"It's funny to think that this game is now so old, it's possible the teenagers who are generally responsible for new membership could actually be the children of those college-age players who first played the game 16 or so years ago."
yea that's pretty true & amazing. I really realized that during M11 spoiler time when WotC spoiled Reverberate. I saw a comment on facebook WotC's page like : "Wow ... they did a red twincast !" ... to me it was just a reprint of the old good fork and i was just thinking about why they didnt called it like that... generation gap i guess
A great primer. Though I can't believe you list Triskelevus over Triskelion under art creatures. I seem to have singles of a lot of the staples here which is really great. I guess my quest to improve my collection since last year has succeeded better than I expected. :)
As for the viability of FTV sets I sold most of my Exiled cards for well over the suggested retail price in total though that took time (3 months or so.)
If I had been higher than 8 life (which I should have been), that woulda been a totally solid play. If he hadn't had Act of Treason, it still would be. First time I ever played those two together, I hope to do it again sometime and actually win instead!
My favorite Lust for War story is when I put it on some creature with a tap ability. My opponent was so pleased when he tapped his creature before combat to avoid taking the damage... Only to become dismayed when he discovered the wording doesn't say "take damage when this attacks", but "take damage when this becomes tapped"! A costly lesson for him, a nice win for me.
I'll almost never pass a Lust for War if I can help it, it's a much more powerful card than it appears to be at first glance.
And thanks very much for the article, child. When I was drafting I was definitely mentally referring to what I'd learned from reading it the day before, and I'm sure there are several picks in here that I made because of what you said, and might have made less optimal picks otherwise. The deck was so strong, I think it would get 2-1 and 3-0 results most of the time, and it was fun to play as well. Hope I get this archetype at least one more time before RoE is over with.
That's a great pool! I think the blue/white is quite a solid playable deck, if you didn't have so much depth in the other colors. I might have been tempted to start in black/green and switch to black/white where called for, not sure. With three mana accel plus five fatties, the black/green could have gotten a lot of explosive starts that most decks could never keep up with. Black/white seems to have a lot of potential in M11 sealed though, I 4-0ed my paper pre-release with that color combo.
Casual players should be a big factor here. I think I played in the Darksteel release tournament online. That’s it. But I play online 3~4 times a week, maybe 10 hours a week total, and I’ve purchased singles from dealers since Onslaught block. I’m guess that there are more serious tournament players per casual player online than in paper Magic, but those online casual players are still a force. And certainly a big part of the market.
Fun article, and I like the new avatar ideas and pictures. I think the cost/benefit analysis is off, though. The programming cost has to take into account opportunity cost. Wizards is clearly far short of the amount of resources and ability to program all the things MTGO could use in a timely manner. So spending time on anything not in their current plan means taking that much time away from a possibly more pressing and/or more lucrative piece of work. Whether it be fixing multiplayer bugs, adding leagues - or maybe something that makes actually sizable amounts of cash (features related to drafts or premiere events).
Speaking of which... Benefit wise, they are a business & their number one factor has to be "how much will this boost sales overall". I think the factors you listed would contribute to boosting sales just a little, not a lot. That's ultimately why I don't see them being likely to go down this road in the near future. Maybe someday, if they have a lot more resources & have a lot more of the big important projects done, like v4.0 etc. etc.
Nice draft! I might have taken Spined Wurm over the Aether Adept in pack 3, as the deck never did get much in the way of fatties. The only creatures with power over 3 are one Yavimaya Wurm, and the glass-jawed Awakener Druid. Likewise I could see taking a second Yavimaya over the second Pacifism. Though with two sleep and a stampede, clearly the deck could get the job done with only 14 creatures, and the Pacifism could have saved you from an enemy dragon or such. The deck has less "pound you dead through ramp into early fatties, before I even draw sleep or stampede" potential, though. Since there's few fatties and little evasion/trample.
I definitely would have picked Giant Spider over Cloud Elemental, though. Since the deck is focused on having "decent enough" creatures rather than 3-5 Wurms, it has more chances of needing to stall the board, draw one of the three finisher sorceries, and then win. Cloud Elemental doesn't block ground guys, it doesn't block an Assault Griffin as well as the spider does - Spider's by far the better defensive creature, while adding the same 2 power to a Sleep or Stampede fueled alpha strike.
For Legacy, the number of unique accounts that have participated in a Legacy Constructed event since it's inception on March 31, 2010 up until this very post is 625.
625...Total. Over about 5 months.
48 new ones came with the Legacy MOCS, which you might argue "forced" players to play Legacy, although the counter argument is that people could simply opt-out and get prizes anyway.
Now, the number in the "Eternal" column from the DCI has to be pretty much all Legacy, since their are next to no sanctioned Vintage events in the US and only a smattering in Europe, so it's about 30,000 over the past two years vs 625 in the past 5 months - a ratio I don't see changing drastically even if we could backtrack 2 years of Legacy - the trend would put it close to 1000 Legacy online.
That's a 300 to 1 ratio.
HOWEVER, I don't think any of these statistics really help.
What would be MORE interesting is to watch the DCI s and see where the GROWTH is coming from. Because if MTGO is growing by say, 2-4% a month and the paper numbers are stagnant or diminishing, or even growing but at a much slower rate, this conversation becomes very different. Companies tend to put resources into their growth markets, to encourage their continued growth.
Incidentally, Legacy PE/DE unique attendance grew > 20% a month up until this month, where even with the MOCS it's around 15%. I don't imagine any other format sports those kinds of numbers, but that is to be expected, and in terms of total numbers, it's probably dwarfed by all others.
I imagine Paper Magic numbers are probably very positive, with small % but big numbers. It's funny to think that this game is now so old, it's possible the teenagers who are generally responsible for new membership could actually be the children of those college-age players who first played the game 16 or so years ago.
5 mana symbols 3 snaps and a circle for this article. I actually touch breifly on this subject in my third installment of my commander/edh premire. I may just have to link this article for reference.
Just as a bit of "data". Most of the people I know who play limited online play many drafts in a given day. Sometimes upwards of 10-20 depending on how well they do, and $ situations at the time. There is nothing to stop you online (as opposed to IRL) from jumping in queue after queue, and I know players that manage juggling rounds of up to 5 tournaments at once successfully. 3 has been my max personally, due to the fact that I am unwilling to lose a round due to inactivity (or time), and hate to delay people waiting on me to play the next effect.
The red for the exercise pool you posted isn't deep, but Bolt + Outrage + Magma Phoenix is enough for me to want it. Blue seems like the natural pairing here, although Packleader is tempting, because Air Servant and Sleep should both just win games on their own. The R/U build would probably be: Augury Owl, Cloud Elemental, Aether Adept, Wall of Frost, 2x Spitfire, Gargoyle Sentinel, Canyon Minotaur, Air Servant, Berserkers, Phoenix, Cancrix (frown), Lighting Bolt, Mana Leak, Sleep, Chandra's Outrage, Lava Axe. Loads of flyers, a pretty good swath of guys to hold the ground, and the potential to go to the head makes this look pretty good, and 2xNegate in the board should help with some of the bombs in the format. The R/G build is something like 2xSpitfire, Gargoyle, Minotaur, 2xGiant Spider, Berserkers, Phoenix, Packleader, Basilisk, Spined Wurm, Bolt, Giant Growth, Naturalize, Outrage, Lava Axe, and while I like the high end here with Packleader, I'm always leery of Big Dumb Guy strategies, especially when most of the guys don't start until about 4. I think I'd go R/U straight up.
I have often wondered what the population of unique tournament players in MTGO was but was too lazy to try to figure it out. I counted the number of drafts during a particular time and estimated how many drafts were firing per hour but you did a lot more work here and I commend the effort. I found the results interesting but on track.
Just curious about the player with the highest rank in the world who attends your store. What is his rating?
I really like 4-booster sealed. The prizes are good, and the format plays very similarly to regular sealed deck. I have yet to see a millstone strategy work. I have seen it fail several times. Maybe if they offered this format in Zendikar with Hedron Crab it might be an option.
I also think it's interesting that 4-booster sealed is the only format offered for Thursday Night Magic that is identical in cost and prize structure to its non-Thursday Night Magic version, except for the promo card. All of the other formats have prize or entry cost upgrades from their non-Thursday Night Magic equivalents.
My main question about 4-booster swiss tournaments is why are they only available in M2011?
just because you didn't mention it but DID play it this one time "what I actually did...," Narcolepsy + Lust for War is one of the sickest combos I can remember in a normal draft environment that you can actually get with some regularity. I've gotten it off in at least three different drafts where my opp. had decks that could have dealt with it, but had used the cards or it was just too quick.
I've never felt a more satisfying "holy shit" pause from my GOOD draft opponents on MTGO than the first time the two of them trigger together :) you can just hear them going "but doesn't lust for war trigger on attack???.. ohh..."
@Hellraiser: Great to hear, Swiss is an excellent way to get into drafting as you get maximum value out of every draft (actually getting to see how good your deck is) while taking it easy on your bankroll. I checked out your draft on Raredraft, looked very solid to me. Although what made you move into white with Siege Mastodon pick 7 over a second Awakener Druid? Guess you were planning on that Sun Titan? ;)
Another consideration is that you might be undervaluing Sleep, while it can be useless at times its often game-winning, I suggest trying it out. Nice draft though, that deck was sick!
I think I would have gone green black splashing blue for the 4 flyers. Green had 2 fixing cards + you have sign in blood and crystal ball making it pretty reasonable to splash into a 3rd color for flying and bombs.
My list would be 10 forest 5 swamp 2 island drowned catacomb, disentomb, birds of paradise, llanowar elves, sign in blood, doom blade, reassembling skeleton, crystal ball, assassinate, cultivate, royal assassin, awakener druid, 2 cloud elemental, azure drake, 2 giant spider, air servant, greater basilisk, 2 spined wurm, grave titan, duskdale wurm.
That gives you 10 green sources (not counting cards you need green to get more green with) 8 black sources, and 5 blue sources. It also gives you 4 flyers and 2 reachers all with 3 or more toughness to stop flying aggro, 3 card advantage/quality cards (sign in blood, cultivate and crystal ball) 3 mana accelerators, 3 bombs + one psuedobomb (air servant royal assassin and grave titan + duskdale wurm) 3 removal spells (assassinate, doom blade and royal assassin), the only double black card you'll be hurting not to cast early is royal assassin and you have tons of fat to push through victory if the game goes late(which it should with all your defensive dudes, or if not it should be because you creamed them already). You beat the aggro decks, you beat the flying decks, you beat the slow fatty decks (you have evasion and probably bigger dudes).
So that's why I'd have gone that route.
Grats on 3-1 anyway though, Im always happy with that result and thanks for the article.
Congrats on the draft, and I'm definitely flattered that you used my strategy. I'm going to write up an ROE walkthrough of my own soon and I think I might add some comments about this article to that one. I agree with most of your picks with a few relatively minor exceptions, so no worries there!
I always like articles that tell me something I don't know even if the data is imperfect.(Most data is imperfect but so long as the presenter of that data doesn't have an ulterior motive like getting politicians elected or selling something or the data isn't deeply seated in cultural bias it's usually useful to pay attention to to get the reality of something at least slightly more into focus)
So thanks for the article, I found it more interesting than most, hopefully wizards will be more transparent in the future so we can get a closer idea about these issues.
I used to play quite a bit of competitive Vanguard back when there still were weekly tournaments on mtgo. It was by far my favorite format, and I would love to see Wizards start supporting it again!
I've always loved vanguard cards, so much so that I own most of them even though I never really play with them. I agree that wotc shouldn't have given up on printing new ones (with abilites) as they were a pretty unique aspect of MTGO vs paper.
Making up cards is always pretty fun. I have a jones to design a whole mtg expansion every now and again just to demonstrate to wizards what they could do with magic if they really thought about it without going back to the same stagnant themes over and over again(set without creatures or anything that makes creatures would be pretty awesome).
If vanguard ever came back as a popular format I'd love playing an Heirloom version of it. (classic casual competitive format with max common price of $0.05, uncommon $0.10, rare $0.20, mythic $1.0 based on mtgotraders/cardbot prices) just because it irks me to build casual decks that cost $30-$1000 each to be the best deck you could think of.
It is far more embarrassing to you (I think) to constantly troll my comments for negative reactions and misread into whatever I say about my collection. In this case I was merely pointing out the tremendous opportunities available right now for those who are more affluent than myself. Sometimes this has not been the case and the market has been much thinner. If people have loose tickets right now, there is much to spend them on instead of waiting for something better to come along.
"It's funny to think that this game is now so old, it's possible the teenagers who are generally responsible for new membership could actually be the children of those college-age players who first played the game 16 or so years ago."
yea that's pretty true & amazing. I really realized that during M11 spoiler time when WotC spoiled Reverberate. I saw a comment on facebook WotC's page like : "Wow ... they did a red twincast !" ... to me it was just a reprint of the old good fork and i was just thinking about why they didnt called it like that... generation gap i guess
A great primer. Though I can't believe you list Triskelevus over Triskelion under art creatures. I seem to have singles of a lot of the staples here which is really great. I guess my quest to improve my collection since last year has succeeded better than I expected. :)
As for the viability of FTV sets I sold most of my Exiled cards for well over the suggested retail price in total though that took time (3 months or so.)
If I had been higher than 8 life (which I should have been), that woulda been a totally solid play. If he hadn't had Act of Treason, it still would be. First time I ever played those two together, I hope to do it again sometime and actually win instead!
My favorite Lust for War story is when I put it on some creature with a tap ability. My opponent was so pleased when he tapped his creature before combat to avoid taking the damage... Only to become dismayed when he discovered the wording doesn't say "take damage when this attacks", but "take damage when this becomes tapped"! A costly lesson for him, a nice win for me.
I'll almost never pass a Lust for War if I can help it, it's a much more powerful card than it appears to be at first glance.
And thanks very much for the article, child. When I was drafting I was definitely mentally referring to what I'd learned from reading it the day before, and I'm sure there are several picks in here that I made because of what you said, and might have made less optimal picks otherwise. The deck was so strong, I think it would get 2-1 and 3-0 results most of the time, and it was fun to play as well. Hope I get this archetype at least one more time before RoE is over with.
you know you could have tapped the forest for mana instead of taking 4 damage right? :P
i agree on UR for the second pool.
That's a great pool! I think the blue/white is quite a solid playable deck, if you didn't have so much depth in the other colors. I might have been tempted to start in black/green and switch to black/white where called for, not sure. With three mana accel plus five fatties, the black/green could have gotten a lot of explosive starts that most decks could never keep up with. Black/white seems to have a lot of potential in M11 sealed though, I 4-0ed my paper pre-release with that color combo.
Casual players should be a big factor here. I think I played in the Darksteel release tournament online. That’s it. But I play online 3~4 times a week, maybe 10 hours a week total, and I’ve purchased singles from dealers since Onslaught block. I’m guess that there are more serious tournament players per casual player online than in paper Magic, but those online casual players are still a force. And certainly a big part of the market.
Fun article, and I like the new avatar ideas and pictures. I think the cost/benefit analysis is off, though. The programming cost has to take into account opportunity cost. Wizards is clearly far short of the amount of resources and ability to program all the things MTGO could use in a timely manner. So spending time on anything not in their current plan means taking that much time away from a possibly more pressing and/or more lucrative piece of work. Whether it be fixing multiplayer bugs, adding leagues - or maybe something that makes actually sizable amounts of cash (features related to drafts or premiere events).
Speaking of which... Benefit wise, they are a business & their number one factor has to be "how much will this boost sales overall". I think the factors you listed would contribute to boosting sales just a little, not a lot. That's ultimately why I don't see them being likely to go down this road in the near future. Maybe someday, if they have a lot more resources & have a lot more of the big important projects done, like v4.0 etc. etc.
Nice draft! I might have taken Spined Wurm over the Aether Adept in pack 3, as the deck never did get much in the way of fatties. The only creatures with power over 3 are one Yavimaya Wurm, and the glass-jawed Awakener Druid. Likewise I could see taking a second Yavimaya over the second Pacifism. Though with two sleep and a stampede, clearly the deck could get the job done with only 14 creatures, and the Pacifism could have saved you from an enemy dragon or such. The deck has less "pound you dead through ramp into early fatties, before I even draw sleep or stampede" potential, though. Since there's few fatties and little evasion/trample.
I definitely would have picked Giant Spider over Cloud Elemental, though. Since the deck is focused on having "decent enough" creatures rather than 3-5 Wurms, it has more chances of needing to stall the board, draw one of the three finisher sorceries, and then win. Cloud Elemental doesn't block ground guys, it doesn't block an Assault Griffin as well as the spider does - Spider's by far the better defensive creature, while adding the same 2 power to a Sleep or Stampede fueled alpha strike.
For Legacy, the number of unique accounts that have participated in a Legacy Constructed event since it's inception on March 31, 2010 up until this very post is 625.
625...Total. Over about 5 months.
48 new ones came with the Legacy MOCS, which you might argue "forced" players to play Legacy, although the counter argument is that people could simply opt-out and get prizes anyway.
Now, the number in the "Eternal" column from the DCI has to be pretty much all Legacy, since their are next to no sanctioned Vintage events in the US and only a smattering in Europe, so it's about 30,000 over the past two years vs 625 in the past 5 months - a ratio I don't see changing drastically even if we could backtrack 2 years of Legacy - the trend would put it close to 1000 Legacy online.
That's a 300 to 1 ratio.
HOWEVER, I don't think any of these statistics really help.
What would be MORE interesting is to watch the DCI s and see where the GROWTH is coming from. Because if MTGO is growing by say, 2-4% a month and the paper numbers are stagnant or diminishing, or even growing but at a much slower rate, this conversation becomes very different. Companies tend to put resources into their growth markets, to encourage their continued growth.
Incidentally, Legacy PE/DE unique attendance grew > 20% a month up until this month, where even with the MOCS it's around 15%. I don't imagine any other format sports those kinds of numbers, but that is to be expected, and in terms of total numbers, it's probably dwarfed by all others.
I imagine Paper Magic numbers are probably very positive, with small % but big numbers. It's funny to think that this game is now so old, it's possible the teenagers who are generally responsible for new membership could actually be the children of those college-age players who first played the game 16 or so years ago.
5 mana symbols 3 snaps and a circle for this article. I actually touch breifly on this subject in my third installment of my commander/edh premire. I may just have to link this article for reference.
Just as a bit of "data". Most of the people I know who play limited online play many drafts in a given day. Sometimes upwards of 10-20 depending on how well they do, and $ situations at the time. There is nothing to stop you online (as opposed to IRL) from jumping in queue after queue, and I know players that manage juggling rounds of up to 5 tournaments at once successfully. 3 has been my max personally, due to the fact that I am unwilling to lose a round due to inactivity (or time), and hate to delay people waiting on me to play the next effect.
Hope this helps in some way..
The red for the exercise pool you posted isn't deep, but Bolt + Outrage + Magma Phoenix is enough for me to want it. Blue seems like the natural pairing here, although Packleader is tempting, because Air Servant and Sleep should both just win games on their own. The R/U build would probably be: Augury Owl, Cloud Elemental, Aether Adept, Wall of Frost, 2x Spitfire, Gargoyle Sentinel, Canyon Minotaur, Air Servant, Berserkers, Phoenix, Cancrix (frown), Lighting Bolt, Mana Leak, Sleep, Chandra's Outrage, Lava Axe. Loads of flyers, a pretty good swath of guys to hold the ground, and the potential to go to the head makes this look pretty good, and 2xNegate in the board should help with some of the bombs in the format. The R/G build is something like 2xSpitfire, Gargoyle, Minotaur, 2xGiant Spider, Berserkers, Phoenix, Packleader, Basilisk, Spined Wurm, Bolt, Giant Growth, Naturalize, Outrage, Lava Axe, and while I like the high end here with Packleader, I'm always leery of Big Dumb Guy strategies, especially when most of the guys don't start until about 4. I think I'd go R/U straight up.
I have often wondered what the population of unique tournament players in MTGO was but was too lazy to try to figure it out. I counted the number of drafts during a particular time and estimated how many drafts were firing per hour but you did a lot more work here and I commend the effort. I found the results interesting but on track.
Just curious about the player with the highest rank in the world who attends your store. What is his rating?
I really like 4-booster sealed. The prizes are good, and the format plays very similarly to regular sealed deck. I have yet to see a millstone strategy work. I have seen it fail several times. Maybe if they offered this format in Zendikar with Hedron Crab it might be an option.
I also think it's interesting that 4-booster sealed is the only format offered for Thursday Night Magic that is identical in cost and prize structure to its non-Thursday Night Magic version, except for the promo card. All of the other formats have prize or entry cost upgrades from their non-Thursday Night Magic equivalents.
My main question about 4-booster swiss tournaments is why are they only available in M2011?
just because you didn't mention it but DID play it this one time "what I actually did...," Narcolepsy + Lust for War is one of the sickest combos I can remember in a normal draft environment that you can actually get with some regularity. I've gotten it off in at least three different drafts where my opp. had decks that could have dealt with it, but had used the cards or it was just too quick.
I've never felt a more satisfying "holy shit" pause from my GOOD draft opponents on MTGO than the first time the two of them trigger together :) you can just hear them going "but doesn't lust for war trigger on attack???.. ohh..."
Thanks everyone!
@Hellraiser: Great to hear, Swiss is an excellent way to get into drafting as you get maximum value out of every draft (actually getting to see how good your deck is) while taking it easy on your bankroll. I checked out your draft on Raredraft, looked very solid to me. Although what made you move into white with Siege Mastodon pick 7 over a second Awakener Druid? Guess you were planning on that Sun Titan? ;)
Another consideration is that you might be undervaluing Sleep, while it can be useless at times its often game-winning, I suggest trying it out. Nice draft though, that deck was sick!
I think I would have gone green black splashing blue for the 4 flyers. Green had 2 fixing cards + you have sign in blood and crystal ball making it pretty reasonable to splash into a 3rd color for flying and bombs.
My list would be 10 forest 5 swamp 2 island drowned catacomb, disentomb, birds of paradise, llanowar elves, sign in blood, doom blade, reassembling skeleton, crystal ball, assassinate, cultivate, royal assassin, awakener druid, 2 cloud elemental, azure drake, 2 giant spider, air servant, greater basilisk, 2 spined wurm, grave titan, duskdale wurm.
That gives you 10 green sources (not counting cards you need green to get more green with) 8 black sources, and 5 blue sources. It also gives you 4 flyers and 2 reachers all with 3 or more toughness to stop flying aggro, 3 card advantage/quality cards (sign in blood, cultivate and crystal ball) 3 mana accelerators, 3 bombs + one psuedobomb (air servant royal assassin and grave titan + duskdale wurm) 3 removal spells (assassinate, doom blade and royal assassin), the only double black card you'll be hurting not to cast early is royal assassin and you have tons of fat to push through victory if the game goes late(which it should with all your defensive dudes, or if not it should be because you creamed them already). You beat the aggro decks, you beat the flying decks, you beat the slow fatty decks (you have evasion and probably bigger dudes).
So that's why I'd have gone that route.
Grats on 3-1 anyway though, Im always happy with that result and thanks for the article.
Xaoslegend-
"A fireball for an X of 1 targeting my pegasus and vanguard cramp my style"
lol'd
Ok, I'm sold on this 4-booster sealed. I'll give it a try this week sometime.
Congrats on the draft, and I'm definitely flattered that you used my strategy. I'm going to write up an ROE walkthrough of my own soon and I think I might add some comments about this article to that one. I agree with most of your picks with a few relatively minor exceptions, so no worries there!
I always like articles that tell me something I don't know even if the data is imperfect.(Most data is imperfect but so long as the presenter of that data doesn't have an ulterior motive like getting politicians elected or selling something or the data isn't deeply seated in cultural bias it's usually useful to pay attention to to get the reality of something at least slightly more into focus)
So thanks for the article, I found it more interesting than most, hopefully wizards will be more transparent in the future so we can get a closer idea about these issues.
Xaoslegend-
I used to play quite a bit of competitive Vanguard back when there still were weekly tournaments on mtgo. It was by far my favorite format, and I would love to see Wizards start supporting it again!
I've always loved vanguard cards, so much so that I own most of them even though I never really play with them. I agree that wotc shouldn't have given up on printing new ones (with abilites) as they were a pretty unique aspect of MTGO vs paper.
Making up cards is always pretty fun. I have a jones to design a whole mtg expansion every now and again just to demonstrate to wizards what they could do with magic if they really thought about it without going back to the same stagnant themes over and over again(set without creatures or anything that makes creatures would be pretty awesome).
If vanguard ever came back as a popular format I'd love playing an Heirloom version of it. (classic casual competitive format with max common price of $0.05, uncommon $0.10, rare $0.20, mythic $1.0 based on mtgotraders/cardbot prices) just because it irks me to build casual decks that cost $30-$1000 each to be the best deck you could think of.
Fun article,
Xaoslegend-
thanks melissa...suck it rainin you stupid troll.
Fireball = R5 For you.
It is far more embarrassing to you (I think) to constantly troll my comments for negative reactions and misread into whatever I say about my collection. In this case I was merely pointing out the tremendous opportunities available right now for those who are more affluent than myself. Sometimes this has not been the case and the market has been much thinner. If people have loose tickets right now, there is much to spend them on instead of waiting for something better to come along.