Good advice for the most part though I don't think all of the points are always valid. Playing well isn't merely a matter of doing things in the correct order, remembering to tap mana correctly, etc. It is also about gauging your opponent correctly. This is subtle skill that takes a lot of time to hone and is much harder to do online. Playing a certain way to influence your opponent is just one method of doing that. If your opponent is smart enough to gauge you though they may correctly intuit that you are in fact not a fog player, for example. (I avoid fog like the plague unless there is some unfair way to use it available. Even then it is not my ideal play. I am not saying I will never play Fog or its ilk but that I consider it to be an "I lose more" strategy most of the time.) Id be curious to see you expound on good play in examples of your play. Play matches in TP and point out where you or your op could have exploited a situation to better effect or where you made exactly the right/wrong play and why. That would be interesting to me.

Wait until the combat phase is declared. Once declared before attackers are chosen you can do things with your priority. This means you tap down the potential attacker and they can not reenter the main phase to cast a creature with haste and attack again (Unless there is some card that says they can in play.)

I can see you've thought about this a lot so I hope you don't mind me poking holes. For starters, the bundling idea is interesting. I have thought for a long time that we needed something like this. Just because it means you don't have to trust someone over a multi-trade session. I am not sure how you would ensure the ability to see the precise contents of a bulk bundle since you would have it all packed up. I am guessing it would need to open a separate window so that you could browse the contents to ensure you aren't being ripped off.

The second idea seems iffier. For one thing unlike many mtgo users I don't consider the programmers at WotC to necessarily be incompetent as much as restricted. They have to follow guidelines set by non-programmers with little actual knowledge of the architecture. Those non-programmers have a lot of power in the decision making process because they do know the ins and outs of the WotC Bottom line. Not an excuse for shoddy work of course but in a program as complex as MTGO is, a little slack seems in order. On the other hand how can you expect the demand for increased complexity to be answered favorably?

Also from a user's perspective bots are currently the bane of the casual trader's existence (cf Anon's post above). We take a loss every time we make a trade with one and it is a tedious time consuming process. There a few notable exceptions: MTGOTradersbots tend to be very low profit, giving relatively fair trades and operate within their stated goals.

Also the time limit on the trades makes trading with a bot difficult, particularly with the new higher card limit. Ive had a bot sit there and take 75 cards and then start putting them back individual and then take more. Then if you want to tell them to remove individual cards that takes a ton more time. So leasing an API to create more bots would open up even more poorly programmed bots for MTGO. I am not sure how that improves anything.

I am not saying idea #2 isn't worth it but it has several gigantic hurdles, not the least of which is WotC's willingness to add complexity to their code.

no probs - i am lost on some points in the article as i have only done about 15 drafts and 3 sealed events (so am a relative beginner) but i will work through it till i get them!!

I'll never understand WotC. Maybe they just dont realize this...

If they fixed the trading issues, controlled the virus that are bots, create a WotC sanctioned bot, gave a really easy way to trade, auction and sell your cards (ebay style) they would increase income dramatically.

All I play is pauper for many reasons:
- it's a pain to trade your valuable cards for the cards you want
- you almost always have to undercut yourself to get the cards you need
- the crashes always occur during inopportune times, i.e. drafting, constructed where you lose money. WotC doesnt always reimburse.

Solve these problems, and wotc will get a lot more income from me

Cavern harpy? In a deck that only has 15 creatures, some of which are nothing more than transmute targets? I'd not play the harpy unless I had at least 25 creatures. Okibas, Chittering Rats, Faceless Butchers, Man-o-Wars... there are all kinds of creatures that both work well with the harpy and happen to work better than the harpy would in a deck with so few creatures.

Hi

I'm a bit lost on the Bloodbraid example - surely he has more information if you terminate and then path to exile. if path to exile is played first, he believes he still has one bloodbraid elf left and has less information about what is going to happen (i.e. terminate). could you please elaborate that point. thanks daz

I really like this, very helpful for new players--and good for old players to hear again as well. I would add to the "giving too much information" section something that I was taught at my very first PTQ--Play all the same art on your lands! That way when you get duressed, your opp. does not know if you drew the land you play over the next few turns.

But Wizards has proven its technical incompetence and unwillingness to invest time and resources to improve Magic Online. If your ideas are good, I'm pretty damn sure they won't be implemented anytime soon.

That's a great point gnawph! There is no way to prevent stupudity, not in programming nor in everyday life. :)

The only way to get good code is from competent coding, and the only way to get competent coders is to hire/contract experienced programmers.

That's pretty much going to be the only thing that makes the next version better than the current version.

I'm not sure that it's possible to say that a person unable to do leagues will turn to drafting and therefore spend more money and increase the profits.

I used to be a member of a clan that was League focused and sadly those people simply do not play any more. Some left when leagues didn't return, the rest drifted away slowly over time. I was speaking to one a month of so ago and he no longer even checks back to see if leagues have returned.

Now, I can understand the logic that states the software can support X players so we want them to be spending as much as possible. That's business. I just don't think that many players moved from Leagues to drafts (Like Godot). I think that most of them left to be replaced over time with new players.

Not that it really matters.