That's an interesting thing to say about drafting in general. I never hear about differences in picking strategies depending on the payout. But it makes sense if you are playing vs people you believe to be as strong as yourself (or stronger) then you have to tighten up your picking order where as with people less strong than you, they might not be following any plan at all and the ball will wheel or whatever.
"Worrying about cards and play styles and strategies is typically stressful, and not fun or casual." is you opinion, and is not always the case. Subjective as NO_Peace said. As is "Casual = laid back, easy going, not formal." I do not always agree with this. In some scenarios yes, in some scenarios no. You are just making up different definitions to support your opinion. It originally went from being "fun" to now this. You may think they are synonymous, but again this is just your opinion. As I alluded to in my first post this is often the case; players just make up what they want the word to mean, and interpret as such, which is why we have so many players confused by what it actually means.
There aren't a lot of prismatic articles anymore that I know of. A few show up on here from time to time. IMO the best place to start is the deck editor :)
Much like you, I am excited about building a Blue-Black Control deck.
Traditionally, Ub Control decks succeed by being able to win the attrition war in the early stages and dominating the late game via overwhelming card advantage (See e.g., Nether-Go and Psychatog).
While it has been unsuccessful for the past few years (primarily due to Cascade imho), I think that Ratchet Bomb is just the card that this deck needs to succeed. The combination of Mana Leak, Jace's Ingenuity, Ratchet Bomb, and other exciting new cards in Scars make this deck a real possibility. We will have to see however if Vengevine/Planeswalker still generate too much advantage such that Ub Control decks cannot overcome. New Standard: Exciting!
There is a reason why he doesn't write for starcity and it's because he talks out of his ass, his opinions are flawed, and even for a casual writer, this is nothing more than an uncreditted excuse of pure ignorance without investing the proper time, research, resources, or money, politically sound for Magic, if he had pete jahn running things, EDH would be a tournament and casual players would be angry because the good players would come in, break the format and cause a ton of restrictions to decks.
It's definitely a powerful card to have - one that is almost automatically included in SEALED. The reason that it's less exciting in M11 DRAFT is because the format is a little faster than sealed. Granted, it's not ZZW-fast, but enough so that the playing a Crystal Ball early is not that great of a play. This, of course, must be taken in light of the fact that it is presumed that the M11 matches will be a bit more tempo-driven. On balance, it IS a fine play in a M11 draft where the matches will drag out a little longer - such as in a less "competitive" draft (define "competitive" how you want...). Speaking very broadly and generally, I will gladly pick a Crystal Ball earlier (3rd/4th) in a Swiss or 4-3-2-2 M11 draft, while I will not pick it up until 6th/7th in an 8-4 draft. So I guess, when I made the prior post about Crystal Ball earlier I forgot that this was a Swiss draft - my mistake!
oh yeah, not discrediting his casual articles in terms of content, etc. just that since i'm not a casual player really, i liked this article a lot. i guess it's a bit self-serving bc i would like to see more draft walkthroughs from him!
The basics of it are not that hard. The hard part is doing it to make it look smooth and nice.
1. Find card images you enjoy. You can use something called the magic wand to find the edges of a contiguous image inside another (like a planeswalker against a background.)
2. Crop the images you want and then c/p them into a background you like. Then make sure you use either a blur, gaussian blur or smooth edges filter so that your picture does not seem cut and paste. You can do this all in layers so as to get a greater effect if you want to filter other images separately.
The rest is just up to your sense of design and style.
Good stuff. You're right, the card pool is so huge that there are ton of similar effects out there if you look. Even with the goofy stuff like Doubling Season, there are one shot effects that will do what you want. And the good thing about playing online is that a lot of the older cards are dirt cheap and plentiful, so you can play with stuff that you would never even get a chance to see in paper, like Rolling Thunder. All you have to do is look.
Glad some of my suggestions are still in the Kaervek deck! Although you probably got that stuff even before my article came out.
You don't seem like a huge elf guy to me, so I'm going to say that Geth and Skithiryx are your top guys. I'm leaning toward Geth being number 1.
Someone needs to teach me how to photoshop. I want a cool banner at the beginning of my article now!
"So I may have mentioned in the splash that I would name my favorite new Commander card from Scars of Mirrodin...well as you can see I didnt. The only hint I will give you is that it is neither White nor is it Blue.
For the first 5 people that get it right you will get your choice in order of posting from the following 5 generals
Scion of Ur-Dragon
Oros the Avenger
Numot the Devastator
Saffi Eriksdotter
Hokori, Dust Drinker
So see if you can figure it out."
Well there are only 4 Legendary Creatures in SoM. One of them is white, so that leaves him out. That leaves me with three choices wich I am allowed to guess at.
1)Ezuri, Renegade Leader
2)Geth, Lord of the Vault
3)Skithiryx, the Blight Dragon
These are great tips for a man in a relationship with kids. Before I bought a laptop, I know my wife and I would fight about using the computer. The rest are just good tips for being a good husband in a relationship.
heh I won't comment on specific pro's remarks I've read/heard regarding the ball but that seems like a reasonable response. Pick 2 does seem early. The flip side of course is that while it doesn't replace a solid 3 drop it is also very important and who you pass it to matters if you elect not to take it. Meh what do I know? I am a spectator for the most part these days.
Ah. Something felt missing. More than half of original was lost with the first writeup so I was recreating what I could recall.
You've made a good point about karakas. With all these going on, various effects are stronger now such as edicts and disenchants. Also together with the introduction of the m11 titans, the value of bribery has gone up considerably from last time.
About the mocs, i eventually ended up playing in it because the timing was somewhat borderline doable. It was 10pm till somewhere in the morning.
I try as much as possible to play the wkend events to support my heavy spendings, even if by a little. Something is better than nothing I would say. The main reason why I can play in those is actually because of their horrendous timings, 5am and 11pm on both sat and sun, which allow me to play without directly conflicting with my normal lifestyle that does not involve sleeping a whole day away.
Anticipating that, I planned my school mod to start late in the afternoon on monday to let me recover from any late nights. I prefer classic to be at the 11pm slot because each of its rounds ends in around 1/2 to 3/4 the normal round of a 100c singleton event.
I believe Conley Woods (for example) recently said that he thinks Crystal Ball is overrated since 3 drops are important, it doesn't draw a card or affect the board, and it takes time to get the value back.
It's still quite good, but for a while people were "Woah, pick 2 Crystal ball? I can't believe someone passed this!" So there has been a counter-reaction to that.
I can't think of a good way to separate professional Magic players from the non-professional Magic players in tournament settings. It is innately unfair in every way possible to the pros. Yeah, I know... "Boohoo for the pros" right? Their skill and standing didn't develop overnight. They had to go through their own hardships of learning the game to get where they are today. Having "noob" tournies solves nothing but alienate the pros and it makes the beginners no more good than they were before that tournament began because they're playing against other new players.
The last thing WotC wants to do is piss off the very same people that support the Pro Tour.
It's not easy to get time online when you're a dad.
1. You need at least 2 computers in the house, otherwise you will get accused of hogging the computer playing Magic.
2. You need to have a balanced schedule including equal time with your wife, time with your family, and time to do your own thing.
3. If you plan out ahead of time what nights you're going to play online and what nights you're going to do other things then your wife will not be angrily waiting up for you.
4. You need to give your wife time to do her own thing too. If you volunteer to take your baby for an entire night while your wife goes out with her friends, it will be much easier to get a night for Magic.
5. A lot of the time, you need to wait until your baby is asleep before you can start playing. This works out really well if you've already given your wife a night out with the girls. Then you can play guilt-free after the baby is asleep.
If you help your wife to do the things she wants to do, then she will want to help you do the things you want to do. The trick is plan it out ahead of time and make sure you are communicating well with your wife.
Of course some players are lucky and have wives who also play Magic Online. I'm not one of those lucky guys.
Alot of pros and pundits agree that Ball is the bomb. The saying is "when the horse speaks listen." Which roughly translates into "if everyone says it is so, it might be so."
The comments have been fantastic, but that’s what I’ve learned to expect from PureMTGO. I’m awarding this week’s prizes to the following commentators for length, breadth, and depth:
Felorin
Paul Leitch
RoninX
GainsBanding
Find me, sanhedrin, on MTGO to pick up your fabulous Pauper Commander sets. And don’t give up if you don’t catch me for a day or two.
It's only a twenty cent prize, but I think it would be an interesting format to explore: EDH with only commons means no board sweepers.
too funny! :) Necrotic with a Carnifex demon and an archon (the new m11 one) is fun times too. I ran across that in sealed the other day (beta)
That's an interesting thing to say about drafting in general. I never hear about differences in picking strategies depending on the payout. But it makes sense if you are playing vs people you believe to be as strong as yourself (or stronger) then you have to tighten up your picking order where as with people less strong than you, they might not be following any plan at all and the ball will wheel or whatever.
"Worrying about cards and play styles and strategies is typically stressful, and not fun or casual." is you opinion, and is not always the case. Subjective as NO_Peace said. As is "Casual = laid back, easy going, not formal." I do not always agree with this. In some scenarios yes, in some scenarios no. You are just making up different definitions to support your opinion. It originally went from being "fun" to now this. You may think they are synonymous, but again this is just your opinion. As I alluded to in my first post this is often the case; players just make up what they want the word to mean, and interpret as such, which is why we have so many players confused by what it actually means.
There aren't a lot of prismatic articles anymore that I know of. A few show up on here from time to time. IMO the best place to start is the deck editor :)
Much like you, I am excited about building a Blue-Black Control deck.
Traditionally, Ub Control decks succeed by being able to win the attrition war in the early stages and dominating the late game via overwhelming card advantage (See e.g., Nether-Go and Psychatog).
While it has been unsuccessful for the past few years (primarily due to Cascade imho), I think that Ratchet Bomb is just the card that this deck needs to succeed. The combination of Mana Leak, Jace's Ingenuity, Ratchet Bomb, and other exciting new cards in Scars make this deck a real possibility. We will have to see however if Vengevine/Planeswalker still generate too much advantage such that Ub Control decks cannot overcome. New Standard: Exciting!
There is a reason why he doesn't write for starcity and it's because he talks out of his ass, his opinions are flawed, and even for a casual writer, this is nothing more than an uncreditted excuse of pure ignorance without investing the proper time, research, resources, or money, politically sound for Magic, if he had pete jahn running things, EDH would be a tournament and casual players would be angry because the good players would come in, break the format and cause a ton of restrictions to decks.
Crystal Ball as I understand it is this:
It's definitely a powerful card to have - one that is almost automatically included in SEALED. The reason that it's less exciting in M11 DRAFT is because the format is a little faster than sealed. Granted, it's not ZZW-fast, but enough so that the playing a Crystal Ball early is not that great of a play. This, of course, must be taken in light of the fact that it is presumed that the M11 matches will be a bit more tempo-driven. On balance, it IS a fine play in a M11 draft where the matches will drag out a little longer - such as in a less "competitive" draft (define "competitive" how you want...). Speaking very broadly and generally, I will gladly pick a Crystal Ball earlier (3rd/4th) in a Swiss or 4-3-2-2 M11 draft, while I will not pick it up until 6th/7th in an 8-4 draft. So I guess, when I made the prior post about Crystal Ball earlier I forgot that this was a Swiss draft - my mistake!
I will also guess Necrotic Ooze.
It's just too much fun.
My favorite combo with him is Necrotic Ooze with Kiki-Jiki and Goblin Fanatic in the graveyard, Infinite Exploding Oozes.....
oh yeah, not discrediting his casual articles in terms of content, etc. just that since i'm not a casual player really, i liked this article a lot. i guess it's a bit self-serving bc i would like to see more draft walkthroughs from him!
Im going to guess Necrotic Ooze.
The basics of it are not that hard. The hard part is doing it to make it look smooth and nice.
1. Find card images you enjoy. You can use something called the magic wand to find the edges of a contiguous image inside another (like a planeswalker against a background.)
2. Crop the images you want and then c/p them into a background you like. Then make sure you use either a blur, gaussian blur or smooth edges filter so that your picture does not seem cut and paste. You can do this all in layers so as to get a greater effect if you want to filter other images separately.
The rest is just up to your sense of design and style.
oops...so maybe i worded the contest wrong....
My new favorite card FOR commander...its not strictly constrained to generals.
Good stuff. You're right, the card pool is so huge that there are ton of similar effects out there if you look. Even with the goofy stuff like Doubling Season, there are one shot effects that will do what you want. And the good thing about playing online is that a lot of the older cards are dirt cheap and plentiful, so you can play with stuff that you would never even get a chance to see in paper, like Rolling Thunder. All you have to do is look.
Glad some of my suggestions are still in the Kaervek deck! Although you probably got that stuff even before my article came out.
You don't seem like a huge elf guy to me, so I'm going to say that Geth and Skithiryx are your top guys. I'm leaning toward Geth being number 1.
Someone needs to teach me how to photoshop. I want a cool banner at the beginning of my article now!
Nice to see you jump in on the Commander boat.
For your contest...
"So I may have mentioned in the splash that I would name my favorite new Commander card from Scars of Mirrodin...well as you can see I didnt. The only hint I will give you is that it is neither White nor is it Blue.
For the first 5 people that get it right you will get your choice in order of posting from the following 5 generals
Scion of Ur-Dragon
Oros the Avenger
Numot the Devastator
Saffi Eriksdotter
Hokori, Dust Drinker
So see if you can figure it out."
Well there are only 4 Legendary Creatures in SoM. One of them is white, so that leaves him out. That leaves me with three choices wich I am allowed to guess at.
1)Ezuri, Renegade Leader
2)Geth, Lord of the Vault
3)Skithiryx, the Blight Dragon
These are great tips for a man in a relationship with kids. Before I bought a laptop, I know my wife and I would fight about using the computer. The rest are just good tips for being a good husband in a relationship.
I was trying to stick with Standard only, possibly making this a FNM level deck.
heh I won't comment on specific pro's remarks I've read/heard regarding the ball but that seems like a reasonable response. Pick 2 does seem early. The flip side of course is that while it doesn't replace a solid 3 drop it is also very important and who you pass it to matters if you elect not to take it. Meh what do I know? I am a spectator for the most part these days.
Ah. Something felt missing. More than half of original was lost with the first writeup so I was recreating what I could recall.
You've made a good point about karakas. With all these going on, various effects are stronger now such as edicts and disenchants. Also together with the introduction of the m11 titans, the value of bribery has gone up considerably from last time.
About the mocs, i eventually ended up playing in it because the timing was somewhat borderline doable. It was 10pm till somewhere in the morning.
I try as much as possible to play the wkend events to support my heavy spendings, even if by a little. Something is better than nothing I would say. The main reason why I can play in those is actually because of their horrendous timings, 5am and 11pm on both sat and sun, which allow me to play without directly conflicting with my normal lifestyle that does not involve sleeping a whole day away.
Anticipating that, I planned my school mod to start late in the afternoon on monday to let me recover from any late nights. I prefer classic to be at the 11pm slot because each of its rounds ends in around 1/2 to 3/4 the normal round of a 100c singleton event.
I believe Conley Woods (for example) recently said that he thinks Crystal Ball is overrated since 3 drops are important, it doesn't draw a card or affect the board, and it takes time to get the value back.
It's still quite good, but for a while people were "Woah, pick 2 Crystal ball? I can't believe someone passed this!" So there has been a counter-reaction to that.
My guesses for your top pick,
1)Ezuri, Renegade Leader
2)Geth, Lord of the Vault
3)Skithiryx, the Blight Dragon
I can't think of a good way to separate professional Magic players from the non-professional Magic players in tournament settings. It is innately unfair in every way possible to the pros. Yeah, I know... "Boohoo for the pros" right? Their skill and standing didn't develop overnight. They had to go through their own hardships of learning the game to get where they are today. Having "noob" tournies solves nothing but alienate the pros and it makes the beginners no more good than they were before that tournament began because they're playing against other new players.
The last thing WotC wants to do is piss off the very same people that support the Pro Tour.
It's not easy to get time online when you're a dad.
1. You need at least 2 computers in the house, otherwise you will get accused of hogging the computer playing Magic.
2. You need to have a balanced schedule including equal time with your wife, time with your family, and time to do your own thing.
3. If you plan out ahead of time what nights you're going to play online and what nights you're going to do other things then your wife will not be angrily waiting up for you.
4. You need to give your wife time to do her own thing too. If you volunteer to take your baby for an entire night while your wife goes out with her friends, it will be much easier to get a night for Magic.
5. A lot of the time, you need to wait until your baby is asleep before you can start playing. This works out really well if you've already given your wife a night out with the girls. Then you can play guilt-free after the baby is asleep.
If you help your wife to do the things she wants to do, then she will want to help you do the things you want to do. The trick is plan it out ahead of time and make sure you are communicating well with your wife.
Of course some players are lucky and have wives who also play Magic Online. I'm not one of those lucky guys.
Alot of pros and pundits agree that Ball is the bomb. The saying is "when the horse speaks listen." Which roughly translates into "if everyone says it is so, it might be so."
Prizes? Teach me not to read thoroughly. Somehow I missed that part. :) In game I am Winter.Wolf.
The comments have been fantastic, but that’s what I’ve learned to expect from PureMTGO. I’m awarding this week’s prizes to the following commentators for length, breadth, and depth:
Felorin
Paul Leitch
RoninX
GainsBanding
Find me, sanhedrin, on MTGO to pick up your fabulous Pauper Commander sets. And don’t give up if you don’t catch me for a day or two.