This may come off as trolling, however, that is not my intent. I believe "heath" is simply being a sour pus over the whole thing. A dealer is a speculator. I know its different because they call themselves "dealers" so they get special privilages.
The "speculator" that "wrongfully" bought those Renegade doppelganger wasnt doing anything different than what you do for a living. You were able to obtain the same information that he used(i.e. nationals coverage)which in this market, you should be doing.
As for the comment about it hurting your business: if speculators are consistently buying out on all of yours cards to the point where its hurting your business then you are doing something very wrong. The simple fact that you are a dealer to me menas that you must watch the market and plan accordingly. With the issue of the doppelganger, you made profit on the transaction. You could of made more but failed to "speculate" on the market.
Now I've never been to your shop any maybe its the best around, but to complain about missing profits on a card sound rather silly to me.
I think alot of peoples issues are not on speculating but on hoarding, which I agree is frustrating. One last note, With all these articles coming out about trading/profit, I predict that you will see an upraise is "speculators" and an increase in people calling themselves "dealers".
Thanks for the comments! Discussing picks is always interesting, and I like getting different perspectives on some of the choices to expand my thinking for next time.
P1, P6 - I actually spent a fair amount of time considering between the Phantom Beast and the Stone Golem. The Golem is the safer pick, the Beast is riskier but more powerful when the risk pays off. Having just picked the Awakener Druid, I decided I was going for beating in early and hard, and the Phantom Beast fit better with that plan since it usually comes down a turn sooner. Also occasionally I might have the Awakener active, and 5 land in play. I can drop a 4 drop and still swing with the animated forest, a 5 drop means I have to either wait a turn to cast it, or skip a 4 damage attack.
I see at the moment, I was taking my third 4 drop. But going into green I like to look for the 5 & 6 drops, and I did indeed end up with three 4 drops and two 5 drops in the end. A more aggressive curve than two 4s and three 5s. Especially since I got the second Awakener. The drawback on Phantom Beast is huge when it happens during a game. (The Awakener Druid's drawback can be too!) But even when you run into someone with say 2 Blinding Mage in their deck, some games they won't draw it in time. Other games you'll be against someone with no good answer to the Beast - if you suspect they'll side one in game 2, you can swap it out for another card after you get the beatings out of him in game 1. Overall I like the card a lot, and in a format with a lot of 4 power dudes, the 5 toughness is sometimes relevant too.
P2P1 - As I said, I wish I'd made the different pick there. But bouncing a creature is relevant in games that come down to tempo, and not as great in games where tempo isn't a factor and the issues are creature power, evasion, card advantage, or who draws more threats and answers, while both players have plenty of time to get all their cards into action. Permanent removal like Outrage, though, is relevant in a tempo-oriented racing situation OR a long grind it out game, so it's better overall. Getting a free bear attached to the spell is relevant in games where bears matter, and other times not so important. I don't worry much about the free shock to the face from outrage unless I'm trying for a burn deck, which I've only done once so far and it was a black "burn" deck splashing red, basically a train wreck of a draft that went 0-3. Next time I make a burn deck I'm going to try and make it red. :D
Admittedly, the Aether Adept can also be better than the Outrage against a few cards, like Armored Ascension or Mind Control in particular. It's a flexible, tricky card that I value highly. But Chandra's Outrage has been excellent for me in decks where red's a main color. It kills Wurms really nicely, I even killed an Obstinate Baloth with it this last friday. I hadn't ruled the possibility of blue/red totally by this pick, though I was leaning green. Of course taking a blue card is totally safe and guaranteed to make my deck, if I feel like I don't know yet, which is another point in adept's favor over either the burn spell or the Garruk's Companion. Though Companion fits so nicely in an aggressive deck if I wanted to commit to that, too. I feel the Companion is a definite gamble compared to the Adept at this point, though, and 1 extra power + trample isn't as valuable as the bounce overall.
P2P3 - Llanowar Elves I've been hearing is really important to make the green fatties fast enough to make green decent, and is a really crucial part of the green deck. I do think equipment almost always has some value in most limited formats though - just a question of how much relative to other cards. Ideally if you're accelerating out the green fatties, they're out so early you just have no need for the axe to get fatal damage through or just make them lose their whole team chump-blocking for a few turns until they can't any more. Axe on your Sylvan Ranger gets you more value out of your cards if the game goes long. But green hopes for games to not go long anyway (unless you have Overwhelming Stampede!)
P2P7 - Mentally, I hadn't ruled out the possibility of switching into blue/red still. Even if it's a 2% chance I get some crazy red the first few picks of pack 3 and try that, I figure I'd like to have that hellhound just in case. With 15 reasonable players for blue/green splashing fireball and pyromancer, I'm reasonably likely to get to 22 playables and not need the bear. I read several people saying they never want vanilla 2/2s or 2/1s in M11. I've since seen people try aggro archetypes where they want a bunch of 2 drops, but green isn't involved in those strategies. I rate the unlikely chances of moving into blue/red higher than the unlikely chances of the bear being my final card. And the benefit there of a card that trades for big huge guys, or sometimes gets big hits in is higher than the benefit I get in the case where I actually need the bear. Could even get a little benefit in one of my three matches from some red drafter not having the hellhound, though that's an even more minor consideration.
P3P1 - Mana Leak is always fine to have, but I think Spined Wurm is more powerful overall. Though I'm thinking it's not as strong in M11 as it was in early core sets, where I loved it so much. Still, Mana Leak is sometimes a dead card, Spined Wurm almost always has value. In late game, your opponent not only might always have 3 extra mana, but you might both have all your threats down on the table, and if you're a creature or two behind you need a creature or removal, and nothing else stops you from being behind on board. Even Cancel would be no good at that point.
In this particular deck, too, I'm looking to play aggro, not control. So if I tap out every turn to try and overwhelm him with threats, I'm not going to have mana open for mana leak much in the early game. In a more control oriented build, the value of mana leak would be higher.
P3P2 - Augury Owl vs. Sylvan Ranger is a much closer pick, in my opinion. Both are seeking to improve the consistency of your deck, but in different ways. The owl also gets in a little flying damage, the ranger isn't likely to do more than buy you one chump block. The ranger gives you actual card advantage, the owl gives you card quality advantage, but possibly a more valuable amount of it since you're looking at so many cards. What sold me on the Ranger here is the fact that I have both Fireball and Pyromancer in the deck, and the Ranger helps guarantee I can play them any time I draw them. They're so powerful that I felt that was more important here. Of course the Owl does more to make sure you draw into your stronger cards, and that you keep the lands and appropriate-sized creatures lined up to curve out, so I think it's likely more valuable than the ranger in a two color deck, or one with a less significant splash. When you're splashing fireball, you should be able to win if you draw it, unless you don't get a mountain. So color-fixing was high priority for me here. The Ranger also helps make sure I get value from my Awakener Druids and Spined Wurms, so I like it in this deck.
P3P7 - I saw Brad Nelson at this weekend's Pro Tour pick a Cloud Elemental over a Spined Wurm, so it's definitely reasonable. When there's a ground stall, flyers are often what you need to win - or block their flyers so they don't win. Whether I'm better "maxing out" my ground beaters plan since I only have one other flyer makes any sense, I don't know. Probably it makes more sense to say "I have zero Giant Spiders and one Azure Drake, I need another flyer for air defense and for a plan B if someone has out deathtouch blockers or whatever". Also flyers are the best thing to put the axe on. So looking back, I could see Cloud Elemental here. Again, I'm used to how great Spined Wurm was in 9th and 10th edition, and there's a lot more creatures that can trade with him now.
As for jumping into white - the more whiterer your deck is, the more valuable Armored Ascension is. Even if you get enough white from just two packs to make a complete deck, it's more likely it'll be the minority color, and I'd need more islands than plains, making the ascension weaker. There was no significant white in the second half of pack one except one mighty leap. While there was some good early white in pack 3, I would have had a deck with a few strong white cards but not enough playables to make it my main color. And of course I could easily have gotten even less white than what showed up there - way too big a gamble there, and I didn't have the pack 1 signals that would make it seem tempting.
In the end, I wish my gameplay decisions had been a little tighter more than anything. But I do need to reconsider Cloud Elemental vs. Spined Wurm, I think. As always, it depends on the rest of your deck, your archetype, curve, etc. But Brad Nelson went 3-0 in his draft pod with multiple Cloud Elementals, on his way to being the last undefeated player in the tour at 11-0. (He made it to the finals, too, and finished in 2nd place!)
My reasoning wasn't that it would be easier to pick out individual cards, but more that using the deck function on MTGOtraders, you could check the price of your entire deck in 2 clicks, so it would be easy to see if your deck was still legal.
I wonder if what you are taking issue with is a mostly a subjective matter of degree.
Global destruction: I'm not sure if youre just referring to creatures here but a wide variety of sweepers exist in Heirloom and I believe the format is in many ways too fast for most of the banned ones to be a huge issue in any case. We don't have Firespout that's true, but we have Pyroclasm and Infest among others. I don't think this is a format that will be defined by a lack of global destruction. There are many ways to skin a cat after all.
Discard options- Mind Shatter, Duress, Ostracize, Consult the Necrosages, Mind Sludge, Shrieking Grotesque, Blackmail, Addle, Distress, Last Rites.
Countermagic- some of the best options do not exist certianly but before the release of Mana Leak the counterspell options for Heirloom would have been stronger than Standard and still are vs Block. You still have access to key counters vs fast decks like Force Spike and Spell Pierce with plenty of other strong options.
While planeswalkers are conspicuously absent from Heirloom they are not a component of the game that has existed for that long now, and certianly not to the dominating degree they have been lately. Additionally they do not dominate all the main constructed formats. In Standard at this time they are certianly a huge component as about 50% use 4 or more and maybe 50% of those are 8 or more. The most recent Block results show 33% playing planeswalkers. The most recent Extended results show a disnict absence of the presence of planeswalkers in the top finishers, with only 2 being played in one of the 5 decks. The most recent Legacy results show 4 jaces being played total in 7 decks.
While Mythics in Heirloom will probably not be the key cards any time soon I think that rares will certianly be as proportionally strong in Heirloom as they are in any main format.
Heirloom will have it's idiosyncrasies like any format does from set release to set release and banning to unbanning. I stand by my statements however that Heirloom plays very much like any main constructed format however.
If you still disagree with this after reading this maybe we have to agree to disagree. You can also try playing some games of it yourself and seeing if the reality is as dissimilar to main magic constructed formats as you have asserted.
I think it's sad that RG designed the game to make booster opening akin to gambling. With the way modern Magic has developed, it would be nice to be able to highlight the strategic aspects of the game without losing out so much to luck and cost. In an ideal world, cards would have no rarity, and collecting a playset of each would be very easy, and the competitive and collectible markets would increase. As long as Magic was still fun, the player base would increase a lot, and the number of players wanting to play tournaments would sky rocket. Given the increased player based, I'm thinking WOTC would still make a ton of money if it kept selling packs for $4-5 a pop.
Of course, the player base would really need to be there. Despite being a cheap game to play casually, competitive chess died because no one wants to play tournaments that cost them $30 each when they could just play at home for free.
"a single price cap causes the format to focus on lower rarities instead of higher ones which causes it to be dominated by exceptional commons and good uncommons. Heirloom is intended to play like traditional constructed formats by having a balance of power between all rarities without making the format expensive."
This is completely inaccurate. No Planeswalkers, no global destruction, restricted discard options far beyond pauper, and even counterspell decks will be extremely limited for a legacy environment.
If you want a format that is affordable, so be it. I get that.
But to say that this format will play more consistent with traditional formats, is inaccurate.
I also don't understand what rarity has to do with how a Magic environment plays. If you mean that by allowing rares, the format will include more complicated cards than exist in Pauper, say that - it will most definitely be true.
Moreover, traditional formats do not have a balance of power between the rarities. Note the power level of Mythic Rares means that any of them that are barely playable in any constructed format will be out of the price threshold of Heirloom. Planeswalkers dominate the standard format at the moment and even big Jace is showing up in Legacy decks, clunky 4 CMC and all. Legacy is filled with rare cards that drive decks far more than the commons and uncommons. There is no such thing as a power balance between the rarities. On the contrary, commons are the home of the stalwarts of limited play and it is the exception rather than the rule that drives a common into a special place within a constructed environment.
Really good to see a draft that didn't end up with an easy 3-0 of a 4th pick fireball. A couple of picks seemed a little strange to me, even without the benefit of hindsight:
P1P6 - Not picking Negate here is pretty reasonable given that they're fairly easy to come by and you usually don't want more than one, but I think it's tough to defend picking Phantom Beast over Stone Golem. Not only is the 4/4 for 5 a bit better than a 4/5 for 4 with a serious drawback, but also at this point you're in three different colors and you don't know how the draft is going to shape up. Sure you know that Blue will likely be a main color given it's overall depth, but taking the Golem makes your color constraints a little easier to manage.
P2P1 - I think it's hard to justify picking Chandra's Outrage over Aether Adept (even without knowing that you're not gonna maindeck the removal spell). It's pretty certain that Blue is your main color at this point. Depending on personal preference you might like Outrage more than Adept, but given it's double R, it's a difficult splash for an okay removal spell. Outrage fits well into a deck that's trying to force through damage though, and this isn't really the deck you're building at this point in the draft.
P2P3 - As mentioned Llanowar Elf or Greater Basilisk are probably better picks here, but I don't think Warlord Axe is a huge mistake, just not optimal. I don't think that Axe is too slow for this deck, especially since you're light on finishers, as games go longer I think this is fine to keep turning every creature into a game ending threat and giving you the chance to trade up.
P2P7 - No real impact on the deck, but Fiery Hellhound is completely unplayable in the deck you're building, even though you probably won't play the Bear, it still makes sense to pick it and give yourself the option if disaster strikes in the rest of the draft and you're light on creatures.
P3P1/2 - I think both of these picks are fine, but I would have liked a little more explanation as to why you didn't pick the Mana Leak or the Augury Owl. The Owl goes nicely with your Warlord Axe in that it's evasive and can force removal with the Axe. Also Scry 3 does something similar to the Elf in terms of fixing. Not saying either pick is wrong at all, just curious for some more discussion.
P3P7 - Again Spined Wurm over Mana Leak and in this pack Cloud Elemental, seems perfectly reasonable, but not the slam dunk you make it sound like.
Also, there was a decent chance to jump into white when you opened the Armored Ascension, but I think it's only clear with hindsight that that might have been a good choice but you do see Ascension, Blinding Mage, Angelic Arbiter, Pacifism, Excommunicate, a couple of Safe Passages and some solid White creatures. Probably only an option in retrospect though.
For card searches I usually have a starting card I want to play with or an archetype in mind then I search with that keyword and by each rarity individually. For example "goblin" I search commons 0-6 cents with "goblin" in the text then uncommon at 1-11 and so on(the advanced search doesn't include the last number in the search so 0.00-0.06 gives you all cards from 1-5 cents).
Riftstone Portal- always been a good one
Ravenous Trap- pretty nice graveyard hate for the format.
Keen Sense- hard to go wrong here
Ancient Ziggurat- Banned. Rarity set by Conflux at uncommon. Lowest price $0.20 above the $0.10 cap.
That's a great question that has a complicated response. If you look through the comments on this article I think you'll find some pretty good rationales for the precise way that the ban system was enacted. I'll try to cover the bases again though.
I think what you're saying is: Why not just a cap at $0.25 per card regardless of rarity? (if this isn't what you mean let me know)
a single price cap causes the format to focus on lower rarities instead of higher ones which causes it to be dominated by exceptional commons and good uncommons. Heirloom is intended to play like traditional constructed formats by having a balance of power between all rarities without making the format expensive.
I don't know that a single price would make bannings fluctuate more or less, with 14,000-15,000 unique cards legal in the format it's hard to tell.
Having the price system narrowed down to one search doesn't seem like it's going to save much time looking at cards with 14-15k cards to look at. Doing more specific searches even beyond rarity will probably be the best strategy. (eg rares that mention "aura" in their text). The advanced search option makes this pretty easy to do in any case.
I'm not sure what you mean by being able to or not able to play larger decks. You can build any size deck you want as long as it's at least 60 cards.
I hope some of this helps you understand the thinking those of us who designed this format had when we conceived Heirloom.
Some paper dealers do not show their full stock. On my websites you can see almost my full inventory. The only thing you cannot see is cards on my restocking bot.
Speculators add another layer of cost to each card that would not occur due to normal player demand. They also increase the prices at an abnormal speed.
Is it just me or are we missing the care factor here?
If a card increases in value it's not anyone's fault. The card just had been undervalued or an increase of demand has taken place.
If you ask me all i can read is jealousy for the small amount of people why try to make some profit.
What they don't see is that same amount of people have (for example) 50 untouched liliana vess in their binder, whom they bought at a higher price then its current value.
On the trend day (where a card skyrockets because it's been in an article) you can try to beat the fanatics to the card, but why would you? is your life really going to suck if you don't play the deck?
I think that fluctuations in prices are normal, been there for years and shouldn't be something we feel the need to control.
Now Id love to see some promotional stuff online (just the possibility is exciting) but I am not upset that they don't plan anything like that. It really is a different game. We aren't second class magic citizens. david peterson garcia
"My question is who do speculators benefit?"
Oh I'd like to answer this. (And would welcome Heath's response, if he wants.)
The answer is easy (even assuming the implied "... besides themselves"). They benefit you, the seller. And we know this because it's an arms-length transaction into which you enter willingly. If there wasn't a net benefit for you in some way, you wouldn't do it. (If I'm wrong and you are willing to make sales that don't benefit you, I'll take 4 Primeval Titan's for $5, please, and I expect you to be miserable about it. ;) )
The tougher questions are "How does it benefit the seller, why would a seller not be happy after making the sales that they offered, and what role do speculators play in the market as a whole?" Let me answer those roundabout.
Much of the reaction to speculators is that we usually only hear the hindsight success stories. They bought low then sold high and everyone else thinks "that could have been me!" (Buyers wishing they'd bought low, sellers wishing they'd sold high.) And hey, I'd sign up for omnipotence and time travel too. But you have to take the deal as it's offered beforehand.
So, anyone rushing off to buy all the Necrotic Plagues? Only $0.08 each! Or does it seem like a waste? And Heath, if I wanted to buy all 32 of your Cranial Extractions (listed at $1 each), isn't a big part of you thinking "Thank God, I thought I'd never get rid of that crap!" This is the world the speculator enters into: one where the cards aren't moving.
So the benefit a speculator provides to the seller is volume and revenue. That's no insight. Less obvious is that the role they play in the market: risk absorber (a.k.a. sometimes they're wrong). Anyone who holds a commodity with the intention to resell is taking the risk of price movement. Today it's worth $2, tomorrow it could be $0.50 or $5.00. Dealers are no stranger to this role, but that's no surprise because a store is a middleman itself. The difference is that dealers manage their risk through breadth while speculators do it though information.
So why a dealer would dislike speculators, despite trades made on their own terms, is that the speculator is playing the role of competitor - one using a different set of rules. As the MTGO Community's leading singles supplier, MTGOTraders wants to have availability for anything the community could want. For this reason I suspect Heath might have some reservation about my hypothetical 32 Cranial Extractions order even though he knows the cards aren't moving. If I come and buy them all that's $32 in his pocket to go spend, but with it comes the risk of a disappointed customer later. That potential buyer now has to find their way to Speculator Amar. And whether I sell to them at $2, $1, or $.10 doesn't even matter so much because I've interfered already interfered with the store's role and reputation.
This is why a 8x rule makes a lot of sense. In fact it's imperfect because I and 3 of my friends could accomplish the same thing and he's right back in the same spot. In an ideal world a dealer could have per-transaction pricing as happens on the stock market. (If you see AAPL trading at $256 and place a market order for 10 million shares immediately, you're not getting them all for $2.56 billion. The price will go up as you're buying.) But it's impractical for the dealer and frustrating for the public to deal with prices that change so dynamically, so the volume limit is a reasonable proxy.
To sum up:
* Dealers dislike speculators because both are middlemen and speculators are fast and specific while dealers are consistent and broad.
* People in the general public dislike speculators because they are whiny babies who think they should never have to pay for anything or take any risks and make no mistake they'd turn on dealers in a heartbeat as well with their what-do-you-mean-you-buy-for-1-and-sell-for-2 nonsense. (I may be editorializing this point a little.)
Why not just have a total price system. That way you could check the legality of your deck in a single search on MTGOTraders. It would also be less susceptible to price changes because there is only one price that could affect it.
If you put the average price at 25 cents a card, you could also make it possible for people to play larger decks if they wanted.
Speculators have the right to take advantage where they can(to a limit, actually trying to corner markets and create artificial price inflation is already illegal in the stock market, and might be for other tradable things as well though I don't know the details of the laws exactly).
Dealers have the right to try to stop speculators anyway they can.
I like dealers a lot more than speculators so if the speculators lose the balance of the fight I won't be crying any tears for them.
illegal in theory and illegal in practical terms are different things of course, and without enforcement it creates the same moral hazard as if there were no law, ie the least moral profiting and reproducing tactics and power with the most moral getting creamed.
So basically you have to support the people made sheriff by circumstance: Dealers. If you want more moral people to succeed over less moral.
Spoils of the Vault- Ouch, but hey if you really want to find that card.
(not sure if there is some interactiong with this i dont know of)
Necropotence- BANANANANANARAMA! The cheapest version is $0.75. The card's highest rarity in a legal non-preconstructed set is rare. which means it's banned. (From the Vault: Exiled is a preconstructed premium set and Heirloom rules say that those sets do not establish rarity, it's rarity is set atm by MED2)
Mirari- Very nice, very fun, very legal (Highest rarity tied between Odyssey and Timeshifted and the Timeshifted version is $0.12 so very legal)
Zuran Orb- As much as it would be cool if this were legal it's not. (rarity set by MED1 as uncommon. It's lowest price is $0.12 just above the cap. Maybe someday but not right now)
Animal Magnetism- Yours to practice animalism with.
Greater Good- Nothing funny about this one, could be a good psuedo-dredge enabler.
Through the Breach- sneak attack go!
Proteus Staff- Heck yes.
Hypergenesis- This. Time to build my 9th Heirloom deck heh.
Good comment to FAQ some of the legalities on. There are a couple of details you have to remember for legality, so pay attention the the fine print(it is all rational and consistent)
As I said in the article, I think I got too excited after passing up the axe in the previous pick, and then getting another shot at one. I let that distort my judgement, and I think the Llanowar Elves, Scroll Thief, and Greater Basilisk could all have been picked over the Axe. I got lucky and the elf wheeled, but normally it wouldn't. He helps fatties more (by getting them out quick) than the axe does. Some decks can benefit more from the axe, others less - green fatties probably benefit from it the least, as they're already "big enough" usually. And they'd rather be spending that cast+equip mana to cast another fattie instead.
This may come off as trolling, however, that is not my intent. I believe "heath" is simply being a sour pus over the whole thing. A dealer is a speculator. I know its different because they call themselves "dealers" so they get special privilages.
The "speculator" that "wrongfully" bought those Renegade doppelganger wasnt doing anything different than what you do for a living. You were able to obtain the same information that he used(i.e. nationals coverage)which in this market, you should be doing.
As for the comment about it hurting your business: if speculators are consistently buying out on all of yours cards to the point where its hurting your business then you are doing something very wrong. The simple fact that you are a dealer to me menas that you must watch the market and plan accordingly. With the issue of the doppelganger, you made profit on the transaction. You could of made more but failed to "speculate" on the market.
Now I've never been to your shop any maybe its the best around, but to complain about missing profits on a card sound rather silly to me.
I think alot of peoples issues are not on speculating but on hoarding, which I agree is frustrating. One last note, With all these articles coming out about trading/profit, I predict that you will see an upraise is "speculators" and an increase in people calling themselves "dealers".
Thanks for the comments! Discussing picks is always interesting, and I like getting different perspectives on some of the choices to expand my thinking for next time.
P1, P6 - I actually spent a fair amount of time considering between the Phantom Beast and the Stone Golem. The Golem is the safer pick, the Beast is riskier but more powerful when the risk pays off. Having just picked the Awakener Druid, I decided I was going for beating in early and hard, and the Phantom Beast fit better with that plan since it usually comes down a turn sooner. Also occasionally I might have the Awakener active, and 5 land in play. I can drop a 4 drop and still swing with the animated forest, a 5 drop means I have to either wait a turn to cast it, or skip a 4 damage attack.
I see at the moment, I was taking my third 4 drop. But going into green I like to look for the 5 & 6 drops, and I did indeed end up with three 4 drops and two 5 drops in the end. A more aggressive curve than two 4s and three 5s. Especially since I got the second Awakener. The drawback on Phantom Beast is huge when it happens during a game. (The Awakener Druid's drawback can be too!) But even when you run into someone with say 2 Blinding Mage in their deck, some games they won't draw it in time. Other games you'll be against someone with no good answer to the Beast - if you suspect they'll side one in game 2, you can swap it out for another card after you get the beatings out of him in game 1. Overall I like the card a lot, and in a format with a lot of 4 power dudes, the 5 toughness is sometimes relevant too.
P2P1 - As I said, I wish I'd made the different pick there. But bouncing a creature is relevant in games that come down to tempo, and not as great in games where tempo isn't a factor and the issues are creature power, evasion, card advantage, or who draws more threats and answers, while both players have plenty of time to get all their cards into action. Permanent removal like Outrage, though, is relevant in a tempo-oriented racing situation OR a long grind it out game, so it's better overall. Getting a free bear attached to the spell is relevant in games where bears matter, and other times not so important. I don't worry much about the free shock to the face from outrage unless I'm trying for a burn deck, which I've only done once so far and it was a black "burn" deck splashing red, basically a train wreck of a draft that went 0-3. Next time I make a burn deck I'm going to try and make it red. :D
Admittedly, the Aether Adept can also be better than the Outrage against a few cards, like Armored Ascension or Mind Control in particular. It's a flexible, tricky card that I value highly. But Chandra's Outrage has been excellent for me in decks where red's a main color. It kills Wurms really nicely, I even killed an Obstinate Baloth with it this last friday. I hadn't ruled the possibility of blue/red totally by this pick, though I was leaning green. Of course taking a blue card is totally safe and guaranteed to make my deck, if I feel like I don't know yet, which is another point in adept's favor over either the burn spell or the Garruk's Companion. Though Companion fits so nicely in an aggressive deck if I wanted to commit to that, too. I feel the Companion is a definite gamble compared to the Adept at this point, though, and 1 extra power + trample isn't as valuable as the bounce overall.
P2P3 - Llanowar Elves I've been hearing is really important to make the green fatties fast enough to make green decent, and is a really crucial part of the green deck. I do think equipment almost always has some value in most limited formats though - just a question of how much relative to other cards. Ideally if you're accelerating out the green fatties, they're out so early you just have no need for the axe to get fatal damage through or just make them lose their whole team chump-blocking for a few turns until they can't any more. Axe on your Sylvan Ranger gets you more value out of your cards if the game goes long. But green hopes for games to not go long anyway (unless you have Overwhelming Stampede!)
P2P7 - Mentally, I hadn't ruled out the possibility of switching into blue/red still. Even if it's a 2% chance I get some crazy red the first few picks of pack 3 and try that, I figure I'd like to have that hellhound just in case. With 15 reasonable players for blue/green splashing fireball and pyromancer, I'm reasonably likely to get to 22 playables and not need the bear. I read several people saying they never want vanilla 2/2s or 2/1s in M11. I've since seen people try aggro archetypes where they want a bunch of 2 drops, but green isn't involved in those strategies. I rate the unlikely chances of moving into blue/red higher than the unlikely chances of the bear being my final card. And the benefit there of a card that trades for big huge guys, or sometimes gets big hits in is higher than the benefit I get in the case where I actually need the bear. Could even get a little benefit in one of my three matches from some red drafter not having the hellhound, though that's an even more minor consideration.
P3P1 - Mana Leak is always fine to have, but I think Spined Wurm is more powerful overall. Though I'm thinking it's not as strong in M11 as it was in early core sets, where I loved it so much. Still, Mana Leak is sometimes a dead card, Spined Wurm almost always has value. In late game, your opponent not only might always have 3 extra mana, but you might both have all your threats down on the table, and if you're a creature or two behind you need a creature or removal, and nothing else stops you from being behind on board. Even Cancel would be no good at that point.
In this particular deck, too, I'm looking to play aggro, not control. So if I tap out every turn to try and overwhelm him with threats, I'm not going to have mana open for mana leak much in the early game. In a more control oriented build, the value of mana leak would be higher.
P3P2 - Augury Owl vs. Sylvan Ranger is a much closer pick, in my opinion. Both are seeking to improve the consistency of your deck, but in different ways. The owl also gets in a little flying damage, the ranger isn't likely to do more than buy you one chump block. The ranger gives you actual card advantage, the owl gives you card quality advantage, but possibly a more valuable amount of it since you're looking at so many cards. What sold me on the Ranger here is the fact that I have both Fireball and Pyromancer in the deck, and the Ranger helps guarantee I can play them any time I draw them. They're so powerful that I felt that was more important here. Of course the Owl does more to make sure you draw into your stronger cards, and that you keep the lands and appropriate-sized creatures lined up to curve out, so I think it's likely more valuable than the ranger in a two color deck, or one with a less significant splash. When you're splashing fireball, you should be able to win if you draw it, unless you don't get a mountain. So color-fixing was high priority for me here. The Ranger also helps make sure I get value from my Awakener Druids and Spined Wurms, so I like it in this deck.
P3P7 - I saw Brad Nelson at this weekend's Pro Tour pick a Cloud Elemental over a Spined Wurm, so it's definitely reasonable. When there's a ground stall, flyers are often what you need to win - or block their flyers so they don't win. Whether I'm better "maxing out" my ground beaters plan since I only have one other flyer makes any sense, I don't know. Probably it makes more sense to say "I have zero Giant Spiders and one Azure Drake, I need another flyer for air defense and for a plan B if someone has out deathtouch blockers or whatever". Also flyers are the best thing to put the axe on. So looking back, I could see Cloud Elemental here. Again, I'm used to how great Spined Wurm was in 9th and 10th edition, and there's a lot more creatures that can trade with him now.
As for jumping into white - the more whiterer your deck is, the more valuable Armored Ascension is. Even if you get enough white from just two packs to make a complete deck, it's more likely it'll be the minority color, and I'd need more islands than plains, making the ascension weaker. There was no significant white in the second half of pack one except one mighty leap. While there was some good early white in pack 3, I would have had a deck with a few strong white cards but not enough playables to make it my main color. And of course I could easily have gotten even less white than what showed up there - way too big a gamble there, and I didn't have the pack 1 signals that would make it seem tempting.
In the end, I wish my gameplay decisions had been a little tighter more than anything. But I do need to reconsider Cloud Elemental vs. Spined Wurm, I think. As always, it depends on the rest of your deck, your archetype, curve, etc. But Brad Nelson went 3-0 in his draft pod with multiple Cloud Elementals, on his way to being the last undefeated player in the tour at 11-0. (He made it to the finals, too, and finished in 2nd place!)
Very good comment and a very good explanation. Could you address the difference between speculating and scalping?
My reasoning wasn't that it would be easier to pick out individual cards, but more that using the deck function on MTGOtraders, you could check the price of your entire deck in 2 clicks, so it would be easy to see if your deck was still legal.
Hello Kaladine,
I wonder if what you are taking issue with is a mostly a subjective matter of degree.
Global destruction: I'm not sure if youre just referring to creatures here but a wide variety of sweepers exist in Heirloom and I believe the format is in many ways too fast for most of the banned ones to be a huge issue in any case. We don't have Firespout that's true, but we have Pyroclasm and Infest among others. I don't think this is a format that will be defined by a lack of global destruction. There are many ways to skin a cat after all.
Discard options- Mind Shatter, Duress, Ostracize, Consult the Necrosages, Mind Sludge, Shrieking Grotesque, Blackmail, Addle, Distress, Last Rites.
Countermagic- some of the best options do not exist certianly but before the release of Mana Leak the counterspell options for Heirloom would have been stronger than Standard and still are vs Block. You still have access to key counters vs fast decks like Force Spike and Spell Pierce with plenty of other strong options.
While planeswalkers are conspicuously absent from Heirloom they are not a component of the game that has existed for that long now, and certianly not to the dominating degree they have been lately. Additionally they do not dominate all the main constructed formats. In Standard at this time they are certianly a huge component as about 50% use 4 or more and maybe 50% of those are 8 or more. The most recent Block results show 33% playing planeswalkers. The most recent Extended results show a disnict absence of the presence of planeswalkers in the top finishers, with only 2 being played in one of the 5 decks. The most recent Legacy results show 4 jaces being played total in 7 decks.
While Mythics in Heirloom will probably not be the key cards any time soon I think that rares will certianly be as proportionally strong in Heirloom as they are in any main format.
Heirloom will have it's idiosyncrasies like any format does from set release to set release and banning to unbanning. I stand by my statements however that Heirloom plays very much like any main constructed format however.
If you still disagree with this after reading this maybe we have to agree to disagree. You can also try playing some games of it yourself and seeing if the reality is as dissimilar to main magic constructed formats as you have asserted.
Have a good one,
Xaoslegend-
I think it's sad that RG designed the game to make booster opening akin to gambling. With the way modern Magic has developed, it would be nice to be able to highlight the strategic aspects of the game without losing out so much to luck and cost. In an ideal world, cards would have no rarity, and collecting a playset of each would be very easy, and the competitive and collectible markets would increase. As long as Magic was still fun, the player base would increase a lot, and the number of players wanting to play tournaments would sky rocket. Given the increased player based, I'm thinking WOTC would still make a ton of money if it kept selling packs for $4-5 a pop.
Of course, the player base would really need to be there. Despite being a cheap game to play casually, competitive chess died because no one wants to play tournaments that cost them $30 each when they could just play at home for free.
I don't understand this statement:
"a single price cap causes the format to focus on lower rarities instead of higher ones which causes it to be dominated by exceptional commons and good uncommons. Heirloom is intended to play like traditional constructed formats by having a balance of power between all rarities without making the format expensive."
This is completely inaccurate. No Planeswalkers, no global destruction, restricted discard options far beyond pauper, and even counterspell decks will be extremely limited for a legacy environment.
If you want a format that is affordable, so be it. I get that.
But to say that this format will play more consistent with traditional formats, is inaccurate.
I also don't understand what rarity has to do with how a Magic environment plays. If you mean that by allowing rares, the format will include more complicated cards than exist in Pauper, say that - it will most definitely be true.
Moreover, traditional formats do not have a balance of power between the rarities. Note the power level of Mythic Rares means that any of them that are barely playable in any constructed format will be out of the price threshold of Heirloom. Planeswalkers dominate the standard format at the moment and even big Jace is showing up in Legacy decks, clunky 4 CMC and all. Legacy is filled with rare cards that drive decks far more than the commons and uncommons. There is no such thing as a power balance between the rarities. On the contrary, commons are the home of the stalwarts of limited play and it is the exception rather than the rule that drives a common into a special place within a constructed environment.
Hey Amar,
Thanks for the tip but ya I was just discovering the room myself. If anyone has any other promotion suggestions I'd love to have the help.
Thanks again,
Xaoslegend-
Any chance of you posting a time for these weekend events in the official Player Run Events room?
http://community.wizards.com/go/forum/view/75846/135082
For those in the know it would be a convenient place to check, and those who haven't read the article might find out about them by browsing that room.
edit:n/m I see one was posted about the identical time I was writing this.
Really good to see a draft that didn't end up with an easy 3-0 of a 4th pick fireball. A couple of picks seemed a little strange to me, even without the benefit of hindsight:
P1P6 - Not picking Negate here is pretty reasonable given that they're fairly easy to come by and you usually don't want more than one, but I think it's tough to defend picking Phantom Beast over Stone Golem. Not only is the 4/4 for 5 a bit better than a 4/5 for 4 with a serious drawback, but also at this point you're in three different colors and you don't know how the draft is going to shape up. Sure you know that Blue will likely be a main color given it's overall depth, but taking the Golem makes your color constraints a little easier to manage.
P2P1 - I think it's hard to justify picking Chandra's Outrage over Aether Adept (even without knowing that you're not gonna maindeck the removal spell). It's pretty certain that Blue is your main color at this point. Depending on personal preference you might like Outrage more than Adept, but given it's double R, it's a difficult splash for an okay removal spell. Outrage fits well into a deck that's trying to force through damage though, and this isn't really the deck you're building at this point in the draft.
P2P3 - As mentioned Llanowar Elf or Greater Basilisk are probably better picks here, but I don't think Warlord Axe is a huge mistake, just not optimal. I don't think that Axe is too slow for this deck, especially since you're light on finishers, as games go longer I think this is fine to keep turning every creature into a game ending threat and giving you the chance to trade up.
P2P7 - No real impact on the deck, but Fiery Hellhound is completely unplayable in the deck you're building, even though you probably won't play the Bear, it still makes sense to pick it and give yourself the option if disaster strikes in the rest of the draft and you're light on creatures.
P3P1/2 - I think both of these picks are fine, but I would have liked a little more explanation as to why you didn't pick the Mana Leak or the Augury Owl. The Owl goes nicely with your Warlord Axe in that it's evasive and can force removal with the Axe. Also Scry 3 does something similar to the Elf in terms of fixing. Not saying either pick is wrong at all, just curious for some more discussion.
P3P7 - Again Spined Wurm over Mana Leak and in this pack Cloud Elemental, seems perfectly reasonable, but not the slam dunk you make it sound like.
Also, there was a decent chance to jump into white when you opened the Armored Ascension, but I think it's only clear with hindsight that that might have been a good choice but you do see Ascension, Blinding Mage, Angelic Arbiter, Pacifism, Excommunicate, a couple of Safe Passages and some solid White creatures. Probably only an option in retrospect though.
Hey Feastoftheunicorn,
For card searches I usually have a starting card I want to play with or an archetype in mind then I search with that keyword and by each rarity individually. For example "goblin" I search commons 0-6 cents with "goblin" in the text then uncommon at 1-11 and so on(the advanced search doesn't include the last number in the search so 0.00-0.06 gives you all cards from 1-5 cents).
Riftstone Portal- always been a good one
Ravenous Trap- pretty nice graveyard hate for the format.
Keen Sense- hard to go wrong here
Ancient Ziggurat- Banned. Rarity set by Conflux at uncommon. Lowest price $0.20 above the $0.10 cap.
Xaoslegend-
Hi there Theobill,
That's a great question that has a complicated response. If you look through the comments on this article I think you'll find some pretty good rationales for the precise way that the ban system was enacted. I'll try to cover the bases again though.
I think what you're saying is: Why not just a cap at $0.25 per card regardless of rarity? (if this isn't what you mean let me know)
a single price cap causes the format to focus on lower rarities instead of higher ones which causes it to be dominated by exceptional commons and good uncommons. Heirloom is intended to play like traditional constructed formats by having a balance of power between all rarities without making the format expensive.
I don't know that a single price would make bannings fluctuate more or less, with 14,000-15,000 unique cards legal in the format it's hard to tell.
Having the price system narrowed down to one search doesn't seem like it's going to save much time looking at cards with 14-15k cards to look at. Doing more specific searches even beyond rarity will probably be the best strategy. (eg rares that mention "aura" in their text). The advanced search option makes this pretty easy to do in any case.
I'm not sure what you mean by being able to or not able to play larger decks. You can build any size deck you want as long as it's at least 60 cards.
I hope some of this helps you understand the thinking those of us who designed this format had when we conceived Heirloom.
Xaoslegend-
Perhaps we should discuss the best way to search for cards
also likey
riftstone portal
ravenous trap
keen sense
ancient ziggurat
Is it just me or are we missing the care factor here?
If a card increases in value it's not anyone's fault. The card just had been undervalued or an increase of demand has taken place.
If you ask me all i can read is jealousy for the small amount of people why try to make some profit.
What they don't see is that same amount of people have (for example) 50 untouched liliana vess in their binder, whom they bought at a higher price then its current value.
On the trend day (where a card skyrockets because it's been in an article) you can try to beat the fanatics to the card, but why would you? is your life really going to suck if you don't play the deck?
I think that fluctuations in prices are normal, been there for years and shouldn't be something we feel the need to control.
Now Id love to see some promotional stuff online (just the possibility is exciting) but I am not upset that they don't plan anything like that. It really is a different game. We aren't second class magic citizens.
david peterson garcia
I made my serious point above so I just want to tongue-in-cheek mention here that you're coming dangerously close to a "too big to fail" statement. :)
"My question is who do speculators benefit?"
Oh I'd like to answer this. (And would welcome Heath's response, if he wants.)
The answer is easy (even assuming the implied "... besides themselves"). They benefit you, the seller. And we know this because it's an arms-length transaction into which you enter willingly. If there wasn't a net benefit for you in some way, you wouldn't do it. (If I'm wrong and you are willing to make sales that don't benefit you, I'll take 4 Primeval Titan's for $5, please, and I expect you to be miserable about it. ;) )
The tougher questions are "How does it benefit the seller, why would a seller not be happy after making the sales that they offered, and what role do speculators play in the market as a whole?" Let me answer those roundabout.
Much of the reaction to speculators is that we usually only hear the hindsight success stories. They bought low then sold high and everyone else thinks "that could have been me!" (Buyers wishing they'd bought low, sellers wishing they'd sold high.) And hey, I'd sign up for omnipotence and time travel too. But you have to take the deal as it's offered beforehand.
So, anyone rushing off to buy all the Necrotic Plagues? Only $0.08 each! Or does it seem like a waste? And Heath, if I wanted to buy all 32 of your Cranial Extractions (listed at $1 each), isn't a big part of you thinking "Thank God, I thought I'd never get rid of that crap!" This is the world the speculator enters into: one where the cards aren't moving.
So the benefit a speculator provides to the seller is volume and revenue. That's no insight. Less obvious is that the role they play in the market: risk absorber (a.k.a. sometimes they're wrong). Anyone who holds a commodity with the intention to resell is taking the risk of price movement. Today it's worth $2, tomorrow it could be $0.50 or $5.00. Dealers are no stranger to this role, but that's no surprise because a store is a middleman itself. The difference is that dealers manage their risk through breadth while speculators do it though information.
So why a dealer would dislike speculators, despite trades made on their own terms, is that the speculator is playing the role of competitor - one using a different set of rules. As the MTGO Community's leading singles supplier, MTGOTraders wants to have availability for anything the community could want. For this reason I suspect Heath might have some reservation about my hypothetical 32 Cranial Extractions order even though he knows the cards aren't moving. If I come and buy them all that's $32 in his pocket to go spend, but with it comes the risk of a disappointed customer later. That potential buyer now has to find their way to Speculator Amar. And whether I sell to them at $2, $1, or $.10 doesn't even matter so much because I've interfered already interfered with the store's role and reputation.
This is why a 8x rule makes a lot of sense. In fact it's imperfect because I and 3 of my friends could accomplish the same thing and he's right back in the same spot. In an ideal world a dealer could have per-transaction pricing as happens on the stock market. (If you see AAPL trading at $256 and place a market order for 10 million shares immediately, you're not getting them all for $2.56 billion. The price will go up as you're buying.) But it's impractical for the dealer and frustrating for the public to deal with prices that change so dynamically, so the volume limit is a reasonable proxy.
To sum up:
* Dealers dislike speculators because both are middlemen and speculators are fast and specific while dealers are consistent and broad.
* People in the general public dislike speculators because they are whiny babies who think they should never have to pay for anything or take any risks and make no mistake they'd turn on dealers in a heartbeat as well with their what-do-you-mean-you-buy-for-1-and-sell-for-2 nonsense. (I may be editorializing this point a little.)
Why not just have a total price system. That way you could check the legality of your deck in a single search on MTGOTraders. It would also be less susceptible to price changes because there is only one price that could affect it.
If you put the average price at 25 cents a card, you could also make it possible for people to play larger decks if they wanted.
I think it comes down to this.
Speculators have the right to take advantage where they can(to a limit, actually trying to corner markets and create artificial price inflation is already illegal in the stock market, and might be for other tradable things as well though I don't know the details of the laws exactly).
Dealers have the right to try to stop speculators anyway they can.
I like dealers a lot more than speculators so if the speculators lose the balance of the fight I won't be crying any tears for them.
illegal in theory and illegal in practical terms are different things of course, and without enforcement it creates the same moral hazard as if there were no law, ie the least moral profiting and reproducing tactics and power with the most moral getting creamed.
So basically you have to support the people made sheriff by circumstance: Dealers. If you want more moral people to succeed over less moral.
Xaoslegend-
Hey Feastoftheunicorn,
Spoils of the Vault- Ouch, but hey if you really want to find that card.
(not sure if there is some interactiong with this i dont know of)
Necropotence- BANANANANANARAMA! The cheapest version is $0.75. The card's highest rarity in a legal non-preconstructed set is rare. which means it's banned. (From the Vault: Exiled is a preconstructed premium set and Heirloom rules say that those sets do not establish rarity, it's rarity is set atm by MED2)
Mirari- Very nice, very fun, very legal (Highest rarity tied between Odyssey and Timeshifted and the Timeshifted version is $0.12 so very legal)
Zuran Orb- As much as it would be cool if this were legal it's not. (rarity set by MED1 as uncommon. It's lowest price is $0.12 just above the cap. Maybe someday but not right now)
Warped Devotion- Always a fun card.
Rootbound Crag- lowest price $0.60, rarity-rare, Banned.
Endless Whispers- Unleash whispers at your want.
Animal Magnetism- Yours to practice animalism with.
Greater Good- Nothing funny about this one, could be a good psuedo-dredge enabler.
Through the Breach- sneak attack go!
Proteus Staff- Heck yes.
Hypergenesis- This. Time to build my 9th Heirloom deck heh.
Good comment to FAQ some of the legalities on. There are a couple of details you have to remember for legality, so pay attention the the fine print(it is all rational and consistent)
Xaoslegend-
As I said in the article, I think I got too excited after passing up the axe in the previous pick, and then getting another shot at one. I let that distort my judgement, and I think the Llanowar Elves, Scroll Thief, and Greater Basilisk could all have been picked over the Axe. I got lucky and the elf wheeled, but normally it wouldn't. He helps fatties more (by getting them out quick) than the axe does. Some decks can benefit more from the axe, others less - green fatties probably benefit from it the least, as they're already "big enough" usually. And they'd rather be spending that cast+equip mana to cast another fattie instead.
Your funny..lol
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