The reason I don't like MM draft is because I find it boring and that is my opinion. But that being said, it also has the idea every draft format has, where if you know what your doing, your going to have fun, while also picking up value cards in the process. I say have fun drafting it, cause honestly it can be fun, but on the daily thing.
I can't think of any good reason to cut the dailies out of the picture, especially when it seems like pauper has been picking up speed in recent months. I also agree with you Chris when you say, "doesn't make financial sense for WOTC" argument is starting to bug me, it also bugs me because in my eyes the game of MTGO is nothing but code and its not hard to just code in a simple pack of 15 cards or anything else that has to do with MTGO. Now I could be wrong and maybe there is more to it, I perfectly believe I could be wrong, but this is just getting ridiculous.
Oh yeah, Gate to Phyrexia is a must-include in my mono-black Commander decks. Couldn't do without (the only other stuff with which I could deal with artifacts are Karn, Lux Cannon, Ratchet Bomb/Powder Keg, and Oblivion Stone/Nevinyrral Disk, and all are way slower and hardly repeatable).
Plus, Gate to Phyrexia's strength isn't just what it does against artifacts. It's that it's a free sacrifice outlet for 2 mana. Black WANTS to sacrifice creatures. If it wasn't restricted to the upkeep, it would be a staple worth a few tix. As it is, try pair it up with a generator like Bitterblossom, and you instantly become the bad guy at the table because you destroy a mana rock in the early turns every single turn without spending a single mana. Add Grave Pact and you'll need to be stopped.
I always strongly reject the "they all look the same now" feeling. It's really something out of the "we were better when we were worse" mindset (to paraphrase something we use to say in Italy to mock nostalgic people).
What you perceive in the old sets is not variety in a good sense; it's, like you said, things that don't belong with each other. Things that feel as they were thrown together randomly. It's dissonance, cacophony. Like opening a bag of chips to find inside popcorn, nuts, a banana, and a penny.
What you perceive now is coherence, elegance, and professional art direction. A good movie doesn't feature a scene shot on 70 mm film followed by a scene shot with a phone (well, unless there's a specific reason for that). You now open a chocolate box and find different-flavored sweets all with comparable quality and the same packaging.
And even there, I challenge you to say that, for instance, these four guys share the same style:
Or he has someone else signing the cards ;)
I like his Juxtapose and dark ritual the rst of the art doesn't feel like it belongs in magic.
With that said, I started playing around revised and opening boosters doesn't feel as magical to me anymore than it used to. You used to have so much different types of art on the cards and now it's just more of the same really.
Great rant, Chris. You make some very solid points there.
I actually do think MM is the worst draft format ever as well. It is just not bad enough to be unplayable, but I will play them (if I do) just for the value, not for the experience. A year ago I was surprised at the difference between the UL, MI and MED drafts compared to the MM drafts. I do assume that drafting the block properly (with MM, NE and PR boosters instead of block boosters) as well as triple-MM draft were much better draft formats than the triple MM Block format offered on MTGO next week
Psychobabble, I think you are 100% correct about the Dailies. Sadly. /Dan
Joshua added a note to the Pauper community because we as a community are in turmoil right now around this.
I can honestly say that without Pauper, my account would have been sold when I realized I couldn't succeed in Standard without spending $500. I wouldn't write for Pure or be a host on two podcasts. I'm obviously an exception for my passion for the format.
I don't know that gateway drug is the right argument, but I also know I can't be the only person who is on a restrictive budget but is very passionate about the game. I initially had $100 to spend on MTGO. That bought me a Standard RDW deck and enough tix to play in like 6 DEs. I eventually went broke, and spent a month and a half before I could accumulate enough funds to invest another $100 in, at which time my deck was obsolete and I needed to pick up a playset of Boros Reckoners at 30+ tix. I eventually lost most of my tix again, only to realize that this was unsustainable for me. My investment was literally obsolete week to week. I couldn't keep doing this. I looked at my bank account and my cash flow couldn't support my hobby.
But man I loved playing Magic, so what was I to do? Well, my answer was Pauper, where my same investment that I would have sold off to mtgotraders bought me a significant portion of decks to play around with.
I guess what I'm getting at here is I and I know many other people just can't afford a new Standard deck every 3 months, but we love playing. I support Wizards by going to pre-releases, even though I literally never play with real life cards outside of pre-releases. I do this because they provide a product, and I want to support the game stores that support the community that supports that product. That product to me is MTGO and Pauper. If I could now make them a direct donation with a note that said "please just keep Pauper DEs firing. Here's $30 rent for the month" I might just do that.
So the "doesn't make financial sense for WOTC" argument is starting to bug me. Constructed Daily Events don't make financial sense for WOTC. Legacy and Classic don't make financial sense for WOTC. I drafted the crap out of Tempest so that I could pick up Pauper staples. I lost a lot of money. I'm going to draft the crap out of MM to pick up Pauper staples, even though literally everyone is telling me it's the actual worst format ever and they'd rather gouge their own eyes out with rusty spoons(except Joshua Claytor and Dan Horning, I think you guys are the exceptions).
The only thing that "doesn't make financial sense for WOTC" is alienating the player base. I don't know what the laws are on digital products, but it's not like they're using ink to print these cards. Nor do they have to physically ship and distribute them. Part of the big hurdle for people to even join MTGO is that they have to REBUY their cards they already own in real life! MTGO has to be making a huge profit off of people like that who double buy already. MTGO only users have to be a fraction of real life players, and there's certainly some overlap between us. I imagine I'm not the only one who directly supports WOTC the way I do either - by going to the prereleases I mean.
At this point I'm just ranting. I appreciate the feedback. Sorry for the rant, I don't think I'll ever shut up about this subject.
blandestk: There has been a bit of pro-Workshop push back over at CQ, but I think there's a general consensus that the numbers at least illustrate that there is some likelihood that there's a problem. I agree that there is perhaps an inherent imbalance to the presence of Workshop in the format. However, the argument against restricting Shop isn't really about not offending anyone, so much as it is about what might come after. There are a lot of really potent cards that aren't on the Restricted List that are basically being held in check by the presence of Shops. For example, pretty much all the components (minus Power) for the infamous Long.dec that Randy Buehler spotlighted here (http://www.wizards.com/Magic/Magazine/Article.aspx?x=mtgcom/daily/rb102) and claimed a 60% Turn 1 kill percentage for are unrestricted in the format along with Mystical Tutor, Lotus Petal, Windfall, and Mind's Desire, which could potentially make the Classic version even more powerful than the Vintage version and that would be even worse for the format, IMO, then the current situation. So along with restricting Workshop, you'd basically have to restrict a bunch of other cards, and I'm of the opinion it's better to restrict less cards if at all possible.
Wickedrh: I agree that there is a lot of Shops in Classic, although maybe not quite 50-60% of the time, from my experience, more like 25-30% of the time. One of the major reasons for writing this, aside from my own experience, was the question I posed a few articles ago of why Classic doesn't get played as much as Legacy, and Workshops were definitely mentioned. While I don't think the dominance of Shops is THE explanation, I think it's part of the explanation, so I'm glad to hear people who don't necessarily play the format heavily chiming in.
Weird that his site says he lives in Oregon but you send the cards to Pennsylvania (about 2500 miles apart for non-Americans). I assume his management runs the card signing site. Do they just forward them on to him? I understand him not wanting to have his home address online, but still it seems inefficient. Especially for $1 a card. That's practically postage between OR and PA. Does he mail them back to his manager who then mails them back to the Magic players?
Well I agree with you about the elves; Quite the let down from the punk hair do of the Llanowars.
With Reverse Polarity I remember there being something about the rules fuss at the time. I don't remember what it was but that the reason for the wording was to avoid something fussy.
yes I have tested artful dodge, and I actually prefer it. It just seems to me that people prefer Distortion strike.
I have thought about dragon fodder or krenko's command out of the board as edict protection but have not tested it. I do think there is a redirect in pauper in those colors. I may be wrong.
Justin Hampton's official website has a biography, so you can learn everything about him and also see the face of the man (he's everything you would expect him to be). The things he does now aren't even that bad, as "stuff that looks good airbrushed on the side of a van".
I assume in the past 20 years he became better. Also, he's not 15-year-old anymore.
He seems proud of his Magic cards, anyway. He created a website where he sends you autographed copies. I'm sure you can't wait to order some of them. (God, he also did Illusionary Forces and, ugh, Fyndhorn Elves! I forgot to mention Fyndhorn Elves as the most repugnant art on a Magic card I've ever seen).
The guy on Circle of Protection: Artifacts is scared by all the artifacts that are trying to enter the circle to kill him. It's a Maximum Overdrive situation.
Reverse Polarity: I'm surprised you didn't comment on that "retroactively added" wording. It's hilarious to me. Why "retroactively"? How can you even add something preemptively if you don't know the amount yet? And how does that specification make it clearer? Couldn't they just say "the damage is added to your life total rather than subtracted"?
Sydri, Galvanic Genius is also a lot prettier to look at than those two dumb wizards in wizard hat and wizard robe. But the creature is the poltergeist, which of course is invisible. Ah!
Yawgmoth Demon: that would be power creep, not nerfing, right? Or did I miss something?
And actually, the most recent take on Strip Mine is M14's Encroaching Wastes. Which is worse than Tectonic Edge, so the trend continues. (Next we'll get a land with "6, sacrifice: Destroy target land you own")
I think pauper players need to acknowledge the fact that it is very unlikely that pauper DEs are coming back. This isn't the first time pauper DEs have taken a hit, the previous time WoTC looked at the schedule their number was literally halved. The measuring stick here isn't how many people participate in events, it's whether their doing so is seen to make financial sense to WoTC. And I've always been puzzled how a format which invovles the use of only the least valuable cards, and which therefore has no impact on relevant secondary market prices (thereby driving demand for drafts/packs) makes financial sense for WoTC to support with DEs. You could try to make a "gateway drug" argument, but playing pauper doesn't prepare you particularly well for transitioning into any of the other more financially relevant formats.
Note that none of this applies to on-demand queues, which payout packs at store rates - WoTC should be willing to let basically any format have on-demand queues. But daily events are effectively subsidised by WoTC (in an opportunity cost sense), I imagine it's pretty hard to write the business case justifying having them for pauper, especially as it's an online-only format. Again, the relevant measure isn't "how many people are playing them", that's only relevant for the non-subsidised queues.
I have nothing against the format whatsoever, I played it for a pretty significant amount of time, but I think the format needs to prepare itself for a transition to a primarily PRE-supported and casual format rather than a WoTC-supported competitive format.
The Shatterstorm to Creeping Corrosion comparison is actually slight power nerf (instead of being even), as Creeping still allows regeneration while Storm does not.
Very enjoyable. Interestingly, I've had the opportunity to play with a couple of these cards. Transmute Artifact was obviously good, but I was surprised at how decent Gaea's Avenger is in a Commander game (I used him in a Doran treefolk deck). He often got really large. Obviously not as good 1v1.
Gate to Phyrexia is not good at what it does, but when it's the only Black card that actually has that ability, it does get played. I used uit in an Endrek Sahr deck and see it pop up every once in a while. Of course, this is for a format that doesn't allow you to play outside your Commander's colors, so it's only played in mono-Black.
I know you mentioned it in the article, but have you acutally tested Artful Dodge over Distortion Strike? While you lose +2 damage and 1 mana, you gain the flexibility of controling when you cast the second copy. So you could double pump a Kiln or 'Clops twice in one turn, make two creatures unblockable in the same turn or if your creature gets removed, have that resource in the yard for future use. I'd be curious to hear your thoughts.
As far as Edit effects, do Blue or Red have any efficient Instant speed creature producers in Pauper? Or good Redirect effects that could also be useful against targeted effects? Just tossing those out some other ways around it.
I used to play classic alot but, the dominance of shops really turned me off. When I played in the tourney practice room 50-60% of the time it is against shop decks. And most of the problem is that you don't actually get to play magic when you face shop decks. Golem, Tangle wire, waste/strip+crucible, sphere gives them multiple cards that literally stops you from playing magic, and coupled with a very fast clock it is just not fun. I believe that a restriction is necessary. Golem is the biggest offender but its restriction can make shop decks obsolete.
I am a bit surprised we're not seeing the pro-Workshop flag that dangerlinto mentioned! Perhaps the raw numbers have never been put out there, but this article just goes to show what we all knew already. Some of us just don't like to admit to the reality.
I am glad to see this article. As a player on the Classic fringe - I'm not a constant participant at CQ, I'm not in a clan, I'm not even buddies with any of the usual names for testing - it has been fairly simple for me to watch the "debate" from afar and recognize it for what it is: a bunch of people who love Workshops fighting tooth and nail against people who bring up the dominance of the deck. I am sure Shops players love their decks and I would hate to give it up, too. But at a certain point we need to be realistic and I am glad we have some numbers to go with that.
Let's be honest, as well. The problem IS Mishra's Workshop. You can talk all you want about Golem, Wire, Cage, Sphere, Thorn, Smokestack, or the damn every spell costs three. Without Workshop itself, none of those cards is inherently "unfair." As a non-Shops deck, if they drop a couple restricted mana-excelerants (Vault, Crypt) and two-mana lands with extreme drawbacks, then they lock me out on turn 1, more power to them. That is a difficult opening to amass. But with Workshop all those cars go over the top, a full mana faster. The arguments about losing an archetype are lame and probably overblown (I believe brown would still be played even with a singleton Workshop) but I realize I am in the minority here. We don't want to offend those Shops guys!
As a "fish" player, I can tell you that it is much easier to combat Oath than it is to combat Shops. Even a turn 1 Oath with a 1/1 dude thrown at me is easier to overcome than the usual Shops turns 1. And that's with a bunch of dedicated hate to artifacts. Workshops are much more resilient to the named cards in the article than most other decks are to their respective hate cards.
Although Classic is a doomed format, whenever I discuss it with unfamiliar players, I have to tell them that the format is essential 1. Workshops 2. Oath 3. Other decks. If you haven't played a bunch of Shops in DEs, then I would wager your experience is an aberration. The number of times I have faced Workshops + Oath in all four rounds is pretty high. Would we lose some players if we restricted Tangle Wire? If the answer is yes, then I think that's extremely lame. But we barely have players as it is, so what would it matter? Are we more willing to fire with 16 cajoled, sponsored players than we are to see if restricting Tangle Wire helps?
As much as I love the viewpoint of PW - fight the good fight and have fun doing it - it is a viewpoint that illuminates the imbalance of the format. If you can throw together a weird pile that has a good shot against Workshops and have fun with it, God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater! But look at how Shops powers through attempt after attempt to derail it. It's like people think we haven't looked at every existing card 10 times already to see if something exists to combat the deck. The ideas have been exhausted and the deck still reigns.
I have not been as active as much as I used to be and the main reason honestly is that the format is boring. If I fired up a Merfolk deck, or a Mana Drain/Gush/Fastbond/name any awesome card here deck and hit a tourney, I would face Shops, Shops, Oath, Shops with the occasional Dredge or Fish matchup. And then I would ask myself if I could tell if it was January 2013 or any other random month since or before. Just by looking at my matches, I wouldn't be able to distinguish a thing based on the decks I play. Would we lose people if Tangle Wire went to one? Maybe. But I know of at least one player would be more interested if the imbalance were shaken up.
It's Lodestone that should be restricted. One-sided sphere and 4-turn clock all in one.
WOTC goes on Christmas break starting next week, so email these guys now if you want them to consider it. If they'll even do it on such short notice. This is probably the last B&R update where it's worth doing anything to Classic.
I mean then vs now there were always casual players and spikes. There were always fun tables and not-fun tables.
Nowadays Johnnies like me have more tools to combine, so that's fun. But spikes have more tools to ruin fun with, so who knows.
The reason I don't like MM draft is because I find it boring and that is my opinion. But that being said, it also has the idea every draft format has, where if you know what your doing, your going to have fun, while also picking up value cards in the process. I say have fun drafting it, cause honestly it can be fun, but on the daily thing.
I can't think of any good reason to cut the dailies out of the picture, especially when it seems like pauper has been picking up speed in recent months. I also agree with you Chris when you say, "doesn't make financial sense for WOTC" argument is starting to bug me, it also bugs me because in my eyes the game of MTGO is nothing but code and its not hard to just code in a simple pack of 15 cards or anything else that has to do with MTGO. Now I could be wrong and maybe there is more to it, I perfectly believe I could be wrong, but this is just getting ridiculous.
If you think back to the old days when magic wasn't too serious, wasn't it more fun back then?
Oh yeah, Gate to Phyrexia is a must-include in my mono-black Commander decks. Couldn't do without (the only other stuff with which I could deal with artifacts are Karn, Lux Cannon, Ratchet Bomb/Powder Keg, and Oblivion Stone/Nevinyrral Disk, and all are way slower and hardly repeatable).
Plus, Gate to Phyrexia's strength isn't just what it does against artifacts. It's that it's a free sacrifice outlet for 2 mana. Black WANTS to sacrifice creatures. If it wasn't restricted to the upkeep, it would be a staple worth a few tix. As it is, try pair it up with a generator like Bitterblossom, and you instantly become the bad guy at the table because you destroy a mana rock in the early turns every single turn without spending a single mana. Add Grave Pact and you'll need to be stopped.
I always strongly reject the "they all look the same now" feeling. It's really something out of the "we were better when we were worse" mindset (to paraphrase something we use to say in Italy to mock nostalgic people).
What you perceive in the old sets is not variety in a good sense; it's, like you said, things that don't belong with each other. Things that feel as they were thrown together randomly. It's dissonance, cacophony. Like opening a bag of chips to find inside popcorn, nuts, a banana, and a penny.
What you perceive now is coherence, elegance, and professional art direction. A good movie doesn't feature a scene shot on 70 mm film followed by a scene shot with a phone (well, unless there's a specific reason for that). You now open a chocolate box and find different-flavored sweets all with comparable quality and the same packaging.
And even there, I challenge you to say that, for instance, these four guys share the same style:
Or he has someone else signing the cards ;)
I like his Juxtapose and dark ritual the rst of the art doesn't feel like it belongs in magic.
With that said, I started playing around revised and opening boosters doesn't feel as magical to me anymore than it used to. You used to have so much different types of art on the cards and now it's just more of the same really.
I miss the Foglio's
Great rant, Chris. You make some very solid points there.
I actually do think MM is the worst draft format ever as well. It is just not bad enough to be unplayable, but I will play them (if I do) just for the value, not for the experience. A year ago I was surprised at the difference between the UL, MI and MED drafts compared to the MM drafts. I do assume that drafting the block properly (with MM, NE and PR boosters instead of block boosters) as well as triple-MM draft were much better draft formats than the triple MM Block format offered on MTGO next week
Psychobabble, I think you are 100% correct about the Dailies. Sadly. /Dan
Sorry about that, this is the note: https://www.facebook.com/notes/alex-ullman-mtg/an-open-letter-on-decembe...
Joshua added a note to the Pauper community because we as a community are in turmoil right now around this.
I can honestly say that without Pauper, my account would have been sold when I realized I couldn't succeed in Standard without spending $500. I wouldn't write for Pure or be a host on two podcasts. I'm obviously an exception for my passion for the format.
I don't know that gateway drug is the right argument, but I also know I can't be the only person who is on a restrictive budget but is very passionate about the game. I initially had $100 to spend on MTGO. That bought me a Standard RDW deck and enough tix to play in like 6 DEs. I eventually went broke, and spent a month and a half before I could accumulate enough funds to invest another $100 in, at which time my deck was obsolete and I needed to pick up a playset of Boros Reckoners at 30+ tix. I eventually lost most of my tix again, only to realize that this was unsustainable for me. My investment was literally obsolete week to week. I couldn't keep doing this. I looked at my bank account and my cash flow couldn't support my hobby.
But man I loved playing Magic, so what was I to do? Well, my answer was Pauper, where my same investment that I would have sold off to mtgotraders bought me a significant portion of decks to play around with.
I guess what I'm getting at here is I and I know many other people just can't afford a new Standard deck every 3 months, but we love playing. I support Wizards by going to pre-releases, even though I literally never play with real life cards outside of pre-releases. I do this because they provide a product, and I want to support the game stores that support the community that supports that product. That product to me is MTGO and Pauper. If I could now make them a direct donation with a note that said "please just keep Pauper DEs firing. Here's $30 rent for the month" I might just do that.
So the "doesn't make financial sense for WOTC" argument is starting to bug me. Constructed Daily Events don't make financial sense for WOTC. Legacy and Classic don't make financial sense for WOTC. I drafted the crap out of Tempest so that I could pick up Pauper staples. I lost a lot of money. I'm going to draft the crap out of MM to pick up Pauper staples, even though literally everyone is telling me it's the actual worst format ever and they'd rather gouge their own eyes out with rusty spoons(except Joshua Claytor and Dan Horning, I think you guys are the exceptions).
The only thing that "doesn't make financial sense for WOTC" is alienating the player base. I don't know what the laws are on digital products, but it's not like they're using ink to print these cards. Nor do they have to physically ship and distribute them. Part of the big hurdle for people to even join MTGO is that they have to REBUY their cards they already own in real life! MTGO has to be making a huge profit off of people like that who double buy already. MTGO only users have to be a fraction of real life players, and there's certainly some overlap between us. I imagine I'm not the only one who directly supports WOTC the way I do either - by going to the prereleases I mean.
At this point I'm just ranting. I appreciate the feedback. Sorry for the rant, I don't think I'll ever shut up about this subject.
blandestk: There has been a bit of pro-Workshop push back over at CQ, but I think there's a general consensus that the numbers at least illustrate that there is some likelihood that there's a problem. I agree that there is perhaps an inherent imbalance to the presence of Workshop in the format. However, the argument against restricting Shop isn't really about not offending anyone, so much as it is about what might come after. There are a lot of really potent cards that aren't on the Restricted List that are basically being held in check by the presence of Shops. For example, pretty much all the components (minus Power) for the infamous Long.dec that Randy Buehler spotlighted here (http://www.wizards.com/Magic/Magazine/Article.aspx?x=mtgcom/daily/rb102) and claimed a 60% Turn 1 kill percentage for are unrestricted in the format along with Mystical Tutor, Lotus Petal, Windfall, and Mind's Desire, which could potentially make the Classic version even more powerful than the Vintage version and that would be even worse for the format, IMO, then the current situation. So along with restricting Workshop, you'd basically have to restrict a bunch of other cards, and I'm of the opinion it's better to restrict less cards if at all possible.
Wickedrh: I agree that there is a lot of Shops in Classic, although maybe not quite 50-60% of the time, from my experience, more like 25-30% of the time. One of the major reasons for writing this, aside from my own experience, was the question I posed a few articles ago of why Classic doesn't get played as much as Legacy, and Workshops were definitely mentioned. While I don't think the dominance of Shops is THE explanation, I think it's part of the explanation, so I'm glad to hear people who don't necessarily play the format heavily chiming in.
It could be the other way around. That the site management company is in Oregon and he is in PA. Just a thought.
Weird that his site says he lives in Oregon but you send the cards to Pennsylvania (about 2500 miles apart for non-Americans). I assume his management runs the card signing site. Do they just forward them on to him? I understand him not wanting to have his home address online, but still it seems inefficient. Especially for $1 a card. That's practically postage between OR and PA. Does he mail them back to his manager who then mails them back to the Magic players?
Well I agree with you about the elves; Quite the let down from the punk hair do of the Llanowars.
With Reverse Polarity I remember there being something about the rules fuss at the time. I don't remember what it was but that the reason for the wording was to avoid something fussy.
yes I have tested artful dodge, and I actually prefer it. It just seems to me that people prefer Distortion strike.
I have thought about dragon fodder or krenko's command out of the board as edict protection but have not tested it. I do think there is a redirect in pauper in those colors. I may be wrong.
not sure why the link is not working now, it was earlier but here it is
https://www.facebook.com/notes/alex-ullman-mtg/an-open-letter-to-the-pau...
Justin Hampton's official website has a biography, so you can learn everything about him and also see the face of the man (he's everything you would expect him to be). The things he does now aren't even that bad, as "stuff that looks good airbrushed on the side of a van".
I assume in the past 20 years he became better. Also, he's not 15-year-old anymore.
He seems proud of his Magic cards, anyway. He created a website where he sends you autographed copies. I'm sure you can't wait to order some of them. (God, he also did Illusionary Forces and, ugh, Fyndhorn Elves! I forgot to mention Fyndhorn Elves as the most repugnant art on a Magic card I've ever seen).
The guy on Circle of Protection: Artifacts is scared by all the artifacts that are trying to enter the circle to kill him. It's a Maximum Overdrive situation.
Reverse Polarity: I'm surprised you didn't comment on that "retroactively added" wording. It's hilarious to me. Why "retroactively"? How can you even add something preemptively if you don't know the amount yet? And how does that specification make it clearer? Couldn't they just say "the damage is added to your life total rather than subtracted"?
Sydri, Galvanic Genius is also a lot prettier to look at than those two dumb wizards in wizard hat and wizard robe. But the creature is the poltergeist, which of course is invisible. Ah!
Yawgmoth Demon: that would be power creep, not nerfing, right? Or did I miss something?
And actually, the most recent take on Strip Mine is M14's Encroaching Wastes. Which is worse than Tectonic Edge, so the trend continues. (Next we'll get a land with "6, sacrifice: Destroy target land you own")
fyi, your link to alex ullman's note is broken.
I think pauper players need to acknowledge the fact that it is very unlikely that pauper DEs are coming back. This isn't the first time pauper DEs have taken a hit, the previous time WoTC looked at the schedule their number was literally halved. The measuring stick here isn't how many people participate in events, it's whether their doing so is seen to make financial sense to WoTC. And I've always been puzzled how a format which invovles the use of only the least valuable cards, and which therefore has no impact on relevant secondary market prices (thereby driving demand for drafts/packs) makes financial sense for WoTC to support with DEs. You could try to make a "gateway drug" argument, but playing pauper doesn't prepare you particularly well for transitioning into any of the other more financially relevant formats.
Note that none of this applies to on-demand queues, which payout packs at store rates - WoTC should be willing to let basically any format have on-demand queues. But daily events are effectively subsidised by WoTC (in an opportunity cost sense), I imagine it's pretty hard to write the business case justifying having them for pauper, especially as it's an online-only format. Again, the relevant measure isn't "how many people are playing them", that's only relevant for the non-subsidised queues.
I have nothing against the format whatsoever, I played it for a pretty significant amount of time, but I think the format needs to prepare itself for a transition to a primarily PRE-supported and casual format rather than a WoTC-supported competitive format.
The Shatterstorm to Creeping Corrosion comparison is actually slight power nerf (instead of being even), as Creeping still allows regeneration while Storm does not.
Still it was a pretty enjoyable read.
If the Argivian Blacksmith and Abuna Acolyte were to "fight" in the Magic sense of the word, the Blacksmith would actually win. :)
" Just what was this artifact before it got blasted? The Tablet of Forty Eyes? Did it tap to Scry 40? "
This is why i read your articles :)
Very enjoyable. Interestingly, I've had the opportunity to play with a couple of these cards. Transmute Artifact was obviously good, but I was surprised at how decent Gaea's Avenger is in a Commander game (I used him in a Doran treefolk deck). He often got really large. Obviously not as good 1v1.
Gate to Phyrexia is not good at what it does, but when it's the only Black card that actually has that ability, it does get played. I used uit in an Endrek Sahr deck and see it pop up every once in a while. Of course, this is for a format that doesn't allow you to play outside your Commander's colors, so it's only played in mono-Black.
I know you mentioned it in the article, but have you acutally tested Artful Dodge over Distortion Strike? While you lose +2 damage and 1 mana, you gain the flexibility of controling when you cast the second copy. So you could double pump a Kiln or 'Clops twice in one turn, make two creatures unblockable in the same turn or if your creature gets removed, have that resource in the yard for future use. I'd be curious to hear your thoughts.
As far as Edit effects, do Blue or Red have any efficient Instant speed creature producers in Pauper? Or good Redirect effects that could also be useful against targeted effects? Just tossing those out some other ways around it.
Great article.
I used to play classic alot but, the dominance of shops really turned me off. When I played in the tourney practice room 50-60% of the time it is against shop decks. And most of the problem is that you don't actually get to play magic when you face shop decks. Golem, Tangle wire, waste/strip+crucible, sphere gives them multiple cards that literally stops you from playing magic, and coupled with a very fast clock it is just not fun. I believe that a restriction is necessary. Golem is the biggest offender but its restriction can make shop decks obsolete.
I am a bit surprised we're not seeing the pro-Workshop flag that dangerlinto mentioned! Perhaps the raw numbers have never been put out there, but this article just goes to show what we all knew already. Some of us just don't like to admit to the reality.
I am glad to see this article. As a player on the Classic fringe - I'm not a constant participant at CQ, I'm not in a clan, I'm not even buddies with any of the usual names for testing - it has been fairly simple for me to watch the "debate" from afar and recognize it for what it is: a bunch of people who love Workshops fighting tooth and nail against people who bring up the dominance of the deck. I am sure Shops players love their decks and I would hate to give it up, too. But at a certain point we need to be realistic and I am glad we have some numbers to go with that.
Let's be honest, as well. The problem IS Mishra's Workshop. You can talk all you want about Golem, Wire, Cage, Sphere, Thorn, Smokestack, or the damn every spell costs three. Without Workshop itself, none of those cards is inherently "unfair." As a non-Shops deck, if they drop a couple restricted mana-excelerants (Vault, Crypt) and two-mana lands with extreme drawbacks, then they lock me out on turn 1, more power to them. That is a difficult opening to amass. But with Workshop all those cars go over the top, a full mana faster. The arguments about losing an archetype are lame and probably overblown (I believe brown would still be played even with a singleton Workshop) but I realize I am in the minority here. We don't want to offend those Shops guys!
As a "fish" player, I can tell you that it is much easier to combat Oath than it is to combat Shops. Even a turn 1 Oath with a 1/1 dude thrown at me is easier to overcome than the usual Shops turns 1. And that's with a bunch of dedicated hate to artifacts. Workshops are much more resilient to the named cards in the article than most other decks are to their respective hate cards.
Although Classic is a doomed format, whenever I discuss it with unfamiliar players, I have to tell them that the format is essential 1. Workshops 2. Oath 3. Other decks. If you haven't played a bunch of Shops in DEs, then I would wager your experience is an aberration. The number of times I have faced Workshops + Oath in all four rounds is pretty high. Would we lose some players if we restricted Tangle Wire? If the answer is yes, then I think that's extremely lame. But we barely have players as it is, so what would it matter? Are we more willing to fire with 16 cajoled, sponsored players than we are to see if restricting Tangle Wire helps?
As much as I love the viewpoint of PW - fight the good fight and have fun doing it - it is a viewpoint that illuminates the imbalance of the format. If you can throw together a weird pile that has a good shot against Workshops and have fun with it, God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater! But look at how Shops powers through attempt after attempt to derail it. It's like people think we haven't looked at every existing card 10 times already to see if something exists to combat the deck. The ideas have been exhausted and the deck still reigns.
I have not been as active as much as I used to be and the main reason honestly is that the format is boring. If I fired up a Merfolk deck, or a Mana Drain/Gush/Fastbond/name any awesome card here deck and hit a tourney, I would face Shops, Shops, Oath, Shops with the occasional Dredge or Fish matchup. And then I would ask myself if I could tell if it was January 2013 or any other random month since or before. Just by looking at my matches, I wouldn't be able to distinguish a thing based on the decks I play. Would we lose people if Tangle Wire went to one? Maybe. But I know of at least one player would be more interested if the imbalance were shaken up.
Turns out I'm visiting family for the holidays on the day of the event. :(
I hope you run it again though.
It's Lodestone that should be restricted. One-sided sphere and 4-turn clock all in one.
WOTC goes on Christmas break starting next week, so email these guys now if you want them to consider it. If they'll even do it on such short notice. This is probably the last B&R update where it's worth doing anything to Classic.