I will try not to evolve this into a quarrel of any sort, but feel the need to reply as I don`t think I made myself clear enough in my response :)
The problem I had with you saying my some of my points not being valid was that you didn`t reason why you thought so. It would be interesting to hear, I`m a learner too.
As for the term "smart", sorry for the confusion. You said it yourself, Norwegian, etc.
Godot`s articles are fine reads, and he really does a great job of showing how he thinks and what`s happening. I, on the other hand, doubt I would be able to fix pictures into the articles, something I believe would help tremendously towards making an all-theory articles interesting. Also, Screenshots show the the situations better than a thousand words would do.
Lastly, I do use a spellchecker (Open Office, not top-notch I quess), but have few native English-speakers handy.
PS: obviously, I imply that the trade limit would be lifted.
Another good idea would be a a user-editable "value" for each card. That could go in the collection screen. Then the trade screen could present you the value of each card and the total. To reuse my previous example:
Why not use the deck editor instead? I think it solves the end-user problem. The save dialog already has a deck type drop-down list, just add deck-bundle to the list. Now instead of having a weird item in your collection, which is hard to verify when trading, you would simply load your trade bundle. This is pretty similar to wish-list, but more general.
Now, this solution doesn't tackle the problem of the trade limit, but personally, I think it coul dbe solved with a better UI. Currently, even trading 75 cards is hard to verify. I think wizards could really improve the trading system by presenting the cards nicely: just like on the Wizards web site, presents cards in the trade as a deck list: First the lands, each prefixed by a N x for teh quantify of each one, with a total land count, then creatures, then other spells list. Each card being an auto-link to the card-pop-up (which, already exist online and work in chat, for example). So you'd have something like:
(Archmage Ascension) - I do not think it is that good :/ You will need 6 turns (assuming that you draw 2 cards a turn)... I think this might be doable in Azami, where you can "flip" it after a few turns, but except for her I think it is too slow even for commander :/ On the other hand Azami is evil anyway...
(Magosi, the Waterveil) + (Rings of Brighthearth)...
Stuff I think you missed:
(Oran-Rief, the Vastwood) - Kick all creatures you played this turn for G. It is quite stupid with Rhys (like everything else ^^)
(Kor Sanctifiers) - it is quite rare for white to get a creature that can destroy enchantments AND artifacts...
(Hedron Crab) - it seems interesting in a reanimator style deck.
This is not really missed but I think (Quest for the Gravelord) is NEARLY worth it. I would say that it is the ultimate expression of how little creature size matters in commander. A 1 mana 5/5 is only nearly worth it. That said I think I will test it anyway.
(Soul Stair Expedition) - I see it as 1 something to do early game and two ca for 1 mana... You will be able to use it in a typcial commander game.
(Expedition Map) - finding Glacier's early game outside green is tech.
Unfortunately, I have to agree with Flippers.
I got to the bottom of black cards, before I got tired of switching browser.
I'm still pretty new to Z though, so I have no idea what most of the cards do unless you have it descriped.
As I really enjoy the 100c format I like reading the articles aswell, so I hope that you might be able to resubmit it with working links, I can see now that mtgotraders have Z in their list if that was the problem.
As said, I hope to read it over again sometime soon.
The autocarding is tied to the MTGOTraders website which is, I believe, tied to the client. I might have that wrong but basically the autocarding on Pure doesn't work until after the set goes live in the client. So if you want to autocard before that you need to tie each individual card to Gather via direct hyperlinks.
Anyway, I apologize for messing that up. And I have no way to fix it now because one an article is submitted it can't be edited.
On the bright side though, all the links *will* work in about three and a half weeks :p
Yeah, I forgot that the auto links don't work for this until the set is released in the MTG:O Client. Normally I'd have direct linked to Gatherer.
JX, you think you could do that? Or bounce it back to me so I can?
Nice article. I will say the alternative elves builds are far superior though. 12 lands? Really? Wellwisher is definitely a main deck card. It sucks up removal allowing your other guys to survive longer and you'll find every top 8 elves deck has it maindecked.
The big problem with the deck is that it is an autoloss to crypt rats. The popular Nightsky Mimic deck also runs them. If you look at the recent meta about 1/4-1/3 of the decks run crypt rats, which does kills this deck. Zendikar doesn't bring anything either which also stings.
Nice Idea about the "Trading Bundles"
I think a personal limit for cards transfer if one can personally mark the MAX number of cards i can get / give on a single trade is a good idea also. make it a settings on mtgo.
however this is probably will stress the servers. and we know , we can't stress them or leagues will be in 2012 ....
tempesteye you should have checked that your links for the new cards were working as its not very easy looking up each card and then going back to your article to read what you said about it, to be honest I didnt bother even doing that as its too much hard work.
Extremely enjoyable read! Even though I rarely ever get the urge to play this format I enjoyed reading about your johnny attempts in deck building. Very cool 2nd deck (though March facts isn't new being a popular combo in casual ext.) and the third deck came from out of left field even though I see Elixer most often in multiplayer.
I think I'm going to have to homebrew up another anti rats tempo deck. Bounce effects are under played and Karoo lands are played heavily. I'm newly back on mtgo and my collection is just like 1200 commons ATM but look for ankheg to be showing up in pe's and player run events soon
I definitely agree with you Evan. In fact I think WOTC needs to upgrade a lot of aspects to MTGO. I think the players and fans of the game invest a lot in the game, WOTC needs to do the same for us. I am no programmer but MTGO is not that complex of a game compared to any other online game, I don't see why they can't add excellent features in the basic format of a card game, I am sure they make enough money to upgrade the system.
In my very first sentence I said: "Good Advice for the most part" does that not say that I mostly agree with you? I merely refined what I think is the case.
As far as gauging one's opponent goes, well it is experiential largely so no it can't be taught as such but you can teach someone how you do it. That is a different thing. It won't give the reader the ability to do what you do but it will give them the ability to learn from what you do.
Also in English the term "smart" is not always a matter of measuring one's innate learning ability but also how well educated the person is. A person with a better grounding in the facts is usually considered smarter even if they are no more intelligent than the next guy. An example of this is the term "Smart Player". It doesn't mean someone vastly more intelligent, just someone who has learned something crucial to the play. So my comment is geared towards having you describe what it is that makes the difference between a smart player and a foolish player. Not a dumb player and a genius player. :) I hope that is clear enough.
As far as mistakes being boring, well Godot does a really fine job of game analysis. I recommend you read his articles for examples. Also I realize English is not your native language so I recommend two further things to help you in your writing: Use a spellchecker and a thesaurus. Both are mighty tools often underestimated. In addition, it might help to have an English speaker proof read it for you. That said your English in the article is mostly just fine.
well the harpy also provides the deck a form of inevitability. Its easily returned to hand and unless they can kill it split-second or make you discard it it will eventually have the ability to win the game...
I`m sorry, but I fail to see how this offers any arguments for why my points aren`t valid. As for gauging an opponent, that is very complicated and not something I feel capable to teach, and I wouldn`t say my skills at reading my opponent are particularly amazing. Basically, on MTGO, it comes down to seeing what tricks your opponent represents troughout the game, and if he follows trough on them. Say he has an Island untapped as his single land in the early game. Then you can relativly safely say he doesn`t have the Force Spike after not countering your Hill Giant (later in the game, that is). I don`t understand how you can be "smart enough to gauge someone", that requires skill and experience. Otherwise, I assume you wouldn`t ask for it to be adressed in the article, as I can`t raise your intelligence.
Thanks for commenting, but I think you misunderstood the article slightly. It has nothing to do about "gauging", nor whetever to draw or play first in Zendikar Limited. It`s about stuff you can easily do to improve your game, but I realize I have included stuff that still requires work until the day you day or quit Magic. Gauging falls into this category.
As for going trough matches where I make mistakes/ I see on-board mistakes my opponent does, I think that`s an interesting idea. It might be a little too little to fill an entire article with though, and maybe a boring read. I don`t know, anyone with strong opinions on the matter?
I will try not to evolve this into a quarrel of any sort, but feel the need to reply as I don`t think I made myself clear enough in my response :)
The problem I had with you saying my some of my points not being valid was that you didn`t reason why you thought so. It would be interesting to hear, I`m a learner too.
As for the term "smart", sorry for the confusion. You said it yourself, Norwegian, etc.
Godot`s articles are fine reads, and he really does a great job of showing how he thinks and what`s happening. I, on the other hand, doubt I would be able to fix pictures into the articles, something I believe would help tremendously towards making an all-theory articles interesting. Also, Screenshots show the the situations better than a thousand words would do.
Lastly, I do use a spellchecker (Open Office, not top-notch I quess), but have few native English-speakers handy.
PS: obviously, I imply that the trade limit would be lifted.
Another good idea would be a a user-editable "value" for each card. That could go in the collection screen. Then the trade screen could present you the value of each card and the total. To reuse my previous example:
11452 Cards: 23 tix.
20x Forest: 1 tix
20x Plains: 1 tix
--------
40 Lands: 2 tix
4x Tarmogoyf: 1 tix
4x Chimney Imp: 16 tix
-------------
8 Creatures: 17 tix
2671x Healing Salves: 2 tix
8733x Stone Rain: 2 tix
--------------
11404 Other spells: 4 tix
Why not use the deck editor instead? I think it solves the end-user problem. The save dialog already has a deck type drop-down list, just add deck-bundle to the list. Now instead of having a weird item in your collection, which is hard to verify when trading, you would simply load your trade bundle. This is pretty similar to wish-list, but more general.
Now, this solution doesn't tackle the problem of the trade limit, but personally, I think it coul dbe solved with a better UI. Currently, even trading 75 cards is hard to verify. I think wizards could really improve the trading system by presenting the cards nicely: just like on the Wizards web site, presents cards in the trade as a deck list: First the lands, each prefixed by a N x for teh quantify of each one, with a total land count, then creatures, then other spells list. Each card being an auto-link to the card-pop-up (which, already exist online and work in chat, for example). So you'd have something like:
11452 Cards
20x Forest
20x Plains
--------
40 Lands
4x Tarmogoyf
4x Chimney Imp
-------------
8 Creatures
2671x Healing Salves
8733x Stone Rain
--------------
11404 Other spells
(Archmage Ascension) - I do not think it is that good :/ You will need 6 turns (assuming that you draw 2 cards a turn)... I think this might be doable in Azami, where you can "flip" it after a few turns, but except for her I think it is too slow even for commander :/ On the other hand Azami is evil anyway...
(Magosi, the Waterveil) + (Rings of Brighthearth)...
Stuff I think you missed:
(Oran-Rief, the Vastwood) - Kick all creatures you played this turn for G. It is quite stupid with Rhys (like everything else ^^)
(Kor Sanctifiers) - it is quite rare for white to get a creature that can destroy enchantments AND artifacts...
(Hedron Crab) - it seems interesting in a reanimator style deck.
This is not really missed but I think (Quest for the Gravelord) is NEARLY worth it. I would say that it is the ultimate expression of how little creature size matters in commander. A 1 mana 5/5 is only nearly worth it. That said I think I will test it anyway.
(Soul Stair Expedition) - I see it as 1 something to do early game and two ca for 1 mana... You will be able to use it in a typcial commander game.
(Expedition Map) - finding Glacier's early game outside green is tech.
Unfortunately, I have to agree with Flippers.
I got to the bottom of black cards, before I got tired of switching browser.
I'm still pretty new to Z though, so I have no idea what most of the cards do unless you have it descriped.
As I really enjoy the 100c format I like reading the articles aswell, so I hope that you might be able to resubmit it with working links, I can see now that mtgotraders have Z in their list if that was the problem.
As said, I hope to read it over again sometime soon.
See you on the battlefield!
Never
I have taken to always using the suggest lands feature. I often change the mix, but by using the feature, all the lands have the same art.
The correlary, of course, is to play any lands that the opponent has seen first, then others.
You cant activate Ovinomancer two times. Returning him to your hand is part of the cost, not of the effect.
The autocarding is tied to the MTGOTraders website which is, I believe, tied to the client. I might have that wrong but basically the autocarding on Pure doesn't work until after the set goes live in the client. So if you want to autocard before that you need to tie each individual card to Gather via direct hyperlinks.
Anyway, I apologize for messing that up. And I have no way to fix it now because one an article is submitted it can't be edited.
On the bright side though, all the links *will* work in about three and a half weeks :p
Is there a specific date when autocarding will work for Zendikar on PureMTGO?
Rites in elves is genius
Is it that much better than Elvish Warrior?
I beg to differ with the last comment Nissa's Chosen is great card for elves, and I expect to it in a lot of elves variants in the future.
Yeah, I forgot that the auto links don't work for this until the set is released in the MTG:O Client. Normally I'd have direct linked to Gatherer.
JX, you think you could do that? Or bounce it back to me so I can?
Nice article. I will say the alternative elves builds are far superior though. 12 lands? Really? Wellwisher is definitely a main deck card. It sucks up removal allowing your other guys to survive longer and you'll find every top 8 elves deck has it maindecked.
The big problem with the deck is that it is an autoloss to crypt rats. The popular Nightsky Mimic deck also runs them. If you look at the recent meta about 1/4-1/3 of the decks run crypt rats, which does kills this deck. Zendikar doesn't bring anything either which also stings.
Nice Idea about the "Trading Bundles"
I think a personal limit for cards transfer if one can personally mark the MAX number of cards i can get / give on a single trade is a good idea also. make it a settings on mtgo.
however this is probably will stress the servers. and we know , we can't stress them or leagues will be in 2012 ....
You played an island? Shame on you, that's never been casual!
tempesteye you should have checked that your links for the new cards were working as its not very easy looking up each card and then going back to your article to read what you said about it, to be honest I didnt bother even doing that as its too much hard work.
Shame looked a good article
Extremely enjoyable read! Even though I rarely ever get the urge to play this format I enjoyed reading about your johnny attempts in deck building. Very cool 2nd deck (though March facts isn't new being a popular combo in casual ext.) and the third deck came from out of left field even though I see Elixer most often in multiplayer.
I think I'm going to have to homebrew up another anti rats tempo deck. Bounce effects are under played and Karoo lands are played heavily. I'm newly back on mtgo and my collection is just like 1200 commons ATM but look for ankheg to be showing up in pe's and player run events soon
tinker robot, balance, bazaar, mana crypt, tutors etc.
classic has too many powerplays to make this a consistant deck
I definitely agree with you Evan. In fact I think WOTC needs to upgrade a lot of aspects to MTGO. I think the players and fans of the game invest a lot in the game, WOTC needs to do the same for us. I am no programmer but MTGO is not that complex of a game compared to any other online game, I don't see why they can't add excellent features in the basic format of a card game, I am sure they make enough money to upgrade the system.
I jusy wish it was available for mac :/
In my very first sentence I said: "Good Advice for the most part" does that not say that I mostly agree with you? I merely refined what I think is the case.
As far as gauging one's opponent goes, well it is experiential largely so no it can't be taught as such but you can teach someone how you do it. That is a different thing. It won't give the reader the ability to do what you do but it will give them the ability to learn from what you do.
Also in English the term "smart" is not always a matter of measuring one's innate learning ability but also how well educated the person is. A person with a better grounding in the facts is usually considered smarter even if they are no more intelligent than the next guy. An example of this is the term "Smart Player". It doesn't mean someone vastly more intelligent, just someone who has learned something crucial to the play. So my comment is geared towards having you describe what it is that makes the difference between a smart player and a foolish player. Not a dumb player and a genius player. :) I hope that is clear enough.
As far as mistakes being boring, well Godot does a really fine job of game analysis. I recommend you read his articles for examples. Also I realize English is not your native language so I recommend two further things to help you in your writing: Use a spellchecker and a thesaurus. Both are mighty tools often underestimated. In addition, it might help to have an English speaker proof read it for you. That said your English in the article is mostly just fine.
well the harpy also provides the deck a form of inevitability. Its easily returned to hand and unless they can kill it split-second or make you discard it it will eventually have the ability to win the game...
I`m sorry, but I fail to see how this offers any arguments for why my points aren`t valid. As for gauging an opponent, that is very complicated and not something I feel capable to teach, and I wouldn`t say my skills at reading my opponent are particularly amazing. Basically, on MTGO, it comes down to seeing what tricks your opponent represents troughout the game, and if he follows trough on them. Say he has an Island untapped as his single land in the early game. Then you can relativly safely say he doesn`t have the Force Spike after not countering your Hill Giant (later in the game, that is). I don`t understand how you can be "smart enough to gauge someone", that requires skill and experience. Otherwise, I assume you wouldn`t ask for it to be adressed in the article, as I can`t raise your intelligence.
Thanks for commenting, but I think you misunderstood the article slightly. It has nothing to do about "gauging", nor whetever to draw or play first in Zendikar Limited. It`s about stuff you can easily do to improve your game, but I realize I have included stuff that still requires work until the day you day or quit Magic. Gauging falls into this category.
As for going trough matches where I make mistakes/ I see on-board mistakes my opponent does, I think that`s an interesting idea. It might be a little too little to fill an entire article with though, and maybe a boring read. I don`t know, anyone with strong opinions on the matter?