everyone is going to have a different definition of "casual" so it's mostly avoided, but no you should not be discouraged in bringing any money card, if you look at the lists there are several people who bring full sets of duals or fetches, and esp vindicate, feel free
what tends to draw fire is people who use combo or a shell from a Teir 1 Legacy deck forced to be tribal.. though I'd imagine mass LD would make some people unhappy
First of all it wasn't a personal attack. I am sorry if it came across that way. I just see alot of doom and gloom in your posts and sometimes negativity gets to me. You seem like a smart enough guy so I am sure work will find you soon enough. I have tons of compassion and I have many people I know that go without work and often times I donate money to help those people in need.
I think it is important to know that not everyone can afford to play in different formats. Personally I don't play standard, can't afford it at the moment. This is why the game has many other things to offer. It isn't fair to fault the guy who has spent his money wisely and watched the value of his collection go up.
Personally I teeter on the fence about the price issue. I am glad I got on board with FOW and got my playset for under 50 tickets when they first came out. I got lucky and got one FOW for $5 on ebay. Surprised the person even honored the lot to be honest. Somedays I wish I had all the cards available and other days I love the fight of a good bargain and enjoy the trading/buying/selling things this game has to offer.
Our society (not singling you out here) has this woe is me attitude and this sense of entitlement attitude. Everyone wants to cry that this isn't fair and that isn't fair. Honestly, if you don't like something only you can change it. Don't wait for mtgo to meet YOUR (not singling you out here either) expectations. If you are unhappy about legacy pricing, then start small, build pauper decks or build dredge or rdw, swarm the 2mans and slowly build up profits. This is exactly what I was refering to when I talked about patience.
We as a society spend far to much time complaining while we could simply use that energy in a more positive approach and actually get things done.
I read the tribal weekly report. I think about playing some weeks, but I would need to decide in advance. I like the three hours or less time to finish.
To me the problems are:
1. I don’t know of any official place to let me know if it is a specialty format week. I would rather try playing the regular format first.
2. I don’t know what is considered bad form. I understand that people play for fun. Playing combo would be frowned upon. If I play a few dual lands, my sole Vindicate (as I play Singleton 100), a deck with land destruction or counterspells am I going to catch flack for it? It’s really the casual room argument I suppose. I don’t know these “rules”.
If I’m thinking this, others must be as well. Thanks for the help.
Great article as always, I think you're right on with the Blue/White deck, it will keep getting stronger and it will be THE uber expensive deck to beat.
I think you're looking at the wrong direction when it comes to vampires though. Drana is too expensive and will probably not see much play. Bloodthrone Vampire combos with so many things in the Vampire deck, including Kalastria Highborn, Blade of the Bloodchief, Quest for the Gravelord, Abyssal Persecutor, Bloodghast, Cadaver Imp, and Pawn of Ulamog. Bloodthrone Vampire will be a 4x in Vampire lists and Vampires will go the aggro weenie route in order to try to beat UW before it can stabilize. Or at least that is what I'm going to be trying out once Eldrazi comes out.
Also, Hyena Umbra isn't that great, it loses to Journey to Nowhere, Into the Roil, All is Dust, Eldrazi, Gatekeeper of Malakir, and sometimes Urge to Feed. I would play equipment with Stoneforge Mystic over it any day.
games ended 2-1 in favor of Yrd, I won the first and lost the following two, burning out Lorescale Coatl before it can grow was a big killer and 1/1 tokens are all well and good, but every spell in his deck is burn so even creatures are doing damage to the head every turn its hard to keep up, granted all games came down to perhaps 5 or less life to 0, close, but just not in my favor
This is the deck that I was working on for this week, but now that we have to vote I will put it off for a week, if I can get the funds to finish it out. Let me know what you think. And yes I am also surprised by the fact the snakes lost to burn. Anyway, I vote for single tribe, if I can actually make it this week it will be fun.
Right, and not just cantriping but selective cantriping. If you’ve hit your 6 mana and play the Herd, it’s not going to draw a Farhaven Elf or Tribe Elder, it’s always going to hit another top-of-the-curve cantriping fatty or a Nameless Inversion.
All good points for sure. And I was thinking of tribal when I talked about the poorness of the aurochs TYPE. However you are correct that given pauper's lack of good green cards that particular does stand out a little more. Indeed I admired the use of it to abuse Cruel Revival and Nameless Inversion in this article.
You should not rate cards in a vacuum. If Aurochs are not good in normal magic they rate a lot higher in Pauper formats.
Yes they cost 6 mana, but the rule of thumb that says nothing should cost more than 4 is weaker in pauper and green has the best mana ramp.
Being 4/4 they negate much removal, most burn spells and things like nameless inversion.
Green particularly is short on card advantage, making the cantripping effect desirable, particularly as you can tutor for removal with it (nameless inversion).
Finally it has trample, another positive ability where green doesn't have ways to deal damage outside combat.
The final analysis says it doesn't have a tier 1 deck in pauper to go in today, but it has in the past and should always be considered in new green decks.
I still can't believe I lost out to the burn deck lol I'm already workin out decks with True Believer lol.. and when I see my mana base written out like that I'm almost embarrassed of my problem lol I can never put together a mana base that isn't singleton non-basics lol I'm glad the deck did well, but its funny cuz I have the article about it written and would have been published this week if the one from last week was put up, only the editors kno when those will get put up lol
Is it possible the guy with the single emrakul in the sideboard had it there to hose any mill-based deck he might end up against?
My friends and I were talking about doing just that at the pre-release. We reckoned a single sideboard card to get an automatic win against a whole archetype was worth it.
After re-reading my post above, I realised that the issue might be similar to being a footballer and reading about professional football and being told that you need not only skill but also these fantastic boots to compete! Then I realised that that was probably actually true and professional sportsman probably do require expensive professional tools.
Now I don't get angry playing my football week in-week out while reading about professional football matches so why do I get angry when I can't have a baneslayer?
And then I realised it's because I don't expect a professional footballer to turn up to my matches! If they did and did regularly, and told me that I had to buy the boots they wore just to compete, then I think I'd be rightly angry. So I guess what I want out of magic is to be able to compete with people at the same skill level and the same resources. And when I say compete, I mean really compete, for something worthwhile not just casual-like. Now if MTGO could do that, could allow me to easily to play tournaments where I know I'll be playing against people with the same resources and skills as me, then I think the cost of FoW wouldn't drive me so mad.
Just another 2 cents worth...
PS and yes I know I spent a buck and half in the previous post :)
I think I've contemplated buying a FoW for my 100 singleton collection twice now; once when it was $35 (remember that?!? - FoW were only marginally expensive once) and once when it was $60 (and that was only a few months ago). I've been playing online for 4 years now and my finances have increased reasonably during this time. Still I cannot quite afford a FoW each time I consider it. Now it's rising so quickly, $150!?!, it both simultaneously makes my initial hesitance seem daft while making me angry for still not being able to afford it. Them's the breaks eh?
You know, it's not that there are expensive cards. They exist, it is a collectable game, I understand. It's just frustrating that entire parts of the game are shut of from me so early these days. Jace hit $60 way too quickly to get any, Baneslayer at $50 was a similar problem. The window on some of the more chase rares are so small that if I'm short of cash when it opens I'm unlikely to be able to acquire one at all.
Still, I have to be fair, I don't own any P3K cards in real life and very few of the money rares either - and I started collecting in 1993 too (er, that is I started playing in 1993, the collecting didn't really start until after I had traded away my spare(!?!) moxes and unused duals). I'm not angry about not owning them, and I play in some legacy events, so why am I angry about online prices? Didn't I realise that some card or other was going to be the most expensive card eventually?
I actually consider my misplaced anger to be caused by media attention and the ease of access to events. In truth I believe it's the very success of MTGO that drives my anger. Wizard's makes legacy available, it gets hyped by them and written about on numerous websites. I'm encouraged to play the format and told what I need to play to compete, to be successful. I'm told I can't win without using the tools I've been shown. At the same time the cost of the cards are normalised by the continued printing and speculating on their prices in various articles and forums. What's the price today, oh you can check it here <insert a given easily accessible website of your choice>.
....Interesting aside, you know I lament the fact that you will rarely find someone who'll trade you, on just a simple mystic-rare for mystic-rare basis, a baneslayer for something else. The ease of obtaining information is the reason for this and while it's quite right that you should get value for your stuff, still there were simpler times....
So anyway, it's kinda like the expensive popular cards are waved in my face when I know I can't get them. Grrr... On top of that I know I can play anytime I want, I'm told so! And because I like the game and I like reading about the game I know I'm likely to lose far more often too. And so being unable to seemingly compete (and I admit it I'm a competitive person) in something that seems so available makes me crazy. You see in truth it's all about me...
Are there any solutions for this? Possibly:
1) Print more of the chase cards - it'll kill the secondary market and make a lot of other people angry but at least I'll be happy (till I realise that I'm losing because I'm bad not because I don't have the cards)
2) Print cards of an equivalent power (functional reprints perhaps?) - this'll kill the secondary market in a whole new way and make a lot of people angry but again at least I'll have something to be competitive with.
3) Ban the expensive cards in the format (create a new format?) - this'll work for a short time until those cards become scarce/popular, and anyway standard isn't cheap after-all and it's always current.
4) Allow tournies to be played where you don't have to own the cards - You probably wouldn't get to keep the prizes either but hey it would be freely accessible to all, until Wizards has to start charging a subscription fee because their commercial model isn't viable anymore.
5) Learn to live with it - save ahead of time, be selective when buying, and most of all develop a pragmatic sense of humour. There's gotta be things I can't own (I don't have a ferrari for example), I have to accept this.
My personal choice is option 1 but I guess I'm going to have to settle for option 5. But damn if it isn't going to be hard.
I took ArchGenius's Plant challenge (managing a mere 1-2 record).
I have waffled on what tribe I want to challenge players to bring. Working on a Fish deck myself, I was going to suggest that and then in the casual room Flippers crushed my Rhino deck thoroughly with a Fish deck that was very similar to the version I was contemplating. So that was a no go.
As mentioned in the Tribal Apocalpyse room I have considered Badger and Elk, but I want a tribe that actually has 5 members exclusive of Changelings.
In the end, I throw down the gauntelet for Thopters.
everyone is going to have a different definition of "casual" so it's mostly avoided, but no you should not be discouraged in bringing any money card, if you look at the lists there are several people who bring full sets of duals or fetches, and esp vindicate, feel free
what tends to draw fire is people who use combo or a shell from a Teir 1 Legacy deck forced to be tribal.. though I'd imagine mass LD would make some people unhappy
First of all it wasn't a personal attack. I am sorry if it came across that way. I just see alot of doom and gloom in your posts and sometimes negativity gets to me. You seem like a smart enough guy so I am sure work will find you soon enough. I have tons of compassion and I have many people I know that go without work and often times I donate money to help those people in need.
I think it is important to know that not everyone can afford to play in different formats. Personally I don't play standard, can't afford it at the moment. This is why the game has many other things to offer. It isn't fair to fault the guy who has spent his money wisely and watched the value of his collection go up.
Personally I teeter on the fence about the price issue. I am glad I got on board with FOW and got my playset for under 50 tickets when they first came out. I got lucky and got one FOW for $5 on ebay. Surprised the person even honored the lot to be honest. Somedays I wish I had all the cards available and other days I love the fight of a good bargain and enjoy the trading/buying/selling things this game has to offer.
Our society (not singling you out here) has this woe is me attitude and this sense of entitlement attitude. Everyone wants to cry that this isn't fair and that isn't fair. Honestly, if you don't like something only you can change it. Don't wait for mtgo to meet YOUR (not singling you out here either) expectations. If you are unhappy about legacy pricing, then start small, build pauper decks or build dredge or rdw, swarm the 2mans and slowly build up profits. This is exactly what I was refering to when I talked about patience.
We as a society spend far to much time complaining while we could simply use that energy in a more positive approach and actually get things done.
Thopters is a very strong tribe, and I surprised I haven't seen any thopter decks posted in the Tribal Apocalypse results.
I think this challenge could easily have a 3-0 winner.
Loses to seems kind of harsh. Sure the aura is vulnerable to 2-1 but that's always been true. If it is free cast from a Sovereigns though who cares?
My vote is for single tribe, especially if that tribe is slivers.
I should note my vote is still for Kaleidoscope.
I read the tribal weekly report. I think about playing some weeks, but I would need to decide in advance. I like the three hours or less time to finish.
To me the problems are:
1. I don’t know of any official place to let me know if it is a specialty format week. I would rather try playing the regular format first.
2. I don’t know what is considered bad form. I understand that people play for fun. Playing combo would be frowned upon. If I play a few dual lands, my sole Vindicate (as I play Singleton 100), a deck with land destruction or counterspells am I going to catch flack for it? It’s really the casual room argument I suppose. I don’t know these “rules”.
If I’m thinking this, others must be as well. Thanks for the help.
Great article as always, I think you're right on with the Blue/White deck, it will keep getting stronger and it will be THE uber expensive deck to beat.
I think you're looking at the wrong direction when it comes to vampires though. Drana is too expensive and will probably not see much play. Bloodthrone Vampire combos with so many things in the Vampire deck, including Kalastria Highborn, Blade of the Bloodchief, Quest for the Gravelord, Abyssal Persecutor, Bloodghast, Cadaver Imp, and Pawn of Ulamog. Bloodthrone Vampire will be a 4x in Vampire lists and Vampires will go the aggro weenie route in order to try to beat UW before it can stabilize. Or at least that is what I'm going to be trying out once Eldrazi comes out.
Also, Hyena Umbra isn't that great, it loses to Journey to Nowhere, Into the Roil, All is Dust, Eldrazi, Gatekeeper of Malakir, and sometimes Urge to Feed. I would play equipment with Stoneforge Mystic over it any day.
I can't wait to get my hands on some rancors this June. Also the Stalingrad deck posted above looks fun.
It Helps trigger the Hedron Crab plus smoothing your draws.
Thanks for the comments again. I haven't made a tribal Aurochs deck but I think they could work for casual play atleast.
games ended 2-1 in favor of Yrd, I won the first and lost the following two, burning out Lorescale Coatl before it can grow was a big killer and 1/1 tokens are all well and good, but every spell in his deck is burn so even creatures are doing damage to the head every turn its hard to keep up, granted all games came down to perhaps 5 or less life to 0, close, but just not in my favor
4 Avatar of discord
3 Avatar of woe
2 Deity of scars
3 Demigod of revenge
2 Dominus of fealty
2 Excrutiator
2 Scion of darkness
2 Stalking vengeance
2 Sneak attack
4 Zombify
4 Terminate
2 Animate Dead
2 Void
Still working on the manabase
This is the deck that I was working on for this week, but now that we have to vote I will put it off for a week, if I can get the funds to finish it out. Let me know what you think. And yes I am also surprised by the fact the snakes lost to burn. Anyway, I vote for single tribe, if I can actually make it this week it will be fun.
Right, and not just cantriping but selective cantriping. If you’ve hit your 6 mana and play the Herd, it’s not going to draw a Farhaven Elf or Tribe Elder, it’s always going to hit another top-of-the-curve cantriping fatty or a Nameless Inversion.
Hear, Hear!
It's to hoze turbo fog
All good points for sure. And I was thinking of tribal when I talked about the poorness of the aurochs TYPE. However you are correct that given pauper's lack of good green cards that particular does stand out a little more. Indeed I admired the use of it to abuse Cruel Revival and Nameless Inversion in this article.
that is quite surprising. I would expect your deck would wreck a pure burn deck.
You should not rate cards in a vacuum. If Aurochs are not good in normal magic they rate a lot higher in Pauper formats.
Yes they cost 6 mana, but the rule of thumb that says nothing should cost more than 4 is weaker in pauper and green has the best mana ramp.
Being 4/4 they negate much removal, most burn spells and things like nameless inversion.
Green particularly is short on card advantage, making the cantripping effect desirable, particularly as you can tutor for removal with it (nameless inversion).
Finally it has trample, another positive ability where green doesn't have ways to deal damage outside combat.
The final analysis says it doesn't have a tier 1 deck in pauper to go in today, but it has in the past and should always be considered in new green decks.
I still can't believe I lost out to the burn deck lol I'm already workin out decks with True Believer lol.. and when I see my mana base written out like that I'm almost embarrassed of my problem lol I can never put together a mana base that isn't singleton non-basics lol I'm glad the deck did well, but its funny cuz I have the article about it written and would have been published this week if the one from last week was put up, only the editors kno when those will get put up lol
SINGLETON... I guess lol
Is it possible the guy with the single emrakul in the sideboard had it there to hose any mill-based deck he might end up against?
My friends and I were talking about doing just that at the pre-release. We reckoned a single sideboard card to get an automatic win against a whole archetype was worth it.
Just a thought...
After re-reading my post above, I realised that the issue might be similar to being a footballer and reading about professional football and being told that you need not only skill but also these fantastic boots to compete! Then I realised that that was probably actually true and professional sportsman probably do require expensive professional tools.
Now I don't get angry playing my football week in-week out while reading about professional football matches so why do I get angry when I can't have a baneslayer?
And then I realised it's because I don't expect a professional footballer to turn up to my matches! If they did and did regularly, and told me that I had to buy the boots they wore just to compete, then I think I'd be rightly angry. So I guess what I want out of magic is to be able to compete with people at the same skill level and the same resources. And when I say compete, I mean really compete, for something worthwhile not just casual-like. Now if MTGO could do that, could allow me to easily to play tournaments where I know I'll be playing against people with the same resources and skills as me, then I think the cost of FoW wouldn't drive me so mad.
Just another 2 cents worth...
PS and yes I know I spent a buck and half in the previous post :)
I think I've contemplated buying a FoW for my 100 singleton collection twice now; once when it was $35 (remember that?!? - FoW were only marginally expensive once) and once when it was $60 (and that was only a few months ago). I've been playing online for 4 years now and my finances have increased reasonably during this time. Still I cannot quite afford a FoW each time I consider it. Now it's rising so quickly, $150!?!, it both simultaneously makes my initial hesitance seem daft while making me angry for still not being able to afford it. Them's the breaks eh?
You know, it's not that there are expensive cards. They exist, it is a collectable game, I understand. It's just frustrating that entire parts of the game are shut of from me so early these days. Jace hit $60 way too quickly to get any, Baneslayer at $50 was a similar problem. The window on some of the more chase rares are so small that if I'm short of cash when it opens I'm unlikely to be able to acquire one at all.
Still, I have to be fair, I don't own any P3K cards in real life and very few of the money rares either - and I started collecting in 1993 too (er, that is I started playing in 1993, the collecting didn't really start until after I had traded away my spare(!?!) moxes and unused duals). I'm not angry about not owning them, and I play in some legacy events, so why am I angry about online prices? Didn't I realise that some card or other was going to be the most expensive card eventually?
I actually consider my misplaced anger to be caused by media attention and the ease of access to events. In truth I believe it's the very success of MTGO that drives my anger. Wizard's makes legacy available, it gets hyped by them and written about on numerous websites. I'm encouraged to play the format and told what I need to play to compete, to be successful. I'm told I can't win without using the tools I've been shown. At the same time the cost of the cards are normalised by the continued printing and speculating on their prices in various articles and forums. What's the price today, oh you can check it here <insert a given easily accessible website of your choice>.
....Interesting aside, you know I lament the fact that you will rarely find someone who'll trade you, on just a simple mystic-rare for mystic-rare basis, a baneslayer for something else. The ease of obtaining information is the reason for this and while it's quite right that you should get value for your stuff, still there were simpler times....
So anyway, it's kinda like the expensive popular cards are waved in my face when I know I can't get them. Grrr... On top of that I know I can play anytime I want, I'm told so! And because I like the game and I like reading about the game I know I'm likely to lose far more often too. And so being unable to seemingly compete (and I admit it I'm a competitive person) in something that seems so available makes me crazy. You see in truth it's all about me...
Are there any solutions for this? Possibly:
1) Print more of the chase cards - it'll kill the secondary market and make a lot of other people angry but at least I'll be happy (till I realise that I'm losing because I'm bad not because I don't have the cards)
2) Print cards of an equivalent power (functional reprints perhaps?) - this'll kill the secondary market in a whole new way and make a lot of people angry but again at least I'll have something to be competitive with.
3) Ban the expensive cards in the format (create a new format?) - this'll work for a short time until those cards become scarce/popular, and anyway standard isn't cheap after-all and it's always current.
4) Allow tournies to be played where you don't have to own the cards - You probably wouldn't get to keep the prizes either but hey it would be freely accessible to all, until Wizards has to start charging a subscription fee because their commercial model isn't viable anymore.
5) Learn to live with it - save ahead of time, be selective when buying, and most of all develop a pragmatic sense of humour. There's gotta be things I can't own (I don't have a ferrari for example), I have to accept this.
My personal choice is option 1 but I guess I'm going to have to settle for option 5. But damn if it isn't going to be hard.
PS. Cracking article!
Thopters could be very good, but I was going to play fish...
I took ArchGenius's Plant challenge (managing a mere 1-2 record).
I have waffled on what tribe I want to challenge players to bring. Working on a Fish deck myself, I was going to suggest that and then in the casual room Flippers crushed my Rhino deck thoroughly with a Fish deck that was very similar to the version I was contemplating. So that was a no go.
As mentioned in the Tribal Apocalpyse room I have considered Badger and Elk, but I want a tribe that actually has 5 members exclusive of Changelings.
In the end, I throw down the gauntelet for Thopters.