I did want to put on thing out there. When I was at the CCC Q&A session I do not remember Worth explicitly stating that the Power 9 would be the most expensive singles on MTGO. As I recall, his state was that it annoys him that the most expensive card on MTGO is Bad Lotus. He explained that it is fairly easy and grokkable to explain to beginners why the Power 9 are so expensive in Paper Magic, but it is a little less clear to newcomers of MTGO why a seemingly terrible card is so expensive.
At least from my seat, that is what I took away from Worth's comments. There was no guarantee that the P9 would be more expensive than LED. That said, they also didn't give any kind of idea for how it would be released or in what quantities or what they envisioned the price range to be, so they could very well be the most expensive cards in very short order.
I play B/W tokens a lot and definitely enjoyed your take. I'll probably give Shoals a try as well and see what I think.
I definitely think some number of Intangible virtues is correct. There are plenty of aggro matchups where the ability to attack with vigilant fliers and still have blockers back is essential.
I've found that Elspeth Knight-Errant is a crucial piece to B/W tokens myself. The repeatable nature of her abilities is much stronger against the control decks of the format
Shanodin Dryads was a Nymph back in Alpha. It got Dryaded with the 6th edition rules changes. Now that Nymph is back, it gets it back on the 'original printing' clause.
I really enjoyed the article. I have a Jor Kadeen list that plays similarly and which you'll probably see on the site soon.
One card I think you should consider using is Cloudshift. You can attack with Aurelia, trigger the second combat phase and then blink Aurelia. She'll still have Haste and will attack again, but this time she'll count as a new permanent and trigger a third combat phase. You can also use Cloudshift to permanently steal a creature that you grab with a card like Molten Primordial or Zealous Conscripts. You return the blinked creature under your control, not to the owner!
Sweet deck. I like the inclusion of creatures that benefit from attacking more than once. Even though I'm blue control at heart, I'm a firm believer that aggro decks are essential part of making a format fun since they bring the most interaction, speed up games, and make things more exciting in general. Good on you for showing some love to Boros!
One card I don't think gets enough love is Molten Primordial. I feel like I'm the only person who likes him. That dude is massive damage, even without a sac outlet. I can only imagine how backbreaking he'd be with Aurelia out. The downside is that casting cost though.
I like competition but my record has been poor in 8-4s, so I play 4-3-2-2s. Maybe it's small sample size issues.
The EV is higher but so is the variation for 8-4s, so small sample size players like myself do in fact prefer the smoothing of the payouts.
If i start playing a draft at 10pm, my kids definitely aren't missing me because they are asleep. My whole point was that I prefer to have some payout every round so that if my kids urgently need me for nightmares or diapers or whatever I can easily drop from the tournament but still have some sort of reward.
The loser pack has to be a concern if you are calculating EV. If you ignore the loser pack in Swiss then you're playing a format that pays out 11 packs just like 4-3-2-2s.
I'm eyes wide open on this. In my day job I'm an economist. I totally get EV and all that jazz. I get that I'm trading a small amount of payout over the long run. It's worth it to me for all the reasons I mentioned. If they up the payout to 5-3-2-2 that'd be awesome. If not, I'm still going to choose that format.
I get that you're passionate about it, but you can be passionate without putting down other people. You can especially not put down authors who go to a lot of trouble to provide content for your enjoyment. If you don't enjoy it no problem. Lots of us do enjoy it.
"If you have small children you should spend time with them instead."
You think this fellow is ignoring his children in favor of magic? I didn't catch that at all. I suspect he (much like many parents with full lives) spends what quality time with his kids as he can and then catches a few hours when they are down for the count attempting to unwind from extremely stressful days.
That would make him more typical no? Even if he was a terrible parent that statement still stands out as an unjustified judgement. He might be only able to force himself to stand his kids for an hour every other day without freaking out. So it has no bearing on what format he chooses to play.
Me, I don't have kids so I don't have to worry about that. But if I did I sure wouldn't need someone telling me how to raise them.
I do agree that 4322s are a little unfair to the player base but you can't really argue with success. If the disparity was large enough and people didn't like enough they wouldn't play the format. That they do means your boycott is likely in vain, (not to mention silly if we are going to be judgemental.)
In my humble opinion, your time would be better spent actively petitioning wotc's influential employees with alternatives you've come up with that make them as much money and are fairer for the players. If you've gottem that is.
If you want to keep doing 4322, feel free to do so, you'll have a publishing home. If Sibot would like to take the time to create some 8-4 content you'll also have a home in which to publish. Thanks for your effort!
The Garrison can actually bounce itself if you choose. If you just want to Landfall each turn, you only need 1 to "go infinite". If you do want to tap it for mana, then you need 2 so that one untaps. (The same trick works for Hedron Crab in non-pauper budget Dimir mill decks.)
An enjoyable article. The simple notes and comments are actually a great way to keep track of a large amount of testing games. I know sometimes I get overwhelmed trying to recall all of the things that happened when I'm writing about the test games. Seeing this makes me reconsider how I go about it.
Well the point of the matter is they are making content for others to watch. And I refuse to support content that supports 4-3-2-2s. They cost players more, up to .5 tickets more, to play those events. If less people play them then Wizards should think about making them 5-3-2-2s so they aren't ripping people off.
I honestly think most of your arguments are moot.
If you want competition and you have a high win rate in Swiss, then just play the 8-4s
If you have small children you should spend time with them instead.
The queues don't take longer to play out than the others, you still get slow players and dual queuers in the 4-3-2-2s which is usually what causes slow play. And when you play is a factor in that.
If you are good enough to play the single elimination events then why is the loser pack even a concern?
But anyways, there is no reason the events shouldn't be 5-3-2-2s and they would be great if they were, but as long as people are fooled into thinking they are better "utility" for them than wizards has no reason to change them.
4-3-2-2 is my preferred draft format actually, despite the worse EV. Let me tell you why:
* I enjoy the more competitive draft formats. Obviously 8-4 is the most competitive and swiss is the least. I don't do terribly well in 8-4 queues so 4-3-2-2 queues are the most competitive queues where I feel comfortable playing
* I have small children. At any moment, even if I'm playing at midnight well after everyone's bedtime, somebody might have a scary dream and I might have to drop. So since the Round 1 payouts are highest in 4-3-2-2s, that's actually an enormous benefit to someone like me.
* Swiss queues take a long time to play out. Since everyone tells beginners to play Swiss drafts, those queues take forever. The drafts themselves are very slow, players take a long time to make simple decisions like which land to play, and rounds take a long time because in general players don't draft great decks. Since 4 matches occur during each of 3 rounds, all it takes is one very slow newbie to turn an enjoyable draft into 3+ hours of staring at your screen.
* The loser packs in Swiss queues are incredibly inconvenient to collect. If I draft an absolute pile in a Swiss queue, I'd really rather not wait around 2 hours just to find out if I can win the 0-2 match for a single pack. Or more commonly, someone drops due to the inconvenience of collecting it and I have to wait an hour at my computer to collect one lousy pack.
I understand all the reasons that the EV is worse. But EV isn't the same as utility, so I'm choosing to maximize my utility at the expense of my EV.
Friends don't let friends play 4-3-2-2s. I won't watch your videos anymore if you play 4-3-2-2s because I believe that players should boycott them until wizards makes them 5-3-2-2s and stop ripping players off.
I don't remember copy/pasting anything. The preview did not show the text this way, but I will try your suggestion with highlighting everything and changing the font size.
One thing could be the font size for the paragraph headers being different from the rest of the article. I will probably just start hard coding them with headers next time.
Deluxeicoff - Thanks for the reply! I have thrown around the idea of Journey main... felt before that another creature was simply better, but in testing I'm thinking you're right.
As far as the cycling lands, I actually cut them down from 4 of both to 2 of both. Testing, I have been really happy with having them in. Without them, it felt like the deck was, in a lot of situations, one card away from winning before the opponent stabilized. The mid-late game card draw is huge, especially with the threat density being so high in this deck. I think, if anything, I would cut the gates before I'd cut the cycle lands.
As always, good insight. Your comments are always infomative and helpful! Thanks again!
This can happen when you copy/cut + paste paragraphs in the article. Not sure why that happens. I think you can catch it when you're previewing your article before submitting, but in general once the entire article is done you should highlight the entire thing and manually set it to Medium font before submitting to avoid it.
I wanted to add that I am not sure why the font size is different in some areas than others. I used the exact same font size for all the text in the article, and as you can see it came out with a couple spots where the size is different.
Sorry for how it looks, and if there are any other writers that have had this happen and know what causes it, let me know!
You couldn't have made a better case and point for the clans. Which in my opinion are utilized best as a tool to group like minded people. I think Wizards could do something to help improve the clan thing. One of the things I hate about MTGO is the fact that 2hg works differently online than on Paper. If they could fix that and more people were exposed to how it works properly that more people would play. I yearn for the day I can enter a 2hg Sanctioned event. Also I hear from players who join mtgo from DOTP that they are disappointed there is no Archenemy.
Im here to thank you Odin.
CerealKillaz Deathrow ... All Day All Night we Play!
Excellent work as always Pete!
I did want to put on thing out there. When I was at the CCC Q&A session I do not remember Worth explicitly stating that the Power 9 would be the most expensive singles on MTGO. As I recall, his state was that it annoys him that the most expensive card on MTGO is Bad Lotus. He explained that it is fairly easy and grokkable to explain to beginners why the Power 9 are so expensive in Paper Magic, but it is a little less clear to newcomers of MTGO why a seemingly terrible card is so expensive.
At least from my seat, that is what I took away from Worth's comments. There was no guarantee that the P9 would be more expensive than LED. That said, they also didn't give any kind of idea for how it would be released or in what quantities or what they envisioned the price range to be, so they could very well be the most expensive cards in very short order.
I play B/W tokens a lot and definitely enjoyed your take. I'll probably give Shoals a try as well and see what I think.
I definitely think some number of Intangible virtues is correct. There are plenty of aggro matchups where the ability to attack with vigilant fliers and still have blockers back is essential.
I've found that Elspeth Knight-Errant is a crucial piece to B/W tokens myself. The repeatable nature of her abilities is much stronger against the control decks of the format
Shanodin Dryads was a Nymph back in Alpha. It got Dryaded with the 6th edition rules changes. Now that Nymph is back, it gets it back on the 'original printing' clause.
I really enjoyed the article. I have a Jor Kadeen list that plays similarly and which you'll probably see on the site soon.
One card I think you should consider using is Cloudshift. You can attack with Aurelia, trigger the second combat phase and then blink Aurelia. She'll still have Haste and will attack again, but this time she'll count as a new permanent and trigger a third combat phase. You can also use Cloudshift to permanently steal a creature that you grab with a card like Molten Primordial or Zealous Conscripts. You return the blinked creature under your control, not to the owner!
Sweet deck. I like the inclusion of creatures that benefit from attacking more than once. Even though I'm blue control at heart, I'm a firm believer that aggro decks are essential part of making a format fun since they bring the most interaction, speed up games, and make things more exciting in general. Good on you for showing some love to Boros!
One card I don't think gets enough love is Molten Primordial. I feel like I'm the only person who likes him. That dude is massive damage, even without a sac outlet. I can only imagine how backbreaking he'd be with Aurelia out. The downside is that casting cost though.
I like competition but my record has been poor in 8-4s, so I play 4-3-2-2s. Maybe it's small sample size issues.
The EV is higher but so is the variation for 8-4s, so small sample size players like myself do in fact prefer the smoothing of the payouts.
If i start playing a draft at 10pm, my kids definitely aren't missing me because they are asleep. My whole point was that I prefer to have some payout every round so that if my kids urgently need me for nightmares or diapers or whatever I can easily drop from the tournament but still have some sort of reward.
The loser pack has to be a concern if you are calculating EV. If you ignore the loser pack in Swiss then you're playing a format that pays out 11 packs just like 4-3-2-2s.
I'm eyes wide open on this. In my day job I'm an economist. I totally get EV and all that jazz. I get that I'm trading a small amount of payout over the long run. It's worth it to me for all the reasons I mentioned. If they up the payout to 5-3-2-2 that'd be awesome. If not, I'm still going to choose that format.
I get that you're passionate about it, but you can be passionate without putting down other people. You can especially not put down authors who go to a lot of trouble to provide content for your enjoyment. If you don't enjoy it no problem. Lots of us do enjoy it.
Hockey season started. Magic takes a back seat.
"If you have small children you should spend time with them instead."
You think this fellow is ignoring his children in favor of magic? I didn't catch that at all. I suspect he (much like many parents with full lives) spends what quality time with his kids as he can and then catches a few hours when they are down for the count attempting to unwind from extremely stressful days.
That would make him more typical no? Even if he was a terrible parent that statement still stands out as an unjustified judgement. He might be only able to force himself to stand his kids for an hour every other day without freaking out. So it has no bearing on what format he chooses to play.
Me, I don't have kids so I don't have to worry about that. But if I did I sure wouldn't need someone telling me how to raise them.
I do agree that 4322s are a little unfair to the player base but you can't really argue with success. If the disparity was large enough and people didn't like enough they wouldn't play the format. That they do means your boycott is likely in vain, (not to mention silly if we are going to be judgemental.)
In my humble opinion, your time would be better spent actively petitioning wotc's influential employees with alternatives you've come up with that make them as much money and are fairer for the players. If you've gottem that is.
If you want to keep doing 4322, feel free to do so, you'll have a publishing home. If Sibot would like to take the time to create some 8-4 content you'll also have a home in which to publish. Thanks for your effort!
Thanks for the words!
Yes, I haven't thought of it that way... the more I read and see, the more I think Garrison is the best choice for this deck.
Actually I had the same problem when it came to remember, so I just started taking notes of relevant things. Try it, it helps a lot!
I'm down for online cubes. huffy henry is the name if you want to add.
The Garrison can actually bounce itself if you choose. If you just want to Landfall each turn, you only need 1 to "go infinite". If you do want to tap it for mana, then you need 2 so that one untaps. (The same trick works for Hedron Crab in non-pauper budget Dimir mill decks.)
An enjoyable article. The simple notes and comments are actually a great way to keep track of a large amount of testing games. I know sometimes I get overwhelmed trying to recall all of the things that happened when I'm writing about the test games. Seeing this makes me reconsider how I go about it.
Well the point of the matter is they are making content for others to watch. And I refuse to support content that supports 4-3-2-2s. They cost players more, up to .5 tickets more, to play those events. If less people play them then Wizards should think about making them 5-3-2-2s so they aren't ripping people off.
I honestly think most of your arguments are moot.
If you want competition and you have a high win rate in Swiss, then just play the 8-4s
If you have small children you should spend time with them instead.
The queues don't take longer to play out than the others, you still get slow players and dual queuers in the 4-3-2-2s which is usually what causes slow play. And when you play is a factor in that.
If you are good enough to play the single elimination events then why is the loser pack even a concern?
But anyways, there is no reason the events shouldn't be 5-3-2-2s and they would be great if they were, but as long as people are fooled into thinking they are better "utility" for them than wizards has no reason to change them.
4-3-2-2 is my preferred draft format actually, despite the worse EV. Let me tell you why:
* I enjoy the more competitive draft formats. Obviously 8-4 is the most competitive and swiss is the least. I don't do terribly well in 8-4 queues so 4-3-2-2 queues are the most competitive queues where I feel comfortable playing
* I have small children. At any moment, even if I'm playing at midnight well after everyone's bedtime, somebody might have a scary dream and I might have to drop. So since the Round 1 payouts are highest in 4-3-2-2s, that's actually an enormous benefit to someone like me.
* Swiss queues take a long time to play out. Since everyone tells beginners to play Swiss drafts, those queues take forever. The drafts themselves are very slow, players take a long time to make simple decisions like which land to play, and rounds take a long time because in general players don't draft great decks. Since 4 matches occur during each of 3 rounds, all it takes is one very slow newbie to turn an enjoyable draft into 3+ hours of staring at your screen.
* The loser packs in Swiss queues are incredibly inconvenient to collect. If I draft an absolute pile in a Swiss queue, I'd really rather not wait around 2 hours just to find out if I can win the 0-2 match for a single pack. Or more commonly, someone drops due to the inconvenience of collecting it and I have to wait an hour at my computer to collect one lousy pack.
I understand all the reasons that the EV is worse. But EV isn't the same as utility, so I'm choosing to maximize my utility at the expense of my EV.
Friends don't let friends play 4-3-2-2s. I won't watch your videos anymore if you play 4-3-2-2s because I believe that players should boycott them until wizards makes them 5-3-2-2s and stop ripping players off.
http://josephbono.wordpress.com/2012/09/13/the-win-rate-fallacy-and-4-3-...
http://www.starcitygames.com/magic/finance/23037_Next_Level_Spec_9_Frien...
I don't remember copy/pasting anything. The preview did not show the text this way, but I will try your suggestion with highlighting everything and changing the font size.
One thing could be the font size for the paragraph headers being different from the rest of the article. I will probably just start hard coding them with headers next time.
Thanks for the help!
Deluxeicoff - Thanks for the reply! I have thrown around the idea of Journey main... felt before that another creature was simply better, but in testing I'm thinking you're right.
As far as the cycling lands, I actually cut them down from 4 of both to 2 of both. Testing, I have been really happy with having them in. Without them, it felt like the deck was, in a lot of situations, one card away from winning before the opponent stabilized. The mid-late game card draw is huge, especially with the threat density being so high in this deck. I think, if anything, I would cut the gates before I'd cut the cycle lands.
As always, good insight. Your comments are always infomative and helpful! Thanks again!
Go for it!
This can happen when you copy/cut + paste paragraphs in the article. Not sure why that happens. I think you can catch it when you're previewing your article before submitting, but in general once the entire article is done you should highlight the entire thing and manually set it to Medium font before submitting to avoid it.
I really love the formatting of this article. It looks very sleek and professional. Would you mind if I used it for my future card analysis articles?
I wanted to add that I am not sure why the font size is different in some areas than others. I used the exact same font size for all the text in the article, and as you can see it came out with a couple spots where the size is different.
Sorry for how it looks, and if there are any other writers that have had this happen and know what causes it, let me know!
Like Cubetutor or Tappedout. Then just play it like a normal draft. Are you Doctoranime on Mtgo?
Great article! I'm glad there's more cube posts on pureMTGO now :)
You couldn't have made a better case and point for the clans. Which in my opinion are utilized best as a tool to group like minded people. I think Wizards could do something to help improve the clan thing. One of the things I hate about MTGO is the fact that 2hg works differently online than on Paper. If they could fix that and more people were exposed to how it works properly that more people would play. I yearn for the day I can enter a 2hg Sanctioned event. Also I hear from players who join mtgo from DOTP that they are disappointed there is no Archenemy.
Im here to thank you Odin.
CerealKillaz Deathrow ... All Day All Night we Play!
Corrupted file?! Ouch, I was up to 2:30 AM getting that done! Great recovery, though.