I'm fine with the new auxiliary rule, seems a fair solution and opens up some interesting new possibilities (Angel of Glory's Rise in a human deck, for example. Bonus points if you can wings of velis vel your opponent first to make his stuff zombies)
Does this mean that the non-creature type 3 good stuff cards you mention are going to be cut out?
As an aside, you answered your own question.
"And for the rest... well, nothing else, really. Creative slump, guys?"
As you said,
"Regular is of course the Realm of the Cutthroat."
The purest form of tournament play is with optimised decks all playing the best possible cards for their archetype. Creativity and originality introduce elements that have not yet been found to be optimal: It is safer to go with the stuff that works no matter what in order to ensure the best return.
You have said yourself this is a tournament first and foremost. Why do you sound disappointed that you have what you wanted? So long as this event is a tournament first and foremost, it will be treated as such. No need to innovate, especially not in an eternal-based format, so long as a given strategy works.
I don't have an answer here, although I will say the current format of achievements doesn't seem to be working as well as previous ones did, haven't seen anyone try for them in ages.
Been working on a version of this deck. Gaea's Touch for ramp, Abundant Growth for fixing and draw, Bow of Nylea for utility, and of all things Drop of Honey for removal.
Good to hear you guys again (hard to hear it when I am doing it. :p) And I am pretty much of the same opinion of v3 vs v4 so enough said on that.
As to Vintage Masters I am really unthrilled that they are squeezing it into the space JUST before they turn off the only viable client for me. I am very likely not going to buy anything at all off the secondary market for a long time to come because I don't see the point if I can't play with my cards which is what being forced to use v4 means to me. (I know that is more than enough said on the subject but the two are related :/)
Journey hardly seems any better an idea for the same reason. Also of interest is that usually these release prices are much much higher so either people also feel bearish about the whole future of MTGO or the redemption hike is really strongly impacting on how badly the cards tank and how quickly.
Just a question for the wonderful Tribal Apocalypse people... Do you ever host events at different times? The only commitment I have on the weekends just so happens to be at 17:00 GMT (or 9:00 in California for me). Are there ever more than one event a day? Maybe a smaller tournament?
Tribally, we'd lose Lodestone Golem and gain Goblin Recruiter, Hermit Druid and Worldgorger Dragon. The rest available would just render the format irrelevant.
I wanted to post a comment and I didn't see anyone else say anything about this, but the Beta client does have a turn indicator. It is right above you hand at the left side of the phase indicator where you can set your stops. it is a pretty thin bar and is easy to miss but it is there.
After hearing the number of vocal persons saying that V4 crashes on them constantly, I guess that I am one of the lucky ones.
I have a Vista (32 bit) quad core with 4GB Ram and a Raedon 6570 vid card. I can simultaneously run V4 (closed beta), V3, Chrome with a couple of flash games running and Camtasia 8 at the same time with next to no lag and minimal problems.
Actually, for various technical reasons, I have been using Shiny exclusively for the past year and a half. I can say from experience that: 1/ Shiny is minimally functional AT BEST. For many, including myself, it often and randomly fails to be functional at all. 2/ I went from getting into events on average 5 times a week last year to not logging in weeks at a time. I barely play these days, even though I relatively recently spent a fton of money on legacy cards. My love for the game is intact, I just do not have the courage anymore to face the client and the lag, drops and other crashes that come with it. No Stockholm syndrome here!
Fauna Shaman could be a great discard outlet, letting you fill out your set of deities. Also curves nicely into Pharika, fixing your array of Gods while giving you deathtouch fodder.
I had two Ashen Riders, fantasizing about a situation where I would recur one for the other and basically turn the whole thing into targeted annihilator. It never got to the point where it was needed, of course. The second Ashen Rider is what took Elesh's place in the main deck, and now it's giving it back.
I guess I'm attached to Akroma from the time when I would play RecSur with Spirit of the Night (Akroma being the Spirit's improvement). But she's actually useful to reanimate the turn after I had Iona on the board, so I can attack for 13, with some luck ending the game right there. (It's true that Elesh might be able to instantly provide those 6 damage if I had Iona, a BoP and another guy on the board, but that's less likely).
And yeah, Big Game Hunter/Survival (killing all big threats at instant speed for just GB) is my favorite tech I came up with. :)
Green can be a good one, then, since you can include auras like Utopia Sprawl and Fertile Ground that both deal with your splashes and help devotion. Karametra also helps because the Gods are creatures in the stack.
The main problem to me seems the high amount of duplicate guys with legendary and indestructible, which means you might end up with a lot of dead cards in hand. Some discard outlet for profit seems a good thing to include.
So the first draft for a possible off-tribe lineup could be:
4x Utopia Sprawl
4x Fertile Ground
4x sweeper of a secondary color (I'd say Firespout or Sudden Demise)
4x discard outlet (Grimoire of the Dead?)
I don't know if you remember but the v3 of 2007/08 was very similar to the v3 of 2009 but at the end of that year they hired a UI designer who came in and fixed many of the things people complained about and then started knocking out some of the backend errors.
I hope we don't need to wait for 2016+ to get that kind of action with V4.
I think you may be reading a bit too much into a sparse story. I am pretty sure most of the people who loath v4 (I am one) are people who have repeatedly tried to use the beta and never been happy with it. Yes it is minimally functional overall and as far as I can tell great for drafters who don't care at all about anything else.
Don't you think the hyperbole is deserved just a little in this case? I don't say this to be argumentative but because I really feel WOTC has fallen on its face, and refuses to see the big Muddy ("the damned fool said to march on!")
Not to equate this with the Vietnam war but to: Learning from one's mistakes and seeing the error before it kills (metaphorically in this case) you.
I expect eventually I would develop Stockholm syndrome if I kept using the client, especially when forced (no v3 to use instead) to choose between that and quitting. I can see why people might feel the need to express a warning that this seems like quitting time.
Is Brian still playing MTGO? Didn't he encourage people to delete MTGO some time back? That is just a testament of the kind of empty threats and rhetoric that the V4-haters use: We will quit the game unless V3 is kept as it is!
In the new article Brian writes "Prior to this, I hadn’t used the Beta client all that much.... I wanted to record a video for StarCityGames before I left, so I decided to wade into the Beta and give it a shot."
So he has never really used the client before and now he records a video using it. No surprise that the first couple of times you try out a new client it is difficult compared to what you are used to.
I'm still not a big fan of many of the UI choices in the beta, but overall, it works, and does everything that the current client does. It's very much worth noting that the last time they forced everyone over to a new beta (the current software), this was not the case.
At that time, switching over to the incomplete new software, and in truth *vastly* more incomplete than this time, allowed them to focus on developing the new software and getting us the client that everyone is so hesitant to give up now.
The same will happen again, but with far less pain and hassle than last time. Wizards may not be getting everything right with this, but the change over this time should go from train wreck to annoyance, and that's a huge step up.
Also, one note on the turn indicator, it's already there, just in an odd spot. The bar that shows you the phases and steps of the turn lists who's turn it is at the leftmost side of the bar.
The new client might not “garbage” or “unplayable” or “the worst program ever written", it remains however not very good. Which, for passionate people, translates pretty much to the same thing. And considering Wizards seldom bothers to listen to us, using the strongest language available either in the hope of finally being heard or out of sheer frustration is sensible enough. I, for one, am fed up telling them their client is not good enough and arguing why. I might as well scream at them Shiny is garbage: they might not listen more, but at least I'm saving my breath and it feels good.
As for beta, it takes more processing power than 6 months ago, freezes up and is just not very balanced as a program, it has shiny stuff from which it got its name but overall is underwhelming and disappointing program.
If they expect people to keep funding them thru online game they should at least improve it instead of going one step back and 7 to side.
Calling it "junk" and leaving it at that is tin foil hat brigade. There is a vast difference between:
"The program is junk."
and
"The program is severely lacking in the following ways...here's why...here's suggestions on how to address those issues..."
Similarly there is a vast difference between
"Scrap V4 it is so bad."
and
"At this stage the new version does not justify it's own existence because it is not better than the current version, here's why, a comparison and why the situation is bad enough to warrant starting over and going with a theoretical V5"
I believe that is more the point Pete was aiming for. The first comment in both will not be read with much seriousness while the second while.
That is awesome, who ever would have thought that Melira would have been a difference maker in a Classic tourney! I also never thought about Big Game Hunter killing Emrakul, that's great. Elesh definitely is a good replacement for Akroma, Angel of Wrath in maindeck...
I'm fine with the new auxiliary rule, seems a fair solution and opens up some interesting new possibilities (Angel of Glory's Rise in a human deck, for example. Bonus points if you can wings of velis vel your opponent first to make his stuff zombies)
Does this mean that the non-creature type 3 good stuff cards you mention are going to be cut out?
As an aside, you answered your own question.
"And for the rest... well, nothing else, really. Creative slump, guys?"
As you said,
"Regular is of course the Realm of the Cutthroat."
The purest form of tournament play is with optimised decks all playing the best possible cards for their archetype. Creativity and originality introduce elements that have not yet been found to be optimal: It is safer to go with the stuff that works no matter what in order to ensure the best return.
You have said yourself this is a tournament first and foremost. Why do you sound disappointed that you have what you wanted? So long as this event is a tournament first and foremost, it will be treated as such. No need to innovate, especially not in an eternal-based format, so long as a given strategy works.
I don't have an answer here, although I will say the current format of achievements doesn't seem to be working as well as previous ones did, haven't seen anyone try for them in ages.
Unfortunately not. We do one event per week (can't afford more), at 17 GMT, since 2009. Sorry.
Solid information, definitely worth the read!
Been working on a version of this deck. Gaea's Touch for ramp, Abundant Growth for fixing and draw, Bow of Nylea for utility, and of all things Drop of Honey for removal.
Good to hear you guys again (hard to hear it when I am doing it. :p) And I am pretty much of the same opinion of v3 vs v4 so enough said on that.
As to Vintage Masters I am really unthrilled that they are squeezing it into the space JUST before they turn off the only viable client for me. I am very likely not going to buy anything at all off the secondary market for a long time to come because I don't see the point if I can't play with my cards which is what being forced to use v4 means to me. (I know that is more than enough said on the subject but the two are related :/)
Journey hardly seems any better an idea for the same reason. Also of interest is that usually these release prices are much much higher so either people also feel bearish about the whole future of MTGO or the redemption hike is really strongly impacting on how badly the cards tank and how quickly.
Just a question for the wonderful Tribal Apocalypse people... Do you ever host events at different times? The only commitment I have on the weekends just so happens to be at 17:00 GMT (or 9:00 in California for me). Are there ever more than one event a day? Maybe a smaller tournament?
Tribally, we'd lose Lodestone Golem and gain Goblin Recruiter, Hermit Druid and Worldgorger Dragon. The rest available would just render the format irrelevant.
I wanted to post a comment and I didn't see anyone else say anything about this, but the Beta client does have a turn indicator. It is right above you hand at the left side of the phase indicator where you can set your stops. it is a pretty thin bar and is easy to miss but it is there.
I would enjoy a Classic event, though I figure every game would last a grand total of about two minutes.
After hearing the number of vocal persons saying that V4 crashes on them constantly, I guess that I am one of the lucky ones.
I have a Vista (32 bit) quad core with 4GB Ram and a Raedon 6570 vid card. I can simultaneously run V4 (closed beta), V3, Chrome with a couple of flash games running and Camtasia 8 at the same time with next to no lag and minimal problems.
Actually, for various technical reasons, I have been using Shiny exclusively for the past year and a half. I can say from experience that: 1/ Shiny is minimally functional AT BEST. For many, including myself, it often and randomly fails to be functional at all. 2/ I went from getting into events on average 5 times a week last year to not logging in weeks at a time. I barely play these days, even though I relatively recently spent a fton of money on legacy cards. My love for the game is intact, I just do not have the courage anymore to face the client and the lag, drops and other crashes that come with it. No Stockholm syndrome here!
Fauna Shaman could be a great discard outlet, letting you fill out your set of deities. Also curves nicely into Pharika, fixing your array of Gods while giving you deathtouch fodder.
I had two Ashen Riders, fantasizing about a situation where I would recur one for the other and basically turn the whole thing into targeted annihilator. It never got to the point where it was needed, of course. The second Ashen Rider is what took Elesh's place in the main deck, and now it's giving it back.
I guess I'm attached to Akroma from the time when I would play RecSur with Spirit of the Night (Akroma being the Spirit's improvement). But she's actually useful to reanimate the turn after I had Iona on the board, so I can attack for 13, with some luck ending the game right there. (It's true that Elesh might be able to instantly provide those 6 damage if I had Iona, a BoP and another guy on the board, but that's less likely).
And yeah, Big Game Hunter/Survival (killing all big threats at instant speed for just GB) is my favorite tech I came up with. :)
Green can be a good one, then, since you can include auras like Utopia Sprawl and Fertile Ground that both deal with your splashes and help devotion. Karametra also helps because the Gods are creatures in the stack.
The main problem to me seems the high amount of duplicate guys with legendary and indestructible, which means you might end up with a lot of dead cards in hand. Some discard outlet for profit seems a good thing to include.
So the first draft for a possible off-tribe lineup could be:
4x Utopia Sprawl
4x Fertile Ground
4x sweeper of a secondary color (I'd say Firespout or Sudden Demise)
4x discard outlet (Grimoire of the Dead?)
Thanks, Paul!
Streak already ended, but it was a good one. :)
I don't know if you remember but the v3 of 2007/08 was very similar to the v3 of 2009 but at the end of that year they hired a UI designer who came in and fixed many of the things people complained about and then started knocking out some of the backend errors.
I hope we don't need to wait for 2016+ to get that kind of action with V4.
I think you may be reading a bit too much into a sparse story. I am pretty sure most of the people who loath v4 (I am one) are people who have repeatedly tried to use the beta and never been happy with it. Yes it is minimally functional overall and as far as I can tell great for drafters who don't care at all about anything else.
Don't you think the hyperbole is deserved just a little in this case? I don't say this to be argumentative but because I really feel WOTC has fallen on its face, and refuses to see the big Muddy ("the damned fool said to march on!")
Not to equate this with the Vietnam war but to: Learning from one's mistakes and seeing the error before it kills (metaphorically in this case) you.
I expect eventually I would develop Stockholm syndrome if I kept using the client, especially when forced (no v3 to use instead) to choose between that and quitting. I can see why people might feel the need to express a warning that this seems like quitting time.
Is Brian still playing MTGO? Didn't he encourage people to delete MTGO some time back? That is just a testament of the kind of empty threats and rhetoric that the V4-haters use: We will quit the game unless V3 is kept as it is!
In the new article Brian writes "Prior to this, I hadn’t used the Beta client all that much.... I wanted to record a video for StarCityGames before I left, so I decided to wade into the Beta and give it a shot."
So he has never really used the client before and now he records a video using it. No surprise that the first couple of times you try out a new client it is difficult compared to what you are used to.
I'm still not a big fan of many of the UI choices in the beta, but overall, it works, and does everything that the current client does. It's very much worth noting that the last time they forced everyone over to a new beta (the current software), this was not the case.
At that time, switching over to the incomplete new software, and in truth *vastly* more incomplete than this time, allowed them to focus on developing the new software and getting us the client that everyone is so hesitant to give up now.
The same will happen again, but with far less pain and hassle than last time. Wizards may not be getting everything right with this, but the change over this time should go from train wreck to annoyance, and that's a huge step up.
Also, one note on the turn indicator, it's already there, just in an odd spot. The bar that shows you the phases and steps of the turn lists who's turn it is at the leftmost side of the bar.
Brian kinda said this but made his opinions known.
http://bmkgaming.com/state-mtgo-beta-spoiler-alert-bad/
Wizards is king at lowering you digital expectations until they are met.
The new client might not “garbage” or “unplayable” or “the worst program ever written", it remains however not very good. Which, for passionate people, translates pretty much to the same thing. And considering Wizards seldom bothers to listen to us, using the strongest language available either in the hope of finally being heard or out of sheer frustration is sensible enough. I, for one, am fed up telling them their client is not good enough and arguing why. I might as well scream at them Shiny is garbage: they might not listen more, but at least I'm saving my breath and it feels good.
http://gatherling.com/eventreport.php?event=Ham%20on%20Wry%20III
Decklists for Ham on the Wry III.
As for beta, it takes more processing power than 6 months ago, freezes up and is just not very balanced as a program, it has shiny stuff from which it got its name but overall is underwhelming and disappointing program.
If they expect people to keep funding them thru online game they should at least improve it instead of going one step back and 7 to side.
Calling it "junk" and leaving it at that is tin foil hat brigade. There is a vast difference between:
"The program is junk."
and
"The program is severely lacking in the following ways...here's why...here's suggestions on how to address those issues..."
Similarly there is a vast difference between
"Scrap V4 it is so bad."
and
"At this stage the new version does not justify it's own existence because it is not better than the current version, here's why, a comparison and why the situation is bad enough to warrant starting over and going with a theoretical V5"
I believe that is more the point Pete was aiming for. The first comment in both will not be read with much seriousness while the second while.
That is awesome, who ever would have thought that Melira would have been a difference maker in a Classic tourney! I also never thought about Big Game Hunter killing Emrakul, that's great. Elesh definitely is a good replacement for Akroma, Angel of Wrath in maindeck...