Basically because of the "Whiniest" part. 3 stars is still "good" and I don't think it deserved an "awsome" 5 stars or even a "great" 4 stars because of that. Tbh I would give 3.5 stars if I could. I also thought about not giving a rating at all but even though it's a small thing, this is usually the most viewed article of the site, and the one I want to read the most so I decided to give the 3 stars.
Maybe I'm not the perfect example because I've grinded many formats in mtgo and I'm happy playing for prizes that I sell for tix, but I think the nature of mtgo is different from irl.
Sure, you spend +1000 tix to build a vintage deck but irl the decks cost 10x more, so the "elitism" is way more present irl.
But even most Standard grinders sell their packs isntead of using them to draft. So Vintage players aren't that different from Standard players in mtgo.
I agree that something extra is needed to make the format grow and add a bigger excitment level is good but we don't need different prizes, specially because the chances of them messing up with different prizes is very big (even rewarding VMA packs they messed up).
I think the vintage stuff is great except for the gold queues. Gold queues are terrible for MTGO. They ruin the economy, making packs way cheaper and make every constructed event lower their EV. At least it's only Vintage this time so there will be less damage but it's still bad. I wish they got rid of gold queues forever.
The Vintage tournament is basically Vintage Championship with a better qualifying method and added prizes for no power9/bazaar. I think this is the way to improve Vintage in mtgo.
I hope they do something similar 3 or 4 times per year but changing the qualifying method a bit. Have it for longer periods and the 3-1s and 4-0s awarded VQPs (Vintage Qualifier Points) as well as 4-0s in Legacy and with a certain number you could play the tournament. For the rest of the year they could award VPPs (Vintage Promo Points) that would give you some cool eternal promos.
The problem with all tournaments having the same prizes is that different formats have different player bases. Giving a STD player current-set packs makes sense as they can take the cards in those packs and play STD with them...that is not the case with Vintage (2 or 3 cards a set aside). What does a Vintage player want with Khans packs?
This is handled in paper by having different prizes for different formats. I have never seen a successful Vintage tournament that gave out packs as prizes. Vintage players don't want packs, we want pimp versions of playable cards (think: SCG Power 9 Series). Packs are nice in that they can offset the price of building decks, but I think the whole prize structure of eternal needs to be rethought. We don't need MORE prizes, we need DIFFERENT prizes to draw players in.
AJ, I really liked your Rhino deck last week. It is fun & competitive. If I manage to get most of these Rhino cards, I will play with it in the future.
It was a misfortune that we paired during last round, that deck deserves much better result with its dynamics.
I get your frustration with Vintage players Pete but calling them out like that seems wrong. "Whiniest"? How bout neediest? They have been ignored (in some ways) as a class for a while. Yes they are vociferous in their opinions and yes their opinions are not necessarily overburdened with fair mindedness, but they have valid points. Like Workshops being bugged for 4+ months and not a word of acknowledgement that the bugs exist. (Yes I said bugs.) The complaint about payouts isn't based solely on greed afaik but on the premise, (perhaps wrongly as you point out) that the payouts are what is keeping Vintage from being a grand ole format. Personally I think it is the price of entry, fear of the unknown and the little understood, and the fact that many vintage players are totally sharks and who wants to jump into that pool without some kind of assurances? Not I, I hate burning tix.
Will people risk 10 tix a pop to get 5 packs of KTK? I don't know. I am not sure if I was flush with $$/Tix I would. Though as we talked about a few weeks ago, I am not a gambler. So maybe the gamblers among them who aren't busy playing flashback drafts and other limited games will take some time to hose their fellows with their favorite vintage brews.
Credit where it's due, my insects were a direct descendant of yours inspired by the Entomopedia with the additions of Blood Artist and Blasphemous Act as my tech. I figured get them coming and going and did exactly that with my first game vs AJ. And it is AJ's own fault that I played at all because he pushed me to play when I was feeling reluctant and unsure of the build. Sadly my wins came from friends rather than people I don't know but that is what happens after a while at the TA.
Update 11/13/2014: We are excited about player response to the Holiday Festival Vintage Championship. Our goal with the additional prizes of a Vintage Masters set to the top three players not playing Power Nine cards is to enable some players who are currently not Vintage players to join the community. After hearing player feedback about this implementation, we have decided to add Bazaar of Baghdad to this list. The additional prizes are now available to players who do not have any copies of Ancestral Recall, Bazaar of Baghdad, Black Lotus, Mox Emerald, Mox Jet, Mox Pearl, Mox Ruby, Mox Sapphire, Time Walk, or Timetwister in either their main decks or their sideboards. Best of luck to everyone as they try to qualify!
Against Oath it's better than Cage because it stops Show and Tell instead of Yawgmoth's Will. But I'm not sure if people really want that because Cage is better against Dredge.
It has the advantage of attacking for 2 and flash. It costs 2 instead of 1 so it can be too slow against dredge but against Oath it actually dodges Misstep.
But the biggest disadvantage is costing white. I don't think I've faced a deck with white mana in over 1 month. So I don't think this can put those decks back into the winning circle.
Well I'm not sure how those things end up working out but I'm pretty sure anyone who is able to play anything, won't play dredge, even with unpowered prizes.
Obviously dredge is the best deck without power simply because it is the only deck played in vintage that doesn't have power. But people can hate on it, no matter if they are playing power or not. In a normal tournament I would say that playing dredge would be better than another non powered deck but maybe nothing this there will be too much hate? But I guess that even with dredge hate, there's bound to be a few that escape some hate or simply get lucky enough to win 1 of the post sb games.
We'll have to see. If dredge does end up taking the 3 slots I think they should consider excluding Bazaar in the future as well and maybe even offer something to the 3 best players without Bazaar and power.
I have conflicting feelings about the announcement. On one hand, I'm absolutely thrilled they're running a large Vintage event. I had previously commented that I thought they were happy to let the format just die after making their money off of VMA; this is one of the rare occasions I'm happy to be wrong. On the other hand, I'm not thrilled with their execution on 2 fronts. Since they've cut Vintage DEs back to Fri, Sat, and Sun only, that leaves exactly 1 weekend to qualify through Vintage events. And, as others have mentioned, including Dredge in the "unpowered" prize pool is just absurd and very likely to skew the metagame toward what most people consider the least fun deck in the format.
I never considered Falconer really. I saw it was there, I think I recall discussing it as a pick, but swarm is one of my weak points.
The delta was almost mine. Had I not already had a set I would have taken it. 4322 I would have taken it, but in an 84 and as someone who is not super confident in my skill level I needed every card I could get that would help win.
It never did, because I was too preoccupied with making giant dorks. It was not a thing I ever thought of, and dang, that's smooth
P1p2 I would have taken the Abzan Falconer over the Swarm of Bloodflies.
You have more control than I do....I would have picked the Polluted Delta P3p1, though I cannot fault your pick.
Also, did it occur to you that you could have added a counter to the Wingmate Roc using High Sentinels of Arashin in order to kill it sooner with the Smite the Monstrous?
Despite the wonderful (for people with spare $$) news about vintage, I am very unhappy that they are putting off Leagues yet again. This does not increase my confidence in the well being of the game. As I have mentioned before the Leagues "Are we there yet??" has become a joke in the community standing in for how WOTC miscommunicates and prevaricates its intentions. Hard to build trust when you break your word.
No prob. They do have a prize for the top 3 finishers with decks without Power which is interesting, however I think they need to add Bazaar to the list else dredge will just take the spots assuredly.
Basically because of the "Whiniest" part. 3 stars is still "good" and I don't think it deserved an "awsome" 5 stars or even a "great" 4 stars because of that. Tbh I would give 3.5 stars if I could. I also thought about not giving a rating at all but even though it's a small thing, this is usually the most viewed article of the site, and the one I want to read the most so I decided to give the 3 stars.
I'm a little curious why you felt the need to downrate this particular article?
Maybe I'm not the perfect example because I've grinded many formats in mtgo and I'm happy playing for prizes that I sell for tix, but I think the nature of mtgo is different from irl.
Sure, you spend +1000 tix to build a vintage deck but irl the decks cost 10x more, so the "elitism" is way more present irl.
But even most Standard grinders sell their packs isntead of using them to draft. So Vintage players aren't that different from Standard players in mtgo.
I agree that something extra is needed to make the format grow and add a bigger excitment level is good but we don't need different prizes, specially because the chances of them messing up with different prizes is very big (even rewarding VMA packs they messed up).
I think the vintage stuff is great except for the gold queues. Gold queues are terrible for MTGO. They ruin the economy, making packs way cheaper and make every constructed event lower their EV. At least it's only Vintage this time so there will be less damage but it's still bad. I wish they got rid of gold queues forever.
The Vintage tournament is basically Vintage Championship with a better qualifying method and added prizes for no power9/bazaar. I think this is the way to improve Vintage in mtgo.
I hope they do something similar 3 or 4 times per year but changing the qualifying method a bit. Have it for longer periods and the 3-1s and 4-0s awarded VQPs (Vintage Qualifier Points) as well as 4-0s in Legacy and with a certain number you could play the tournament. For the rest of the year they could award VPPs (Vintage Promo Points) that would give you some cool eternal promos.
The problem with all tournaments having the same prizes is that different formats have different player bases. Giving a STD player current-set packs makes sense as they can take the cards in those packs and play STD with them...that is not the case with Vintage (2 or 3 cards a set aside). What does a Vintage player want with Khans packs?
This is handled in paper by having different prizes for different formats. I have never seen a successful Vintage tournament that gave out packs as prizes. Vintage players don't want packs, we want pimp versions of playable cards (think: SCG Power 9 Series). Packs are nice in that they can offset the price of building decks, but I think the whole prize structure of eternal needs to be rethought. We don't need MORE prizes, we need DIFFERENT prizes to draw players in.
AJ, I really liked your Rhino deck last week. It is fun & competitive. If I manage to get most of these Rhino cards, I will play with it in the future.
It was a misfortune that we paired during last round, that deck deserves much better result with its dynamics.
Excellent brewing as always...
Vintage players are the whiniest players around.
That is gold, Jerry!
I regret nothing! :D
I'm seeing a lot of red.
I get your frustration with Vintage players Pete but calling them out like that seems wrong. "Whiniest"? How bout neediest? They have been ignored (in some ways) as a class for a while. Yes they are vociferous in their opinions and yes their opinions are not necessarily overburdened with fair mindedness, but they have valid points. Like Workshops being bugged for 4+ months and not a word of acknowledgement that the bugs exist. (Yes I said bugs.) The complaint about payouts isn't based solely on greed afaik but on the premise, (perhaps wrongly as you point out) that the payouts are what is keeping Vintage from being a grand ole format. Personally I think it is the price of entry, fear of the unknown and the little understood, and the fact that many vintage players are totally sharks and who wants to jump into that pool without some kind of assurances? Not I, I hate burning tix.
Will people risk 10 tix a pop to get 5 packs of KTK? I don't know. I am not sure if I was flush with $$/Tix I would. Though as we talked about a few weeks ago, I am not a gambler. So maybe the gamblers among them who aren't busy playing flashback drafts and other limited games will take some time to hose their fellows with their favorite vintage brews.
Credit where it's due, my insects were a direct descendant of yours inspired by the Entomopedia with the additions of Blood Artist and Blasphemous Act as my tech. I figured get them coming and going and did exactly that with my first game vs AJ. And it is AJ's own fault that I played at all because he pushed me to play when I was feeling reluctant and unsure of the build. Sadly my wins came from friends rather than people I don't know but that is what happens after a while at the TA.
Respectably fast and refreshingly effective. Kudos, Wizards!
Update 11/13/2014: We are excited about player response to the Holiday Festival Vintage Championship. Our goal with the additional prizes of a Vintage Masters set to the top three players not playing Power Nine cards is to enable some players who are currently not Vintage players to join the community. After hearing player feedback about this implementation, we have decided to add Bazaar of Baghdad to this list. The additional prizes are now available to players who do not have any copies of Ancestral Recall, Bazaar of Baghdad, Black Lotus, Mox Emerald, Mox Jet, Mox Pearl, Mox Ruby, Mox Sapphire, Time Walk, or Timetwister in either their main decks or their sideboards. Best of luck to everyone as they try to qualify!
Against Oath it's better than Cage because it stops Show and Tell instead of Yawgmoth's Will. But I'm not sure if people really want that because Cage is better against Dredge.
It has the advantage of attacking for 2 and flash. It costs 2 instead of 1 so it can be too slow against dredge but against Oath it actually dodges Misstep.
But the biggest disadvantage is costing white. I don't think I've faced a deck with white mana in over 1 month. So I don't think this can put those decks back into the winning circle.
It will be interesting to see if people start using Containment Priest in their sideboards.
Well I'm not sure how those things end up working out but I'm pretty sure anyone who is able to play anything, won't play dredge, even with unpowered prizes.
Obviously dredge is the best deck without power simply because it is the only deck played in vintage that doesn't have power. But people can hate on it, no matter if they are playing power or not. In a normal tournament I would say that playing dredge would be better than another non powered deck but maybe nothing this there will be too much hate? But I guess that even with dredge hate, there's bound to be a few that escape some hate or simply get lucky enough to win 1 of the post sb games.
We'll have to see. If dredge does end up taking the 3 slots I think they should consider excluding Bazaar in the future as well and maybe even offer something to the 3 best players without Bazaar and power.
I have conflicting feelings about the announcement. On one hand, I'm absolutely thrilled they're running a large Vintage event. I had previously commented that I thought they were happy to let the format just die after making their money off of VMA; this is one of the rare occasions I'm happy to be wrong. On the other hand, I'm not thrilled with their execution on 2 fronts. Since they've cut Vintage DEs back to Fri, Sat, and Sun only, that leaves exactly 1 weekend to qualify through Vintage events. And, as others have mentioned, including Dredge in the "unpowered" prize pool is just absurd and very likely to skew the metagame toward what most people consider the least fun deck in the format.
The p9 decks hating out dredge doesn't keep dredge from being the highest placing un-powered deck, though.
The un-powered decks need to hate it out too.
I never considered Falconer really. I saw it was there, I think I recall discussing it as a pick, but swarm is one of my weak points.
The delta was almost mine. Had I not already had a set I would have taken it. 4322 I would have taken it, but in an 84 and as someone who is not super confident in my skill level I needed every card I could get that would help win.
It never did, because I was too preoccupied with making giant dorks. It was not a thing I ever thought of, and dang, that's smooth
You are not kidding. At this point, announcements about Leagues on MTGO are just another round of Lucy holding the football.
Two comments, Josh:
P1p2 I would have taken the Abzan Falconer over the Swarm of Bloodflies.
You have more control than I do....I would have picked the Polluted Delta P3p1, though I cannot fault your pick.
Also, did it occur to you that you could have added a counter to the Wingmate Roc using High Sentinels of Arashin in order to kill it sooner with the Smite the Monstrous?
Despite the wonderful (for people with spare $$) news about vintage, I am very unhappy that they are putting off Leagues yet again. This does not increase my confidence in the well being of the game. As I have mentioned before the Leagues "Are we there yet??" has become a joke in the community standing in for how WOTC miscommunicates and prevaricates its intentions. Hard to build trust when you break your word.
Well that also gives everyone who is playing with power9 a reason to have dredge hate.
That was my first thought as well.
Free power to the top 3 dredge placings. xD
No prob. They do have a prize for the top 3 finishers with decks without Power which is interesting, however I think they need to add Bazaar to the list else dredge will just take the spots assuredly.