RE Glacial Fortress: Yeah its like less than a ticket, but I'd still rather have that then hate an Infantry Veteran. Every little bit helps!
RE Pyroclasm: You guys are right, I definitely should have taken it. I don't usually hatedraft so I don't tend to think of it much, but Pyroclasm just wrecks this deck. If I didn't have any Giant Spiders I would stick with the Plummet, but this deck isn't all that vulnerable to fliers as it is.
Mr Jahnal ready kind of covered what you mentioned, namely the differences between paper and MTGO. In fact, many people have most likely covered that topic, so I kind of – for better or worse – wanted to avoid that and stick to the central idea. What is usually your target word count? Do you ever fear you'll be adding unimportant details in your articles that will end up watering down the main ideas in order to reach that count? I ask because I know you write on here as well.
Yeah, I don't like the paradigm of Paper vs. Online that is in many ways set up since both can have their respective values to each player. That IS really fortunate to have so many stores because another unfortunate trend with LGS is bad service because of lack of competition. You, on the other hand, have lots of choice. How do you decide which to go to since they're equidistant?
To be honest if I could play paper magic I would not be playing MTGO. The interaction and socializing is too important to me. As it is, the nearest card shop is 300mi away and I can't drive due to my vision.
Also I think you meant "...but otherwise a swan start.". Or perhaps otherwise a duck start. Meh.
haha, yeah, it isn't very long because I expressed what I wanted to express and adding more would have just polluted the central message I wanted to convey in this article. =) Thanks for reading.
I don't have a good answer yet - the interface is pretty limited in this respect. But this is what the community should be brainstorming about. Do you have any initial thoughts?
Not bad. Short article. I would of liked to see the comparisons between MTGO and MTG(Paper) to further reinforce your arguement, but otherwise a goos start. I won't ever sell my collection unless life gets desperate. I consider myself fortunate to have 4 stores within equal distance of each other and my house. Unfortuantly it's an hour drive, but it's worth it to me. There is something about the personal interations I like a little bit more then online. And although we have commander online, I prefer EDH a little bit more.
Gotta take the pyroclasm.. You are vulnerable to Wx Fliers and Pyroclasm kills you dead if you don't play around it. Other than that pick, I think you did much better in this draft. I am in the same opinion as you as far as green goes. I think it's very underrated, especially with multiple llanowar elves and awakener druids. Nice 6-0 man. Keep it up.
I also wish there were a mix of limited and constructed PTQs, but yeah I understand why they don't do that. It's not just that they make more money off of the limited events, it's also that they get more people joining them.
In the end my consuming opinion is that the people who really deserve to be on the Pro Tour and who put in the effort to get there will get there. If some people who don't really deserve to be there get there as well, that's okay because they're pretty quickly going to figure out that they they're out of their league.
Heh, "Ith's Issues" makes it sound like I should be writing this column while laying on a couch in a therapist's office. "It's Elspeth, doc.. I just can't stop thinking about her!"
Sorry I didn't hit home with anything you really wanted to hear. To be honest, as far as new tech goes, I don't see a whole lot of new things going on. Certain lists are changing up a few cards here and there but nothing really groundbreaking. For instance, I have noticed that certain mythic lists are running Rafiq or finest hour again to try to catch people off guard or make something like a Lotus Cobra a valid threat. While I expected to see dredgevine right after the pro tour a few weeks ago, I didn't see much of it making top results but I have seen some of those decks do well lately. Whereas people may have boarded in Sideboard cards such as Relic of Progenitus because they felt those matchups would be heavily encountered (I did for a while in testing and in the daily events), this deck may take people by surprise again. The two newest decks in the format I believe are the straight up White Weenie with Elite Vanguard, Honor the Pure, Ranger of Eos, kor skyfisher, etc. The goal of the deck is not to gain life but to use the Ajani instead to put counters on their creatures and to beat down. The other newer deck I had seen was the G/W/B deck trying to use Tidehollow Sculler to take away important threats and playing other cards such as Lotus Cobra and Knight of the Reliquary to get into threats such as Primeval Titan comboing with Ob Nixilis. Also, the four color Fauna Shaman deck running Blue to tutor for Lost Alara. While they changed a few lands around and added in the combo, the deck essentially plays similar with Hierarch, Cobra, Birds, Reliquary, Vengevine, BBE, Linvala and others.
As such, I really don't think there will be many "innovations" in the format until the rotation. Paper players will be playing their pre release this weekend and deckbuilders both casual and professional alike are aimed at the new Scars cards.
I was hoping to start doing standard recaps but a grueling school schedule has held me back. Hopefully I can get on a normal schedule and do standard updates weekly.
sick draft was sick. pretty much what green/red should look like based on my experiences. i was with phe0bus pack 3, pick 1 thinking 'wheel the garruk' but you really didn't need juggernaut and the pack had no red or black so he probably would have gotten hated out. also, love the glacial fortress pick. sometimes you take the card worth tickets
with the pre-rotation standard MOCS coming up this saturday, i was really excited when i spotted this article, hoping to glean some last minute standard tech before the big tournament, but instead i got a quick recap of pre-rotation standard and alot of speculation about post-rotation standard.
it's kinda strange actually, standard is by far the most popular format on MTGO, with the most daily events, premier events, near constant firing of 2-man and 8-man queues, and is the format for the biggest MTGO tournament of the month coming up this weekend, and yet nobody on this site dedicated to MTGO is talking about it.
You even said yourself that: "We are in the healthiest standard format in years."
Standard is not a stagnant format right now, soul sisters is not the latest piece of innovation to hit standard, dare i say its even old tech by now as the format has evolved, given the constant innovations and light speed metagame changes on MTGO.
Standard is also not an irrelevant format right now, with MOCS this weekend and still a good month and a half? to go before Scars hits MTGO.
So i think it's a bit early to be speculating about post-rotation standard right now, especially on a MTGO site...
With regard your Wizened Cenn-Captain of the Watch example, the absolute best play is X=0 naming Kithkin, then X=5 naming Soldier. The effect from the captain will keep the 0/0 Cenn alive as a 1/1 now that it's a soldier, freeing up all your mana to end up with one 6/6 and three 7/7s, all vigilant.
The strand is awesome...though I partially blame them for the crowdedness of my studio. Ypu know there is a similar market at TSP though I admit that is a bit out of the way of Strand etc.
I went through the entire first pack and guessed every one of your picks right, except the Arc Runner over the Goblin Piker. Pack 2 Pick 1, I guessed the druid, but liked your pyromancer pick better once I saw the comment. It worked out for you, too. The next pick that I got wrong was Pack 3 Pick 1. Given your comment about being the only green player (your guess), I would have further guessed that the companion would wheel. That being said, you already had the fatties, so the juggernaut would have been a greedy pick. I guessed that you would take the Lava Axe over the Glacial Fortress, but there was only one more chance to get a second Lava Axe, so it would have been a waste of a chance to get the duel land. When I built the deck, I would have put in the Duskdale over the second Yavimaya, but you were correct. I did not think of the druids reserving your lands.
The last flag football league I played in a team mate tore both his achilles tendons on one play, and opponent had both of the bones in lower leg broken, and I sprained my ankle so badly that I was in a boot for a month.
Changing the rules of a game does not necessarily change the intensity with which it is played.
If you want to change the intensity you need to communicate that to all participants ahead of time - which I why I've been advocating establishing a clear method of communication rather trying come up with a unifying theory of casual.
To me it seems that it is equally unrealistic to expect the majority of your opponents to allow you to play a game of resource management without trying to deny you some of those resources.
RE Glacial Fortress: Yeah its like less than a ticket, but I'd still rather have that then hate an Infantry Veteran. Every little bit helps!
RE Pyroclasm: You guys are right, I definitely should have taken it. I don't usually hatedraft so I don't tend to think of it much, but Pyroclasm just wrecks this deck. If I didn't have any Giant Spiders I would stick with the Plummet, but this deck isn't all that vulnerable to fliers as it is.
Mr Jahnal ready kind of covered what you mentioned, namely the differences between paper and MTGO. In fact, many people have most likely covered that topic, so I kind of – for better or worse – wanted to avoid that and stick to the central idea. What is usually your target word count? Do you ever fear you'll be adding unimportant details in your articles that will end up watering down the main ideas in order to reach that count? I ask because I know you write on here as well.
Yeah, I don't like the paradigm of Paper vs. Online that is in many ways set up since both can have their respective values to each player. That IS really fortunate to have so many stores because another unfortunate trend with LGS is bad service because of lack of competition. You, on the other hand, have lots of choice. How do you decide which to go to since they're equidistant?
To be honest if I could play paper magic I would not be playing MTGO. The interaction and socializing is too important to me. As it is, the nearest card shop is 300mi away and I can't drive due to my vision.
Also I think you meant "...but otherwise a swan start.". Or perhaps otherwise a duck start. Meh.
haha, yeah, it isn't very long because I expressed what I wanted to express and adding more would have just polluted the central message I wanted to convey in this article. =) Thanks for reading.
*This* is the question!
I don't have a good answer yet - the interface is pretty limited in this respect. But this is what the community should be brainstorming about. Do you have any initial thoughts?
Not bad. Short article. I would of liked to see the comparisons between MTGO and MTG(Paper) to further reinforce your arguement, but otherwise a goos start. I won't ever sell my collection unless life gets desperate. I consider myself fortunate to have 4 stores within equal distance of each other and my house. Unfortuantly it's an hour drive, but it's worth it to me. There is something about the personal interations I like a little bit more then online. And although we have commander online, I prefer EDH a little bit more.
rofl.. I was gonna say it, but didn't...
and by Tix you mean .8x?
Gotta take the pyroclasm.. You are vulnerable to Wx Fliers and Pyroclasm kills you dead if you don't play around it. Other than that pick, I think you did much better in this draft. I am in the same opinion as you as far as green goes. I think it's very underrated, especially with multiple llanowar elves and awakener druids. Nice 6-0 man. Keep it up.
I also wish there were a mix of limited and constructed PTQs, but yeah I understand why they don't do that. It's not just that they make more money off of the limited events, it's also that they get more people joining them.
In the end my consuming opinion is that the people who really deserve to be on the Pro Tour and who put in the effort to get there will get there. If some people who don't really deserve to be there get there as well, that's okay because they're pretty quickly going to figure out that they they're out of their league.
Heh, "Ith's Issues" makes it sound like I should be writing this column while laying on a couch in a therapist's office. "It's Elspeth, doc.. I just can't stop thinking about her!"
Sorry I didn't hit home with anything you really wanted to hear. To be honest, as far as new tech goes, I don't see a whole lot of new things going on. Certain lists are changing up a few cards here and there but nothing really groundbreaking. For instance, I have noticed that certain mythic lists are running Rafiq or finest hour again to try to catch people off guard or make something like a Lotus Cobra a valid threat. While I expected to see dredgevine right after the pro tour a few weeks ago, I didn't see much of it making top results but I have seen some of those decks do well lately. Whereas people may have boarded in Sideboard cards such as Relic of Progenitus because they felt those matchups would be heavily encountered (I did for a while in testing and in the daily events), this deck may take people by surprise again. The two newest decks in the format I believe are the straight up White Weenie with Elite Vanguard, Honor the Pure, Ranger of Eos, kor skyfisher, etc. The goal of the deck is not to gain life but to use the Ajani instead to put counters on their creatures and to beat down. The other newer deck I had seen was the G/W/B deck trying to use Tidehollow Sculler to take away important threats and playing other cards such as Lotus Cobra and Knight of the Reliquary to get into threats such as Primeval Titan comboing with Ob Nixilis. Also, the four color Fauna Shaman deck running Blue to tutor for Lost Alara. While they changed a few lands around and added in the combo, the deck essentially plays similar with Hierarch, Cobra, Birds, Reliquary, Vengevine, BBE, Linvala and others.
As such, I really don't think there will be many "innovations" in the format until the rotation. Paper players will be playing their pre release this weekend and deckbuilders both casual and professional alike are aimed at the new Scars cards.
I was hoping to start doing standard recaps but a grueling school schedule has held me back. Hopefully I can get on a normal schedule and do standard updates weekly.
The only resource denial I’m arguing against in the article is LD.
I like Mmog's suggestion of "Navigating the Maze of Ith"
I also like the fact you gave a perspective from the ORC. I don't have any issues with them so I am happy.
So how do you guarantee that the person who joins your game will be playing RDW or WW?
So how do you guarantee that the person who joins your game will be playing RDW or WW?
sick draft was sick. pretty much what green/red should look like based on my experiences. i was with phe0bus pack 3, pick 1 thinking 'wheel the garruk' but you really didn't need juggernaut and the pack had no red or black so he probably would have gotten hated out. also, love the glacial fortress pick. sometimes you take the card worth tickets
with the pre-rotation standard MOCS coming up this saturday, i was really excited when i spotted this article, hoping to glean some last minute standard tech before the big tournament, but instead i got a quick recap of pre-rotation standard and alot of speculation about post-rotation standard.
it's kinda strange actually, standard is by far the most popular format on MTGO, with the most daily events, premier events, near constant firing of 2-man and 8-man queues, and is the format for the biggest MTGO tournament of the month coming up this weekend, and yet nobody on this site dedicated to MTGO is talking about it.
You even said yourself that: "We are in the healthiest standard format in years."
Standard is not a stagnant format right now, soul sisters is not the latest piece of innovation to hit standard, dare i say its even old tech by now as the format has evolved, given the constant innovations and light speed metagame changes on MTGO.
Standard is also not an irrelevant format right now, with MOCS this weekend and still a good month and a half? to go before Scars hits MTGO.
So i think it's a bit early to be speculating about post-rotation standard right now, especially on a MTGO site...
With regard your Wizened Cenn-Captain of the Watch example, the absolute best play is X=0 naming Kithkin, then X=5 naming Soldier. The effect from the captain will keep the 0/0 Cenn alive as a 1/1 now that it's a soldier, freeing up all your mana to end up with one 6/6 and three 7/7s, all vigilant.
The strand is awesome...though I partially blame them for the crowdedness of my studio. Ypu know there is a similar market at TSP though I admit that is a bit out of the way of Strand etc.
while i like the idea of the reweave deck...i never remember it being on BoaB
+1 good thoughts and well said
I went through the entire first pack and guessed every one of your picks right, except the Arc Runner over the Goblin Piker. Pack 2 Pick 1, I guessed the druid, but liked your pyromancer pick better once I saw the comment. It worked out for you, too. The next pick that I got wrong was Pack 3 Pick 1. Given your comment about being the only green player (your guess), I would have further guessed that the companion would wheel. That being said, you already had the fatties, so the juggernaut would have been a greedy pick. I guessed that you would take the Lava Axe over the Glacial Fortress, but there was only one more chance to get a second Lava Axe, so it would have been a waste of a chance to get the duel land. When I built the deck, I would have put in the Duskdale over the second Yavimaya, but you were correct. I did not think of the druids reserving your lands.
Nice Draft.
The last flag football league I played in a team mate tore both his achilles tendons on one play, and opponent had both of the bones in lower leg broken, and I sprained my ankle so badly that I was in a boot for a month.
Changing the rules of a game does not necessarily change the intensity with which it is played.
If you want to change the intensity you need to communicate that to all participants ahead of time - which I why I've been advocating establishing a clear method of communication rather trying come up with a unifying theory of casual.
To me it seems that it is equally unrealistic to expect the majority of your opponents to allow you to play a game of resource management without trying to deny you some of those resources.