I liked playing Misdirection in my list, as it is either another Force when you need it to be, or it can deflect an Abrupt Decay.
I probably gave up on the list too soon, as after my first event with it, I never did well again. I'd try to land an Oath with back-up counters and still get blown out.
I'd still play it again, it's a very fun deck, and when it does it's thing, it's hard to stop. You're lucky there aren't that many players playing it now though, the mirror isn't fun in my opinion. They can use your own oath against you, and you never want to risk a Show and Tell. It's rough.
Nice article! You should post a link on TMD, people will read it!
I go along with what you said. The social justice warriors came down hard on Jim Davis and I don't think they read or understood his point of view. The sad thing is that if you treat people fairly and equally it will be a huge upgrade for many of them. He pointed out that there is too much bullying and that it's not just women who are on the receiving end of it. WishyWashy is right: there are a lot of game stores that have toxic environments and outsiders (female AND male) are not welcome.
If you check out the comments of female posters to Jim's article you'll see that just about every one of them agreed with him. As one female poster said, "I don't want special treatment. I just want equal treatment."
Here's the basic reason why people opposed Jim's article: because penis. That really sums it up.
@Joe I think the beats (good and bad) just come a little more often and with more power in Vintage. Counter wars get vicious and convoluted, Flusterstorm is not the end all it seems to be, Pyroblast isn't either. It is always a matter of thought whether to play through counters, whether to counter a specific spell or wait for something worse, and interestingly creatures seem to matter more than I initially thought which is what drew me in.
I acquired Time Walk and Mox Ruby not long after this so my decks have a slightly more complete feel to them but I am still trying to tinker with ideas instead of just playing one well known deck.
Just put your text only list into the left most text box, and click on the check box under visual list options and it generates HTML and CSS code for you to copy into your article. The only trick here is to make sure you put the CSS inside of a <style> tag set (I put mine at the very top) and make sure you are pasting into the html source not the rich text editor.
@CLB and MrWishyWashy:
Thanks both for weighing in on this discussion.
In my opinion, the "no girls allowed" thing has gone on long enough. There is something to be said for rocking the boat of the status quo and making women feel welcomed.
I agree that the level of drama in this game has risen well above my normal drama tolerance levels (trademark pending) however I see it a little differently than you do MR WW. Calling people SJWs (Social Justice Warriors) when they call out something they dislike does not make them wrong. Name calling and sticks/stones and all that jazz. The ad hominem is the first sign of a weak argument.
The valid points here are: Men get bullied too and some of the men in the community are scumbags.
To answer both in one, for the most part men aren't threatened with rape, sexual assault and other extremely demoralizing crimes on a regular basis. If that was going on, I am certain there would be bloodshed and arrests and it would stop. Women face this all the time and their response has been by and large to walk away. Some of the braver ones find safer venues but lets face it, accepting women into the club has become an issue.
If we REALLY want to cut the drama, just get it done. If you do already then spread the word. Socially speaking, silence is consent. You don't have to be a social justice warrior to want to see community building occur or to help make it happen.
Also, if Mr Davis's only message had only been "yes, we need to be better humans" no one would have disagreed with him. But his message was "nothing to see here, lets move along" when clearly that isn't the case. Lets be less dramatic for sure but also be maybe a little more truthful about the social dynamics here.
There are men who don't want women to compete in the game and they behave abysmally in order to get their way. Don't accept that. Sure, some of these men are the same scumbags that make MTG in your small town unbearable but you don't have to accept that either. Sadly not accepting people's bad behavior is actually doing something and requires some small effort. And you risk people getting angry.
But fearing anger should not be the reason you do nothing. IMHO.
I agree with Jim Davis's standpoint since from personal experience theres just a portion of the Magic player base that are trolls. I have an LGS that is pure toxic and a pretty underwhelming Magic community in my city in general. Plus you can log into MTGO to see how terrible people can be. This isnt to say that all people people who play Magic are terrbile people, but having a vagina doesnt change how crappy certain MTG groups are. I dont have a vagina and I would not bother with some of the MTG players in my city.
Also the MTG Drama in general is just sheet stupidity. If it wasnt for reddit some of these weirdo SJWs would have to get a life. Its kinda Wotc fault for allowing it. I think the ties Wotc has with Hasbro enables them to not care about the community. Hasbro likes when ppl stay in a childish state since it pushes them to buy more product since there spending all their time on magic instead of caring about anything really important.
A long awaited party! I have been hoping you'd post soon. It has indeed been a long time when I first started reading puremtgo.Com and only dreamt of writing here, I looked forward to your articles.glad you are back!
I love your deck layouts. I'm visual person and so seeing the cards almost like they'd be on my table is great.
I tend to stay out of the political sruff in MtG but support for our female players is so important I have to make my one statement. Anyone who knowingly fosters an environment of exclusivity to this game is ultimately hurting this game. Whether it's exclusion based on gender or race or sexuality, it's counter productive and reduces the number of potentially great players to learn from and play against. Andby exclusion I mean I tentio ally treating others poorly in the hopes they will just leave out of frustration or fear.
I never considered how hateful so efolks in our community are until I listened to a relatively popular female streamer on Twitch tell about how she kept quitting magic because of the negative experiences she had. I have never thought of our larger community it as containing a vocal subset of bigoted idiots til I heard how guys told her she was a stupid girl for making some rookie picks in a draft, made fun of her, refused to help her learn. This is an intelligent, well spoken, normal Magic Player who happens to be female. She sounded like the type of player I'd have liked to hang out with.
But, I guess some idiots still have a 'no girls in gaming' thing. Even in the 21st century. If anything we should be actively encouraging more females to try it. I got hooked into the game by someone teaching me how to really play the way the game should be played. If you know a lady or girl who is interested or probaby would like the game, get them hooked and teach them as best as you can. Bring them to an FNM or PPTQ or even a GP just to feel the excitement.
There are plenty of prominent members of the Eternal Format community who I'd interview, but many people are just really busy. I promise that there will be more in the future.
Stephen, Rich Shay, and many other people have an open invitation to give an interview. I wouldn't hold it against anyone for turning it down, people are busy, and sometimes people are just more reserved and private than you might expect.
I'm really glad you're into these, I'm working on upgrading my computer so that I can stream or at least make the occasional video.
See you all next week! There will be a follow up to the mulligan question. This one was too easy the more I thought about it :(
So kind of a gamble for the store owner. Suspend/ban a profit source(s) and risk not making enough $ to pay the rent vs more potential customers.
Most cards shops I have been in have had environmental issues even disregarding the patrons therein. Older buildings in run-down neighborhoods, with dim lighting and old musty carpet, being the norm.
Sure, there's only one card that requires double colour, but when you're cycling through the deck with Fecundity looking for something specific you need a lot of coloured mana to keep playing token producers and keep the chain going.
I actually do like the checklands a lot, the reason I didn't include any in this deck is because I had, I believe, 0.06 tix of bot credit remaining.
Is there a rule for how many times an underdog can win before it's no longer underdog legal? I find that there's a lot of interesting mana-intensive tribes, that can't hope to hang with average draws against Soltari/Berserker/Scarecrow which are all up to at least three wins now. Restriction breeds creativity.
Well, that's something. At least they didn't commit a crime in retaliation.
Funny that when it's needed, they perfectly know how they secondary market works. Did they use MTGOTraders.com prices as a guideline?
I really loved this article, both for your commentary on Vintage, (and just Magic in general to a greater extent) as well as your extremely entertaining interview with Mike Solymossy. Regarding your discussion on Containment Priest, I couldn't help but think about how it reminds me in a way of Ingot Chewer being in the sideboards of Vintage decks that play red, in particular URg Delver. As Containment Priest is in decks running white primarily because it is hate versus Dredge and Oath, yet secondarily can be used as hostility versus Martello Shops, Ingot Chewer can be seen as a reverse of that. It is primarily used as hate versus Shops, yet can be sideboarded in versus Dredge as well because it can exile the opposing player's Bridge from Below(s), which really are the true kill engine in the Dredge deck, especially when the Dredge player is running Ingot Chewers of their own to create Bridge tokens when there is a Grafdigger's Cage and/or Containment Priest on the battlefield. Back to the interview, it brings up some of the most controversial and important topics regarding the state and future of Vintage. I think the Reserved List MUST go away, as it is leading to the imminent death of at least paper eternal formats. I think there are many solutions to fixing the sort of "Catch-22" problem the Reserved List was inherently destined to have when first created. (I think sometime in the future I may make a post on the Mana Drain outlinging the different ideas I have for fixing the problem.) I also agree with Mike that the Vintage metagame needs altering in the format in the form of restriction(s)/unrestriction(s). I may not agree with all of the specific cards he identifies as targets, but I think they are definitely pointing in the right direction. (To be more specific I agree that cards like Dig Through Time and Chalice of the Void are unfun to play against [because they are too powerful] and Chalice just as a card is one of the worst designed in my opinion due also to its inherent method of interaction [or lack there of].) Joe, I hope you continue with these articles indefinitely :) because they are just what Vintage needs, excellent commentary/perspective on the format, as well as the raising of issues the format faces on its hopefully infinite journey. Up next for interview: Stephen Menendian maybe? :)
Yes, Zach posted that himself and he said he still had to analyze the contents on his account (they sent him a list of cards he had) but he thought the value wasn't that far away from the value of his collection at first glacne.
I agree with what has been said in the comments for the most part.
What Zach did was horrible and he was probably lucky on how everything turned out. I understand that some people would want much worse for him, but the legal system's goal should be to discourage people to commit crimes, to make them pay for crimes but also, and if possible, to try to bring criminals back to the community as positive members of it. And it seems that was the case with Zach. 10 years later, we have to look at who he is now and what he has done since he got out.
Rape is an horrible crime, but right now, the public opinion thinks of it as the "end boss" of all crimes. That is probably because for many years, it was not dealt with the seriousness it deserved. So when people started revolting about it, it got out of hand and now the public opinion is on the other extreme. It doesn't help that it can be hard to figure out who is lying and who isn't and that it's something often related to alcohol and drugs on both parties.
Wizards/Hasbro reaction is purely PR (and obviously dealt horribly) and that is only because of the public opinion. I understand why they did it but it is my opinion that the dealt with it in an horrible way, especially the mtgo ban. I also understand that if their position is to show "we don't allow rapists on our events" but if people found out he was still able to play mtgo they could point that out and they didn't want to risk that either. However, considering he didn't cheat, hack or in any way tried take advantage of anything, he should have been given a grace period to move everything from his account in any way he wanted. Maybe give it out to friends, maybe sell everything, or whatever. Sure, they gave him some ammount of cash for his stuff but this option would probably allow him a better deal while not costing any cash to Wizards.
Yes, it's a contract. And in a civilized society, contracts are guaranteed by certain rules and the expectation that both parts will fulfill their end of the contract provided those rules aren't broken. A telephone company or a bank or any service provider of any kind are potentially fully able to ban an user from their services overnight if they decide that, say, they don't want people with red hair as customers. But our expectations as people living in a civilized society, and as reasonable people, is that this won't happen.
A MTGO account is not proxy for money. It's theoretically (but not technically) goods you acquired with money. If I buy a $1000 statue of Liliana, and then one day the store owner comes to my house and takes it back, they can't say, "Hey, it wasn't money anymore, it was just a statue". It's not proxy for money, it's an item I bought. If someone stole that item, that would be theft. Or if we want to talk of immaterial goods, if someone stole my power I pay the electric bill for, that would be theft as well. Or if we want to talk of renting, which is more to the point, once I paid the rent for a service, if the provider stopped supplying the service, they would have taken my money without giving me what they promised in exchange, which is fraud. There has to be a reason on their part, governed by the contract we agreed upon at the beginning of the provider-customer relationship.
Now, we do agree to an user agreement for MTGO every time we install a new update. This one. It comes with the caveat that we don't own any digital objects, we just rent them (with no expiration date: we rent them for as long as the agreement stands). It's in Section 9. Section 10 mentions the cases for which they can terminate such agreement unilaterally. Most of these cases involve stuff like cheating, hacking, pirating the software and/or game events and/or other people's accounts. Then there's "violations of the code of conduct". The code of conduct is this one. The only point of relevance to this story is:
4. Do not promote, plan, glorify or engage in any illegal activity or otherwise make available content that would encourage or provide instructions for an illegal activity. These topics include crimes relating to drugs, drug paraphernalia, rape, solicitation of a minor, computer hacking, counterfeiting and fraud.
Specifically "Do not (...) engage in (...) rape". Makes sense. They don't want their customers to commit crimes while they're their customers. I can even approve of this. What happens here is that they, I imagine, retroactively applied this point in the code of conduct to events of the past which were casually brought to light, since they don't actually investigate their potential customers' background before accepting them. And there's not a point where it says, "Do not be a former convict". If that were the case, a former convict would just know not to rent MTGO services to begin with. Instead, they take the former convict's money, and then prevent them from using the services those money paid for. I think a lawyer of average cleverness may be able to mount a fraud case here. A former convict can still be, in turn, a victim of a crime.
I've said it before and I'll say it again: The best and probably most complete realistic way to end the incivility is for local stores to ban it. A simple set of rules: no insulting, no offensive words (swearing, and some other choice words, most notably rape), clothes must cover skin appropriately (gets both provocative clothing and butt crack), and be respectful. If you break those, the store suspends/bans you.
Read the report linked in Jesse's own reddit. It states he performed acts of rape on the victim. Clearly this is not something to be said lightly or easily. And while he was not convicted of rape this is at least partially due to the victim offering him the compassion of leniency because she did not want to ruin the rest of his life over the incident.
That in itself might make one wonder why. Most of the women I've known who have suffered from this kind of violence were not particularly vindictive but I know, were I in their place I would not rest until the perpetrator was dead. That might be a guy thing though. We males have a tendency to be harsh with those who hurt us.
I do agree however that whatever the case with the legal aspect it is irrelevant to this incident and WOTC has either erred severely in judgement or in their inability/unwillingness to fully explain their actions. Particularly the banning from MTGO which is the part that most people scratched their heads about.
The fact that WOTC can flex their legal muscle to ban anyone they like from MTGO is not surprising or new. I even warned about that in an article after an acquaintance was banned for being in a chain of acquisitions of stolen cards. In other words he wasn't actually the person who stole the cards, or knew that person. He merely received stolen cards and was banned for it.
This is the way Modern PC games work and it is a shame in general but it is allowed because players have no recourse if they want to enjoy the games that their peers play. And for the most part it is not our concern because we are behaving (ostensibly) within the CoC and ToS and shouldn't ever run into this problem.
As for the account being a proxy for actual money I am pretty sure WOTC hates the idea that people think that way about their cards because they certainly don't. They see people's collections as one end of a contract. One which they have full rights over, whenever they want. That this might backfire at some point in the future is a possibility but it is probably a slim one and would require someone with serious clout to challenge this status quo.
Meanwhile is Jesse going to be reinstated? I doubt it. I think he should be (if there is no deeper reasoning going on here) despite the outrageousness of his crime. I don't think WOTC should be making decisions like this without being REALLY clear about it. On the other hand what we the players think really has no bearing on what happens.
I found this post by Matt Sperling, where he notes that WotC is certainly doing it uniquely for reasons of public image, because if they really had to keep away convicted felons from the PT to protect themselves legally, their legal department would require background checks of all the pros, and ask all the players to fill in a form where they declare they have never been found guilty of criminal charges.
But then I wonder what kind of public image they're pushing for. Of a company that doesn't believe in rehabilitation? Once a criminal, forever a criminal? The prison system is rotten enough as it is, but to outright negate the possibility of rehabilitation? That seems a crazy stance to take if you want to be politically correct beyond reproach. In fact, someone commented on Sperling's post that WotC actually supports the use of Magic as a recreational form in prisons. I've no details on this, but it makes sense that they do, it's the kind of humanitarian stuff a big company like Hasbro typically uses to look good. So felons can play Magic as long as they're not reintegrated into society? A murderer who plays Magic in jail is okay, a reformed sex offender is problematic? (I wonder if the nature of the crime is affecting these actions. I wouldn't be surprised, given America's weird double standards relationship with anything sex-related as a whole vs. non-sexual violence).
By the way, Zach Jesse is not a "rapist", as it seems. In the last link provided by Adam, someone mentions that for the laws of Virginia, "aggravated sexual battery" means "touching someone's intimate body parts with the purpose of sexual gratification" without the victim's consent. Therefore, quoting from there: "While the law considers Zach Jesse a sexual offender, it does not consider him a rapist. The other thing to keep in mind is according to Jesse, he's had his civil rights restored so even the state doesn't find him to be a future threat." (So among the other things, Drew Levin is guilty of defamation). I seriously want to hope they wouldn't propose a 3 months deal for actual rape.
The more interesting part of Sperling's post, though, is the opinion given by Magic judge Tasha Jamison, herself a victim of sexual assault. Which makes us realize what incredible, monstrous can of worms this whole thing is opening: as Tasha notes, a case like this gives more ammunition to people (often but not exclusively women) who use false rape claims as a weapon, because they see to what extent such accusations can go and what fruits can bear, and this in turn makes the real victims' life harder, for a complex series of reasons (it also helps us understand why Zach Jesse's victim reportedly helped him getting a reduced sentence). This on top of essentially instigating recidivism by negating the reformed criminal the rights to even simple activities like playing Magic.
Also disturbing is that WotC didn't just prevent Zach Jesse from playing competitive paper Magic for the rest of his life (and by the way, how stupid is to give a date for that? Banned for 30 years for having served time in prison? Like that was some MTG infraction calling for a specific sanction). They closed his MTGO account, and this means they took away how many money he had in there, possibly thousands of dollars. This reminds us how WotC has the power to literally take our money away overnight because they don't like who we are, or who we were.
Well, the budget is indeed a factor in a PRE event (or anywhere pros aren't involved). I use Natural Order when I can, but I made a rule to mostly use it in-tribe, and that's not a super-Spike approach (mostly it works with Insect to fetch Hornet Queen).
Prices of the mentioned cards are not as high as they used to, anyway, if not outright cheap.
- Pernicious Deed (promo!) $17.64 (wanna! Last time I checked was over $25)
- Natural Order (also promo) $9.01
- Intuition (TPR) $4.65
- Vindicate (AP) $13.75
I just played vs. a player who started very budget-conscious and now runs 4x Vindicate. I think there's also to consider Golgari is more popular and tribal-friendly than Orzhov, so you just use Maelstrom Pulse, or even better something instant. I never really liked sorcery-speed removal. Vindicate is a bit of an old-timer.
By the way, MisterMojo, I'm glad you're still following the articles even if you're not playing much at the moment. Did you see the email I sent you?
I was nodding my head at what Adam was saying but I had no chance to read the reddits or the links from them (because strangely the mods were obstructing reading of reddits yesterday to make some obscure point to its admins...) until much later in the day.
I am horrified that he essentially got away with his crimes despite having "served his sentence". I find that to be the fault of the government and the judicial system though. and apparently the victim (through her kindness?) was influential at least partially for the leniency shown to him, so who am I to want or demand further justice??
I understand now, better maybe. WOTC's reasons for doing this. But it is still an extremely flawed and dangerous precedent. I can only hope someone in a position to say something meaningful (sorry Mr Jarret, your reddit post does not count) will explain what was going on, because this really shakes the customer's faith in WOTC's rationality.
As much as I desire rapists to get what is due them, and as many people have said concerning social rules, this is not how to go about ensuring that happens. Trial by Mob Mentality went out of style with the French revolution. (Not that it hasn't happened many times since, its just no one beats the Maddame LaFarge archetype for grossly unfair rabble rousing.)
I don't think this pertains at all to Patrick Chapin or his past misdeeds as that has been out in the open for a long time and he has proceeded to be a darling of the PT and GP circuits as well as a highly favored author/deck designer and commentator. And I am not afraid for most of the other ex-cons who play magic. Registered Sex Offenders should maybe tremble a little. As unfair as it may seem, looks like WOTC has set a policy here that is pretty draconian. Unless there is some more information forthcoming it is likely to cause quite a bit of unease in the community. Which is not all that well glued together to begin with.
Not to mention Patrick Chapin and his record. From what I've heard about Zach, he is about as likely to assault someone at an event as Chapin is to sell ecstasy to some kids.
I liked playing Misdirection in my list, as it is either another Force when you need it to be, or it can deflect an Abrupt Decay.
I probably gave up on the list too soon, as after my first event with it, I never did well again. I'd try to land an Oath with back-up counters and still get blown out.
I'd still play it again, it's a very fun deck, and when it does it's thing, it's hard to stop. You're lucky there aren't that many players playing it now though, the mirror isn't fun in my opinion. They can use your own oath against you, and you never want to risk a Show and Tell. It's rough.
Nice article! You should post a link on TMD, people will read it!
I go along with what you said. The social justice warriors came down hard on Jim Davis and I don't think they read or understood his point of view. The sad thing is that if you treat people fairly and equally it will be a huge upgrade for many of them. He pointed out that there is too much bullying and that it's not just women who are on the receiving end of it. WishyWashy is right: there are a lot of game stores that have toxic environments and outsiders (female AND male) are not welcome.
If you check out the comments of female posters to Jim's article you'll see that just about every one of them agreed with him. As one female poster said, "I don't want special treatment. I just want equal treatment."
Here's the basic reason why people opposed Jim's article: because penis. That really sums it up.
Hey guys thanks for commenting. :D
@Joe I think the beats (good and bad) just come a little more often and with more power in Vintage. Counter wars get vicious and convoluted, Flusterstorm is not the end all it seems to be, Pyroblast isn't either. It is always a matter of thought whether to play through counters, whether to counter a specific spell or wait for something worse, and interestingly creatures seem to matter more than I initially thought which is what drew me in.
I acquired Time Walk and Mox Ruby not long after this so my decks have a slightly more complete feel to them but I am still trying to tinker with ideas instead of just playing one well known deck.
@Calmlittlebuddy I'm glad you like the layouts. That is done with a javascript page I modeled after Jamuraa's. http://outofthebrokensky.com/mtgo/decklistgen/deckgen.html
Just put your text only list into the left most text box, and click on the check box under visual list options and it generates HTML and CSS code for you to copy into your article. The only trick here is to make sure you put the CSS inside of a <style> tag set (I put mine at the very top) and make sure you are pasting into the html source not the rich text editor.
@CLB and MrWishyWashy:
Thanks both for weighing in on this discussion.
In my opinion, the "no girls allowed" thing has gone on long enough. There is something to be said for rocking the boat of the status quo and making women feel welcomed.
I agree that the level of drama in this game has risen well above my normal drama tolerance levels (trademark pending) however I see it a little differently than you do MR WW. Calling people SJWs (Social Justice Warriors) when they call out something they dislike does not make them wrong. Name calling and sticks/stones and all that jazz. The ad hominem is the first sign of a weak argument.
The valid points here are: Men get bullied too and some of the men in the community are scumbags.
To answer both in one, for the most part men aren't threatened with rape, sexual assault and other extremely demoralizing crimes on a regular basis. If that was going on, I am certain there would be bloodshed and arrests and it would stop. Women face this all the time and their response has been by and large to walk away. Some of the braver ones find safer venues but lets face it, accepting women into the club has become an issue.
If we REALLY want to cut the drama, just get it done. If you do already then spread the word. Socially speaking, silence is consent. You don't have to be a social justice warrior to want to see community building occur or to help make it happen.
Also, if Mr Davis's only message had only been "yes, we need to be better humans" no one would have disagreed with him. But his message was "nothing to see here, lets move along" when clearly that isn't the case. Lets be less dramatic for sure but also be maybe a little more truthful about the social dynamics here.
There are men who don't want women to compete in the game and they behave abysmally in order to get their way. Don't accept that. Sure, some of these men are the same scumbags that make MTG in your small town unbearable but you don't have to accept that either. Sadly not accepting people's bad behavior is actually doing something and requires some small effort. And you risk people getting angry.
But fearing anger should not be the reason you do nothing. IMHO.
I agree with Jim Davis's standpoint since from personal experience theres just a portion of the Magic player base that are trolls. I have an LGS that is pure toxic and a pretty underwhelming Magic community in my city in general. Plus you can log into MTGO to see how terrible people can be. This isnt to say that all people people who play Magic are terrbile people, but having a vagina doesnt change how crappy certain MTG groups are. I dont have a vagina and I would not bother with some of the MTG players in my city.
Also the MTG Drama in general is just sheet stupidity. If it wasnt for reddit some of these weirdo SJWs would have to get a life. Its kinda Wotc fault for allowing it. I think the ties Wotc has with Hasbro enables them to not care about the community. Hasbro likes when ppl stay in a childish state since it pushes them to buy more product since there spending all their time on magic instead of caring about anything really important.
A long awaited party! I have been hoping you'd post soon. It has indeed been a long time when I first started reading puremtgo.Com and only dreamt of writing here, I looked forward to your articles.glad you are back!
I love your deck layouts. I'm visual person and so seeing the cards almost like they'd be on my table is great.
I tend to stay out of the political sruff in MtG but support for our female players is so important I have to make my one statement. Anyone who knowingly fosters an environment of exclusivity to this game is ultimately hurting this game. Whether it's exclusion based on gender or race or sexuality, it's counter productive and reduces the number of potentially great players to learn from and play against. Andby exclusion I mean I tentio ally treating others poorly in the hopes they will just leave out of frustration or fear.
I never considered how hateful so efolks in our community are until I listened to a relatively popular female streamer on Twitch tell about how she kept quitting magic because of the negative experiences she had. I have never thought of our larger community it as containing a vocal subset of bigoted idiots til I heard how guys told her she was a stupid girl for making some rookie picks in a draft, made fun of her, refused to help her learn. This is an intelligent, well spoken, normal Magic Player who happens to be female. She sounded like the type of player I'd have liked to hang out with.
But, I guess some idiots still have a 'no girls in gaming' thing. Even in the 21st century. If anything we should be actively encouraging more females to try it. I got hooked into the game by someone teaching me how to really play the way the game should be played. If you know a lady or girl who is interested or probaby would like the game, get them hooked and teach them as best as you can. Bring them to an FNM or PPTQ or even a GP just to feel the excitement.
Okay rant over.
Thanks for the thought provoking article!
There are plenty of prominent members of the Eternal Format community who I'd interview, but many people are just really busy. I promise that there will be more in the future.
Stephen, Rich Shay, and many other people have an open invitation to give an interview. I wouldn't hold it against anyone for turning it down, people are busy, and sometimes people are just more reserved and private than you might expect.
I'm really glad you're into these, I'm working on upgrading my computer so that I can stream or at least make the occasional video.
See you all next week! There will be a follow up to the mulligan question. This one was too easy the more I thought about it :(
So kind of a gamble for the store owner. Suspend/ban a profit source(s) and risk not making enough $ to pay the rent vs more potential customers.
Most cards shops I have been in have had environmental issues even disregarding the patrons therein. Older buildings in run-down neighborhoods, with dim lighting and old musty carpet, being the norm.
Sure, there's only one card that requires double colour, but when you're cycling through the deck with Fecundity looking for something specific you need a lot of coloured mana to keep playing token producers and keep the chain going.
I actually do like the checklands a lot, the reason I didn't include any in this deck is because I had, I believe, 0.06 tix of bot credit remaining.
But low profit may be causally connected to rude behavior. I'm not suggesting likelihood, but merely pointing out the possibility.
I would venture that card stores, like bookstores, are low profit makers. As such, I cannot see them banning any customers.
But otherwise, I agree with your statement.
Is there a rule for how many times an underdog can win before it's no longer underdog legal? I find that there's a lot of interesting mana-intensive tribes, that can't hope to hang with average draws against Soltari/Berserker/Scarecrow which are all up to at least three wins now. Restriction breeds creativity.
Well, that's something. At least they didn't commit a crime in retaliation.
Funny that when it's needed, they perfectly know how they secondary market works. Did they use MTGOTraders.com prices as a guideline?
I really loved this article, both for your commentary on Vintage, (and just Magic in general to a greater extent) as well as your extremely entertaining interview with Mike Solymossy. Regarding your discussion on Containment Priest, I couldn't help but think about how it reminds me in a way of Ingot Chewer being in the sideboards of Vintage decks that play red, in particular URg Delver. As Containment Priest is in decks running white primarily because it is hate versus Dredge and Oath, yet secondarily can be used as hostility versus Martello Shops, Ingot Chewer can be seen as a reverse of that. It is primarily used as hate versus Shops, yet can be sideboarded in versus Dredge as well because it can exile the opposing player's Bridge from Below(s), which really are the true kill engine in the Dredge deck, especially when the Dredge player is running Ingot Chewers of their own to create Bridge tokens when there is a Grafdigger's Cage and/or Containment Priest on the battlefield. Back to the interview, it brings up some of the most controversial and important topics regarding the state and future of Vintage. I think the Reserved List MUST go away, as it is leading to the imminent death of at least paper eternal formats. I think there are many solutions to fixing the sort of "Catch-22" problem the Reserved List was inherently destined to have when first created. (I think sometime in the future I may make a post on the Mana Drain outlinging the different ideas I have for fixing the problem.) I also agree with Mike that the Vintage metagame needs altering in the format in the form of restriction(s)/unrestriction(s). I may not agree with all of the specific cards he identifies as targets, but I think they are definitely pointing in the right direction. (To be more specific I agree that cards like Dig Through Time and Chalice of the Void are unfun to play against [because they are too powerful] and Chalice just as a card is one of the worst designed in my opinion due also to its inherent method of interaction [or lack there of].) Joe, I hope you continue with these articles indefinitely :) because they are just what Vintage needs, excellent commentary/perspective on the format, as well as the raising of issues the format faces on its hopefully infinite journey. Up next for interview: Stephen Menendian maybe? :)
Yes, Zach posted that himself and he said he still had to analyze the contents on his account (they sent him a list of cards he had) but he thought the value wasn't that far away from the value of his collection at first glacne.
They did? First I had heard of this. Remuneration makes a little more sense than blank, "your account is banned, have a nice life".
I agree with what has been said in the comments for the most part.
What Zach did was horrible and he was probably lucky on how everything turned out. I understand that some people would want much worse for him, but the legal system's goal should be to discourage people to commit crimes, to make them pay for crimes but also, and if possible, to try to bring criminals back to the community as positive members of it. And it seems that was the case with Zach. 10 years later, we have to look at who he is now and what he has done since he got out.
Rape is an horrible crime, but right now, the public opinion thinks of it as the "end boss" of all crimes. That is probably because for many years, it was not dealt with the seriousness it deserved. So when people started revolting about it, it got out of hand and now the public opinion is on the other extreme. It doesn't help that it can be hard to figure out who is lying and who isn't and that it's something often related to alcohol and drugs on both parties.
Wizards/Hasbro reaction is purely PR (and obviously dealt horribly) and that is only because of the public opinion. I understand why they did it but it is my opinion that the dealt with it in an horrible way, especially the mtgo ban. I also understand that if their position is to show "we don't allow rapists on our events" but if people found out he was still able to play mtgo they could point that out and they didn't want to risk that either. However, considering he didn't cheat, hack or in any way tried take advantage of anything, he should have been given a grace period to move everything from his account in any way he wanted. Maybe give it out to friends, maybe sell everything, or whatever. Sure, they gave him some ammount of cash for his stuff but this option would probably allow him a better deal while not costing any cash to Wizards.
:A former convict can still be, in turn, a victim of a crime.
Statistically speaking, they are more likely than the average person to be the victims of crime, due to having already been socially disenfranchised.
Yes, it's a contract. And in a civilized society, contracts are guaranteed by certain rules and the expectation that both parts will fulfill their end of the contract provided those rules aren't broken. A telephone company or a bank or any service provider of any kind are potentially fully able to ban an user from their services overnight if they decide that, say, they don't want people with red hair as customers. But our expectations as people living in a civilized society, and as reasonable people, is that this won't happen.
A MTGO account is not proxy for money. It's theoretically (but not technically) goods you acquired with money. If I buy a $1000 statue of Liliana, and then one day the store owner comes to my house and takes it back, they can't say, "Hey, it wasn't money anymore, it was just a statue". It's not proxy for money, it's an item I bought. If someone stole that item, that would be theft. Or if we want to talk of immaterial goods, if someone stole my power I pay the electric bill for, that would be theft as well. Or if we want to talk of renting, which is more to the point, once I paid the rent for a service, if the provider stopped supplying the service, they would have taken my money without giving me what they promised in exchange, which is fraud. There has to be a reason on their part, governed by the contract we agreed upon at the beginning of the provider-customer relationship.
Now, we do agree to an user agreement for MTGO every time we install a new update. This one. It comes with the caveat that we don't own any digital objects, we just rent them (with no expiration date: we rent them for as long as the agreement stands). It's in Section 9. Section 10 mentions the cases for which they can terminate such agreement unilaterally. Most of these cases involve stuff like cheating, hacking, pirating the software and/or game events and/or other people's accounts. Then there's "violations of the code of conduct". The code of conduct is this one. The only point of relevance to this story is:
4. Do not promote, plan, glorify or engage in any illegal activity or otherwise make available content that would encourage or provide instructions for an illegal activity. These topics include crimes relating to drugs, drug paraphernalia, rape, solicitation of a minor, computer hacking, counterfeiting and fraud.
Specifically "Do not (...) engage in (...) rape". Makes sense. They don't want their customers to commit crimes while they're their customers. I can even approve of this. What happens here is that they, I imagine, retroactively applied this point in the code of conduct to events of the past which were casually brought to light, since they don't actually investigate their potential customers' background before accepting them. And there's not a point where it says, "Do not be a former convict". If that were the case, a former convict would just know not to rent MTGO services to begin with. Instead, they take the former convict's money, and then prevent them from using the services those money paid for. I think a lawyer of average cleverness may be able to mount a fraud case here. A former convict can still be, in turn, a victim of a crime.
I've said it before and I'll say it again: The best and probably most complete realistic way to end the incivility is for local stores to ban it. A simple set of rules: no insulting, no offensive words (swearing, and some other choice words, most notably rape), clothes must cover skin appropriately (gets both provocative clothing and butt crack), and be respectful. If you break those, the store suspends/bans you.
Read the report linked in Jesse's own reddit. It states he performed acts of rape on the victim. Clearly this is not something to be said lightly or easily. And while he was not convicted of rape this is at least partially due to the victim offering him the compassion of leniency because she did not want to ruin the rest of his life over the incident.
That in itself might make one wonder why. Most of the women I've known who have suffered from this kind of violence were not particularly vindictive but I know, were I in their place I would not rest until the perpetrator was dead. That might be a guy thing though. We males have a tendency to be harsh with those who hurt us.
I do agree however that whatever the case with the legal aspect it is irrelevant to this incident and WOTC has either erred severely in judgement or in their inability/unwillingness to fully explain their actions. Particularly the banning from MTGO which is the part that most people scratched their heads about.
The fact that WOTC can flex their legal muscle to ban anyone they like from MTGO is not surprising or new. I even warned about that in an article after an acquaintance was banned for being in a chain of acquisitions of stolen cards. In other words he wasn't actually the person who stole the cards, or knew that person. He merely received stolen cards and was banned for it.
This is the way Modern PC games work and it is a shame in general but it is allowed because players have no recourse if they want to enjoy the games that their peers play. And for the most part it is not our concern because we are behaving (ostensibly) within the CoC and ToS and shouldn't ever run into this problem.
As for the account being a proxy for actual money I am pretty sure WOTC hates the idea that people think that way about their cards because they certainly don't. They see people's collections as one end of a contract. One which they have full rights over, whenever they want. That this might backfire at some point in the future is a possibility but it is probably a slim one and would require someone with serious clout to challenge this status quo.
Meanwhile is Jesse going to be reinstated? I doubt it. I think he should be (if there is no deeper reasoning going on here) despite the outrageousness of his crime. I don't think WOTC should be making decisions like this without being REALLY clear about it. On the other hand what we the players think really has no bearing on what happens.
Quite literally they hold all the cards.
This story is so very disheartening.
I found this post by Matt Sperling, where he notes that WotC is certainly doing it uniquely for reasons of public image, because if they really had to keep away convicted felons from the PT to protect themselves legally, their legal department would require background checks of all the pros, and ask all the players to fill in a form where they declare they have never been found guilty of criminal charges.
But then I wonder what kind of public image they're pushing for. Of a company that doesn't believe in rehabilitation? Once a criminal, forever a criminal? The prison system is rotten enough as it is, but to outright negate the possibility of rehabilitation? That seems a crazy stance to take if you want to be politically correct beyond reproach. In fact, someone commented on Sperling's post that WotC actually supports the use of Magic as a recreational form in prisons. I've no details on this, but it makes sense that they do, it's the kind of humanitarian stuff a big company like Hasbro typically uses to look good. So felons can play Magic as long as they're not reintegrated into society? A murderer who plays Magic in jail is okay, a reformed sex offender is problematic? (I wonder if the nature of the crime is affecting these actions. I wouldn't be surprised, given America's weird double standards relationship with anything sex-related as a whole vs. non-sexual violence).
By the way, Zach Jesse is not a "rapist", as it seems. In the last link provided by Adam, someone mentions that for the laws of Virginia, "aggravated sexual battery" means "touching someone's intimate body parts with the purpose of sexual gratification" without the victim's consent. Therefore, quoting from there: "While the law considers Zach Jesse a sexual offender, it does not consider him a rapist. The other thing to keep in mind is according to Jesse, he's had his civil rights restored so even the state doesn't find him to be a future threat." (So among the other things, Drew Levin is guilty of defamation). I seriously want to hope they wouldn't propose a 3 months deal for actual rape.
The more interesting part of Sperling's post, though, is the opinion given by Magic judge Tasha Jamison, herself a victim of sexual assault. Which makes us realize what incredible, monstrous can of worms this whole thing is opening: as Tasha notes, a case like this gives more ammunition to people (often but not exclusively women) who use false rape claims as a weapon, because they see to what extent such accusations can go and what fruits can bear, and this in turn makes the real victims' life harder, for a complex series of reasons (it also helps us understand why Zach Jesse's victim reportedly helped him getting a reduced sentence). This on top of essentially instigating recidivism by negating the reformed criminal the rights to even simple activities like playing Magic.
Also disturbing is that WotC didn't just prevent Zach Jesse from playing competitive paper Magic for the rest of his life (and by the way, how stupid is to give a date for that? Banned for 30 years for having served time in prison? Like that was some MTG infraction calling for a specific sanction). They closed his MTGO account, and this means they took away how many money he had in there, possibly thousands of dollars. This reminds us how WotC has the power to literally take our money away overnight because they don't like who we are, or who we were.
I'm the guy who decided to get rid of Blood Moon for good, because I would always, ALWAYS meet 3 monored decks in a row when running it.
Well, the budget is indeed a factor in a PRE event (or anywhere pros aren't involved). I use Natural Order when I can, but I made a rule to mostly use it in-tribe, and that's not a super-Spike approach (mostly it works with Insect to fetch Hornet Queen).
Prices of the mentioned cards are not as high as they used to, anyway, if not outright cheap.
- Pernicious Deed (promo!) $17.64 (wanna! Last time I checked was over $25)
- Natural Order (also promo) $9.01
- Intuition (TPR) $4.65
- Vindicate (AP) $13.75
I just played vs. a player who started very budget-conscious and now runs 4x Vindicate. I think there's also to consider Golgari is more popular and tribal-friendly than Orzhov, so you just use Maelstrom Pulse, or even better something instant. I never really liked sorcery-speed removal. Vindicate is a bit of an old-timer.
By the way, MisterMojo, I'm glad you're still following the articles even if you're not playing much at the moment. Did you see the email I sent you?
I slept on this, not wanting to respond in haste.
I was nodding my head at what Adam was saying but I had no chance to read the reddits or the links from them (because strangely the mods were obstructing reading of reddits yesterday to make some obscure point to its admins...) until much later in the day.
I am horrified that he essentially got away with his crimes despite having "served his sentence". I find that to be the fault of the government and the judicial system though. and apparently the victim (through her kindness?) was influential at least partially for the leniency shown to him, so who am I to want or demand further justice??
I understand now, better maybe. WOTC's reasons for doing this. But it is still an extremely flawed and dangerous precedent. I can only hope someone in a position to say something meaningful (sorry Mr Jarret, your reddit post does not count) will explain what was going on, because this really shakes the customer's faith in WOTC's rationality.
As much as I desire rapists to get what is due them, and as many people have said concerning social rules, this is not how to go about ensuring that happens. Trial by Mob Mentality went out of style with the French revolution. (Not that it hasn't happened many times since, its just no one beats the Maddame LaFarge archetype for grossly unfair rabble rousing.)
I don't think this pertains at all to Patrick Chapin or his past misdeeds as that has been out in the open for a long time and he has proceeded to be a darling of the PT and GP circuits as well as a highly favored author/deck designer and commentator. And I am not afraid for most of the other ex-cons who play magic. Registered Sex Offenders should maybe tremble a little. As unfair as it may seem, looks like WOTC has set a policy here that is pretty draconian. Unless there is some more information forthcoming it is likely to cause quite a bit of unease in the community. Which is not all that well glued together to begin with.
Not to mention Patrick Chapin and his record. From what I've heard about Zach, he is about as likely to assault someone at an event as Chapin is to sell ecstasy to some kids.