I really liked this article, a lot. You hit a lot of topics that I believe people don't really think about. Family is important, and should be number 1. I'm glad that you are able to connect with your much younger brother through a game you enjoy.
In addition, the ability to pick up just about every available card online within a few clicks, without having to go to 3 different shops or wait a week, is invaluable. As a matter of fact, I get annoyed when I go to a bot and they are out of the card that I am looking for, because it happens so rarely.
Tribal minotaur decks rock! As a matter of fact, having a playgroup is pretty cool, since you know the power level to expect. I'm guessing you would never play Raka Disciple in any other setting, and that's pretty cool. This social aspect is one of the things I miss most when playing online.
House rules... ah, I remember those days. When I first started, back in '94, we used that Twiddle trick as well. Good times.
Finally, a reminder about how much cheaper things are online never hurts.
The way Blau wrote this article is not confrontational or "a bad opinion article" he gets a little excited about what he's suggesting but hey it's his article. (and if I were to flame every article with illogical ideas presented I'd be typing forever lol)
He sets up his article with a preface that should inform the way in which the article is to be taken in any case.
"Read his(Blau's) outlandish ideas and foolhardy beliefs that will never happen" Blau-
This is about as harsh as he gets toward anyone in the article.
"If you want to “invest” your money, buy a stock or bond, or open a savings account." Blau-
You can't go out with your "Obama is Hitler" or "George W likes killing babies" signs and then claim to have simply been articulating a counter-arguement. A lot of what people have posted here is just meant to put Blau down, that's not challenging, that's bullying.
Some fun "challenges" that I didn't find OK:
"You obviously don't understand even the most basic premise of the MED series. I'll spell it out to you..." endless-
"$%&$ you...if your gonna write bout something do some research. Maybe even "gasp" talk to people who drafted all 3 sets...i hate that i spent time reading this." wiffy-
"Let's all cry some more." greyes3-
"It absolutely blows my mind how poorly thought out this was" endless-
I agree with a lot of the critiques of the things Blau said, but I still think he seems like a good guy with more often than not a valid point of view.
Interesting article. The last time went to a shop to buy singles was probably 10 years ago. Even with shipping online sites are so much cheaper generally speaking. There's no awe factor of seeing all the cards, but you get what you want and don't have to sort through boxes of random crap like you experienced. The most radical "house" (read: wrong) rules I ever experienced was when I joined up with a casual group in high school once many years ago. I don't remember exactly what land I tried to play, but I do remember it was hit with Counterspell. Never before had Counterspell felt so unfair.
paul, sorry im not nice. maybe my bullet point thought process on responses is to blame. seriously though, i only get verbel when authors make opinions sound arrogant. i took offense to his article, i spoke my mind out about it. i guess its ok for him to write a bad opinion article, just not for anyone to challenge it.
The online cards have no value is easily answered with what is a domain name worth? You don't actually own it, you just own the rights to use it. No different than a mtgo card. Domain names have sold for absolutely insane prices. They're also just a few bytes of server space pointing requests to your domain.
I will try to do some matchup overviews in future articles, and have more matches since I will report the DE's in the future.
If your opponent is smart, then those cards would shut down the Vengevine, as he only triggers off the second creature of the turn, they just have to know to wait.
Since when is stating an opinion, no matter how flawed an insult in itself? Blau didn't call us all idiots for believing something he doesn't. He said he disagrees with our (the general) assumption. You may find his opinion insulting but that is your inference not his implication.
I strongly disagree. A sleeper card is a card that generally doesn't see much play at the moment but you believe will in the future due to a new deck innovation or shift in the format. For example, you might have said that Frost Titan was a "sleeper" card before States.
The kinds of cards I'm talking about are cards that are known to be good and already see play in the format, but are at reduced demand at the moment because fewer people are playing the format in question. If most people are building standard decks at the moment and few people are building extended decks, then the demand for standard cards is going to be relatively high and the demand for extended cards will be low and the prices will follow this demand. Extended staples that will almost certainly see play will see their prices rise once people get more interested in Extended, etc.
Back in the day, you could bet on a card like Pernicious Deed having good value in extended season simply because there were always people who would play The Rock. This isn't speculating on a sleeper card -- everyone knew Deed was good. It's just that the value of that known good card would invariably be lower when Extended wasn't "in season" and higher when it was.
So no, I didn't load up on everything. I generally wanted to have playsets of as many format staples as I could so that I could play whatever decks I wanted -- so I focused on acquiring those staples during their predictable low cycles.
Crypt,Relic and Fae Macabre are not surefire against Vengevines being that with enough mana open and Survival down they can just respond to the ability and recurr them with Rootwala madness, Extirpate is failsafe.
You could have given more-being nice here since there wasnt any at all- of a breakdown on which mus are favorable and why as well as which are not and why.
Lol, my arguement is "blah, blah, blah. I have every deck evar and I wish every day that i could have paid 1/4th for it. It would not only grow the game further-cheaper access-, but increase competition! Power to the People!!!"
I certianly share your disdain for the broken secondary market for MTGO/MTG. I like the idea of using future MED sets to nerfbat cards that have gotten out of control in value.
People that trade a lot and/or sell a lot I don't think much care if there are very high value cards or if their values are more moderate. probably would prefer more evenly dispersed values since then they'd be able to be more diversified and get better buy/sell ratios anyway. People are more willing to sell their cards directly to other players if the value of the card is high enough and enough people want it to make the sale quick.
I think you say a couple of illogical things here that cause me some cognitive dissonance, but all in all I'm with the main emphasis of what you're saying.
They could use bigger events for MED sets as well I think to get more packs opened and prevent 20 + tix duals and FOW ridiculousness. (card needs to be reprinted again and again and again until it's at max $10 imo)
Having some cheap calls only means being practical to your self. actually choosing some cheap calls really saves a lot of money, It really made thing better in some good way. well actually there is a lot of options to choose being practical is a good option.
I certianly agree that the player base has been independent enough to circumvent the original wizards supported formats to be able to play more affordably.
You're right that believing things should be a certain way doen't make it so, some people say healthcare is a right, well it isn't unless you can actually get it the vast majority of circumstances (EG freedom of speech is a US right, but there are exceptions)
Now saying that the collectible portion of the game has to either produce the levels of single card values it does now or just be a flat fee for access to all cards is just illogically black and white. You can certianly have collectability with an infinite range of value disparity of the cheapest vs the most expensive cards.
And at the end again like many others responding here you're just being insulting which means you don't really want Blau to agree with your perspective, you just want to make sure he feels bad because he offended your sensibilities about how the game should be.
I'm not sure what this article was supposed to be; was it a rant, or a suggestion about what should be in MED4, or your predictions about what *will* be in MED4?
But, in all honesty, as soon as I saw "Digital cards have no intrinsic value and they never will." it let me know that any argument you could possibly make will be flawed.
I'm very disappointed that an online player would profess such an ignorant view. Someone who, by virtue of the medium they play in and write about, should know better.
Edit: It's an incredible insult your target audience.
I'd probably agree with this statement about the strength of the colors in this pool. For non artifact spells I want to run volition reins, the sky eels, both slices, the trinket mage, the renegade, carapace forger, and the vedalken tapper. This is kind of annoying because I want at least 15 artifacts, and I have 9 color spells I really don't want to cut in these colors. That means I'm either running 16 lands(strictly doable with two mana myr depending on curve)or running 41 cards depending on how my final deck looks. I suppose its worth mentioning I could run the trigon even without mountains to reload it, and the moriok replica with the one leaden myr to potentially activate his ability isn't too bad. I'd also consider running the pinions in this deck. Even with the flight spellbombs, you don't need to leave mana open to make a critter fly with the pinions and first strike can be ok.
If we run both the Ezuri, Renegade leader and the voliton reins we basically have two triple cc cards in the pile, so I don't really want to splash without fixing in that scenario. I want to run both of those cards and use them reliably more than I want to splash red or white's removal.
The pool definitely isn't that great, mostly the rares leave something to be desired. I don't think grindclock is that great here with just two proliferate spells(only one with a repeatable effect) and nothing else really worth proliferating, quicksilver is very expensive, the praetors are useless in nearly every sealed pool, and the forgemaster works against your artifacts matter spells in everything but mono-brown decks. That basically leaves the Juggernaut and Ezuri as your good rares. You do have 5 removal spells in the UG combination however, and three of them are solid CA.
I haven't played a whole lot of sealed so take my advice with a grain of salt, but that's how I would have attempted it.
Pack 1, pick 4 - Strider Harness over black Trigon? Fairly certain that's a bad pick. Even without any black mana in your deck, Trigon is incredible in this format because of the overall low toughness of creatures.
Very well done, if for no other reason than it got me to read the comments for the previous article . . . Holy God does Medina make awful analogies. Maybe the analytic portion of his brain only works for card evaluation, but he really couldn't explain away even salient points.
I'm much less likely to read his articles on SCG going forward - not a good showing by the man, when faced with legitimate microecon theory. Thanks for bringing some knowledge to bear, PRJ.
Just because you don't believe cards are worth investing in doesn't mean they aren't. What do you say to the player that has a signed mint black lotus that's worth $10,000? It's somehow less of an investment than a Wayne Gretzky rookie card? Like it or not guys, the game is defined as a collectible card game. You can't have it both ways. Either it's collectible and some cards are worth more than others. Or you buy a welcome to mtgo pack worth $50 that has every single card ever printed included as a 4x.
Luckily wizards has been smart enough to preserve the collectible part of this card game. I'm not sad that some players can't afford the underground sea that I have. Just as I'm sure the people with the foil underground sea aren't sad that I don't have them. It's part of the game, it's part of showing off your collection. There's plenty of PRE's and formats that support the cheap cards. Pauper has an insane following in both PRE and events. There's plenty of peasant and now hierloom to fill up your week if pauper isn't enough. That's the great thing about mtgo, you can find a price range you're happy at and play within it.
Anyway back to the article. It absolutely blows my mind how poorly thought out this was.
MED4 will not have a bunch of reprints in it. It will follow the same setup as all the previous MEDs - only cards that haven't appeared in packs online with exceptions made at common for limited purposes.
Great article as always. Nice 6-0, and cool deck. I agree with many of your sentiments, including the idea that the titans are asking to be abused in 100CS.
I disagree with a few of the card choices, but so it goes with 100CS. In particular, I think it's insane to leave out FTK, Primeval Titan, and Enlightened Tutor.
I'm intrigued by Sarkhan Vol. Have you played him enough to be convinced that he's worth it? He's one of those planeswalkers that can't defend himself, and I'm always wary of those. How about Greater Gargadon - my first guess is that his sacrifice ability isn't as good as having Primeval Titan in the deck, but I obviously haven't tried the list.
My favorite trick with Didgeridoo is using it in conjunction with Conspiracy to get all kinds of Enters the Battlefield cards into play without casting them. Very funny to see when my ops realize they aren't facing just minotaurs anymore.
I see we have an imposter! Off with his head.......seriously, the above poster is not me......I am the original!!!
On a 2nd note, I do play both paper and online. I find testing online first helps me in my FNMs which is funny since mtgo is more competitive than FNMs on a more consistant basis. Having said that, paper provides much more excitement to me in the trading aspect of the game. Having played mtgo forever and just starting paper 3 months ago, I have found another part of this game in trading that I've missed for far to long!
I really liked this article, a lot. You hit a lot of topics that I believe people don't really think about. Family is important, and should be number 1. I'm glad that you are able to connect with your much younger brother through a game you enjoy.
In addition, the ability to pick up just about every available card online within a few clicks, without having to go to 3 different shops or wait a week, is invaluable. As a matter of fact, I get annoyed when I go to a bot and they are out of the card that I am looking for, because it happens so rarely.
Tribal minotaur decks rock! As a matter of fact, having a playgroup is pretty cool, since you know the power level to expect. I'm guessing you would never play Raka Disciple in any other setting, and that's pretty cool. This social aspect is one of the things I miss most when playing online.
House rules... ah, I remember those days. When I first started, back in '94, we used that Twiddle trick as well. Good times.
Finally, a reminder about how much cheaper things are online never hurts.
Thanks again for this article!
The way Blau wrote this article is not confrontational or "a bad opinion article" he gets a little excited about what he's suggesting but hey it's his article. (and if I were to flame every article with illogical ideas presented I'd be typing forever lol)
He sets up his article with a preface that should inform the way in which the article is to be taken in any case.
"Read his(Blau's) outlandish ideas and foolhardy beliefs that will never happen" Blau-
This is about as harsh as he gets toward anyone in the article.
"If you want to “invest” your money, buy a stock or bond, or open a savings account." Blau-
You can't go out with your "Obama is Hitler" or "George W likes killing babies" signs and then claim to have simply been articulating a counter-arguement. A lot of what people have posted here is just meant to put Blau down, that's not challenging, that's bullying.
Some fun "challenges" that I didn't find OK:
"You obviously don't understand even the most basic premise of the MED series. I'll spell it out to you..." endless-
"$%&$ you...if your gonna write bout something do some research. Maybe even "gasp" talk to people who drafted all 3 sets...i hate that i spent time reading this." wiffy-
"Let's all cry some more." greyes3-
"It absolutely blows my mind how poorly thought out this was" endless-
I agree with a lot of the critiques of the things Blau said, but I still think he seems like a good guy with more often than not a valid point of view.
I just can't stand this sort of chest-thumping.
X-
Interesting article. The last time went to a shop to buy singles was probably 10 years ago. Even with shipping online sites are so much cheaper generally speaking. There's no awe factor of seeing all the cards, but you get what you want and don't have to sort through boxes of random crap like you experienced. The most radical "house" (read: wrong) rules I ever experienced was when I joined up with a casual group in high school once many years ago. I don't remember exactly what land I tried to play, but I do remember it was hit with Counterspell. Never before had Counterspell felt so unfair.
paul, sorry im not nice. maybe my bullet point thought process on responses is to blame. seriously though, i only get verbel when authors make opinions sound arrogant. i took offense to his article, i spoke my mind out about it. i guess its ok for him to write a bad opinion article, just not for anyone to challenge it.
The online cards have no value is easily answered with what is a domain name worth? You don't actually own it, you just own the rights to use it. No different than a mtgo card. Domain names have sold for absolutely insane prices. They're also just a few bytes of server space pointing requests to your domain.
I will try to do some matchup overviews in future articles, and have more matches since I will report the DE's in the future.
If your opponent is smart, then those cards would shut down the Vengevine, as he only triggers off the second creature of the turn, they just have to know to wait.
Since when is stating an opinion, no matter how flawed an insult in itself? Blau didn't call us all idiots for believing something he doesn't. He said he disagrees with our (the general) assumption. You may find his opinion insulting but that is your inference not his implication.
I strongly disagree. A sleeper card is a card that generally doesn't see much play at the moment but you believe will in the future due to a new deck innovation or shift in the format. For example, you might have said that Frost Titan was a "sleeper" card before States.
The kinds of cards I'm talking about are cards that are known to be good and already see play in the format, but are at reduced demand at the moment because fewer people are playing the format in question. If most people are building standard decks at the moment and few people are building extended decks, then the demand for standard cards is going to be relatively high and the demand for extended cards will be low and the prices will follow this demand. Extended staples that will almost certainly see play will see their prices rise once people get more interested in Extended, etc.
Back in the day, you could bet on a card like Pernicious Deed having good value in extended season simply because there were always people who would play The Rock. This isn't speculating on a sleeper card -- everyone knew Deed was good. It's just that the value of that known good card would invariably be lower when Extended wasn't "in season" and higher when it was.
So no, I didn't load up on everything. I generally wanted to have playsets of as many format staples as I could so that I could play whatever decks I wanted -- so I focused on acquiring those staples during their predictable low cycles.
Crypt,Relic and Fae Macabre are not surefire against Vengevines being that with enough mana open and Survival down they can just respond to the ability and recurr them with Rootwala madness, Extirpate is failsafe.
You could have given more-being nice here since there wasnt any at all- of a breakdown on which mus are favorable and why as well as which are not and why.
Lol, my arguement is "blah, blah, blah. I have every deck evar and I wish every day that i could have paid 1/4th for it. It would not only grow the game further-cheaper access-, but increase competition! Power to the People!!!"
Hey Blau,
I certianly share your disdain for the broken secondary market for MTGO/MTG. I like the idea of using future MED sets to nerfbat cards that have gotten out of control in value.
People that trade a lot and/or sell a lot I don't think much care if there are very high value cards or if their values are more moderate. probably would prefer more evenly dispersed values since then they'd be able to be more diversified and get better buy/sell ratios anyway. People are more willing to sell their cards directly to other players if the value of the card is high enough and enough people want it to make the sale quick.
I think you say a couple of illogical things here that cause me some cognitive dissonance, but all in all I'm with the main emphasis of what you're saying.
They could use bigger events for MED sets as well I think to get more packs opened and prevent 20 + tix duals and FOW ridiculousness. (card needs to be reprinted again and again and again until it's at max $10 imo)
X-
Having some cheap calls only means being practical to your self. actually choosing some cheap calls really saves a lot of money, It really made thing better in some good way. well actually there is a lot of options to choose being practical is a good option.
Lol, the arguments are:
blah, blah, blah, I have the cards, your article was dumb, dont devalue my cards.
and
blah, blah, blah, I dont have the cards make them all available to everyone.
I think both sides have been saying these forever, even before mythics, and it still amazes me how angry people get over a game.
I certianly agree that the player base has been independent enough to circumvent the original wizards supported formats to be able to play more affordably.
You're right that believing things should be a certain way doen't make it so, some people say healthcare is a right, well it isn't unless you can actually get it the vast majority of circumstances (EG freedom of speech is a US right, but there are exceptions)
Now saying that the collectible portion of the game has to either produce the levels of single card values it does now or just be a flat fee for access to all cards is just illogically black and white. You can certianly have collectability with an infinite range of value disparity of the cheapest vs the most expensive cards.
And at the end again like many others responding here you're just being insulting which means you don't really want Blau to agree with your perspective, you just want to make sure he feels bad because he offended your sensibilities about how the game should be.
X-
I'm not sure what this article was supposed to be; was it a rant, or a suggestion about what should be in MED4, or your predictions about what *will* be in MED4?
But, in all honesty, as soon as I saw "Digital cards have no intrinsic value and they never will." it let me know that any argument you could possibly make will be flawed.
I'm very disappointed that an online player would profess such an ignorant view. Someone who, by virtue of the medium they play in and write about, should know better.
Edit: It's an incredible insult your target audience.
I'd probably agree with this statement about the strength of the colors in this pool. For non artifact spells I want to run volition reins, the sky eels, both slices, the trinket mage, the renegade, carapace forger, and the vedalken tapper. This is kind of annoying because I want at least 15 artifacts, and I have 9 color spells I really don't want to cut in these colors. That means I'm either running 16 lands(strictly doable with two mana myr depending on curve)or running 41 cards depending on how my final deck looks. I suppose its worth mentioning I could run the trigon even without mountains to reload it, and the moriok replica with the one leaden myr to potentially activate his ability isn't too bad. I'd also consider running the pinions in this deck. Even with the flight spellbombs, you don't need to leave mana open to make a critter fly with the pinions and first strike can be ok.
If we run both the Ezuri, Renegade leader and the voliton reins we basically have two triple cc cards in the pile, so I don't really want to splash without fixing in that scenario. I want to run both of those cards and use them reliably more than I want to splash red or white's removal.
The pool definitely isn't that great, mostly the rares leave something to be desired. I don't think grindclock is that great here with just two proliferate spells(only one with a repeatable effect) and nothing else really worth proliferating, quicksilver is very expensive, the praetors are useless in nearly every sealed pool, and the forgemaster works against your artifacts matter spells in everything but mono-brown decks. That basically leaves the Juggernaut and Ezuri as your good rares. You do have 5 removal spells in the UG combination however, and three of them are solid CA.
I haven't played a whole lot of sealed so take my advice with a grain of salt, but that's how I would have attempted it.
Well, I must admit I don't know much about cost of living over there but that sounds positively awful.
Pack 1, pick 4 - Strider Harness over black Trigon? Fairly certain that's a bad pick. Even without any black mana in your deck, Trigon is incredible in this format because of the overall low toughness of creatures.
Very well done, if for no other reason than it got me to read the comments for the previous article . . . Holy God does Medina make awful analogies. Maybe the analytic portion of his brain only works for card evaluation, but he really couldn't explain away even salient points.
I'm much less likely to read his articles on SCG going forward - not a good showing by the man, when faced with legitimate microecon theory. Thanks for bringing some knowledge to bear, PRJ.
Just because you don't believe cards are worth investing in doesn't mean they aren't. What do you say to the player that has a signed mint black lotus that's worth $10,000? It's somehow less of an investment than a Wayne Gretzky rookie card? Like it or not guys, the game is defined as a collectible card game. You can't have it both ways. Either it's collectible and some cards are worth more than others. Or you buy a welcome to mtgo pack worth $50 that has every single card ever printed included as a 4x.
Luckily wizards has been smart enough to preserve the collectible part of this card game. I'm not sad that some players can't afford the underground sea that I have. Just as I'm sure the people with the foil underground sea aren't sad that I don't have them. It's part of the game, it's part of showing off your collection. There's plenty of PRE's and formats that support the cheap cards. Pauper has an insane following in both PRE and events. There's plenty of peasant and now hierloom to fill up your week if pauper isn't enough. That's the great thing about mtgo, you can find a price range you're happy at and play within it.
Anyway back to the article. It absolutely blows my mind how poorly thought out this was.
MED4 will not have a bunch of reprints in it. It will follow the same setup as all the previous MEDs - only cards that haven't appeared in packs online with exceptions made at common for limited purposes.
Great article as always. Nice 6-0, and cool deck. I agree with many of your sentiments, including the idea that the titans are asking to be abused in 100CS.
I disagree with a few of the card choices, but so it goes with 100CS. In particular, I think it's insane to leave out FTK, Primeval Titan, and Enlightened Tutor.
I'm intrigued by Sarkhan Vol. Have you played him enough to be convinced that he's worth it? He's one of those planeswalkers that can't defend himself, and I'm always wary of those. How about Greater Gargadon - my first guess is that his sacrifice ability isn't as good as having Primeval Titan in the deck, but I obviously haven't tried the list.
Once again, great article.
My favorite trick with Didgeridoo is using it in conjunction with Conspiracy to get all kinds of Enters the Battlefield cards into play without casting them. Very funny to see when my ops realize they aren't facing just minotaurs anymore.
I see we have an imposter! Off with his head.......seriously, the above poster is not me......I am the original!!!
On a 2nd note, I do play both paper and online. I find testing online first helps me in my FNMs which is funny since mtgo is more competitive than FNMs on a more consistant basis. Having said that, paper provides much more excitement to me in the trading aspect of the game. Having played mtgo forever and just starting paper 3 months ago, I have found another part of this game in trading that I've missed for far to long!
DAMNIT!