I just played a real commander game for the first time last night! With Elspeth banned I couldn't play in my Standard DE, so I dropped a couple tix on some wizards for an Azami EDH deck. It was pretty fun, though I managed to damn near deck myself. I did feel a little awkward playing counterspells though, like I was ruining a "fun" format XD
From the Duel Decks Elpseth vs Tezzeret comes another card not due in mtgo yet:
Foil (another alternate casting cost counter spell)
Costs 2UU, can be played by for free by discarding an island and another card. Effect: Counter target spell.
Comments: The first card I was looking for in the duel decks was this and I was quite disappointed when I couldn't find it. I saw the full decklists on dailymtg.com so here's the update. I'm looking forward to yet another tapped out counterspell and this (unlike force of will) lets you discard cards instead of exiling them. (so it will fit nicely into the deck I have up there and maybe some reanimation decks too?)
This leaves U, B, R and G. The problem with the grixis colours is that I count ~3 creatures I'd be happy to play in red, ~4 in black, and ~5 in blue. Therefore, whatever you construct is probably going to be low on creatures. The green does offer creatures, but only 5-drops and giant spiders. All except the basilisk are just single green, so it might be possible to run 2 spiders, packleader and spined wurm off ~3 forests in a U/R deck with something like 6 islands and 4 mountains. However, this would lead to trouble casting phoenix and chandra's outrage (and your green guys, of course).
I'm not too sure about this pool, I might come back to it!
Maybe I'm overestimating how many creatures you need in a 30 card deck, but the only plausible R/B or U/R decks I could build had about 8-9 creatures, and U/B wasn't much better.
(I don't think chandra's spitfire is playable as anything more than a flying wall, by the way)
I only play Pauper and in drafts. In paper I play Legacy but for now it's too expensive for 2 collections.
I just hope that MTGO will grow and more players will make the transfer. Playing whenever I want and always find opponents is a massive plus for me.
It's sad to see you leave UW behind, even if only temporarily. I do like the UB list. I have been thinking about trying Esper control, but I really haven't played any magic since gameday. Going back to work and having four kids in soccer kind of puts Magic in the back seat.
I do agree that Baneslayer is necessary in the current meta. She single handedly stopped two vengevines and two bloodbraids in the finals of gameday for me. The 2nd one provided the win!
To the people that say that the MTGO team has to factor in the time it takes to program the cards, and that they're already stretched thin in the programming department, I wouldn't be so sure about that. The teams that are working on the client, the new UI, and the internal server structure are completely different from Lee Sharpe and Alexis. Most likely, the task would fall 100% on Alexis. And she's shown in the past that although the infrastructure guys are tied up in slow-moving, big-picture projects, she's free to tackle the little things that MTGO better.
Since they're still making the Avatar art anyway, I think the only thing stopping them from making new functional avatars is the trouble of designing them. So they should let you do it! They've let fans design precons several times before. Phyrexia vs The Coalition was also essentially player-made, too, with significant input from R&D and marketing. So I imagine there's no problem with allowing you to design the avatars. Might as well?
I like a lot of your designs. The only Vanguard games I've ever played are Mormir and NLM, which I love, but I've never investigated the format. Your designs are exciting and that makes me interested. The only thing I'd change, are the characters. You made flavorful choices (Elder Druid!), but it'd be more convenient to stick these new abilities on the currently blank avatars. Specifically:
Uyo - At 2cmc here are two easy choices: Channel and Hymn to Tourach. Good game. Awesome ability, but it's as broken as Nekrataal. Which, as you pointed out, doesn't matter.
Brothers Yamazaki - Perfect. Put it on Stangg!
Fugitive Druid - Another good design. Maybe stick it on Armament Master?
Figure of Destiny - Already has an avatar, obviously. But it makes sense on Morphling! Or Transcendent Master.
Sigil Tracer - ECHO MAGE!
Desert Nomads - <3, cute. ME4 maybe?
Academy Rector - Do it for UD! Make it happen! This is one of the best ideas for a card in this article. It could also be Rayne.
Gatherer of Graces - More like, "Sends people to The Gatherer to look up what it does." :)
Noble Benefactor - Most likely broken. If you couldn't look at your opening hand and the discard were at random, that'd help.
Ghost Council - ERTAI! Ertai's a pretty non-creature guy. And he's blank.
Fusion Elemental - Hopefully, someday this will be the only blank avatar.
Other weak suggestions: your Angelic Protector -> blank Steel Overseer; your Dralnu -> blank Ob Nixilis; your Kaysa -> blank Joraga Warcaller; your Supreme Inquisitor -> blank Anowan, Ruin Sage; and blank Goblin Wielder -> Hell's Caretaker Avatar for artifacts. There aren't enough blanks to use all of your ideas and I didn't use all of the blanks available. (Greven, Radiant, Karn, Knight Exemplar, Transcendent Master, and Zodiac Dragon are still blank.) Your Elder Druid design needs to go on something.
My only hope is that MTGO continues to grow rapidly because I can not wait for an updated MTGO game client! I swear if it was up to date with the times way more people would be interested in it. It is such an immediate turn off the way it is now... I cannot wait until they release the new one! I would pay $50 for it, I have so much invested into the cards, I want a nice shiny program to use to play with them.
CMC 5:
Time Warp/similar (it's like a rampant growth!)
Extortion (when it gets Modo'd)
Stunted Growth (Nice Hand)
Acquire (Nice mana acceleration)
Bribery (Nice Emrakul)
Any Tutor (Demonic Collusion, Diabolic Tutor etc) (IE strictly better than Noble Benefactor)
Dramatic Entrance (HEY KOOLAID! OH YEAH!)
Through The Breach + any crazy creatures (Serra Avatar?)
Head Games (seems completely broken)
Ad Nauseum (First turn win As hipuncle posted above)
CMC 4:
Thought Hemhorrage/Cranial Extraction
Explosive Vegetation
Persecute
Eureka/Hypergenesis
Gifts Ungiven (4 Tutors is better than 1)
CMC 3:
Doomsday
Intuition
Sanity Grinding (You don't need land.. just fill your whole deck with blue spells with 4-5 symbols on them)
show and tell (Equal Opportunity to be broken, but you'd most likely play eldrazi ^^)
Wargate (X = 0 gets you any land in your deck. Nice Gaea's Cradle/Tolarian Academy)
Seems like the ability is potentially abusable at ANY decent CMC, and I've only really looked at rare/mythic spells, there might be similarly brutal cards below that for card drawing, land acceleration or discard.
So, I also agree with the UR strategy. The Chandra's Spitfires make decent flyers in a lower power format like 4-booster sealed. They are decent evasive creatures, and they can block bears. (On the first try, I accidentally typed bras). But there are four cards that can power them up, though one of them is lightning boolt that you would rather play on a creature. But the blue has a few good flyers as welll, and some good blockers, and you even get the Gargoyle. Seems like a pretty good deck to me. I would keep the elixir in the board.
I think there are arguments for many kinds of decks from that pool, especially depending on m11 sealed meta which I cant claim to be expert on.
I don't tend to like aggro decks in base sets and dislike them in sealed even more, this could certianly be a leak in my game. I do think the GBu deck was potentially format dominating with it's resources though. In theory it's exactly the kind of deck I'd want to have for sealed. I could see going down to 1 cloud elemental and just having a 3 card splash.
I guess I'm just not a big fan of cards like child of night and war priest(main) and given the option ill go for power over speed especially when i have plenty of roadblocks to make the speed of other decks irrelevant.
Thanks guys. Feel free to mention more stuff that was missed.
As for the Relics set, my concern is what would happen if they don't print Sol Ring in MED4. Then I would have to wait around until the next masters edition set comes out, which I recall hearing wasn't guaranteed. And that would suck but it is entirely possible. So I'm going to be conservative and get it. They haven't reprinted strip mine yet either.
Imo, Elixir of Immortality is hugely underrated in 4 pack sealed, especially in a control archetype. They work great with Spitfires + Bolt/Outrage. My list would look like this:
1 Lightning Bolt
1 Stabbing Pain
1 Elixir of Immortality
1 Child of Night
2 Chandra's Spitfire
1 Assassinate
1 Mind Rot
1 Liliana's Specter
1 Gargoyle Sentinel
1 Gravedigger
1 Canyon Minotaur
1 Berserkers of Blood Ridge
1 Lava Axe
1 Magma Phoenix
1 Rotting Legion
7 Swamp
7 Mountain
I can definitely see the argument for the Spider over the Elemental, but I my thought process is that I can gum up the ground enough with my Basilisks, and the Spider vs Elemental hold the air almost equally. I like having the option to go offensive with the Elemental more than the extra toughness. A very close pick, and I don't think mine is necessarily "correct", just personal preference.
I tend to not see sign in blood as an incentive to splash. Other than that though you definitely have a point. I strongly considered a G/B/u build but ultimately decided that the upgrade between the cards I'd be cutting for the blue splash wasn't worth the cost to my consistency. With only three fixers (one of which dies if you sneeze at it) I just wasn't comfortable running a four card splash. And once you start trimming it down it looks even less appealing. That said, I think I was underrating a splashed Air Servant. While it really isn't as bomby as a splash as it is when you are playing blue as a main color, it's still a very above average guy.
Unfortunately, after thinking it over a lot, FTV Relics has lost nearly all its appeal for me. I've already picked up my Memory Jar for the upcoming implementation of Vintage with MED4 *shakes fist* and I haven't found a good enough reason to pick up the ever-depreciating Mox Diamond. That leaves me with the only other card of interest being Sol Ring. For one, if it is printed in MED4, which would make a lot of sense as both Mana Vault and the P9 are getting printed in MED4 *shakes fist again*, I would be upset for buying an ugly Sol Ring. I'm a sucker for old card art, sue me. However, if I can find one for around ~8 tix, I'll snatch it up in a heartbeat. It's just like how I ignored FTV Exiled but bought the Strip Mine alone before it surely skyrockets in December *more fist shaking*. However, if we get a Strip Mine reprint in MED4, a replacement will be in order.
As for the article, I enjoyed it very much, and will make it a point to skim that list when I'm at home with the client open. This Standard nonsense is giving me a headache, I need me some Commander :p
Someone at Wizards (was it Worth Wollpert? I forget) made a public statement a year or two ago, comparing revenues from paper to revenues from online. It implied online might be making half or more of their profits, or could be soon, or something like that. He issued a followup quickly saying he'd implied a stronger share than was accurate, bringing up another factor or two to explain that. While he didn't get totally specific in either post, I got the impression he was implying MTGO was responsible for maybe something like 20% to 40% of Magic's profits. A hefty share.
Since then, paper Magic has grown a lot, with M10 and Zendikar both being huge hits, selling out print runs quickly with levels of demand that caught Wizards by surprise. But MTGO has grown a lot too, getting a number of new players who tried Duels of the Planewalkers as their introduction to the game. I think the amount of play and product purchased has gone up from those same high quality sets being released online, too.
The average MTGO player is worth far more cash than the average paper player. Not only is it possible for them to play many more times per week if they wish... But the profit margin on each booster is much higher. Typically in retail, a manufacturer gets paid about half the retail price for a product, with the rest covering the profits for the retailer and/or distributors. Cards also require the costs of cardboard, printing, a wrapper & box, and the machinery to cut the cards, put the wrapper on, and put them in that box. Manufacturing a booster on MTGO requires some computers to shuffle a few electrons around.
So while there's significantly less players, the profits from MTGO approach those of paper.
I will note that those DCI numbers are understated. There's a number of players at my local FNM who get the card and keep using the same DCI number, but never go to the DCI website and register. I like to look up the ratings of the players I faced, after an event - those people don't show up in the list of Austin/San Marcos players at all.
It's also worth noting, on Hasbro's latest quarterly report, they specifically mentioned Magic as a strong contributor to why their profits were good in the quarter. That's pretty significant growth and sales for Magic as a whole, nice to see.
I just played a real commander game for the first time last night! With Elspeth banned I couldn't play in my Standard DE, so I dropped a couple tix on some wizards for an Azami EDH deck. It was pretty fun, though I managed to damn near deck myself. I did feel a little awkward playing counterspells though, like I was ruining a "fun" format XD
Update:
From the Duel Decks Elpseth vs Tezzeret comes another card not due in mtgo yet:
Foil (another alternate casting cost counter spell)
Costs 2UU, can be played by for free by discarding an island and another card. Effect: Counter target spell.
Comments: The first card I was looking for in the duel decks was this and I was quite disappointed when I couldn't find it. I saw the full decklists on dailymtg.com so here's the update. I'm looking forward to yet another tapped out counterspell and this (unlike force of will) lets you discard cards instead of exiling them. (so it will fit nicely into the deck I have up there and maybe some reanimation decks too?)
forget that comment... thought scapeshift was from planar chaos.
it'll be the only combo deck in the format then.
scapeshift rotates too.
every combo deck will disappear after rotation :\
I agree 100%.
I'd ditch white right away.
This leaves U, B, R and G. The problem with the grixis colours is that I count ~3 creatures I'd be happy to play in red, ~4 in black, and ~5 in blue. Therefore, whatever you construct is probably going to be low on creatures. The green does offer creatures, but only 5-drops and giant spiders. All except the basilisk are just single green, so it might be possible to run 2 spiders, packleader and spined wurm off ~3 forests in a U/R deck with something like 6 islands and 4 mountains. However, this would lead to trouble casting phoenix and chandra's outrage (and your green guys, of course).
I'm not too sure about this pool, I might come back to it!
Maybe I'm overestimating how many creatures you need in a 30 card deck, but the only plausible R/B or U/R decks I could build had about 8-9 creatures, and U/B wasn't much better.
(I don't think chandra's spitfire is playable as anything more than a flying wall, by the way)
After reading the above comments, I'm going to publicly admit that Uyo is broken and was the result of lazy design.
I only play Pauper and in drafts. In paper I play Legacy but for now it's too expensive for 2 collections.
I just hope that MTGO will grow and more players will make the transfer. Playing whenever I want and always find opponents is a massive plus for me.
It's sad to see you leave UW behind, even if only temporarily. I do like the UB list. I have been thinking about trying Esper control, but I really haven't played any magic since gameday. Going back to work and having four kids in soccer kind of puts Magic in the back seat.
I do agree that Baneslayer is necessary in the current meta. She single handedly stopped two vengevines and two bloodbraids in the finals of gameday for me. The 2nd one provided the win!
To the people that say that the MTGO team has to factor in the time it takes to program the cards, and that they're already stretched thin in the programming department, I wouldn't be so sure about that. The teams that are working on the client, the new UI, and the internal server structure are completely different from Lee Sharpe and Alexis. Most likely, the task would fall 100% on Alexis. And she's shown in the past that although the infrastructure guys are tied up in slow-moving, big-picture projects, she's free to tackle the little things that MTGO better.
Since they're still making the Avatar art anyway, I think the only thing stopping them from making new functional avatars is the trouble of designing them. So they should let you do it! They've let fans design precons several times before. Phyrexia vs The Coalition was also essentially player-made, too, with significant input from R&D and marketing. So I imagine there's no problem with allowing you to design the avatars. Might as well?
I like a lot of your designs. The only Vanguard games I've ever played are Mormir and NLM, which I love, but I've never investigated the format. Your designs are exciting and that makes me interested. The only thing I'd change, are the characters. You made flavorful choices (Elder Druid!), but it'd be more convenient to stick these new abilities on the currently blank avatars. Specifically:
Uyo - At 2cmc here are two easy choices: Channel and Hymn to Tourach. Good game. Awesome ability, but it's as broken as Nekrataal. Which, as you pointed out, doesn't matter.
Brothers Yamazaki - Perfect. Put it on Stangg!
Fugitive Druid - Another good design. Maybe stick it on Armament Master?
Figure of Destiny - Already has an avatar, obviously. But it makes sense on Morphling! Or Transcendent Master.
Sigil Tracer - ECHO MAGE!
Desert Nomads - <3, cute. ME4 maybe?
Academy Rector - Do it for UD! Make it happen! This is one of the best ideas for a card in this article. It could also be Rayne.
Gatherer of Graces - More like, "Sends people to The Gatherer to look up what it does." :)
Noble Benefactor - Most likely broken. If you couldn't look at your opening hand and the discard were at random, that'd help.
Ghost Council - ERTAI! Ertai's a pretty non-creature guy. And he's blank.
Fusion Elemental - Hopefully, someday this will be the only blank avatar.
Other weak suggestions: your Angelic Protector -> blank Steel Overseer; your Dralnu -> blank Ob Nixilis; your Kaysa -> blank Joraga Warcaller; your Supreme Inquisitor -> blank Anowan, Ruin Sage; and blank Goblin Wielder -> Hell's Caretaker Avatar for artifacts. There aren't enough blanks to use all of your ideas and I didn't use all of the blanks available. (Greven, Radiant, Karn, Knight Exemplar, Transcendent Master, and Zodiac Dragon are still blank.) Your Elder Druid design needs to go on something.
I may get a relics set. I dont have any of the cards but Sensie's top, so its fine for me.
My only hope is that MTGO continues to grow rapidly because I can not wait for an updated MTGO game client! I swear if it was up to date with the times way more people would be interested in it. It is such an immediate turn off the way it is now... I cannot wait until they release the new one! I would pay $50 for it, I have so much invested into the cards, I want a nice shiny program to use to play with them.
CMC 5:
Time Warp/similar (it's like a rampant growth!)
Extortion (when it gets Modo'd)
Stunted Growth (Nice Hand)
Acquire (Nice mana acceleration)
Bribery (Nice Emrakul)
Any Tutor (Demonic Collusion, Diabolic Tutor etc) (IE strictly better than Noble Benefactor)
Dramatic Entrance (HEY KOOLAID! OH YEAH!)
Through The Breach + any crazy creatures (Serra Avatar?)
Head Games (seems completely broken)
Ad Nauseum (First turn win As hipuncle posted above)
CMC 4:
Thought Hemhorrage/Cranial Extraction
Explosive Vegetation
Persecute
Eureka/Hypergenesis
Gifts Ungiven (4 Tutors is better than 1)
CMC 3:
Doomsday
Intuition
Sanity Grinding (You don't need land.. just fill your whole deck with blue spells with 4-5 symbols on them)
show and tell (Equal Opportunity to be broken, but you'd most likely play eldrazi ^^)
Wargate (X = 0 gets you any land in your deck. Nice Gaea's Cradle/Tolarian Academy)
Seems like the ability is potentially abusable at ANY decent CMC, and I've only really looked at rare/mythic spells, there might be similarly brutal cards below that for card drawing, land acceleration or discard.
So, I also agree with the UR strategy. The Chandra's Spitfires make decent flyers in a lower power format like 4-booster sealed. They are decent evasive creatures, and they can block bears. (On the first try, I accidentally typed bras). But there are four cards that can power them up, though one of them is lightning boolt that you would rather play on a creature. But the blue has a few good flyers as welll, and some good blockers, and you even get the Gargoyle. Seems like a pretty good deck to me. I would keep the elixir in the board.
I think there are arguments for many kinds of decks from that pool, especially depending on m11 sealed meta which I cant claim to be expert on.
I don't tend to like aggro decks in base sets and dislike them in sealed even more, this could certianly be a leak in my game. I do think the GBu deck was potentially format dominating with it's resources though. In theory it's exactly the kind of deck I'd want to have for sealed. I could see going down to 1 cloud elemental and just having a 3 card splash.
I guess I'm just not a big fan of cards like child of night and war priest(main) and given the option ill go for power over speed especially when i have plenty of roadblocks to make the speed of other decks irrelevant.
Xaoslegend-
Uyo
1 Ad Nauseam
54 Mountains
4 Rite
1 Conflagrate
Thanks guys. Feel free to mention more stuff that was missed.
As for the Relics set, my concern is what would happen if they don't print Sol Ring in MED4. Then I would have to wait around until the next masters edition set comes out, which I recall hearing wasn't guaranteed. And that would suck but it is entirely possible. So I'm going to be conservative and get it. They haven't reprinted strip mine yet either.
Imo, Elixir of Immortality is hugely underrated in 4 pack sealed, especially in a control archetype. They work great with Spitfires + Bolt/Outrage. My list would look like this:
1 Lightning Bolt
1 Stabbing Pain
1 Elixir of Immortality
1 Child of Night
2 Chandra's Spitfire
1 Assassinate
1 Mind Rot
1 Liliana's Specter
1 Gargoyle Sentinel
1 Gravedigger
1 Canyon Minotaur
1 Berserkers of Blood Ridge
1 Lava Axe
1 Magma Phoenix
1 Rotting Legion
7 Swamp
7 Mountain
The Traitorous Instinct/Act of Treason cards are hard to see coming. Thanks for the article!
Act of Treason untaps the creature on resolution. Nice thought though.
I can definitely see the argument for the Spider over the Elemental, but I my thought process is that I can gum up the ground enough with my Basilisks, and the Spider vs Elemental hold the air almost equally. I like having the option to go offensive with the Elemental more than the extra toughness. A very close pick, and I don't think mine is necessarily "correct", just personal preference.
I tend to not see sign in blood as an incentive to splash. Other than that though you definitely have a point. I strongly considered a G/B/u build but ultimately decided that the upgrade between the cards I'd be cutting for the blue splash wasn't worth the cost to my consistency. With only three fixers (one of which dies if you sneeze at it) I just wasn't comfortable running a four card splash. And once you start trimming it down it looks even less appealing. That said, I think I was underrating a splashed Air Servant. While it really isn't as bomby as a splash as it is when you are playing blue as a main color, it's still a very above average guy.
Unfortunately, after thinking it over a lot, FTV Relics has lost nearly all its appeal for me. I've already picked up my Memory Jar for the upcoming implementation of Vintage with MED4 *shakes fist* and I haven't found a good enough reason to pick up the ever-depreciating Mox Diamond. That leaves me with the only other card of interest being Sol Ring. For one, if it is printed in MED4, which would make a lot of sense as both Mana Vault and the P9 are getting printed in MED4 *shakes fist again*, I would be upset for buying an ugly Sol Ring. I'm a sucker for old card art, sue me. However, if I can find one for around ~8 tix, I'll snatch it up in a heartbeat. It's just like how I ignored FTV Exiled but bought the Strip Mine alone before it surely skyrockets in December *more fist shaking*. However, if we get a Strip Mine reprint in MED4, a replacement will be in order.
As for the article, I enjoyed it very much, and will make it a point to skim that list when I'm at home with the client open. This Standard nonsense is giving me a headache, I need me some Commander :p
That wouldn't have worked. If I tap in response to Act of Treason, AoT would then resolve and, as part of its resolution, untap the creature.
Someone at Wizards (was it Worth Wollpert? I forget) made a public statement a year or two ago, comparing revenues from paper to revenues from online. It implied online might be making half or more of their profits, or could be soon, or something like that. He issued a followup quickly saying he'd implied a stronger share than was accurate, bringing up another factor or two to explain that. While he didn't get totally specific in either post, I got the impression he was implying MTGO was responsible for maybe something like 20% to 40% of Magic's profits. A hefty share.
Since then, paper Magic has grown a lot, with M10 and Zendikar both being huge hits, selling out print runs quickly with levels of demand that caught Wizards by surprise. But MTGO has grown a lot too, getting a number of new players who tried Duels of the Planewalkers as their introduction to the game. I think the amount of play and product purchased has gone up from those same high quality sets being released online, too.
The average MTGO player is worth far more cash than the average paper player. Not only is it possible for them to play many more times per week if they wish... But the profit margin on each booster is much higher. Typically in retail, a manufacturer gets paid about half the retail price for a product, with the rest covering the profits for the retailer and/or distributors. Cards also require the costs of cardboard, printing, a wrapper & box, and the machinery to cut the cards, put the wrapper on, and put them in that box. Manufacturing a booster on MTGO requires some computers to shuffle a few electrons around.
So while there's significantly less players, the profits from MTGO approach those of paper.
I will note that those DCI numbers are understated. There's a number of players at my local FNM who get the card and keep using the same DCI number, but never go to the DCI website and register. I like to look up the ratings of the players I faced, after an event - those people don't show up in the list of Austin/San Marcos players at all.
It's also worth noting, on Hasbro's latest quarterly report, they specifically mentioned Magic as a strong contributor to why their profits were good in the quarter. That's pretty significant growth and sales for Magic as a whole, nice to see.