Ajani, Mentor of Heroes hasn't seen much w/g play, but is the most played mythic in the set. He's winning in naya and w/g/b, but not in pure w/g... go figure. Athreos hasn't materialized as an archetype, but b/g graveyard is playing 2-3 Pharika, which I didn't expect give her lackluster ability. Still 3 for a 5/5 isn't bad if you can turn her on.
Personally I tested the heck out of Prophetic Flamespeaker in standard. It just doesn't win. Mono-U Devotion is 66% against all my red builds with it, thanks to Tideblinder Mage, Master of Waves, and the fact I SB Staff of the Mind Magus for burn match-up. Same with my Esper deck, Flamespeaker red wins by turn 6 or doesn't win at all, usually not winning. P.F. is ridiculously good, but, but... BUT has no standard deck to play in right now. Sad face.
Iroas has produced no good results, and mono-black Master of Feast seemed like a 'card of the week' before going back to the traditional lists. Eidolon of the Great Revel is actually the break-out red card of the set, out performing its prophetic brother by a landslide, usually to the tune of x4 copies in the latest lists.
While I got most of the value cards right, I was wrong about the final values. However, I was right about how under-performing the set is in terms of standard. You are far more likely to see a JOU temple or Mana Confluence than any other JOU card in a standard game.
Agnostic is what I call myself but everyone gets to make their own labels. That bit about visiting inmates is very cool. Tough to do I imagine since you have to knuckle under for the benefit of the system and behave under their rules whilst there.
It is an interesting thing that you did weddings and such as that is not what I expected. Nice to be surprised sometimes. :D I am surprised I didn't manage to prise that out of you in our interview. I guess I failed at that lol.
While not an atheist, I don't fall into the mold of the judeo-christian tradition, either. God and I, we have an understanding: I don't tell Her how to run Creation, and She doesn't tell me how to run my, or anyone elses, life. It works out well.
The Golden Rule, Maynard.
I've never had a congregation, per se. I primarily provided spiritual comfort/advice for inmates, and did weddings/commitment ceremonies. I pursued my ordination expressly for the purpose of being able to visit/help friends in jail "face to face", instead of "through the phone booth". I know how sad, lonely, and dehumanizing jail can be, and any comfort I could bring is welcome. I met some interesting people and new friends in the process.
The entire point we are trying to make is that Wizards is missing an opportunity to dramatically broaden the appeal and accessibility of the Legacy/Vintage format. Many of you have correctly identified that these formats are super niche in paper and exist there mainly because of a dedicated group of hardcore players that have really worked at building a small but stable community.
I reject the idea that people would not buy into Legacy/Vintage if the price was competitive. I would love to buy into both of those formats but I can't afford to spend my entire bankroll on one or two decks. It's awesome that cards like vamp and force are becoming more affordable. But unless Wasteland is addressed it will be difficult to find a viable deck that clocks in at less than $500 and most decks will probably be FAR above that.
I don't see any possible argument that such a state would be healthy for the growth of online Vintage and Legacy.
I don't think anybody is crying that the sky is falling -- what we are saying is that there is an opportunity to make these formats not only viable but popular, and that those things are not likely to happen if the buy in for the format remains prohibitively high.
Can I ask you clergy of what, exactly? You stroke me as an atheist, really, so this notion intrigues me quite a lot. I mean, being ordained implied a certain degree of conviction, even if it's just temporary.
I'll balance out the other side and complain about Force of Will and Vampiric Tutor and Flusterstorm dropping the value of my collection significantly. I now loathe Wizards for the money I dumped into these cards that evaporated simply because they decided to put those cards at rare, while Skullclamp gets the mythic tag.
I agree with you about the sky-is-falling response to Wasteland, for the record.
I do believe the complaints are due to the expected cumulative cost of entry not of any one card. I could be wrong about some of these people complaining but that's the barrier as I see it. The further Vintage gets away from Legacy the more expensive it is going to be to join (not counting casual play) And I think it is funny that the focus redirected from $600 forces to $400 a playset Wastelands merely because force dropped to 25% of its value and is no longer a problem.
Having owned 4 wastelands I have to say I never expected them to hit that marker but hey there will always be something. On the other hand, the fewer cards it takes to join a format the more viable that format for more people, will be at least until it is solved.
I had hoped that Pete would help calm the pitchfork carrying "Lack of Wasteland is the end of the world" doom spreaders, but alas, I should have known better.
Look people, we are getting a draftable set with every relative Vintage staple EXCEPT FOR 1. Misdirection is barely used, and only recently because of Abrupt Decay has started to finally catch on in paper Vintage. Without Abrupt Decay, no one would use it. If anything, blame paper Vintage players from being glacially slow to adopt Decay, otherwise maybe WotC thinks the card is necessary when they started to develop the set. City of Traitors is a Legacy card, end of story. Workshop decks don't need it when they have Moxen at their disposal (Classic Workshop decks only used Traitors because of the lack of Moxen). If anything, you might see it as a 1-of in Workshop decks with a higher curve.
So instead of celebrating the fact that we got Vampiric Tutor at rare to make the card go from $35 -> $3, Force of Will at rare to go from $65 -> $15-20(?, maybe lower??), Flusterstorm at rare to go from $27 -> $5-7(?), Burning Wish at rare to go from $20 ->$3, Ancient Tomb at rare to make the card go from $10 -> $3, and a whole host of other cards like Bazaar, Oath, Workshop, Mana Crypt, Demonic Tutor, Mana Drain, Ichorid, Lion's Eye Diamond, Duals, Library of Alexandria, and Tolarian Academy.
Nope, it is much easier to complain about the one thing we didn't get instead of being happy we got everything else.
Is Wasteland needed in decks in Vintage? Of course, I won't deny that fact. The point is complaining that Vintage/Legacy is now inaccessible is ridiculous. Has anyone seen the prices in Modern lately? Say you want to test out 4x GoST in your U/W/R delver deck... have fun forking over $90 for those cards. There are tons of examples like this in Modern.
Modern is just as inaccessible as Legacy and Vintage, yet nobody bitches and moans about it, do they? People might be upset at the cost of Modern, but no one is running out with their pitchfork in their best chicken little costume.
Beyond that, Power is not going to be on avg $5 a piece. Vintage and Legacy are expensive formats because the cards will never rotate and rarely, if ever, become obsolete due to a better version being reprinted. There will never be a free counterspell like Force ever again. There will never be a better Wasteland... they already did that and it's restricted/banned in Vintage/Legacy. There will never be a 2 mana unconditional Time Walk. You buy these cards, and never have to worry about them rotating out, etc. They are an investment with the ONLY downside being that they are reprinted and the price drops when supply beats demand.
Bottom line, if Wasteland is inaccessible to someone, they would never be able to play Vintage anyway since they probably won't be able to pay for the rest of the cards they'd need to play the format, especially Power.
Wasteland is an "UNCOMMON" in paper too. I don't see anyone complaining about it's price relative to its rarity there, do they?
Rarity has nothing to do with its price. There are tons of uncommons worth more than rares, and even many junk mythics. The card is $90, and that is the only thing that matters. The card is great at what it does and people want it for their decks. Supply and Demand.
If your sole goal is to get WotC to do something, then posting here is not going to help your cause whatsoever. Send WotC an e-mail, or post on their twitter accounts. Posting here is never going to be read by WotC, sorry.
Cradle is pretty essential for Shops afaicr. Though the deck(s) have evolved quite a bit since I last played it. In addition Show & Sneak have shown up in classic decks a lot. I wouldn't call them staples but they are important all the same for that meta though what a vintage online format meta looks like isn't 100% clear to me.
I hope the reason they left out wasteland is not to create a chokepoint in vintage/legacy but to make room for it in some other soon to come venue.
Yeah things have changed a lot since the adepts and they have stated a few times that answering questions about the game is entirely in their purview. Whether that means it's mandatory is not for me to say but I am pretty sure it is. Online Response Crew = Helpers in any language. And I agree, it would be a horrible task if they didn't like helping people.
Yeah, UR might have been better, but I don't think I would have done any better really.
Sorry about the beats, sometimes you open a good pool and just lose anyway. It happens. Pool sounds really good though.
It's winding down for me as well, I'll still do my weekly Sealed but I haven't been in love with draft since Born came out and there's no more PTQs in Theros Block so it's somewhat of a dead format for now. I'm ready for either some Vintage Masters Sealed (if they offer it), or just M15. Might have to get a M14 Daily going and see if I can shake things up a bit.
Most people who would be playing Vintage online aren't trying to buy in from scratch. Wasteland was 25 tix or less for a long time, and many people bought in at that lower level. The people who are going to play Vintage either already have Wastelands, or don't have the budget constraints that some players do.
Those two sets of people, the old players and the new players with high budgets, have been steadily growing paper legacy for the past three+ years. That's the group that will do it for online Vintage as well, if it is to be done. It was never going to be a surge of budget players that was going to make or break this format, that just isn't realistic. Those players whine and moan about prices constantly, and are always saying they'd play the format if Card X or Card Y were just a bit cheaper. Then when there IS an opportunity to buy a bunch of staples for lower prices, they never seem to actually put their money where their mouth is. They say "oh well sure, Card X and Card Y are cheap now, but why even bother playing the format if I can't have a cheap playset of Card Z?" They are never going to play eternal magic, because they will always find an excuse not to buy in.
They were so close to making Vintage AND Legacy actually accessible to players and really growing the player base.
There's basically 7 cards that they left out that would have changed things.
3 of them are played in Vintage (and Legacy):
08-TE Wasteland
14-MM Misdirection
10-EX City of Traitors
4 of them are generally only played in Legacy:
14-MM Rishadan Port
11-US Gaea's Cradle
11-US Show and Tell
11-US Sneak Attack
If they had included these 7, then (apart from the someday-reprinted ONS fetches) there would be no unreprinted cards that started over $25 in the format. So if you want a specific deck, you likely need to invest less than $100 for the key cards beyond what you can get from Vintage Masters.
I've been feeling a bit like they fumbled the ball at the 1-yard line. They ALMOST had Vintage Masters set up to really kickstart Eternal online - both Vintage and Legacy. But the exclusion of these 7 cards is going to hurt those chances dramatically, in my opinion. It takes decks from a $100 + VM investment to a $400-$800 + VM investment.
Wasteland is the biggest problem by far. And Unfortunately I feel strongly that'll be too late, no matter what kind of Flashback/Promo/Vault they have in mind for it.
Any people who "join" to play Vintage online by drafting VMA (one of WotC's stated goals) will be faced with the stark reality that half of the Vintage decks they want to play need 4 $100 UNCOMMONS. And I don't think that's going to be very encouraging for them to start playing the format.
Unless it's in M15, no product is going to come out soon enough to rectify this.
And it's definitely not limited that's holding it back. It could replace Thawing Glaciers and be a rare along with Strip Mine, and it would have no more effect on limited than Thawing Glaciers does. No one's suggesting it should be uncommon, that WOULD be a problem.
The argument for Wasteland was summed up nicely by a small child, and I have to agree with him that its absence is only going to hurt Vintage. The Fish and Workshop variants it goes in account for 40-45% of the metagame, and those are the decks that play a more "normal" game than the various combo and Dredge decks making them a more ideal starting point for those unfamiliar with the format. I'd be quite shocked and pretty upset if this ever became a store promo though. Chronicles taught WotC not to dump a glut of chase cards onto the market, and that's essentially what a store promo Wasteland would be. Legacy Masters, MOCS promo(s), or FtV would be a much more sensible way to get more into the system IMO. (I say this as someone who own 4 copies already and only stands to lose money from its reprinting.)
Fetchalnds: I really think we're going to see a Standard-legal printing of these in the very near future. They hinted at it already when they created Modern, noting that it was odd that they had enemy-colored, but not ally-colored fetches. They've also said that they want the format to remain accessible, and right now those are one of the biggest entry barriers. I'd say the only reason we didn't have them a year or 2 ago is that the dev team did not want them in the same Standard format as the RAV duals.
City of Traitors: You could make a case for this being a staple, but it'd be a weak one. It's really only in Workshop decks, and even at that it's never a 4-of. Most decks run 2, with a few going up to 3 and even some opting to cut it entirely. The omission of Wasteland is a much bigger blow to those decks since they don't really function without a playset of those plus the full compliment of Moxen and a Lotus.
Daze: I'm not surprised at all. It's a non-factor in powered formats where you can reasonably expect your opponent to have 2-3 mana on turn 1 and it doesn't really benefit the Limited play at all.
Misdirection: I think this is the other one they really missed tho boat on. It's in a significant number of Vintage decks as Force of will #5 thru 6 or 7. Unlike Wasteland, however, it sees minimal if any play in Legacy and makes no sense in a Legacy Masters set, and its chances of being reprinted in a standard legal set are roughly the same as Necropotence or Skullclamp.
Actually, unless things have changed since the days when ORCs were called Adepts, and they certainly could have with as long as I've been away from MODO, they are not required to be judges and answering rules questions is above and beyond their responsibilities. That said, almost all of them do because they genuinely like helping people; they wouldn't have signed up for the position if they didn't.
1) We don't speak of that. We never speak of that.
2) I figured that might have been the case, but they're also very clearly part of a hierarchy that in turn looks at superior ideals — after all, if they're praetors, they've a clear function (then again Tourach's Ebon Praetor moniker disproves that. In his defense, he was batshit crazy). The line is often blurred, indeed. And if Gabriel Angelfire is a deity, pretty much anything can be.
3) It is known.
4) Never played Karametra. Have you ever played Kruphix? They're probably similar, but Kruphix has an additional function. Also, he gives you 12-13 mana by turn 7 – or more likely earlier.
3) The Myojins: While this doesn't particularly bear mentioning in your article, I thought I would let everyone know that if you use That Which Was Taken alongside the myojins you can "reload" their divinity counters and reuse their ultimates.
4) I mostly play casual room, but the only Commander deck I have literally never lost with, due to whatever universal chaotic forces that control the shuffler and what decks your opponents chose, is Karametra. So I would just like to say, form a casual perspective, she's my favorite God.
Ajani, Mentor of Heroes hasn't seen much w/g play, but is the most played mythic in the set. He's winning in naya and w/g/b, but not in pure w/g... go figure. Athreos hasn't materialized as an archetype, but b/g graveyard is playing 2-3 Pharika, which I didn't expect give her lackluster ability. Still 3 for a 5/5 isn't bad if you can turn her on.
Personally I tested the heck out of Prophetic Flamespeaker in standard. It just doesn't win. Mono-U Devotion is 66% against all my red builds with it, thanks to Tideblinder Mage, Master of Waves, and the fact I SB Staff of the Mind Magus for burn match-up. Same with my Esper deck, Flamespeaker red wins by turn 6 or doesn't win at all, usually not winning. P.F. is ridiculously good, but, but... BUT has no standard deck to play in right now. Sad face.
Iroas has produced no good results, and mono-black Master of Feast seemed like a 'card of the week' before going back to the traditional lists. Eidolon of the Great Revel is actually the break-out red card of the set, out performing its prophetic brother by a landslide, usually to the tune of x4 copies in the latest lists.
While I got most of the value cards right, I was wrong about the final values. However, I was right about how under-performing the set is in terms of standard. You are far more likely to see a JOU temple or Mana Confluence than any other JOU card in a standard game.
Agnostic is what I call myself but everyone gets to make their own labels. That bit about visiting inmates is very cool. Tough to do I imagine since you have to knuckle under for the benefit of the system and behave under their rules whilst there.
It is an interesting thing that you did weddings and such as that is not what I expected. Nice to be surprised sometimes. :D I am surprised I didn't manage to prise that out of you in our interview. I guess I failed at that lol.
While not an atheist, I don't fall into the mold of the judeo-christian tradition, either. God and I, we have an understanding: I don't tell Her how to run Creation, and She doesn't tell me how to run my, or anyone elses, life. It works out well.
The Golden Rule, Maynard.
I've never had a congregation, per se. I primarily provided spiritual comfort/advice for inmates, and did weddings/commitment ceremonies. I pursued my ordination expressly for the purpose of being able to visit/help friends in jail "face to face", instead of "through the phone booth". I know how sad, lonely, and dehumanizing jail can be, and any comfort I could bring is welcome. I met some interesting people and new friends in the process.
The entire point we are trying to make is that Wizards is missing an opportunity to dramatically broaden the appeal and accessibility of the Legacy/Vintage format. Many of you have correctly identified that these formats are super niche in paper and exist there mainly because of a dedicated group of hardcore players that have really worked at building a small but stable community.
I reject the idea that people would not buy into Legacy/Vintage if the price was competitive. I would love to buy into both of those formats but I can't afford to spend my entire bankroll on one or two decks. It's awesome that cards like vamp and force are becoming more affordable. But unless Wasteland is addressed it will be difficult to find a viable deck that clocks in at less than $500 and most decks will probably be FAR above that.
I don't see any possible argument that such a state would be healthy for the growth of online Vintage and Legacy.
I don't think anybody is crying that the sky is falling -- what we are saying is that there is an opportunity to make these formats not only viable but popular, and that those things are not likely to happen if the buy in for the format remains prohibitively high.
"I was clergy at one point in my life"
Can I ask you clergy of what, exactly? You stroke me as an atheist, really, so this notion intrigues me quite a lot. I mean, being ordained implied a certain degree of conviction, even if it's just temporary.
I need to spell it out for you? Kumagoro...Kuma...Kumo. Perversion in declining size and from a to o at that end.
I'll balance out the other side and complain about Force of Will and Vampiric Tutor and Flusterstorm dropping the value of my collection significantly. I now loathe Wizards for the money I dumped into these cards that evaporated simply because they decided to put those cards at rare, while Skullclamp gets the mythic tag.
I agree with you about the sky-is-falling response to Wasteland, for the record.
Which is a fairly common deck at the moment...
I do believe the complaints are due to the expected cumulative cost of entry not of any one card. I could be wrong about some of these people complaining but that's the barrier as I see it. The further Vintage gets away from Legacy the more expensive it is going to be to join (not counting casual play) And I think it is funny that the focus redirected from $600 forces to $400 a playset Wastelands merely because force dropped to 25% of its value and is no longer a problem.
Having owned 4 wastelands I have to say I never expected them to hit that marker but hey there will always be something. On the other hand, the fewer cards it takes to join a format the more viable that format for more people, will be at least until it is solved.
I had hoped that Pete would help calm the pitchfork carrying "Lack of Wasteland is the end of the world" doom spreaders, but alas, I should have known better.
Look people, we are getting a draftable set with every relative Vintage staple EXCEPT FOR 1. Misdirection is barely used, and only recently because of Abrupt Decay has started to finally catch on in paper Vintage. Without Abrupt Decay, no one would use it. If anything, blame paper Vintage players from being glacially slow to adopt Decay, otherwise maybe WotC thinks the card is necessary when they started to develop the set. City of Traitors is a Legacy card, end of story. Workshop decks don't need it when they have Moxen at their disposal (Classic Workshop decks only used Traitors because of the lack of Moxen). If anything, you might see it as a 1-of in Workshop decks with a higher curve.
So instead of celebrating the fact that we got Vampiric Tutor at rare to make the card go from $35 -> $3, Force of Will at rare to go from $65 -> $15-20(?, maybe lower??), Flusterstorm at rare to go from $27 -> $5-7(?), Burning Wish at rare to go from $20 ->$3, Ancient Tomb at rare to make the card go from $10 -> $3, and a whole host of other cards like Bazaar, Oath, Workshop, Mana Crypt, Demonic Tutor, Mana Drain, Ichorid, Lion's Eye Diamond, Duals, Library of Alexandria, and Tolarian Academy.
Nope, it is much easier to complain about the one thing we didn't get instead of being happy we got everything else.
Is Wasteland needed in decks in Vintage? Of course, I won't deny that fact. The point is complaining that Vintage/Legacy is now inaccessible is ridiculous. Has anyone seen the prices in Modern lately? Say you want to test out 4x GoST in your U/W/R delver deck... have fun forking over $90 for those cards. There are tons of examples like this in Modern.
Modern is just as inaccessible as Legacy and Vintage, yet nobody bitches and moans about it, do they? People might be upset at the cost of Modern, but no one is running out with their pitchfork in their best chicken little costume.
Beyond that, Power is not going to be on avg $5 a piece. Vintage and Legacy are expensive formats because the cards will never rotate and rarely, if ever, become obsolete due to a better version being reprinted. There will never be a free counterspell like Force ever again. There will never be a better Wasteland... they already did that and it's restricted/banned in Vintage/Legacy. There will never be a 2 mana unconditional Time Walk. You buy these cards, and never have to worry about them rotating out, etc. They are an investment with the ONLY downside being that they are reprinted and the price drops when supply beats demand.
Bottom line, if Wasteland is inaccessible to someone, they would never be able to play Vintage anyway since they probably won't be able to pay for the rest of the cards they'd need to play the format, especially Power.
Wasteland is an "UNCOMMON" in paper too. I don't see anyone complaining about it's price relative to its rarity there, do they?
Rarity has nothing to do with its price. There are tons of uncommons worth more than rares, and even many junk mythics. The card is $90, and that is the only thing that matters. The card is great at what it does and people want it for their decks. Supply and Demand.
If your sole goal is to get WotC to do something, then posting here is not going to help your cause whatsoever. Send WotC an e-mail, or post on their twitter accounts. Posting here is never going to be read by WotC, sorry.
Cradle is not used at all in any Workshop deck right now except for the Classic->Vintage port of Affinity Shops.
Cradle is pretty essential for Shops afaicr. Though the deck(s) have evolved quite a bit since I last played it. In addition Show & Sneak have shown up in classic decks a lot. I wouldn't call them staples but they are important all the same for that meta though what a vintage online format meta looks like isn't 100% clear to me.
I hope the reason they left out wasteland is not to create a chokepoint in vintage/legacy but to make room for it in some other soon to come venue.
Yeah things have changed a lot since the adepts and they have stated a few times that answering questions about the game is entirely in their purview. Whether that means it's mandatory is not for me to say but I am pretty sure it is. Online Response Crew = Helpers in any language. And I agree, it would be a horrible task if they didn't like helping people.
Yeah, UR might have been better, but I don't think I would have done any better really.
Sorry about the beats, sometimes you open a good pool and just lose anyway. It happens. Pool sounds really good though.
It's winding down for me as well, I'll still do my weekly Sealed but I haven't been in love with draft since Born came out and there's no more PTQs in Theros Block so it's somewhat of a dead format for now. I'm ready for either some Vintage Masters Sealed (if they offer it), or just M15. Might have to get a M14 Daily going and see if I can shake things up a bit.
Thanks for reading!
Most people who would be playing Vintage online aren't trying to buy in from scratch. Wasteland was 25 tix or less for a long time, and many people bought in at that lower level. The people who are going to play Vintage either already have Wastelands, or don't have the budget constraints that some players do.
Those two sets of people, the old players and the new players with high budgets, have been steadily growing paper legacy for the past three+ years. That's the group that will do it for online Vintage as well, if it is to be done. It was never going to be a surge of budget players that was going to make or break this format, that just isn't realistic. Those players whine and moan about prices constantly, and are always saying they'd play the format if Card X or Card Y were just a bit cheaper. Then when there IS an opportunity to buy a bunch of staples for lower prices, they never seem to actually put their money where their mouth is. They say "oh well sure, Card X and Card Y are cheap now, but why even bother playing the format if I can't have a cheap playset of Card Z?" They are never going to play eternal magic, because they will always find an excuse not to buy in.
They were so close to making Vintage AND Legacy actually accessible to players and really growing the player base.
There's basically 7 cards that they left out that would have changed things.
3 of them are played in Vintage (and Legacy):
08-TE Wasteland
14-MM Misdirection
10-EX City of Traitors
4 of them are generally only played in Legacy:
14-MM Rishadan Port
11-US Gaea's Cradle
11-US Show and Tell
11-US Sneak Attack
If they had included these 7, then (apart from the someday-reprinted ONS fetches) there would be no unreprinted cards that started over $25 in the format. So if you want a specific deck, you likely need to invest less than $100 for the key cards beyond what you can get from Vintage Masters.
I've been feeling a bit like they fumbled the ball at the 1-yard line. They ALMOST had Vintage Masters set up to really kickstart Eternal online - both Vintage and Legacy. But the exclusion of these 7 cards is going to hurt those chances dramatically, in my opinion. It takes decks from a $100 + VM investment to a $400-$800 + VM investment.
Wasteland is the biggest problem by far. And Unfortunately I feel strongly that'll be too late, no matter what kind of Flashback/Promo/Vault they have in mind for it.
Any people who "join" to play Vintage online by drafting VMA (one of WotC's stated goals) will be faced with the stark reality that half of the Vintage decks they want to play need 4 $100 UNCOMMONS. And I don't think that's going to be very encouraging for them to start playing the format.
Unless it's in M15, no product is going to come out soon enough to rectify this.
And it's definitely not limited that's holding it back. It could replace Thawing Glaciers and be a rare along with Strip Mine, and it would have no more effect on limited than Thawing Glaciers does. No one's suggesting it should be uncommon, that WOULD be a problem.
The argument for Wasteland was summed up nicely by a small child, and I have to agree with him that its absence is only going to hurt Vintage. The Fish and Workshop variants it goes in account for 40-45% of the metagame, and those are the decks that play a more "normal" game than the various combo and Dredge decks making them a more ideal starting point for those unfamiliar with the format. I'd be quite shocked and pretty upset if this ever became a store promo though. Chronicles taught WotC not to dump a glut of chase cards onto the market, and that's essentially what a store promo Wasteland would be. Legacy Masters, MOCS promo(s), or FtV would be a much more sensible way to get more into the system IMO. (I say this as someone who own 4 copies already and only stands to lose money from its reprinting.)
Fetchalnds: I really think we're going to see a Standard-legal printing of these in the very near future. They hinted at it already when they created Modern, noting that it was odd that they had enemy-colored, but not ally-colored fetches. They've also said that they want the format to remain accessible, and right now those are one of the biggest entry barriers. I'd say the only reason we didn't have them a year or 2 ago is that the dev team did not want them in the same Standard format as the RAV duals.
City of Traitors: You could make a case for this being a staple, but it'd be a weak one. It's really only in Workshop decks, and even at that it's never a 4-of. Most decks run 2, with a few going up to 3 and even some opting to cut it entirely. The omission of Wasteland is a much bigger blow to those decks since they don't really function without a playset of those plus the full compliment of Moxen and a Lotus.
Daze: I'm not surprised at all. It's a non-factor in powered formats where you can reasonably expect your opponent to have 2-3 mana on turn 1 and it doesn't really benefit the Limited play at all.
Misdirection: I think this is the other one they really missed tho boat on. It's in a significant number of Vintage decks as Force of will #5 thru 6 or 7. Unlike Wasteland, however, it sees minimal if any play in Legacy and makes no sense in a Legacy Masters set, and its chances of being reprinted in a standard legal set are roughly the same as Necropotence or Skullclamp.
Actually, unless things have changed since the days when ORCs were called Adepts, and they certainly could have with as long as I've been away from MODO, they are not required to be judges and answering rules questions is above and beyond their responsibilities. That said, almost all of them do because they genuinely like helping people; they wouldn't have signed up for the position if they didn't.
What perversion?
Who's Kumo? :P you are. Accept the perversion of your nick name with grace. It will be less painful that way.
1) We don't speak of that. We never speak of that.
2) I figured that might have been the case, but they're also very clearly part of a hierarchy that in turn looks at superior ideals — after all, if they're praetors, they've a clear function (then again Tourach's Ebon Praetor moniker disproves that. In his defense, he was batshit crazy). The line is often blurred, indeed. And if Gabriel Angelfire is a deity, pretty much anything can be.
3) It is known.
4) Never played Karametra. Have you ever played Kruphix? They're probably similar, but Kruphix has an additional function. Also, he gives you 12-13 mana by turn 7 – or more likely earlier.
Who's Kumo? :P
I love the knowledge and recaps in this article.
1) Kumo, or anyone really, what the frakkin' heck is actually going on in Ebon Praetor's artwork?
2) Speaking of Praetors, I think you forgot them! I think the 5 new phyrexian praetors blur the line between ruling-class worship and god-like worship. https://www.wizards.com/Magic/magazine/Article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/stf/142 is a link to their backstories if anyone is interested.
3) The Myojins: While this doesn't particularly bear mentioning in your article, I thought I would let everyone know that if you use That Which Was Taken alongside the myojins you can "reload" their divinity counters and reuse their ultimates.
4) I mostly play casual room, but the only Commander deck I have literally never lost with, due to whatever universal chaotic forces that control the shuffler and what decks your opponents chose, is Karametra. So I would just like to say, form a casual perspective, she's my favorite God.
Great article Kumo
Haha, that's a good idea Adam! I had no idea that the decks would be that similar.
Kuma, send out an email, I'll see what I can do on my end.