Slag, Arc trail becomes a windmill slam (and PROBABLY) should have been anyway. It is better than Scrapmelter at getting you to turn 5+, when your theoretical 5+cc bombs and removal can take over and dominate.
I think that I would have drafted my entire deck around living long enough to wreck people with the 2-3 amazing 6CC+ cards; Arc Trail, Slag, and Shield all focus on that more than the picks you made (in my opinion).
When the Turn to Slag came around, I was still mistakenly thinking I was heading towards green/blue splashing red, when I should have already realized my deck was meant to be red/green.
That said, in both the case of the shield and the slag, I at least got a card for my deck that was at a comparable power level, not something way below. If the Artisan isn't killed, he can actually hold back multiple attackers by sitting there with open mana, whereas the Turn To Slag just shuts down one (and sometimes a two for one if they have equipment). The Artisan also did win me my last game - though if I'd had Turn to Slag in that slot, it likely would have put me in a winning position in some game too.
The shield over lifestaff is a strong case, I think. Put on a good blocker, it can again be holding back multiple defenders in some situations, which will often be better for buying time than the lifestaff will be. I think Accorder's Shield is better than most people realize, and should be picked a bit higher than most people are taking it now.
I do love to put Lifestaff on a Tangle Angler, though. Also it goes up a little in value in a deck that has multiple sacrifice effects. I agree Shield looks better in this draft, though, in hindsight. I think Turn to Slag edges out Artisan slightly as well, though that's a closer call. Sometimes Artisan is a bomb. Slag is one of the few answers to some of the biggest bomb creatures, and it's still very good against anyone that doesn't have those.
Heh, Aether Mutation targeting your own Anarchist ftw. ;)
I would say "Glad to hear it's not just me", but I would rather not see more people having problems with it. I would rather everybody get just exactly the results they intend out of the card!
I agree the declare attackers style interface would be better. Hope you'll manage to get both uses out of it next time you have one, and I hope I will also!
Oh god, really? What horrible user interface design! Maybe if there were a huge popup in the MIDDLE of the screen that says "I AM AUTOADVANCING YOU TO THE SECOND PROLIFERATE EFFECT NOW" that could be "less bad", but I assume any mode change indicator is over in the text window on one side, or the modal stuff indicator at the other side, whereas your attention is focused on the middle of the screen where you'll likely miss it.
But this interface is still unacceptable, because you might have times when you pick 5 out of 5 targets, think a little more, and want to unselect one of them and just do 4 and then click ok.
Knowing that the interface is that bad, and I really and truly didn't click twice, I'm almost tempted to file for event compensation. But I'm not going to, and hey I got two boosters out of it - really what I want is for them to fix this bad interface design to work better and cause fewer user screwups.