I was pretty surprised and angry when I saw that all the 2015 pro tours are going to standard, it doesn't make sense to "support modern" for two years, release a modern masters set and then twelve months later abandon the format. And Standard is both boring, and goes stale in like a month. If this year had been all standard I think we would have all been tired of mono black a long time ago, well more tired.
Taking a step back. Modern is one or two steps away from strangling itself on rising card prices. Modern Masters increased demand more then it increased supply. Modern is a victim of its own success. In the last year we have seen modern decks go way up. Most of the staples have double or quadrupled. I was seriously expected goyf to reach 300 with in a year. I think modern is growing too fast for its own health, and I think it needs to take a break from the spotlight for a bit.
If you look at the grand prix schedule there are I think 8 modern grand prix not far off from this years, But all but one of them are after may 31st. May 31st there are three Grand prix all on the same week end, all limited and one in Asia, one in Europe and one in North America. I give pretty good odds its modern masters two which will hopefully help relieve some of the demand on modern staples.
I feel you on this, but I am hoping it was done for the right reasons.
A great article! Everybody loves some speculation, especially if it leads to profit!
Chandra, Pyromaster is now the poster child for your whole concept. She was 4.71 and MTGOtraders showed 2 left in stock, I figured I'd wake up and buy them in the morning. The next day they were 5.80. Then I figured I'd wait for writing credit.
A day later she was 7.50.
Now she is back down to 6.67.
Prices, especially on Mythics, can swing wildly. Know when to pounce!
Sorry for the late reply. Glad you both liked this one!
I've always liked the PREs as a way to try out an idea without the financial pressure to succeed. I took my Scryb Ranger deck to WAFTT a couple of times. I ran UW Delver in your Modern Times and the Ascension League (which I sadly didn't find out about until the last few weeks). Every time I was running something different was a lot of fun.
Ha, Jungle for Fun! And yes, I rarely get to win by dealing the damage. Between Emrakul and now Elesh Norn, games often end abruptly. Without fail though, I will get a 10 second pause after casting Aethermage's Touch; EVERYBODY has to stop and read what is about to happen.
Oddly enough, I want the Clique to target myself when I get stuck holding Emrakul. It helps that Clique is also super awesome in general though.
I had found the M key earlier, but your article inspired me to write the positive list this week.
I agree that Wizards doesn't know how to sell v$. It's a communication thing. No one at WOTC (except maybe Rosewater) does communication.
The MTGO announcements article went up for a couple hours on Tuesday, then it vanished completely for two days. I sent them a bug report, then it came back.
Yeah, I saw a couple of episodes of Day[9] teaching Felicia Day how to play MTG. It was sort of cute to see the first impact with the game's mechanics of someone with such a high I.Q. and gaming experience as Felicia, but overall it was meant for newbies only. Still, a pretty big endorsement for the game, as Geek and Sundry moves a lot of people with the right mindset. I wouldn't be surprised if MTGO got a few new players through that channel.
Thanks for the shoutout, Pete! Am I the one who introduced you to the wonders of the M key?
We really need to spread the word as much as possible about all the V4 functionalities, because we really can't expect WotC to do it properly (I still think people never properly learned to use V3 at its fullest in 6 years).
I've also found out that docking the chat horizontally at the bottom of the screen seriously improves your life, even in a 4:3 monitor (of course, V4 really wants for you to run it on a 16:9). After all, everything is organized horizontally in V4, and as baffling as that is, it's better to go with it than to actively trying to fight it. For instance, the battlefield develops horizontally, so you're going to want to give it more room in that direction, and you already have the Exile&Co. column on the right and the player status on the left.
And this way you keep that pesky unkillable chat notification away from your prompt, even if I still hope that one will be fixed at some point.
By the way, is it me or the article with the notes on the August 6 downtime was released three days later?
Interestingly I've heard of him through Seb talking about him and Starcraft. Just somehow missed the connection before. And I see what WOTC has done here and it isn't all bad. They definitely pulled some greater community threads together here. Lets hope they don't forget the online portion (other than the terrible twitch streaming I mean) when putting the event together.
That UW Control deck is really complete control. I was looking for the kill condition, not even one main deck Elspeth. I guess they either deck via elixir, mutavault you, or grab your kill with Jace Ultimate.
"We don't care about the players, we're all about selling cards now" -Effectively WOTC.
The problem is, if you look at it from the standpoint of an economist, this doesn't work. They are saying the value of cards will be shortened tremendously. This will cut down on the demand for the cards, and thus the value will drop, and if the value of the cards drops (even more) but the price of the packs remains the same, then far fewer people will buy them. Buy having eternal formats like Modern, they keep the value of the cards up, and people can justify buying packs. When they limit the formats, they just cut the demand. Take a more extreme example, lets say the only format that would have tours would be limited, then they are effective saying that the cards have no value once opened.
I hope wizards isn't pulling an intentioned harikari.
I sold Day9 short: He also hosts a show, Spellslingers, on Geeks and Sundry, which is both strongly magic related and highly amusing. I corrected this in the thread where I originally posted the synopses, only fair I set the record right here too.
We are a community so long as we choose to be, the rest is just fluff.
Sorry to hear you are in so much pain, but distant empathy is the best I can offer on the subject of such ailments.
What I CAN do is offer to join you in casual games should you feel the need.
Unfortunately the new modo client isn't the greatest in the social aspects of game-play.
But if you happen to have a Steam account, you are welcome to add me on there.
Actually that is a pretty open invitation.
Something I picked up from the borderlands fora community.
Toss me an invite, we'll play some games together.
Any games.
Even magic.
The New modo client doesn't crash when you run it in Steam overlay like v3 did!
So you can hijack that for a better social interaction venue.
Hehe.
It was just a freeform rambling triggered by Blippy's question. Not a way to oppose Blippy's point of view in any way. Except maybe for the part where he wonders if people who care about one hundred different things can be a community. Yes, they can. The rest is just thought associations.
I do not support modern, legacy, or vintage (and it kinda looks like neither does wizards by dropping modern and having the reserved list) as I am an EDH player. I figured they would try harder to make the series not look so much like a cash grab, but that is what it is. If they truly wanted to see who the best players in the world or US were, they would run all of the formats. NASCAR, as much as i dislike it, does this the best by making drivers race all sorts of tracks. All of the sports, save college football (at least until this year) do this by either tourneys or making players play at all sorts of levels and varying degrees of difficulty. They could even throw in drafts of current and former sets. Unfortunately, none of this is their goal, but rather it is to make as much money off the player base as possible.
I hate to see the day they get a hold of EDH and turn it into something like this. That will be the day I walk away for good.
But "v4 sucks!" is irrelevant among the players who are interested in community so I don't understand your point. I mean Blippy and other TOs who have run events yourself included are community builders as are writers, and casters and frequent posters on the forums and chatters in the major chat rooms. That is what community is. And all of that has been ignored by WOTC this year. As has the chance to build more community online via these things and communal deck building/playing/testing that happened in the early years.
What is a community?
Is it a group of people who always talk about the same things and care about the same things?
No, that's the Borg Collective.
I treasure the wildly, crazily different people I met on MTGO in the events I host, from lawyers to airline pilots to deep sea fishermen. We had nothing in common, except for one basic thing: we were all there to play this game. But I learned about people other than myself, found the one thing that linked us all, and that is my community.
The thing I'm hating more these days is that so many people on MTGO seem to think that saying, "V4 sucks!" is gonna give you high fives from everyone else. That is not cultivating a sense of community. That's being in high school and trying to be popular. High school is very much not a community.
"I can't tell you anything about the Khans of Tarkir cycle of dual lands yet, but I can tell you that they will make an impact on Standard. I know there was some skepticism last year when I revealed the scry lands for the first time, which many players believed wouldn't be strong enough to see Standard play. "
I don't really think that there will be any dual lands in the new block, but rather the twin versions of the Alara triple lands (maybe even the Alara fetch Common lands too?). If it's a set about triple colors those new versions of Alara lands must be there. Just saying.
Righteous indignation over calamitous malfeasance. That's my teaser for you. And I totally agree/echo what you said about the CCC. I made this point in the comments section of FFTR this week and will probably say it again in my own for August. You probably know I am not a fan of Modern Juff-style. (Not typically fun or particularly innovative.) I do feel for those who enjoy it and want the format to thrive.
I was pretty surprised and angry when I saw that all the 2015 pro tours are going to standard, it doesn't make sense to "support modern" for two years, release a modern masters set and then twelve months later abandon the format. And Standard is both boring, and goes stale in like a month. If this year had been all standard I think we would have all been tired of mono black a long time ago, well more tired.
Taking a step back. Modern is one or two steps away from strangling itself on rising card prices. Modern Masters increased demand more then it increased supply. Modern is a victim of its own success. In the last year we have seen modern decks go way up. Most of the staples have double or quadrupled. I was seriously expected goyf to reach 300 with in a year. I think modern is growing too fast for its own health, and I think it needs to take a break from the spotlight for a bit.
If you look at the grand prix schedule there are I think 8 modern grand prix not far off from this years, But all but one of them are after may 31st. May 31st there are three Grand prix all on the same week end, all limited and one in Asia, one in Europe and one in North America. I give pretty good odds its modern masters two which will hopefully help relieve some of the demand on modern staples.
I feel you on this, but I am hoping it was done for the right reasons.
A great article! Everybody loves some speculation, especially if it leads to profit!
Chandra, Pyromaster is now the poster child for your whole concept. She was 4.71 and MTGOtraders showed 2 left in stock, I figured I'd wake up and buy them in the morning. The next day they were 5.80. Then I figured I'd wait for writing credit.
A day later she was 7.50.
Now she is back down to 6.67.
Prices, especially on Mythics, can swing wildly. Know when to pounce!
Sorry for the late reply. Glad you both liked this one!
I've always liked the PREs as a way to try out an idea without the financial pressure to succeed. I took my Scryb Ranger deck to WAFTT a couple of times. I ran UW Delver in your Modern Times and the Ascension League (which I sadly didn't find out about until the last few weeks). Every time I was running something different was a lot of fun.
Ha, Jungle for Fun! And yes, I rarely get to win by dealing the damage. Between Emrakul and now Elesh Norn, games often end abruptly. Without fail though, I will get a 10 second pause after casting Aethermage's Touch; EVERYBODY has to stop and read what is about to happen.
Oddly enough, I want the Clique to target myself when I get stuck holding Emrakul. It helps that Clique is also super awesome in general though.
- Gio
FtV contents are not being changed - it's too late for that. The paper versions will be out shortly. Just delaying the online version.
The hunt packs are the 5 colored M15 prerelease packs.
I had found the M key earlier, but your article inspired me to write the positive list this week.
I agree that Wizards doesn't know how to sell v$. It's a communication thing. No one at WOTC (except maybe Rosewater) does communication.
The MTGO announcements article went up for a couple hours on Tuesday, then it vanished completely for two days. I sent them a bug report, then it came back.
client is getting better, no need to have a total breakdown crisis anymore....
so FTV is delayed to 10/6, did you say they are changing the contents?
and what are the hunt packs? was that the 35 phantom points from 2 weeks ago>?
Very good idea to praise what functions well in Shiny. Thanks for the idea!
FYI/comment: In multiplayer, I still don't think you can adjust hand-size, and it's a critical problem.
Yeah, I saw a couple of episodes of Day[9] teaching Felicia Day how to play MTG. It was sort of cute to see the first impact with the game's mechanics of someone with such a high I.Q. and gaming experience as Felicia, but overall it was meant for newbies only. Still, a pretty big endorsement for the game, as Geek and Sundry moves a lot of people with the right mindset. I wouldn't be surprised if MTGO got a few new players through that channel.
Thanks for the shoutout, Pete! Am I the one who introduced you to the wonders of the M key?
We really need to spread the word as much as possible about all the V4 functionalities, because we really can't expect WotC to do it properly (I still think people never properly learned to use V3 at its fullest in 6 years).
I've also found out that docking the chat horizontally at the bottom of the screen seriously improves your life, even in a 4:3 monitor (of course, V4 really wants for you to run it on a 16:9). After all, everything is organized horizontally in V4, and as baffling as that is, it's better to go with it than to actively trying to fight it. For instance, the battlefield develops horizontally, so you're going to want to give it more room in that direction, and you already have the Exile&Co. column on the right and the player status on the left.
And this way you keep that pesky unkillable chat notification away from your prompt, even if I still hope that one will be fixed at some point.
By the way, is it me or the article with the notes on the August 6 downtime was released three days later?
Interestingly I've heard of him through Seb talking about him and Starcraft. Just somehow missed the connection before. And I see what WOTC has done here and it isn't all bad. They definitely pulled some greater community threads together here. Lets hope they don't forget the online portion (other than the terrible twitch streaming I mean) when putting the event together.
That UW Control deck is really complete control. I was looking for the kill condition, not even one main deck Elspeth. I guess they either deck via elixir, mutavault you, or grab your kill with Jace Ultimate.
"We don't care about the players, we're all about selling cards now" -Effectively WOTC.
The problem is, if you look at it from the standpoint of an economist, this doesn't work. They are saying the value of cards will be shortened tremendously. This will cut down on the demand for the cards, and thus the value will drop, and if the value of the cards drops (even more) but the price of the packs remains the same, then far fewer people will buy them. Buy having eternal formats like Modern, they keep the value of the cards up, and people can justify buying packs. When they limit the formats, they just cut the demand. Take a more extreme example, lets say the only format that would have tours would be limited, then they are effective saying that the cards have no value once opened.
I hope wizards isn't pulling an intentioned harikari.
I sold Day9 short: He also hosts a show, Spellslingers, on Geeks and Sundry, which is both strongly magic related and highly amusing. I corrected this in the thread where I originally posted the synopses, only fair I set the record right here too.
As I am on MTGO I am on Steam except no dot in the middle. :) Though I am not much for coop games on there.
We are a community so long as we choose to be, the rest is just fluff.
Sorry to hear you are in so much pain, but distant empathy is the best I can offer on the subject of such ailments.
What I CAN do is offer to join you in casual games should you feel the need.
Unfortunately the new modo client isn't the greatest in the social aspects of game-play.
But if you happen to have a Steam account, you are welcome to add me on there.
Actually that is a pretty open invitation.
Something I picked up from the borderlands fora community.
Toss me an invite, we'll play some games together.
Any games.
Even magic.
The New modo client doesn't crash when you run it in Steam overlay like v3 did!
So you can hijack that for a better social interaction venue.
Hehe.
OK, I gotcha now.
It was just a freeform rambling triggered by Blippy's question. Not a way to oppose Blippy's point of view in any way. Except maybe for the part where he wonders if people who care about one hundred different things can be a community. Yes, they can. The rest is just thought associations.
Oh, that wasn't referred to you. It was my "V4 sucks" rant rant.
I do not support modern, legacy, or vintage (and it kinda looks like neither does wizards by dropping modern and having the reserved list) as I am an EDH player. I figured they would try harder to make the series not look so much like a cash grab, but that is what it is. If they truly wanted to see who the best players in the world or US were, they would run all of the formats. NASCAR, as much as i dislike it, does this the best by making drivers race all sorts of tracks. All of the sports, save college football (at least until this year) do this by either tourneys or making players play at all sorts of levels and varying degrees of difficulty. They could even throw in drafts of current and former sets. Unfortunately, none of this is their goal, but rather it is to make as much money off the player base as possible.
I hate to see the day they get a hold of EDH and turn it into something like this. That will be the day I walk away for good.
I believe that the "MTGO community" and the "MTG/Twitter community", while having significant overlap in a Venn diagram, *are* two different animals.
I don't believe I mentioned anything about v4; this isn't a "v4 sucks" rant.
But "v4 sucks!" is irrelevant among the players who are interested in community so I don't understand your point. I mean Blippy and other TOs who have run events yourself included are community builders as are writers, and casters and frequent posters on the forums and chatters in the major chat rooms. That is what community is. And all of that has been ignored by WOTC this year. As has the chance to build more community online via these things and communal deck building/playing/testing that happened in the early years.
Are we a community?
What is a community?
Is it a group of people who always talk about the same things and care about the same things?
No, that's the Borg Collective.
I treasure the wildly, crazily different people I met on MTGO in the events I host, from lawyers to airline pilots to deep sea fishermen. We had nothing in common, except for one basic thing: we were all there to play this game. But I learned about people other than myself, found the one thing that linked us all, and that is my community.
The thing I'm hating more these days is that so many people on MTGO seem to think that saying, "V4 sucks!" is gonna give you high fives from everyone else. That is not cultivating a sense of community. That's being in high school and trying to be popular. High school is very much not a community.
I agree with you that Alara fetch lands also makes sense to be there to fix the mana base for limited formats.
Currently we don't have any solid info regarding to KoT dual lands, yet there are some fragments to support dual land cycle possibility.
Here is a quote from Latest Developments article series by Sam Stoddard: http://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/making-mana-2014-06-27
"I can't tell you anything about the Khans of Tarkir cycle of dual lands yet, but I can tell you that they will make an impact on Standard. I know there was some skepticism last year when I revealed the scry lands for the first time, which many players believed wouldn't be strong enough to see Standard play. "
I don't really think that there will be any dual lands in the new block, but rather the twin versions of the Alara triple lands (maybe even the Alara fetch Common lands too?). If it's a set about triple colors those new versions of Alara lands must be there. Just saying.
Righteous indignation over calamitous malfeasance. That's my teaser for you. And I totally agree/echo what you said about the CCC. I made this point in the comments section of FFTR this week and will probably say it again in my own for August. You probably know I am not a fan of Modern Juff-style. (Not typically fun or particularly innovative.) I do feel for those who enjoy it and want the format to thrive.