The misquote in the above post shows how much people complaining about mythics will twist words into their own view of things.
The ACTUAL quote, which is STILL NOT 'holy gospel down from WoTC as the end-all philosophy of Mythic Rarity' is:
"They will NOT just be a list of each set's most powerful tournament-level cards."
"We've also decided that there are certain things we specifically do not want to be mythic rares. The largest category is UTILITY cards, what I'll define as cards that fill a universal function. (Ex. dual lands, Mutavault, Char)"
The article was written before Shards came out. Seven sets, all with mythic rares in them, have been released since then. Of those sets, CON, ARB, and ZEN don't have 'ow my wallet' mythics. If ALA had been opened as much as ZEN, Elspeth might be lower in price, who knows. The yearly incidence of core sets can fix BSA's price, as if it is reprinted, the supply is effectively doubled, which does wonders for the price naturally. Of course, the core can ALSO reprint Elspeth and some even suggest New Jace.
Jace is ridiculous, just disturbingly powerful.
Vengevine is riding a wave right now, once the meta figures out how to appropriately deal with it, or a card (possibly in M11?) is printed that deals with it, we will see the price settle down. Of course, more RoE is opened every day...
Gideon, well, it all depends on how much he sees play in the future as well. Is he as universally usable as Elspeth? Possibly.
People complain but seldom suggest a viable alternative, and go back to playing and buying cards soon after pitching a fit. Magic is seeing more play than ever, this year has broken record after record. This weekend's GP broke attendance records for the US, for example.
"We will not print tournament staples at Mythic rarity!"
Get your copies now boys, because Haste creatures with Power > 4 will probably be the only way to stop Control after shards rotates in Standard.
Overheard a Singles-reseller: "Av. Box price of WWK has dropped to about 94$, which is the about the break even point. A few bad cases with fewer than 1 Jace/2 box and I am losing $$."
Luckily ROE has 2 mythic rares worth playing, or are we that lucky?
The issue with splitting isn't the split itself but how it alters the outcome of the match. If the split is agreed upon by both players they can drop or play the match out. If they play the match at all they must conclude it fairly without collusion. That is where the line was drawn online because there is no way to split QPs without collusion.
My favourite Eye of the Storm deck ran Knowledge Exploitation, Memory Plunder and Sins of the Past. Every single instant or sorcery in their library, their graveyard and your graveyard.
Thanks for a great read - very funny, and informative in how you detail your playstyle. I'd love more detail on tutoring choices for specific instances - for instance when you're doing a play with multiple tutors, go into several possible viable options for what you could have tutored, how those cards would have worked together, how they would have affected the board, and how what you ended up picking was (or wasn't) optimal. I know detailing card choices in Big Bertha would be very hard to do, so maybe a breakdown of tutor packages during the game reports would be advantageous.
Awesome first article, I look forward to seeing more Reel Big Decks.
What I'm suggesting is actually only opening packs in the event of drafting. And I'm not even really saying, "Don't draft" - more like "don't draft if the funds diversion prevents you from building your collection the way you want." Like I said in the article, everyone who drafts should keep a tally of the cards they've gotten from drafting and the cost they've incurred - even if only for a month as an experiment. If it's worth it to you - awesome. But I'm guessing that a lot of people who draft frequently would be uneasy with trying that record-keeping experiment because they don't want to really see the raw data at the end of it.
I'm not even saying that drafting can't be profitable. I've kept a tally of my last 50+ drafts, and I'm very slightly ahead (~20 tix) when all is said and done. So for me, drafting is a moderate risk (I can be in the red within 2 drafts) but I do probably 3-5 a month.
At the core of it: doing your due diligence and seeing how much you're really spending the hobby, and seeing whether that's worth it to you. We have a tendency to inflate our successes and ignore our defeats in drafting/gambling/the stock market, so what I'm really suggesting is taking off the rose-colored glasses and looking at the numbers on how much drafting is draining your collection's potential (And I would guess for 90% of people, it is indeed draining).
True! They are quite good. I'd recommend them for anyone in dual/tricolor decks. If tricolor they have to be bolstered by a good fetchland pool. I'd avoid them for 4-5 color.
Personally I tend to go lighter on the fetches in monocolor, but not by much. Generally I run 6, as opposed to 8-10 in multicolor decks. I often will use Flagstones of Trokair if I'm monowhite, just to get painless thinning - but the fact that this can leave you -1 mana on a turn has hurt me more than once.
I still have a Battle of Wits deck from the Time Spiral era that I break out occasionally in Extended games. I probably need to update it, but with those type of big decks, I have a hard time not throwing in just every cool card I own/want to play/have never seen anyone else play.
Maybe in the future you can come out with why you play what you play. With a deck list that big, it's hard to break things out for the untrained eye like mine. Basically, answer the question: what are you trying to do with the deck? Interesting games tho.
Yeah I'd imagine not. =/ It's too bad they don't code to properly utilize those interactions, but then again probably only 1 in several thousand players would ever try it.
Maybe the browser-based MTGO will be less buggy - but they'll probably borrow so much code from this existing one that we'll encounter the same problems as we currently are.
Yeah, after FoW skyrocketed in price I wished I'd bought them but oh well... I also had to consider what I already owned when I made my decision. With Tarmogoyf I already had many of the cards I needed to build a good deck around him. If I'd purchased the FoW then, I would have had to spend even more money at that time to build around it (although in hindsight probably less since Force is over 100 tix now).
I'm out of luck at the moment but I'm sure that at some point I'll feel the itch to beef up my blue collection some more. Instead of buying cards here and there I usually save up a couple hundred bucks and buy things all at once.
Haha...it's not intentional. I think next time I'll do battle reports first before I get too set on an article topic, in order to ensure it doesn't make MTGO go crazy.
The funny thing is before I started writing these articles, I never really noticed how much so many of the decks would freak out the client!
Probably kicking yourself about that decision after looking at the price of FOW. Both cards are staples, but by not buying Force you pretty much eliminate yourself from playing blue. As unfortunate as that is, it just happens to be the game we love. Either way, both cards will remain powerful in Legacy probably forever or at least until they print something better than Tarmo. Lord knows they won't be printing anything better Force of Will.
The key is "if you're going to crack packs anyway." Like he says, don't crack packs. Purchase tickets and trade them for singles. If we're talking about somebody who is not an expert drafter and wants to build up a collection, drafting is just a good way to lose money over time.
If somebody consciously decide to draft because it's entertaining and/or they are willing to spend some time and money to get good at it, that's fine.
I ran into that same situation not too long ago. I had set aside some extra money to buy a few staples for legacy. My main choice was 4x Force of Will (when it was around 60 tix) or 4x Tarmogoyf. I chose the goyf because of how many decks I could actually use. FoW is an amazing card but limited to only so many decks so I chose Tarm. You can throw him in just about any deck with green in it and it'll fit fine.
im sorta 50/50 on this. I definitely enjoy the fetchlands in dual or multi colored decks, and while they re also useful in monocolored decks they do seem less necessary.
im unsure of the eye trick but i think the chain lightning example would work, because regardless of if the spell is countered the targeting trigger would till go on the stack i believe...though i could be wrong...isnt hamtastic a judge now? He could answer this
This may be my new favorite article ever.
"What a magnificent creature!!
What a scalding slap of chaos!"
"Your opponent is playing White Weenie, (what an idiot!)"
On a related note, I've been playing quite a bit of RoE drafts, and you can often pick these dudes up in multiples and crash the table with them.
The misquote in the above post shows how much people complaining about mythics will twist words into their own view of things.
The ACTUAL quote, which is STILL NOT 'holy gospel down from WoTC as the end-all philosophy of Mythic Rarity' is:
"They will NOT just be a list of each set's most powerful tournament-level cards."
"We've also decided that there are certain things we specifically do not want to be mythic rares. The largest category is UTILITY cards, what I'll define as cards that fill a universal function. (Ex. dual lands, Mutavault, Char)"
The article was written before Shards came out. Seven sets, all with mythic rares in them, have been released since then. Of those sets, CON, ARB, and ZEN don't have 'ow my wallet' mythics. If ALA had been opened as much as ZEN, Elspeth might be lower in price, who knows. The yearly incidence of core sets can fix BSA's price, as if it is reprinted, the supply is effectively doubled, which does wonders for the price naturally. Of course, the core can ALSO reprint Elspeth and some even suggest New Jace.
Jace is ridiculous, just disturbingly powerful.
Vengevine is riding a wave right now, once the meta figures out how to appropriately deal with it, or a card (possibly in M11?) is printed that deals with it, we will see the price settle down. Of course, more RoE is opened every day...
Gideon, well, it all depends on how much he sees play in the future as well. Is he as universally usable as Elspeth? Possibly.
People complain but seldom suggest a viable alternative, and go back to playing and buying cards soon after pitching a fit. Magic is seeing more play than ever, this year has broken record after record. This weekend's GP broke attendance records for the US, for example.
"We will not print tournament staples at Mythic rarity!"
Get your copies now boys, because Haste creatures with Power > 4 will probably be the only way to stop Control after shards rotates in Standard.
Overheard a Singles-reseller: "Av. Box price of WWK has dropped to about 94$, which is the about the break even point. A few bad cases with fewer than 1 Jace/2 box and I am losing $$."
Luckily ROE has 2 mythic rares worth playing, or are we that lucky?
The issue with splitting isn't the split itself but how it alters the outcome of the match. If the split is agreed upon by both players they can drop or play the match out. If they play the match at all they must conclude it fairly without collusion. That is where the line was drawn online because there is no way to split QPs without collusion.
ah mine goes infinite with Early Harvest and wins through milling with dampen thought
ah mine goes infinite with Early Harvest and wins through milling with dampen thought
My favourite Eye of the Storm deck ran Knowledge Exploitation, Memory Plunder and Sins of the Past. Every single instant or sorcery in their library, their graveyard and your graveyard.
Thanks for a great read - very funny, and informative in how you detail your playstyle. I'd love more detail on tutoring choices for specific instances - for instance when you're doing a play with multiple tutors, go into several possible viable options for what you could have tutored, how those cards would have worked together, how they would have affected the board, and how what you ended up picking was (or wasn't) optimal. I know detailing card choices in Big Bertha would be very hard to do, so maybe a breakdown of tutor packages during the game reports would be advantageous.
Awesome first article, I look forward to seeing more Reel Big Decks.
I must be missing something here with the puzzle. It seems ridiculously easy... I can do it with 4 mana?
What I'm suggesting is actually only opening packs in the event of drafting. And I'm not even really saying, "Don't draft" - more like "don't draft if the funds diversion prevents you from building your collection the way you want." Like I said in the article, everyone who drafts should keep a tally of the cards they've gotten from drafting and the cost they've incurred - even if only for a month as an experiment. If it's worth it to you - awesome. But I'm guessing that a lot of people who draft frequently would be uneasy with trying that record-keeping experiment because they don't want to really see the raw data at the end of it.
I'm not even saying that drafting can't be profitable. I've kept a tally of my last 50+ drafts, and I'm very slightly ahead (~20 tix) when all is said and done. So for me, drafting is a moderate risk (I can be in the red within 2 drafts) but I do probably 3-5 a month.
At the core of it: doing your due diligence and seeing how much you're really spending the hobby, and seeing whether that's worth it to you. We have a tendency to inflate our successes and ignore our defeats in drafting/gambling/the stock market, so what I'm really suggesting is taking off the rose-colored glasses and looking at the numbers on how much drafting is draining your collection's potential (And I would guess for 90% of people, it is indeed draining).
True! They are quite good. I'd recommend them for anyone in dual/tricolor decks. If tricolor they have to be bolstered by a good fetchland pool. I'd avoid them for 4-5 color.
Personally I tend to go lighter on the fetches in monocolor, but not by much. Generally I run 6, as opposed to 8-10 in multicolor decks. I often will use Flagstones of Trokair if I'm monowhite, just to get painless thinning - but the fact that this can leave you -1 mana on a turn has hurt me more than once.
I still have a Battle of Wits deck from the Time Spiral era that I break out occasionally in Extended games. I probably need to update it, but with those type of big decks, I have a hard time not throwing in just every cool card I own/want to play/have never seen anyone else play.
Maybe in the future you can come out with why you play what you play. With a deck list that big, it's hard to break things out for the untrained eye like mine. Basically, answer the question: what are you trying to do with the deck? Interesting games tho.
I totally agree about Prey's Vengeance vs Might of the Masses. It's not even close.
"+2/+2 surprise damage now, and then another free +2/+2 next turn when my opponent will be fully prepared for it..."
or
"+9/+9. I win."
Yeah I'd imagine not. =/ It's too bad they don't code to properly utilize those interactions, but then again probably only 1 in several thousand players would ever try it.
Maybe the browser-based MTGO will be less buggy - but they'll probably borrow so much code from this existing one that we'll encounter the same problems as we currently are.
http://www.raredraft.com/watch?d=inaz
Here is a great example of a good UG deck in RoE. Went 3-0 handily, and took down some pretty strong decks to do it.
for more fun try eye of the storm wirh splicing arcane spells it does not work well.
Yeah, after FoW skyrocketed in price I wished I'd bought them but oh well... I also had to consider what I already owned when I made my decision. With Tarmogoyf I already had many of the cards I needed to build a good deck around him. If I'd purchased the FoW then, I would have had to spend even more money at that time to build around it (although in hindsight probably less since Force is over 100 tix now).
I'm out of luck at the moment but I'm sure that at some point I'll feel the itch to beef up my blue collection some more. Instead of buying cards here and there I usually save up a couple hundred bucks and buy things all at once.
Haha...it's not intentional. I think next time I'll do battle reports first before I get too set on an article topic, in order to ensure it doesn't make MTGO go crazy.
The funny thing is before I started writing these articles, I never really noticed how much so many of the decks would freak out the client!
Something tells me that you just like making decks that mess with the rules engine. Good stuff!
Probably kicking yourself about that decision after looking at the price of FOW. Both cards are staples, but by not buying Force you pretty much eliminate yourself from playing blue. As unfortunate as that is, it just happens to be the game we love. Either way, both cards will remain powerful in Legacy probably forever or at least until they print something better than Tarmo. Lord knows they won't be printing anything better Force of Will.
The key is "if you're going to crack packs anyway." Like he says, don't crack packs. Purchase tickets and trade them for singles. If we're talking about somebody who is not an expert drafter and wants to build up a collection, drafting is just a good way to lose money over time.
If somebody consciously decide to draft because it's entertaining and/or they are willing to spend some time and money to get good at it, that's fine.
I ran into that same situation not too long ago. I had set aside some extra money to buy a few staples for legacy. My main choice was 4x Force of Will (when it was around 60 tix) or 4x Tarmogoyf. I chose the goyf because of how many decks I could actually use. FoW is an amazing card but limited to only so many decks so I chose Tarm. You can throw him in just about any deck with green in it and it'll fit fine.
im sorta 50/50 on this. I definitely enjoy the fetchlands in dual or multi colored decks, and while they re also useful in monocolored decks they do seem less necessary.
im unsure of the eye trick but i think the chain lightning example would work, because regardless of if the spell is countered the targeting trigger would till go on the stack i believe...though i could be wrong...isnt hamtastic a judge now? He could answer this