Editorial Section:
Welcome back to State of the Program!  Your one stop shop for MTGO news and price details!  I am hamtastic and I'll be hanging out with you all this week, talking about all sorts of MTGO related details.  I'm starting to see a lot more overlap lately in my MTGP and MTGO worlds.  Things like sealed experiences in my shop and Standard play testing with my guys.  But first things first, it is probably a good idea to start at the ground level and work my up.  So first thing's first, I'll start with the Rise of the Eldrazi set.  Being as I haven't had any drafting happen I'll focus on Sealed since I have seen and experienced a lot of that with the League I'm running in my shop right now.  We're in the first section (of four) in the league and people are racking up sealed games left and right.  So far, I've seen some pretty interesting things in the league that have changed the way I view the environment.  The biggest thing I've seen so far is the mass under-valuing of Aura Gnarlid... at least, at first.  People have warmed up to that little common very quickly since there are almost always Totem Armor'd Aura's flowing like water from each deck, and he gets bigger and bigger and bigger.  The other card that has seen an increase in the adoring fans is Guard Duty, as an emergency answer to any of the Eldrazi spells.  Granted, you still need to get past them on the attack, but at least you're no longer getting Annihilated each time it attacks.  The last interesting nugget of wisdom is that Keening Stone is a very fast win condition once you hit the mid to late game.  I've seen quite a few games swung around based on a player drawing and dropping that artifact with mana to use it.  But in general, the coolest thing so far about Eldrazi Limited is that it is a much slower, more traditional feeling limited set.  Zendikar and Zendikar/Worldwake were so amazingly fast at times that it made it hard to catch up if you fell behind for any reason.  Rise of the Eldrazi consistently feels like it can go either way, if only someone could draw <card x>, or <card y>.  I've also seen a couple amazing card interactions in my time watching over events.  Like someone casting Devastating Summons with two active Battle Ramparts!  I've also seen Disaster Radius with an Emrakul being revealed...  Rise can have that "bomb-heavy" feel to it from time to time, especially with those Eldrazen all up in the hizzy.  However, I've noticed that the bombs are usually pretty high end on the Converted mana cost and one can, usually disrupt or race those bombs before they become active.  Usually... but not always.  When it comes to black removal, Induce Despair is a great card that changes the way you play your Eldrazi fatties.  It's generally useful to hold back casting an early Eldrazi if your opponent is on Black mana as well.  Namely because the first person to get there's down will often have it killed via an Induce Paranoia showing a new Eldrazi... but..

As I previously mentioned, I'm running a League in my shop over the summer and have been reminded a lot about why I got into MTGO's leagues and MTGO, and what a huge resource we're missing right now.  I know that the horse of "BRING BACK LEAGUES" has been utterly destroyed by this point so I won't rant about them being gone too much right now.  However, I can safely say that I have outpaced my expectations for the League thanks to the ability for new players to ease into Sealed Magic.  Seriously... something like forty percent of my League players are new or very fresh to Magic in general.  The draw was that there was little to worry about for time.  Take a day or two to test and play and prepare the deck, then come back and get some matches in.  I literally had one guy join, call his friend, his friend drove in and joined, then he called his friend who drove in and joined and lastly, called a fourth friend to drive in and join the league.  All in about the space of an hour and a half.  The got their cards, registered their pools and went back to their house to play test and they returned the next day and got in about four matches in the evening and I expect to see them again on Friday as well to get in more matches.  The other draw for them was they could get help if they wanted it.  Being able to have a friend shadow their build or have a think-tank session about the best removal or colors to focus on was clearly an exciting time for them all.  

But enough reminiscing about WHY leagues rocked, I'd like to add a thought about ways for MTGO to improve their old League structure, since they'll probably have time to make changes by the time it's all said and done and ready to support leagues again.  Namely, the biggest thing that has been generating buzz is that I'm allowing them to add one pack of any set I have on hand.  Dissension?  Sure!  M10?  Sure!  What this has done (unintentionally, I might add) is to allow for some meta-gaming on the pack choices.  For example, one player is currently in a heavy black/white list.  Double bomb black creatures, etc.  He wants to get something with the greatest chance to augment his pool.  He's leaning heavily towards Zendikar as it will allow him to have a chance at a Vampire Nighthawk and Journey to Nowhere.  I would love to see an option like this in Leagues if/when they return.  Start with six of the same for everyone, then allow people to mix and match packs that they have in their collection.  This would be yet another outlet for long dormant packs that remains better than simply cracking them after the set rotates or stops being supported.  It would be way, way easier for MTGO to handle this than how I have to handle it.  Obviously this idea isn't mine, as I clearly recall reading it on the MTGO forums during one of the many League brainstorming threads.  I've been surprised by the amount of support I've seen for the ability to mix up boosters from week to week.

I mentioned that I would talk about formats, and I shall add another format to the thoughts of my readers this week.... Standard!  It's been a while since I could really get serious about Standard ever since I started working at the card shop I've been consumed by menial work and manual labor like laying tile, hanging drywall, and all that great stuff.  But now that things are hitting their strides, I'm getting to sit down and playtest with my players.  Through this playtesting I've seen just how wide open Standard really is right now.  Jund is obviously great, but it's not dominating the field like it used to.  U/W Control, Naya, Mythic, Grixis Control, and four color control decks are playable and WINNABLE around Jund.  So if you had decided to pass on the format while Jund was en vogue it may be worth your time to take a peek at the recent tournaments, like this one, and shop around for a deck you might enjoy playing!

Discussion Items:
This week we had one of the hottest discussions on the Message Boards that I've seen in a while.  Namely it revolved around what is and isn't allowable to do when splitting a match at the end of a tournament.  The full thread can be found here.

Another interesting thread was the speculation about what card would break 40 tickets (besides the already top-heavy Force of Will) after March 31st.

We also got some build notes for issues this week, and they can be found here.

Lastly, we received the newest set of MOPR rewards, listed here: MOPR May Rewards!  The level four/five one is the completely teched out Giant Badger promo.  Beware!  The saucy news is that Chrome Mox is the MOCS reward card, which is completely awesome!

Card Price Discussion:
Ugh.  Force of Will just wont stop its meteoric rise to the top of the charts.  It is now firmly in the lead for single most expensive non-foil card ever on MTGO.  The previous record was held by Pernicious Deed and Orim's Chant which both hit 110 tickets in 2006 and 2004, respectively.  Force of Will is now 20 tickets higher than either of those two.  Also reaching new heights is the ever amazing Jace, the Mind Sculptor who is featured heavily in Standard right now as the U/W Control decks have been posting up very good numbers over the past few weeks.  Mix that in with MTGO PTQ's and Jace is going to be high for quite a while!  While there were quite a few other cards that moved, most of them were minor changes in status, either a ticket or two in either direction.  

Card Tables:

Card Graphs:
force of will chart
jace, the mind sculptor chart
entomb chart
time warp chart
goblin piledriver chart
grindstone chart
intuition chart
lion's eye diamond chart
eldrazi monument chart
sword of light and shadow chart
kavu titan chart
kalitas, bloodchief of ghet chart
force of will chart
eternity vessel chart
lord of atlantis chart
font of mythos chart
ancient spring chart
goblin piledriver chart
summoning trap chart
desertion chart
maelstrom pulse chart
phyrexian dreadnought chart
tarmogoyf chart
vampire nocturnus chart
raging ravine chart
eye of ugin chart
avenger of zendikar chart
talus paladin chart
undiscovered paradise chart
ajani vengeant chart
hypnotic specter chart
harabaz druid chart
wolfbriar elemental chart
joraga warcaller chart
talus paladin chart
eye of ugin chart
lich lord of unx chart
pithing needle chart
great sable stag chart
siege_gang commander chart