I used to frequent the forums (After gleemax and before this current hot mess.) I enjoyed them for the conversations that would develop sometimes, the interesting threads and sometimes a wizo would come by and make our day. Now it is just too much of a chore to bother with. I don't care for the new look (it isn't THAT hard to find a simple, easy to read forum format and stick to it. Really it isn't. Trying to "modernize" stuff on the internet often leads to hot messes.)
As for the bot debate, well awhile back I wrote somewhat about how I think the trading system could be fixed. 1. Add a "no bot" room that people could Autojoin on start up. The problem with bots isn't the "scamming" that some people cite but that they ruined the /Trading room. You'd enter and immediately freeze up if you ran MTGO on an older machine, because the spam was non-stop and lightning speed. 2. Then they added Classifieds. I had some suggestions for that too. Making it sortable by full Boolean (which in theory they did in the new client) was one. 3. Another was being able to personally ban some ads from appearing on your classifieds wall so that you could omit those bots you never want to trade with. (Similar to maintaining a chat ban list.) 4. and I also suggested adding a Rate up system so that you would first see your buddies ads, then those of your favorite bots and then the rest. (I also recommended getting rid of the random reordering which was a piss poor solution to a stupid complaint but that's not an added option so I will leave that alone for now.)
Well one out of four ain't bad right? :(
At least the 32 card limit was raised to a not-ridiculous amount (400 items seems more than enough for most interactions.) Unfortunately that seems to have given some users (bots and humans both) the ability to "scam" moronic (or just lazy/uninformed) players out of their cards/packs via adding so many items that the victim doesn't see all of the traded-for items. The thing about this is that a person who cares about their collection and money should at the very least check to make sure they aren't giving away the store even if it is a tedious process that no one wants to do. Caveat Emptor.
Personally I 100% agree with Seb. The tedium of dealing with actual manual trading and people and their attitudes about needing to get value for each and every exchange is not offset in the client by the fun of doing some interpersonal dickering as it might with paper mtg. I'd much rather play more or do just about anything else.
Gush decks as far as I remember use more than a couple islands. Also wasn't there a Nykthos white weenie deck that won a major tourney recently?
Hmmm, hadn't thought of the Gargoyle. It's a possibility, but I really don't like having to put mana into him to attack, when I could use that mana to draw cards. Ulamog and Kozilek are both possible game enders for the deck. Out of those 2 I would probably go with Ulamog just to have another way to kill stuff. But is Ulamog better than Rite of Replication? I really don't know.
Ahh i remember the UW Eggs game. ;) I loved this deck while it was stomping me lol. Have you tried running one to two snapcaster? If feel like two could help pump or even flashback a bolt for win. Awesome article and amazing deck!
Regarding the ELO debate, I can see why hiding ELOs on MTGO was a good idea. I do think though that they should have kept the hall of champions. That would allow for the best of both worlds -- motivate players by giving them a shot at fame but at the same time avoid the bullying that comes along with visible ratings.
Printing is a process for reproducing text and images, typically with ink on paper using a printing press. It is often carried out as a large-scale industrial process, ...
Saying that prices are cut and prizes are better for Premier Events does not tell the whole story. The increase of the minimum players to fire the events from 33 to 65 is a big deal for EV and for getting the events to happen at all. Because prizes do not scale with the number of players, the prizes each player can expect to win go down as more players join. With the new costs and prizes, PEs that fire with 65 people now are a little bit worse than old PEs that fired at 33. On the plus side, new PEs are less sensitive to adding more players, for example the difference in value between an old PE at 33 players versus 63 players is much greater than the difference in value between a new PE at 65 players versus 95 players.
The people who benefit from the changes are the ones who weren't averse to playing larger, 60+ player PEs, Standard for example, and the people who lose are those who enjoyed sniping PEs that fired close to 33 players, core set sealed and block constructed as examples. And not only do some people lose value, they also lose the opportunity to play the event at all when it cannot reach 65 players, as happened already this weekend with at least one THS block constructed PE and one M14 sealed PE.
I agree, its been quite a while since I've played any Magic, since Lorwyn Block. Leagues will apparently never return, the 6pack sealed was an incredible opportunity to get back into the game. I hope they scrap the 4pack (really?? 30 card decks?)) and move to the 6pack with the same prize payout. It was a very good payout in a relevant format, something WoC seems to have troubles nailing, or perhaps caring about. If I had a choice I would vote for them to scrap DE and just have the 8man 6pack sealed events with the same payout.
Just throwing this out there... but maybe they want to keep the draft format secret so that people don't buy their packs from bots, instead of the "store"? I have no idea how many people just pay the 15 tix instead of scouring the classifieds to save 1-2 tix.
That, or they don;t want people dumping cards in advance and depreciating the prices of the cards before the drafts even start (which in turn lowers the incentive to draft with lower EV)?
I agree about the time slot issue. It's pretty inexcusable that Wizards is that ignorant of the demographics of the format player base.
I have to side with Zach about the Dredge matchup. I remember talking to Fishy about the deck and he told me that it was his biggest problem. Having played Dredge with Fish-style decks quite a bit, I can concur. The issue is that you really need to seal them off getting going at all, even just getting four or five Bridge tokens out can be a headache, and the fact that you generally have a pretty slow clock gives them quite a bit of time to find their anti-hate and dig out, as opposed to something like an Oath or Tinker-centric deck where you really just need to stick the hate for a couple turns and win the game from there. Rest in Peace is nice hate out of the board, but 3 RiPs = not enough to make it positive, IMO.
Maybe I'm being narcissistic, but I felt kind of like the elephant in the room during the restriction discussion. One point of agreement with Montolio: I definitely don't think it's the place of the community to be managing our own B&R list. Outside of the inherent conflicts of interest, it doesn't get to what is, IMO, the crux of the issue, which is low attendance in Classic DEs. Even if I thought it was a marvelous idea to restrict Tangle Wire or Lodestone Golem in PREs, the Restricted List is already settled in DEs and the DE attendance, IMO, although improved, has more problems than the PRE attendance, which is more or less fine.
The genesis of my own article, which happened to coincide with enderfall's survey (which I had no part in), came out of Pete Jahn's opinion column and the discussion of why Legacy DEs were firing and Classic DEs were not, despite the similar monetary barriers. One topic that came up was the dominance of Workshop decks stifling diversity in the format. This complaint definitely resonated with my own experiences of the format, although it is not enough to drive me away, and I eventually went in and did an analysis of the tournament data we had available. If it were the case that the data contradicted the popular narrative and the data showed that there were multiple archetypes with a more or less fair shot, I would have been the first one to shout it from the rooftops, as the whole reason I put in the time to do my columns is to promote the format, but the only real viable conclusion from the data is that the popular narrative is largely correct, which honestly makes it pretty hard to promote the format, especially to skeptics who believe that Classic is all Workshops + Oath.
As for my own aims in writing the article, it was to compile the data in one place and spur Classic players to action. Whether that action will work or not, I have no idea, but I know that if I didn't do it and didn't try, that the next B&R cycle will pass without incident, because the DCI is not going to pay attention to Classic on it's own accord and I do believe that, whether you think something is off in the format or not, that the fact that the DCI is not even paying attention is a bad thing.
If they bring back 6 pack Sealed and have it run concurrently with Sealed DE's, I'd imagine they'd have to nerf the prize payout of the 6 pack Sealed because that queue is just better EV than DE's (excluding QPs). Each win in a 8 man queue gets you 3 packs no matter what, whereas in a DE, even if you go 4-0, you're getting 2.75 packs per win. Obviously that's just packs alone, QPs are worth something to players and might offset the loss in packs per win.
It most likely cut both ways to be honest. Some people would get into pauper and MTGO, find they like it enough that they jumped into other formats. It also allowed some extreme low budget players to play consistently (I am speaking of the people who would slowly lose money on dailies, maybe 3-1'ing every 4th or 5th)
It's a great list to read. I've actually been meaning to get a copy of Nin for my account. This gives me a bit more food for thought. I love the tech with Magebane Armour!
Have you considered Manor Gargoyle? Protects your Planeswalkers while providing a sizable body to shoot with Nin.
If you want a win-con, Darksteel Colossus seems plausible. Pretty hard to deal with for a number of decks, though I guess I could say the same thing about Ulamog or Kozilek here as well. Just food for thought then, I guess.
I used to frequent the forums (After gleemax and before this current hot mess.) I enjoyed them for the conversations that would develop sometimes, the interesting threads and sometimes a wizo would come by and make our day. Now it is just too much of a chore to bother with. I don't care for the new look (it isn't THAT hard to find a simple, easy to read forum format and stick to it. Really it isn't. Trying to "modernize" stuff on the internet often leads to hot messes.)
As for the bot debate, well awhile back I wrote somewhat about how I think the trading system could be fixed. 1. Add a "no bot" room that people could Autojoin on start up. The problem with bots isn't the "scamming" that some people cite but that they ruined the /Trading room. You'd enter and immediately freeze up if you ran MTGO on an older machine, because the spam was non-stop and lightning speed. 2. Then they added Classifieds. I had some suggestions for that too. Making it sortable by full Boolean (which in theory they did in the new client) was one. 3. Another was being able to personally ban some ads from appearing on your classifieds wall so that you could omit those bots you never want to trade with. (Similar to maintaining a chat ban list.) 4. and I also suggested adding a Rate up system so that you would first see your buddies ads, then those of your favorite bots and then the rest. (I also recommended getting rid of the random reordering which was a piss poor solution to a stupid complaint but that's not an added option so I will leave that alone for now.)
Well one out of four ain't bad right? :(
At least the 32 card limit was raised to a not-ridiculous amount (400 items seems more than enough for most interactions.) Unfortunately that seems to have given some users (bots and humans both) the ability to "scam" moronic (or just lazy/uninformed) players out of their cards/packs via adding so many items that the victim doesn't see all of the traded-for items. The thing about this is that a person who cares about their collection and money should at the very least check to make sure they aren't giving away the store even if it is a tedious process that no one wants to do. Caveat Emptor.
Personally I 100% agree with Seb. The tedium of dealing with actual manual trading and people and their attitudes about needing to get value for each and every exchange is not offset in the client by the fun of doing some interpersonal dickering as it might with paper mtg. I'd much rather play more or do just about anything else.
Gush decks as far as I remember use more than a couple islands. Also wasn't there a Nykthos white weenie deck that won a major tourney recently?
Legacy Merfolk plays a lot of Islands XD
LODESTONE.
-ZACHTOLIO
Hmmm, hadn't thought of the Gargoyle. It's a possibility, but I really don't like having to put mana into him to attack, when I could use that mana to draw cards. Ulamog and Kozilek are both possible game enders for the deck. Out of those 2 I would probably go with Ulamog just to have another way to kill stuff. But is Ulamog better than Rite of Replication? I really don't know.
Ahh i remember the UW Eggs game. ;) I loved this deck while it was stomping me lol. Have you tried running one to two snapcaster? If feel like two could help pump or even flashback a bolt for win. Awesome article and amazing deck!
I agree. I think that is a wonderful idea.
Yeah, I suspect that Wizards is going to have to modify the system before long. A lot of PEs are failing to fire.
this would have been a great idea.
I wish there was a like button for that.
Regarding the ELO debate, I can see why hiding ELOs on MTGO was a good idea. I do think though that they should have kept the hall of champions. That would allow for the best of both worlds -- motivate players by giving them a shot at fame but at the same time avoid the bullying that comes along with visible ratings.
Jace *was* the best card in Homelands, hands down.
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We actually switched the set Jace, TMS was from, I think the best one was from when he was in homelands. It was a rotating set list for Jace :D
Saying that prices are cut and prizes are better for Premier Events does not tell the whole story. The increase of the minimum players to fire the events from 33 to 65 is a big deal for EV and for getting the events to happen at all. Because prizes do not scale with the number of players, the prizes each player can expect to win go down as more players join. With the new costs and prizes, PEs that fire with 65 people now are a little bit worse than old PEs that fired at 33. On the plus side, new PEs are less sensitive to adding more players, for example the difference in value between an old PE at 33 players versus 63 players is much greater than the difference in value between a new PE at 65 players versus 95 players.
The people who benefit from the changes are the ones who weren't averse to playing larger, 60+ player PEs, Standard for example, and the people who lose are those who enjoyed sniping PEs that fired close to 33 players, core set sealed and block constructed as examples. And not only do some people lose value, they also lose the opportunity to play the event at all when it cannot reach 65 players, as happened already this weekend with at least one THS block constructed PE and one M14 sealed PE.
Pete's trolling. Just like he used to when he'd put "Fallen Empires" as the set Jace TMS was from.
32 sounds like a good price for Timetwister though.
Martyrs of Korlis losing that last line in Oracle intrigued me, so I asked about it on the rules theory and templating message board.
http://community.wizards.com/forum/rules-theory-and-templating/threads/4...
There is a Timetwister in the 'Good Stuff' list. I don't it is possible to own a Timetwister right now, or is it? Where would it come from?
I agree, its been quite a while since I've played any Magic, since Lorwyn Block. Leagues will apparently never return, the 6pack sealed was an incredible opportunity to get back into the game. I hope they scrap the 4pack (really?? 30 card decks?)) and move to the 6pack with the same prize payout. It was a very good payout in a relevant format, something WoC seems to have troubles nailing, or perhaps caring about. If I had a choice I would vote for them to scrap DE and just have the 8man 6pack sealed events with the same payout.
Just throwing this out there... but maybe they want to keep the draft format secret so that people don't buy their packs from bots, instead of the "store"? I have no idea how many people just pay the 15 tix instead of scouring the classifieds to save 1-2 tix.
That, or they don;t want people dumping cards in advance and depreciating the prices of the cards before the drafts even start (which in turn lowers the incentive to draft with lower EV)?
I agree about the time slot issue. It's pretty inexcusable that Wizards is that ignorant of the demographics of the format player base.
I have to side with Zach about the Dredge matchup. I remember talking to Fishy about the deck and he told me that it was his biggest problem. Having played Dredge with Fish-style decks quite a bit, I can concur. The issue is that you really need to seal them off getting going at all, even just getting four or five Bridge tokens out can be a headache, and the fact that you generally have a pretty slow clock gives them quite a bit of time to find their anti-hate and dig out, as opposed to something like an Oath or Tinker-centric deck where you really just need to stick the hate for a couple turns and win the game from there. Rest in Peace is nice hate out of the board, but 3 RiPs = not enough to make it positive, IMO.
Maybe I'm being narcissistic, but I felt kind of like the elephant in the room during the restriction discussion. One point of agreement with Montolio: I definitely don't think it's the place of the community to be managing our own B&R list. Outside of the inherent conflicts of interest, it doesn't get to what is, IMO, the crux of the issue, which is low attendance in Classic DEs. Even if I thought it was a marvelous idea to restrict Tangle Wire or Lodestone Golem in PREs, the Restricted List is already settled in DEs and the DE attendance, IMO, although improved, has more problems than the PRE attendance, which is more or less fine.
The genesis of my own article, which happened to coincide with enderfall's survey (which I had no part in), came out of Pete Jahn's opinion column and the discussion of why Legacy DEs were firing and Classic DEs were not, despite the similar monetary barriers. One topic that came up was the dominance of Workshop decks stifling diversity in the format. This complaint definitely resonated with my own experiences of the format, although it is not enough to drive me away, and I eventually went in and did an analysis of the tournament data we had available. If it were the case that the data contradicted the popular narrative and the data showed that there were multiple archetypes with a more or less fair shot, I would have been the first one to shout it from the rooftops, as the whole reason I put in the time to do my columns is to promote the format, but the only real viable conclusion from the data is that the popular narrative is largely correct, which honestly makes it pretty hard to promote the format, especially to skeptics who believe that Classic is all Workshops + Oath.
As for my own aims in writing the article, it was to compile the data in one place and spur Classic players to action. Whether that action will work or not, I have no idea, but I know that if I didn't do it and didn't try, that the next B&R cycle will pass without incident, because the DCI is not going to pay attention to Classic on it's own accord and I do believe that, whether you think something is off in the format or not, that the fact that the DCI is not even paying attention is a bad thing.
Aqualung for the win. :)
If they bring back 6 pack Sealed and have it run concurrently with Sealed DE's, I'd imagine they'd have to nerf the prize payout of the 6 pack Sealed because that queue is just better EV than DE's (excluding QPs). Each win in a 8 man queue gets you 3 packs no matter what, whereas in a DE, even if you go 4-0, you're getting 2.75 packs per win. Obviously that's just packs alone, QPs are worth something to players and might offset the loss in packs per win.
Ian Anderson only made Top 8 of that Legacy Open by dazzling his opponents with the jazz flute. Poor ol' sods.
edit: There's a Timetwister promo listed in your "good stuff"??
It most likely cut both ways to be honest. Some people would get into pauper and MTGO, find they like it enough that they jumped into other formats. It also allowed some extreme low budget players to play consistently (I am speaking of the people who would slowly lose money on dailies, maybe 3-1'ing every 4th or 5th)
It's a great list to read. I've actually been meaning to get a copy of Nin for my account. This gives me a bit more food for thought. I love the tech with Magebane Armour!
Have you considered Manor Gargoyle? Protects your Planeswalkers while providing a sizable body to shoot with Nin.
If you want a win-con, Darksteel Colossus seems plausible. Pretty hard to deal with for a number of decks, though I guess I could say the same thing about Ulamog or Kozilek here as well. Just food for thought then, I guess.