Always appreciate the comments. I always loved legacy just was really hard for me to play it on MTGO because I didn't want to rebuy cards I already had in paper. Though this deck is sweet because in paper Gaea's Cradle is like 200$ haha. I will keep playing it as long as possible.
Thanks for you feedback. I think elves is much better than goblins. The deck just does more and has really good sideboard options. As for port and wasteland they just don't really fit in this deck. If you have the money to afford them I would play Death and Taxes or Goblins. Those 2 decks are much better fits for those lands.
I agree that my problem has to do with the length of the event. When I open a fresh client, it is using ~400k RAM. Slowly over time it grows to near 1GB RAM.
It became that to use up the last boosters that I had, I would close the client and restart it between rounds 1 and 2 so it would not crash at the inopportune time of its choosing.
Just some thoughts on your matchup vs. Landstill...
1. I disagree with your assessment that you have strong odds here. I've played both sides of the table on this and, depending on the configuration of both decks, I believe Landstill to have a slight to significant edge. Their Wastes combined with high land count (typically 21-23) mean that they can often choke you with your own spheres while being able to play under them, especially since they do not need to chain multiple spells together in a single turn like Storm or Gro. Additionally, they're better at finding their Crucibles and have access to Dack and Null Rod or Engineered Explosives in the main. They are one of the few decks with a favorable game 1 against you and post-board they'll be bringing in some combination of Goblin Welder, Energy Flux, Ingot Chewer, Viashino Heretic, and Shattering Spree while you have little to nothing for them.
2. Chalice is pretty much the easiest cut to make in sideborading since it does so little against them. 0 cuts off Lotus, Sapphire and *maybe* Ruby. 1 hits 3-4 Bolts, Ancestral, and rarely Mystical; they don't play cantrips and are siding out their 1 mana counters anyway. Also, I would never cut Metamorph here. The Crucible fight is usually a big part of games 2&3, and this lets you copy theirs if need be.
3. I consider blind naming Lotus with Revoker to be a fairly poor choice. Dack, Jace, or Explosives (if they've shown it or are running 3 colors) are almost always stronger calls since they aren't using Lotus to fuel a large Will or flood the board with permanents while the aforementioned cards are all a large headache if they resolve. The same is true for Welder and Heretic if you know they have either one.
That said, congrats on the 3-1 (you too, Joe) and keep the Vintage content coming :)
But you can't just look at that. I play mostly DEs followed by swiss cube drafts and sealed release events (70% to 80% are DEs). That means my average tournament has over 3 rounds (swiss drafts I'll always play every round, I might get a bye once in a while and most DEs I play at least 3 rounds).
If you compare that to someone who plays a lot of 2man queues (which I have played in the past but I haven't played in many years), I'll obviously have more average problems per event than that person. And it's not only because of the number of rounds. Sometimes, bigger events crash. Also, a general mtgo crash has a bigger chance to catch a Daily event than 4 2man queues played in a row because you end up having to wait for the other matches to finish.
You also can't ignore that many people actually don't ask for a refund when they had the right to get one. First, it's something that takes too much time (by now, they should have a fast way to do it in game). Some people don't bother asking for it because of that. That's true specially for 2mans or cube drafts. Second, some people are new to MTGO and they don't even know they can ask for a refund or that the problem was worthy of a refund. Or it could even be a problem that they don't notice and they end up not asking.
When I was new to mtgo, I'm pretty sure I missed out on some refunds because of these things.
You are making a mistake in assuming that the fact that they are basing this on average refund % means that anyone above that number is at risk.
More likely, they are looking at people who are at least 2x the average %, so far, everyone who has gotten a ban and given actual examples of their redemption % has been way, way over the average.
2 other things to be aware of when playing against Chalice are that it will not stop uncounterable spells like Abrupt Decay or a creature cast w/ Cavern of Souls. Storm and Replicate (Flusterstorm and Shattering Spree being the most relevant examples) can also play through it somewhat. The initial spell is countered, but the copies are placed on the stack, not cast, and therefore resolve normally.
less spam, more magic! seriously though, good writing deserves not to be spam-bombed in the comments. Why the hell aren't these spammers spamming recent content? Not very good at your jobs, sirs! you're an embarrassment to the spam brand!
It's funny, I got into Vintage recently and was told Workshop was frustrating to play against. I eventually played against it and sideboarded in the Ingot Chewers. My opponent cast Chalice for one and I never tried to evoke my Chewer because I thought it would just get countered. It never occurred to me that they had to set it to five. Thanks for the tip, Joe!
I think fixing the bugs and issues would be more productive for WotC instead of banning people for playing the game. It is obvious to me from reading social media, that whatever amount of fraud people are engaging in is low in proportion to the temp bans. Since they are banning based on 'average refunds,' 50% of the the playerbase who are 'above average' stand to have negative experiences. The last thing a smart company wants is for their 'whales', the people who use their product ALL THE TIME and spend tons of money, to leave. I don't think a few extra refunds for big spenders or multi-grinders is a bad policy when the software product itself is in a such a sorry state.
Every time MTGO goes through a new release like v4, they always make passive-aggressive digital policies encouraging people not to play magic. Personally, I admit, when things like this go down, I play less MTGO.
I used to play Sundering Titan in RG Tron. It's back-breaking to get armageddoned by that thing.
I saw you in the Daily Event last night! I actually managed to play in it myself. I was undefeated going into round four, but I lost round four 2-1 to abstrakt66.
I feel good about it though, second place isn't bad for a Vintage rookie.
May I ask you Plainswalker 83, do you consider Elves more potent than Goblins in Legacy (not in terms of which one would win in a matchup, but which one can handle the decks in the current metagame).
Also, do you believe that adding 4 x Rishadan Port and 4 x Wasteland to this Elves deck would make this deck more potent (for those who can afford these cards)?
First thanks for being honest and bringing this up because it may help others. I can say when I first read 2/3's of the time I said WOW. While I disagree with the way WOTC handled it, I am not sure they will have an issue with any player making this request rate (you must have made a nice penny if you won many of these games on top of the reimbursement). I also bet that is so much above the norm, so they had to intervene somehow (they just did it the wrong way). I think your plans are the way to best handle this, until you can upgrade to a better PC that is...
I can honestly say my request % was very high, given that my computer runs Vista and the memory leak problem is prevalent because Vista has crap memory recouping.
The open client crashed on me in tournies about 2/3rds of the time. Funny thing is the Beta client rarely crashes on me (I think only twice in the last 3 months, and I have logged over a hundred sealeds and drafts).
I have no idea how they would rule the example of the client crashing during drafting and you coming back and winning the event. Probably negatively, but you might lose out on picking money cards?!?!
It is in the past now, I only put it out in response to Pete's wonderment and as a warning (which I never got) to newer players:
Regardless of what WotC's website says, do not submit a request for reimbursement/ bug reporting if your event is affected by a bug unless the outcome was affected.
Also, when you have a problem mas go to "chat with support" and ask an ORC, they always give the same copy pasted message saying something like: "if you believe you lost product, go to link and submit your problem". After that if people ask if they have any idea if they will get a refund they also always give the same response something like "we don't really know".
This is one more thing encouraging you to ask for a refund, even if you are not sure. It's simply ridiculous that something like this could happen without any warning. I would understand banning right away people who built a constructed deck to abuse a bug (there was one that had a creature enchanted with something that caused the opp to timeout without being able to do anything).
In order to balance out the packs on secondary market.. they should distribute the prizes with mostly journey into nyx packs..
Like:
3 wins gets 6 packs: 2xTHS, 2xBNG, 2xJOU
2 wins gets 2 packs: 1xBNG and 1xJOU
I understand... What we don't know is maybe you were 100% higher than the average, if average of the people ask for reimbursements in 5% of the tourneys they entered but you asked for it 20% then I get it. If average is 5% and you were 6% then it seems less fair. Again I think this is miscommunication by WOTC not you (if what you say is all correct, we obviously don't have their side of the story)...
Yeah, I will probably start writing on here weekly, and since I have done many set reviews there will probably be an article where I go through some of my mistakes in initial evaluations. That is a valid point with the Narset, I will try to put that in future reviews when applicable.
Is there a reason the deck list has 61 cards? Or is that just an oversight?
Always appreciate the comments. I always loved legacy just was really hard for me to play it on MTGO because I didn't want to rebuy cards I already had in paper. Though this deck is sweet because in paper Gaea's Cradle is like 200$ haha. I will keep playing it as long as possible.
Thanks for you feedback. I think elves is much better than goblins. The deck just does more and has really good sideboard options. As for port and wasteland they just don't really fit in this deck. If you have the money to afford them I would play Death and Taxes or Goblins. Those 2 decks are much better fits for those lands.
I agree that my problem has to do with the length of the event. When I open a fresh client, it is using ~400k RAM. Slowly over time it grows to near 1GB RAM.
It became that to use up the last boosters that I had, I would close the client and restart it between rounds 1 and 2 so it would not crash at the inopportune time of its choosing.
Just some thoughts on your matchup vs. Landstill...
1. I disagree with your assessment that you have strong odds here. I've played both sides of the table on this and, depending on the configuration of both decks, I believe Landstill to have a slight to significant edge. Their Wastes combined with high land count (typically 21-23) mean that they can often choke you with your own spheres while being able to play under them, especially since they do not need to chain multiple spells together in a single turn like Storm or Gro. Additionally, they're better at finding their Crucibles and have access to Dack and Null Rod or Engineered Explosives in the main. They are one of the few decks with a favorable game 1 against you and post-board they'll be bringing in some combination of Goblin Welder, Energy Flux, Ingot Chewer, Viashino Heretic, and Shattering Spree while you have little to nothing for them.
2. Chalice is pretty much the easiest cut to make in sideborading since it does so little against them. 0 cuts off Lotus, Sapphire and *maybe* Ruby. 1 hits 3-4 Bolts, Ancestral, and rarely Mystical; they don't play cantrips and are siding out their 1 mana counters anyway. Also, I would never cut Metamorph here. The Crucible fight is usually a big part of games 2&3, and this lets you copy theirs if need be.
3. I consider blind naming Lotus with Revoker to be a fairly poor choice. Dack, Jace, or Explosives (if they've shown it or are running 3 colors) are almost always stronger calls since they aren't using Lotus to fuel a large Will or flood the board with permanents while the aforementioned cards are all a large headache if they resolve. The same is true for Welder and Heretic if you know they have either one.
That said, congrats on the 3-1 (you too, Joe) and keep the Vintage content coming :)
But you can't just look at that. I play mostly DEs followed by swiss cube drafts and sealed release events (70% to 80% are DEs). That means my average tournament has over 3 rounds (swiss drafts I'll always play every round, I might get a bye once in a while and most DEs I play at least 3 rounds).
If you compare that to someone who plays a lot of 2man queues (which I have played in the past but I haven't played in many years), I'll obviously have more average problems per event than that person. And it's not only because of the number of rounds. Sometimes, bigger events crash. Also, a general mtgo crash has a bigger chance to catch a Daily event than 4 2man queues played in a row because you end up having to wait for the other matches to finish.
You also can't ignore that many people actually don't ask for a refund when they had the right to get one. First, it's something that takes too much time (by now, they should have a fast way to do it in game). Some people don't bother asking for it because of that. That's true specially for 2mans or cube drafts. Second, some people are new to MTGO and they don't even know they can ask for a refund or that the problem was worthy of a refund. Or it could even be a problem that they don't notice and they end up not asking.
When I was new to mtgo, I'm pretty sure I missed out on some refunds because of these things.
You are making a mistake in assuming that the fact that they are basing this on average refund % means that anyone above that number is at risk.
More likely, they are looking at people who are at least 2x the average %, so far, everyone who has gotten a ban and given actual examples of their redemption % has been way, way over the average.
Yeah, Elesh Norn is a house against elves. That lotus petal, entomb, reanimate is a tough one.
that's a good point. Played my first daily with oath last night. did well.
2 other things to be aware of when playing against Chalice are that it will not stop uncounterable spells like Abrupt Decay or a creature cast w/ Cavern of Souls. Storm and Replicate (Flusterstorm and Shattering Spree being the most relevant examples) can also play through it somewhat. The initial spell is countered, but the copies are placed on the stack, not cast, and therefore resolve normally.
less spam, more magic! seriously though, good writing deserves not to be spam-bombed in the comments. Why the hell aren't these spammers spamming recent content? Not very good at your jobs, sirs! you're an embarrassment to the spam brand!
It's funny, I got into Vintage recently and was told Workshop was frustrating to play against. I eventually played against it and sideboarded in the Ingot Chewers. My opponent cast Chalice for one and I never tried to evoke my Chewer because I thought it would just get countered. It never occurred to me that they had to set it to five. Thanks for the tip, Joe!
I think fixing the bugs and issues would be more productive for WotC instead of banning people for playing the game. It is obvious to me from reading social media, that whatever amount of fraud people are engaging in is low in proportion to the temp bans. Since they are banning based on 'average refunds,' 50% of the the playerbase who are 'above average' stand to have negative experiences. The last thing a smart company wants is for their 'whales', the people who use their product ALL THE TIME and spend tons of money, to leave. I don't think a few extra refunds for big spenders or multi-grinders is a bad policy when the software product itself is in a such a sorry state.
Every time MTGO goes through a new release like v4, they always make passive-aggressive digital policies encouraging people not to play magic. Personally, I admit, when things like this go down, I play less MTGO.
I used to play Sundering Titan in RG Tron. It's back-breaking to get armageddoned by that thing.
I saw you in the Daily Event last night! I actually managed to play in it myself. I was undefeated going into round four, but I lost round four 2-1 to abstrakt66.
I feel good about it though, second place isn't bad for a Vintage rookie.
I look forward to playing against you someday!
Thanks. Most often is Sudering Titan.
Great article.
May I ask, which artifact do you tend to search for most with the KULDOTHA?
That's at least a tiny bit better than my system. Most of my crashes though are from the deck editor scene not playing.
Great article, I loved it.
May I ask you Plainswalker 83, do you consider Elves more potent than Goblins in Legacy (not in terms of which one would win in a matchup, but which one can handle the decks in the current metagame).
Also, do you believe that adding 4 x Rishadan Port and 4 x Wasteland to this Elves deck would make this deck more potent (for those who can afford these cards)?
No, was not a money maker as I am not a very good player.
All my drafts were swiss KTKx3 and my overall match win % is somewhere around 50%.
I won't give the exact number, as I don't want to encourage "gaming the system", but the time frame was a month.
BTW, my PC is a Q6600 quad core with 4 GB Memory and 1GB GPU
First thanks for being honest and bringing this up because it may help others. I can say when I first read 2/3's of the time I said WOW. While I disagree with the way WOTC handled it, I am not sure they will have an issue with any player making this request rate (you must have made a nice penny if you won many of these games on top of the reimbursement). I also bet that is so much above the norm, so they had to intervene somehow (they just did it the wrong way). I think your plans are the way to best handle this, until you can upgrade to a better PC that is...
I can honestly say my request % was very high, given that my computer runs Vista and the memory leak problem is prevalent because Vista has crap memory recouping.
The open client crashed on me in tournies about 2/3rds of the time. Funny thing is the Beta client rarely crashes on me (I think only twice in the last 3 months, and I have logged over a hundred sealeds and drafts).
I have no idea how they would rule the example of the client crashing during drafting and you coming back and winning the event. Probably negatively, but you might lose out on picking money cards?!?!
It is in the past now, I only put it out in response to Pete's wonderment and as a warning (which I never got) to newer players:
Regardless of what WotC's website says, do not submit a request for reimbursement/ bug reporting if your event is affected by a bug unless the outcome was affected.
Also, when you have a problem mas go to "chat with support" and ask an ORC, they always give the same copy pasted message saying something like: "if you believe you lost product, go to link and submit your problem". After that if people ask if they have any idea if they will get a refund they also always give the same response something like "we don't really know".
This is one more thing encouraging you to ask for a refund, even if you are not sure. It's simply ridiculous that something like this could happen without any warning. I would understand banning right away people who built a constructed deck to abuse a bug (there was one that had a creature enchanted with something that caused the opp to timeout without being able to do anything).
In order to balance out the packs on secondary market.. they should distribute the prizes with mostly journey into nyx packs..
Like:
3 wins gets 6 packs: 2xTHS, 2xBNG, 2xJOU
2 wins gets 2 packs: 1xBNG and 1xJOU
Enough of theros packs flooding the market!!
I understand... What we don't know is maybe you were 100% higher than the average, if average of the people ask for reimbursements in 5% of the tourneys they entered but you asked for it 20% then I get it. If average is 5% and you were 6% then it seems less fair. Again I think this is miscommunication by WOTC not you (if what you say is all correct, we obviously don't have their side of the story)...
Yeah, I will probably start writing on here weekly, and since I have done many set reviews there will probably be an article where I go through some of my mistakes in initial evaluations. That is a valid point with the Narset, I will try to put that in future reviews when applicable.