What part was mismanaged? I'm assuming it's not easy for anyone to spend $600 to get the power nine. Wotc should have made prices lower. $100 for the power nine seems more reasonable. I don't understand their logic. This really is a rich man's game.
I do not think petes article has made people think that Vintage has bombed on mtgo. I think people think that vintage bombed on MTGO because it has actually been mismanaged to oblivion.
You article cause all the vintage prices to drop on mtgo. People were freaked out thinking Vintage has bombed and are now selling out. Some have dropped over 50%. Good job!
Also, sweet article like always! I kind of liked Monsters in Standard and want to jam some Temur like everyone else, after that, Mardu Control looks like a sweet deck I could get behind with.
I agree that it's reasonable to think that Beta testers get access to all the new cards because what's the point of testing new set otherwise, when people just can't have these cards ahead of time in any other way. That makes Beta the premier platform (online) to playtest for Block and I encourage readers to join Beta Testing, if they could. Beta testing is probably down right now after the last downtime since KTK is getting released publicly, but Beta will be a good way to test after the next set anyway.
-Returning to your hand a creature which has a kill effect, such as big game hunter. This also counts for any black creature with a useful ETB trigger.
-Returning Murderous Redcap when it has a counter on it so you can hit something for two or go off with your persist combo.
-Return Dark Confidant to your hand if he is eating away at your life too much- though this probably not an option a Jund deck would consider.
-Bouncing a black ninja, such as Okiba-Gana Shinobi, so you can keep cheating it into play with ninjutsu.
-Serving as a regenerating blocker that will eat damage and require a kill spell to get rid of, ie raises the difficultly level there.
-Lets you bounce your favorite creature when you hit Damnation. Then you can cast that creature again next turn.
There are probably a few more applications I haven't thought of. But it seems like a card that would have a place in several casual builds.
Triage is always the first step in sorting. I don't blame you for throwing out/selling old cards you will never play with. The idea of the collector of MTG cards is not the same as it was when there were maybe 20 sets to collect. Even 15 years ago when I was actively trading, I only really traded for two things: Betas, and Standard legal cards that I wanted for decks. Everything else I ignored. Admittedly I am not a collector but the reason that is the case is because collecting is a huge chore, takes up lots of space and is ultimately not very functional. Not even as an investment. The market for complete sets is fairly low. Yes it does matter if you have a foreign version of some cards and miscuts/misprints are highly collectable. Foils tend to keep value (slightly) where non-foil does not. But over all old cards that are not hot are fairly worthless as collectibles.
Of course little of this applies to online. As you obliquely point out, you don't NEED to sell off cards online (unless you need $$). There is no space limit (yet) and there is no other impetus to do so.
I was picturing Siege Rhino used off-tribe, actually. You also keep that use in mind in the evaluation, no? I think every Pod build will easily play 1 Rhino over any other off-tribe 4-drop.
kuma, you may be happy to know that I could not stop myself from purchasing some expensive cards to attempt to build a working elk deck. I've been tweaking it every day, once I get a hold of a playset of highland game it might actually win some games on saturday. I'm also working on a good deck name, I feel like if I make a deck with a good name it softens the blow of my many, many losses :)
Those cards are nice but I was not gonna take Mortars over a colorless card. I don't think it was really getting tied to black. It was simply taking a green or colorless card when I could because I didn't want many off color cards. Grave Titan is one card that makes me want to take it despite being another color, the same would apply to Jace or Upheaval. It does not apply to Mortars.
On Siege Rhino, the problem was the black mana cost. Rhino tribal is solidly G/W, but usually wants a blue splash for Rhox War Monk. There's also Cliffrunner Behemoth pulling you towards red, though not as strongly as Rhox War Monk. RWM is almost mandatory to give the deck anything resembling a reasonable curve -- you probably have to play both RWM and Dauntless Escort plus 4-6 offtribe manadorks or else the whole thing is going to be far too clunky. And unlike the Alara Rhinos, Siege Rhino has no secondary types, so Rhinos is pretty much the only place to stick it. You certainly could play 4-color Rhinos, I suppose, maybe with BoP and DRS as the manadorks. It's tricky even with a full-power fetch/dual Legacy manabase, but do-able.
Somehow when I searched Gatherer, it only came up with 3 beasts that had morph. I thought I remembered more, but then I second-guessed myself and assumed Gatherer was right and that maybe I was just thinking of all those beasts with cycling.
I've never found Precinct Captain or Bloodline Keeper to be overly-threatening. They can both take over an empty board in a few turns if they live, though the weaker Captain needs to also clear out any blocker even so big as a 2/3 before he can do his magic. I suppose they are more powerful in Pure, with worse instant removal, you may take a tempo loss to deal with them if you can't ignore them. I'm no defender of white weenie, and it is so massively over-played that it could probably absorb the hit, but I don't see the need to purify Precinct Captain. If you have to pick something, I would suggest Champion of the Parish. Yes, it also goes in Human decks, but there's enormous crossover (sometimes 100% crossover) between mono-white Human and Soldier decks. I'd give Champion the boot if something has to go. For the vampires, I would boot Gatekeeper of Malakir, one of the most heavily-played creatures in Tribal Wars.
I feel like GR was open for the entire draft. If you had been in red you would have had access to cards like Huntmaster, Generator Servant, Xenagos, Bloodbraid Elf, and Mizzium Mortars. I think you let yourself get too tied to black when you picked the Grave Titan, as a lot of GR cards and lands came your way fairly steadily throughout the draft. You did go 3-0, so GB was clearly fine, but my thoughts are that you probably should have switched to red fairly early on.
Really nice article series! As usual, these reviews are both funny and informative. Also, I have completely overlooked Erase as a card when glancing over the spoiler, it could be very good considering its mana cost
The underdog tourney is mainly about using unhallowed tribes. But even so, your thought is not entirely without merit. The main thing is: We don't want/need a format where the creatures are overshadowed by the nontribal elements. That is one of the major complaints about all the various formats. And no solution has been applied that satisfies the complaints to date.
I will keep swinging ideas until I hit something. I feel like doing something new and different could open up all kinds of possibilities. Of course, I haven't been around as long as all you vets so I don't know which ideas you have already tried. With that in mind....What about an unhallowed tourney? But just not taking off the winner from the unhallowed tribe list. Speaking from the perspective of a person who has almost exclusively played unhallowed tribes in every tourney, it's pretty fun trying to make bad tribes work. It would solve a lot of the deckbuilding complaints about singleton and kaleidoscope, because you would still be able to use all the noncreature spells you like.
What part was mismanaged? I'm assuming it's not easy for anyone to spend $600 to get the power nine. Wotc should have made prices lower. $100 for the power nine seems more reasonable. I don't understand their logic. This really is a rich man's game.
I do not think petes article has made people think that Vintage has bombed on mtgo. I think people think that vintage bombed on MTGO because it has actually been mismanaged to oblivion.
You article cause all the vintage prices to drop on mtgo. People were freaked out thinking Vintage has bombed and are now selling out. Some have dropped over 50%. Good job!
RE: Non-pack prizes
FYI
A response to your request for comments on non-pack prizes.
http://community.wizards.com/forum/magic-online-general/threads/4149371
Those crazy nomads!
Also, sweet article like always! I kind of liked Monsters in Standard and want to jam some Temur like everyone else, after that, Mardu Control looks like a sweet deck I could get behind with.
I agree that it's reasonable to think that Beta testers get access to all the new cards because what's the point of testing new set otherwise, when people just can't have these cards ahead of time in any other way. That makes Beta the premier platform (online) to playtest for Block and I encourage readers to join Beta Testing, if they could. Beta testing is probably down right now after the last downtime since KTK is getting released publicly, but Beta will be a good way to test after the next set anyway.
Phantasmal Image is a great call. Gives you an extra lord, an extra leecher, an extra whatever. I really like it.
I feel like you could play 1 or 2 Bonescythe Slivers in this build and get away with it.
Skull Collector has several useful applications:
-Returning to your hand a creature which has a kill effect, such as big game hunter. This also counts for any black creature with a useful ETB trigger.
-Returning Murderous Redcap when it has a counter on it so you can hit something for two or go off with your persist combo.
-Return Dark Confidant to your hand if he is eating away at your life too much- though this probably not an option a Jund deck would consider.
-Bouncing a black ninja, such as Okiba-Gana Shinobi, so you can keep cheating it into play with ninjutsu.
-Serving as a regenerating blocker that will eat damage and require a kill spell to get rid of, ie raises the difficultly level there.
-Lets you bounce your favorite creature when you hit Damnation. Then you can cast that creature again next turn.
There are probably a few more applications I haven't thought of. But it seems like a card that would have a place in several casual builds.
Triage is always the first step in sorting. I don't blame you for throwing out/selling old cards you will never play with. The idea of the collector of MTG cards is not the same as it was when there were maybe 20 sets to collect. Even 15 years ago when I was actively trading, I only really traded for two things: Betas, and Standard legal cards that I wanted for decks. Everything else I ignored. Admittedly I am not a collector but the reason that is the case is because collecting is a huge chore, takes up lots of space and is ultimately not very functional. Not even as an investment. The market for complete sets is fairly low. Yes it does matter if you have a foreign version of some cards and miscuts/misprints are highly collectable. Foils tend to keep value (slightly) where non-foil does not. But over all old cards that are not hot are fairly worthless as collectibles.
Of course little of this applies to online. As you obliquely point out, you don't NEED to sell off cards online (unless you need $$). There is no space limit (yet) and there is no other impetus to do so.
To clarify, Vampire will NOT get a purified card.
I agree about the Captain.
I was picturing Siege Rhino used off-tribe, actually. You also keep that use in mind in the evaluation, no? I think every Pod build will easily play 1 Rhino over any other off-tribe 4-drop.
kuma, you may be happy to know that I could not stop myself from purchasing some expensive cards to attempt to build a working elk deck. I've been tweaking it every day, once I get a hold of a playset of highland game it might actually win some games on saturday. I'm also working on a good deck name, I feel like if I make a deck with a good name it softens the blow of my many, many losses :)
Those cards are nice but I was not gonna take Mortars over a colorless card. I don't think it was really getting tied to black. It was simply taking a green or colorless card when I could because I didn't want many off color cards. Grave Titan is one card that makes me want to take it despite being another color, the same would apply to Jace or Upheaval. It does not apply to Mortars.
On Siege Rhino, the problem was the black mana cost. Rhino tribal is solidly G/W, but usually wants a blue splash for Rhox War Monk. There's also Cliffrunner Behemoth pulling you towards red, though not as strongly as Rhox War Monk. RWM is almost mandatory to give the deck anything resembling a reasonable curve -- you probably have to play both RWM and Dauntless Escort plus 4-6 offtribe manadorks or else the whole thing is going to be far too clunky. And unlike the Alara Rhinos, Siege Rhino has no secondary types, so Rhinos is pretty much the only place to stick it. You certainly could play 4-color Rhinos, I suppose, maybe with BoP and DRS as the manadorks. It's tricky even with a full-power fetch/dual Legacy manabase, but do-able.
Somehow when I searched Gatherer, it only came up with 3 beasts that had morph. I thought I remembered more, but then I second-guessed myself and assumed Gatherer was right and that maybe I was just thinking of all those beasts with cycling.
I've never found Precinct Captain or Bloodline Keeper to be overly-threatening. They can both take over an empty board in a few turns if they live, though the weaker Captain needs to also clear out any blocker even so big as a 2/3 before he can do his magic. I suppose they are more powerful in Pure, with worse instant removal, you may take a tempo loss to deal with them if you can't ignore them. I'm no defender of white weenie, and it is so massively over-played that it could probably absorb the hit, but I don't see the need to purify Precinct Captain. If you have to pick something, I would suggest Champion of the Parish. Yes, it also goes in Human decks, but there's enormous crossover (sometimes 100% crossover) between mono-white Human and Soldier decks. I'd give Champion the boot if something has to go. For the vampires, I would boot Gatekeeper of Malakir, one of the most heavily-played creatures in Tribal Wars.
I feel like GR was open for the entire draft. If you had been in red you would have had access to cards like Huntmaster, Generator Servant, Xenagos, Bloodbraid Elf, and Mizzium Mortars. I think you let yourself get too tied to black when you picked the Grave Titan, as a lot of GR cards and lands came your way fairly steadily throughout the draft. You did go 3-0, so GB was clearly fine, but my thoughts are that you probably should have switched to red fairly early on.
Please plug the doodle poll. It's something we can do to push Vintage online.
I've been seeing variations on Ensoul decks all over standard lately. Looks like it maybe the go to deck if you don't know what else to play.
To boast, my Vampire deck, in all five rounds played, didn't lose a game. :-)
Thanks for the tip Paul, I will check it out. I am looking at purchasing a new mic as well
The feedback might be fixable on youtube. via their editor (youtube.com/editor)
I love your videos and just an FYI, there was a ton of feed back in the audio of these videos.
You couldn't with the token against Rabble Red due to Legion Loyalist's battalion ability.
Really nice article series! As usual, these reviews are both funny and informative. Also, I have completely overlooked Erase as a card when glancing over the spoiler, it could be very good considering its mana cost
Reply to Richard Markwitz since I don't have Facebook...
Interesting points. I will take up the Ponyback Brigade in a blogpost this week and explain why I rated it the way I did.
The underdog tourney is mainly about using unhallowed tribes. But even so, your thought is not entirely without merit. The main thing is: We don't want/need a format where the creatures are overshadowed by the nontribal elements. That is one of the major complaints about all the various formats. And no solution has been applied that satisfies the complaints to date.
I will keep swinging ideas until I hit something. I feel like doing something new and different could open up all kinds of possibilities. Of course, I haven't been around as long as all you vets so I don't know which ideas you have already tried. With that in mind....What about an unhallowed tourney? But just not taking off the winner from the unhallowed tribe list. Speaking from the perspective of a person who has almost exclusively played unhallowed tribes in every tourney, it's pretty fun trying to make bad tribes work. It would solve a lot of the deckbuilding complaints about singleton and kaleidoscope, because you would still be able to use all the noncreature spells you like.