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By: one million words, Pete Jahn
Dec 07 2012 11:30am
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Hammie’s The State of the Program for December 7th

This series is an ongoing tribute to Erik “Hamtastic” Friborg.
 

In the News this Week:

Replay Policy Changed: You will no longer be able to watch replays of other players’ matches during events. This is a change. Here is Wizards’ statement on this issue:
 
Starting December 12th after the Wednesday downtime, replays will no longer be available for active tournaments in Magic Online. We realize that as long as replays are available during events, many players feel required to watch them, if only because they might gain some slight advantage otherwise missed. We feel like this behavior is detrimental to the overall experience and reduces fun, and this change is being made so players can focus on playing and enjoying Magic rather than studying replays of games at a breakneck pace between games or rounds.
 
Replays will be available after the event ends. They will remain up for 12 hours after PEs, and 15 minutes after DEs. (This is apparently the current standard – no change.)  The statement is here
 
Personally, I like this change. I don’t use replays to scout my opponents – it feels wrong. Getting information about what your opponent is playing after you have sat for a match is illegal in the paper world. (It’s outside assistance, and earns you a match loss. Details here, see section 3.2.) So I like this change, but I also understand why others won’t.
 
More importantly, I like how Wizards announced this change. They posted the change, with an explanation of the reasons, in advance and in a public forum. Huge thumbs up for how they announced this change.
 
Pro Tour Dragon’s Maze Qualifier Dates Announced: The next round of online PTQs will begin over the Christmas weekend. MTGO will have 16 TQs for Pro Tour Dragon’s Maze. Eleven will be Modern, four RtR sealed, and the last one Gatecrash sealed. Details here.
 
End of the MOCS Series for 2012: MOC Season 12 is over. The Season 12 Championship is Saturday, December 8th.  This ends the 2012 MOCS season. Until the next season begins, early next year, tournaments will not pay out MOCS points. With the December 19th downtime, all existing MOCS qualifier points will be removed from accounts – so grab a screenshot or make a list, if you like tracking this stuff.    The MOCS 2012 Championship will be a 16 player tournament. The participants will be last year’s MOCS Champion, the winners of the 12 season championships, the Player of the Year (see below) and the winners of the two Last Chance Qualifiers (see below).
 
MOCS Player of the Year Championship: The Player of the Year event will be held on December 15th, at 11am. The format is Standard. The event is invitation only, with invitations issued to the top 150 constructed and top 150 limited players, as found on the Player-of-the-Year Standings Page.
 
MOCS Last Chance Qualifiers: MOCs Season 12 is over. Once the Player of the Year Championship is decided, only two invitations to the 2012 MTGO Champion will remain undecided. These will go to the winners of the Last Chance Qualifiers on December 22nd and 29th. These events will be RtR Sealed events with Top 8 drafts, and limited to the first 1,024  players to register (and stay registered – remember that you have to re-enter if MTGO crashes.) Each event will pay packs to the top 256 players, and 128 and higher get at least a draft set.  
 
A New “What’s Fun” Thread: We had a post from a new player about the obnoxious posts end of game, including “How does it feel to have your expensive deck beaten by my cheap one?! You suuuuck!" – amusing because the new player had a very, very limited card pool. This ignited several pages of posts on what is fun, and what you can / should play in the casual play room. Higher than average ratio of serious / good/ thoughtful responses. Read it here.
 
Another Worthwhile Thread: Where’s the Social Aspect? Interesting discussion on what chat used to be, verses what it now is (more accurately, is not.)  Read it here.
 
Longer First Picks for PTQ Top 8 drafts: (repeat from last week) You may had the experience of waiting forever for a draft to fire and getting distracted, only to notice the draft had started about pick four. That sucks, but it is even worse in a Top 8 PTQ draft. In order to help mitigate that problem in PTQ Top 8 drafts, Wizards is setting the pick timers for PTQ Top 8 drafts only to 3 minutes. That means that you will not see your second pick for up to 3 minutes. So, if you make it to the Top 8 draft, first: congrats, and second: don’t reboot if the second pick seems to take a while.
 
TNMO Promo: Alternative Art Gitaxian Probe. It is not Standard legal, but I expect that, since stores can now sanction Modern format Friday Night Magic events, they will be showcasing Modern cards for a while. I’m not sure why they want to encourage Storm decks, though, if they want more people to play the format. Losing to Storm is not a whole lot of fun for new players (or old one, for that matter.) Of course, Wizards has already done Path to Exile, Lightning Bolt – a judge foil, Dismember and many of the other highly-played commons. Sure beats printing unplayable junk.         
 
Planeswalker 2013 Deck Pack Expansion:   The 2013 Planeswalker expansion will go on sale on Friday, December 7th. (Note: that is Pearl Harbor Day – so insert random bomb reference here.) This expansion includes 706 untradeable gold-bordered cards for use in the Planeswalker Format, with five new deck lists.
 
HammyBot:  It’s still going strong! HammyBot was created to sell the late Erik Friborg’s MTGO collection to raise money for his widow and son. HammyBot is a great way to get cards while supporting the family of someone who supported the community. Here’s an update on the Bot, plus a note on a cool card that I saw on HammyBot.
 
            Cards left on HammyBot: 28,818
TIX raised so far: 4,698
            Cool HammyBot card of the week: (Umezawa’s Jitte)
 
Jitte is a Legacy staple, so get one.
 

Opinion Section: What to Do About Eternal Formats on MTGO?

For the last couple weeks, the “cutting edge tech” section has noted that Legacy and Classic events generally don’t fire online. Standard, on the other hand, fires constantly, as do Pauper and even Return to Ravnica Block Constructed and Modern, albeit to a lesser degree. What’s the problem.  More importantly, what should Wizards do about it.
 
One possible answer, of course, is nothing. Wizards could just let these formats die. Not a ton of people play Legacy and Classic online. It’s different in the paper world, where Legacy is played in store events, at SCG Opens and the occasional GP. Online, though, the number of regular players is just not that high. It is low enough that most days we cannot find 16 players interested in playing the format, despite pulling from the entire world. Given that so few players want to play, what would be the problem with letting Eternal formats die?
 
For the players who currently enjoy competitive Eternal formats, it would be bad – but it is not like they are getting much opportunity to play now. Those players would be sad, and so would be all the players that might have liked to play in the future. However, Magic is a business. Any business closes product lines if they are unprofitable.
 
That’s not the whole story, though. The other people who would be affected if Wizards just killed older formats would dealers. Right now, they have invested in older cards because there is a market for them. That market is, to a fairly large extent, driven by the tournament players. Without tournament players, high end cards will drop in value, and the dealers will take some serious losses.   This won’t be an immediate problem – if Classic died tomorrow, most of the cards would see Legacy play. If Legacy also died, then the impact would be greater, but would directly affect only a couple dozen expensive cards. Many of the rest would still be bought by casual players, so the loses would be gradual, and values would not drop to zero. However, casual players generally don’t like to pay all that much for cards.
 
What would be harmed, massively, would be the dealer trust in Wizards. Dealers would know that Wizards will pull all support to older formats, meaning that the cards playable only in that format could lose much of their value. Dealers might be a bit more skittish about buying cards for older formats – and if dealers won’t buy, players will have a much harder time getting cards for the format. This could have a ripple effect. If dealers know Wizards might cut all support for cards of a given age, dealers might wonder if the same thing might happen with Modern. Suppose the format got out of whack, or player interest dropped. Could dealers justify investing in cards playable only in that format? If Modern died, they could be stuck? If Modern died, then dealers might worry about investing in Standard – at least in those standard cards nearing rotation. 
 
I’m not saying that dealers would not stop buying. They would – that’s their business. However, if they expect that the value of cards might fall faster and farther, then their risk in buying cards increases. The way dealers handle risk is to factor that into the prices they pay for inventory. If holding cards is riskier, they will pay less for cards. 
 
The impact of reduced buy prices, of course, is that players cannot make as much reselling their draft cards. Lower prices for leftovers means fewer TIX, and fewer TIX means fewer drafts. That’s the danger – if Wizards let’s older formats die, it could hurt their highly lucrative draft business. 
 
The PR effect of letting the older formats die would also be pretty negative. Wizards would be say to online players, in effect, “sorry you spent all that time collecting tournament staples, they are now useless.” Not the message they want to be sending.
 
All this is just a long-winded way of arguing that it is in Wizard’s economic best interest to prop up the Eternal formats. In other words, they are not going to let them die – especially since saving them is not that hard.
 
So, what needs to be done? I see three main problems, all interwoven:
1.    The cost/benefit ratio of the tournaments is poor.
2.    The cost of cards is too high.
3.    Online and paper formats are not the same.
Let’s look at these one at a time.
 
First, one reason most players play in an event is to win packs. Those not made on money try to finance their tournament play with their winnings.  With limited play, you play with the packs you win, and try to finance the rest by selling cards. With constructed play, you invest in the deck, then try to win enough packs to recoup that cost. 
 
The first problem with Classic is that the cost of the decks is, comparatively, quite high. The payout, OTOH, is the same as for a similar Standard or Pauper event. For going 4-0 in a four-round event, you win 11 packs of RtR. In the past, Classic has paid out M1X packs, and it has sometimes paid out in out of print (OOP) packs, which could be better or worse, depending on whether the OOP queues were firing. Either way, the simple fact is that spending three to four times what a good Standard deck would cost, without some additional reward, is not attractive to many players. (Note, during the Winter Classic events last year, Wizards added some sweetener to the prize pool, and Classic events fired like clockwork.)
 
The second problem is highly correlated with the first: the reason the return on investment is low is that the cost of cards is high. To some extent, this will always be the case when you have a format that uses a lot of OOP cards. Old cards – at least, the good ones – will always be expensive. However, that cost is directly proportional to the number in circulation. Price is, after all, a function of supply and demand. Wizards taken several strides in this direction, most notably rereleasing the dual lands in MED IV. Dual lands are important to Classic, Legacy, Commander and casual players alike. Having a relatively large supply is critical to keep the cost of the format accessible. That plan would have worked, had not Ted Knutson sabotaged it. However, Wizards can still help save the format if it can get additional duals into the hands of players, and keep the supply of old cards growing at least as quickly as the total number of  online players. Wizards is doing that, as well, with OOP drafts and sealed events.
 
The third problem is that the online and paper formats are very close, but not quite the same. In legacy, for example, these cards show up in Top 16 decks every so often, but they are not available online.
 
 
Nature’s Ruin is the equivalent of Perish, but it is played in sideboards alongside Perish, to provide outs to Meddling Mage shenanigans. 
 
As for Classic, that is clearly different from paper Vintage because nine cards are not available online.   The Power Nine are coming, but without them, Classic is most definitely not Vintage. 
 
Presumably, Wizards will release a MED V set sometime this summer. I would expect the Power 9 to be Mythics in that set, and hopefully the duals and other staples will be rares. Wizards should make reasonably sure that all other cards seeing regular play in Legacy and Classic events, and that are not yet online, are in MED V. However, that will not solve all the problems. First off, Wizards has scrapped the barrel already for playable creatures from the old sets. The old sets have some great creatures, but also have a lot of bad ones. For example we really need these guys: 
 
 
They are so cute! You can’t build a fuzzy/cuddly deck without the cubs.  (Guys, if you don't get it, ask your girlfriends.)  Seriously, though, I know cute is irrelevant to tournament play, but what is relevant is that Bear Cub is one of the few not-yet-on-MTGO creatures with a modern P/T to mana cost ratio. In contrast, look at these winners:
 
 
Can you imagine playing a draft format based around creatures of this power level?  It could be significantly worse than Masques block, or even Fifth Edition drafts. I’ve done 5E drafts. [shudder]. 
 
Unprinted cards have some other issues.  First, some of these cards cannot, and will never, appear online. Chaos Orb and Falling Star are known as dexterity cards, since you literally dropped them onto the table (spinning, from at least one foot above the surface.) They simply don’t work in digital form, and they are banned in all paper formats.  Likewise, the ante cards will never again be played in sanctioned Magic, because they violate anti-gambling rules. The ante cards (Amulet of Quoz, Bronze Tablet, Contract from Below, Darkpact, Demonic Attorney, Jeweled Bird, Rebirth, Tempest Efreet and Timmerian Fiends) will never be programmed, and are banned in all formats. 
 
There is one other card that is banned in all formats: Shahrazad. This card is banned because players would use it to stall games. Players would win game one, then side in and cast Shahrazad (and Fork it) to run out the clock and prevent opponents from completing game two. This was too close to stalling (a DQ offense), so the DCI banned Shahrazad. Online, though, has chess clocks. Shahrazad might be less objectionable online, but once the formats are aligned, I would expect the banned and restricted lists will be, too.  Sorry, Shahrazad.
 
Even after we exclude the dexterity cards, ante cards, and Shahrazad, there are still roughly 800 Vintage legal cards not available online. (details here.) MED V simply cannot include them all – not and be even remotely playable as a limited format. After all, imagine drafting a set if most of the cards looked like these:
 
 
So what is the solution? I have one, but I am going to have to save that for next week. My deadline is here already (actually, I’m way past deadline - my article should be up already) and I still have to get this proofread it, load the decks and tables, format everything and get the article submitted. I don’t have time – but this is 4.5k words already, so I haven’t shorted anyone too badly. 
 

Cutting Edge Tech:

Standard: TCPPlayer.com ran their 50K Championship last weekend. The top 32 decklists are here. The top three finishing decks were all UWR Midrange decks. Here’s the winner. 
 
 
Return to Ravnica Block Constructed:  The format seems pretty stable, for now. Most of the Top 8 at the most recent RtR Block Premier were UWG decks. However, two RGB decks snuck into the Top 8. Here’s one.
 
Modern: The online metagame is slightly different from the paper one, mainly due to card availability. Or maybe the metagame is just evolving faster online. I could make an argument either way. Whichever, here’s the latest winning archetype.
 
 
Legacy: This week SCG ran an Open in Baltimore. The Top 8 is a bit more closed than it used to be – BUG decks were huge, and dominated the Top 16.  The winner, though, was Esper Stoneblade.
 
 
Classic: Did not fire an event this week. However, the Classic Quarter Invitational Qualifier II has almost reached the Top 8. You can hear about the last couple rounds of the event here.
 

Card Prices:  

Notes: All my prices come from MTGOTraders.com. For cards that are available in multiple sets, I am quoting the most recent set’s price. Thus, the price I’m quoting for Garruk Primal Hunter is from M13. These cards are also available from the MTGOTraders Bots,  so check out mtgotradersbot, mtgotradersbot2,mtgotradersbot3, mtgotradersbot4, mtgotradersbot5, CardCaddy and CardWareHouse. These Bots often have the cards in stock even when the online store shows as out. Now, on to prices.
 
Standard prices are moving around a bit. Well played Mythics from sets not being drafted heavily are rising, some significantly.
 

Standard & Block Cards
Price
Last Week
Change
% Change
$23.37
$23.31
$0.06
0%
$9.38
$9.38
$0.00
0%
$11.75
$12.08
($0.33)
-3%
$26.78
$25.33
$1.45
6%
$13.58
$13.12
$0.46
4%
$34.35
$31.09
$3.26
10%
$27.28
$26.65
$0.63
2%
$27.84
$24.76
$3.08
12%
$9.62
$8.89
$0.73
8%
$20.29
$23.86
($3.57)
-15%
$18.94
$19.40
($0.46)
-2%
$15.40
$15.84
($0.44)
-3%
$24.03
$19.94
$4.09
21%
$31.13
$27.67
$3.46
13%
$7.33
$8.20
($0.87)
-11%
$21.80
$15.62
$6.18
40%
$20.67
$17.11
$3.56
21%
$6.56
$6.53
$0.03
0%
$14.76
$15.92
($1.16)
-7%
$18.53
$18.31
$0.22
1%
$3.94
$3.58
$0.36
10%
$14.37
$16.94
($2.57)
-15%
$4.40
$4.83
($0.43)
-9%
$17.00
$17.77
($0.77)
-4%
$9.04
$11.77
($2.73)
-23%
$7.27
$6.89
$0.38
6%
$11.62
$11.61
$0.01
0%
$2.55
$2.74
($0.19)
-7%

 
Modern prices are churning – some up, some down. No trends that I can see.
 

Modern Cards
Price
Last Week
Change
% Change
$63.33
$60.06
$3.27
5%
$30.47
$28.89
$1.58
5%
$16.67
$17.14
($0.47)
-3%
$16.29
$18.52
($2.23)
-12%
$9.83
$9.91
($0.08)
-1%
$20.68
$21.23
($0.55)
-3%
$14.77
$14.83
($0.06)
0%
$15.54
$15.33
$0.21
1%
$9.12
$9.12
$0.00
0%
$16.68
$17.65
($0.97)
-5%
$20.24
$17.83
$2.41
14%
$11.85
$10.61
$1.24
12%
$14.74
$12.29
$2.45
20%
Emrakul, the Aeons Torn
$10.36
$10.36
$0.00
0%
$7.84
$5.96
$1.88
32%
$4.50
$4.16
$0.34
8%
$10.33
$10.33
$0.00
0%
$8.14
$6.88
$1.26
18%
$11.76
$11.41
$0.35
3%
$14.44
$12.96
$1.48
11%
$17.77
$18.24
($0.47)
-3%
$9.15
$8.74
$0.41
5%
$7.62
$7.15
$0.47
7%
$26.73
$20.39
$6.34
31%
$6.30
$6.30
$0.00
0%
$7.74
$7.23
$0.51
7%

 
Legacy and Classic prices are pretty much stable. The format is stagnant. 
 
Legacy / Classic Cards
Price
Last Week
Change
% Change
$102.42
$102.42
$0.00
0%
$82.93
$82.93
$0.00
0%
Vampiric Tutor
$28.10
$28.10
$0.00
0%
$22.61
$22.61
$0.00
0%
$47.99
$47.99
$0.00
0%
$31.68
$30.11
$1.57
5%
$27.38
$27.38
$0.00
0%
$25.43
$25.43
$0.00
0%
$12.85
$12.85
$0.00
0%
$20.09
$20.09
$0.00
0%
$36.40
$36.40
$0.00
0%
$9.18
$9.18
$0.00
0%
$12.25
$12.25
$0.00
0%
$15.58
$15.85
($0.27)
-2%
$19.66
$19.97
($0.31)
-2%
$40.15
$41.00
($0.85)
-2%
$8.14
$9.12
($0.98)
-11%
$9.09
$7.74
$1.35
17%
$15.74
$15.49
$0.25
2%
$13.68
$13.68
$0.00
0%
$8.08
$8.08
$0.00
0%
$37.38
$37.38
$0.00
0%
$25.23
$21.54
$3.69
17%
$10.24
$10.99
($0.75)
-7%
$65.14
$65.14
$0.00
0%
$36.91
$36.91
$0.00
0%
$6.38
$6.38
$0.00
0%
$14.48
$14.48
$0.00
0%
$15.63
$15.63
$0.00
0%

 Pauper prices are still recovering from the big crash three weeks ago. I think. Pauper prices seem a bit irrational. I suspect that they are more subject to speculation and hoarders than other cards, but I can’t prove that. Maybe the prices are just inherently weird. 

Pauper Cards
Price
Last Week
Change
% Change
$2.10
$2.10
$0.00
0%
$2.19
$2.26
($0.07)
-3%
$0.36
$0.15
$0.21
140%
$1.43
$1.22
$0.21
17%
$3.71
$3.71
$0.00
0%
$4.46
$4.46
$0.00
0%
$7.54
$6.99
$0.55
8%
$7.15
$6.87
$0.28
4%
$1.57
$1.57
$0.00
0%
$8.04
$8.04
$0.00
0%
$2.97
$2.97
$0.00
0%
$0.40
$0.51
($0.11)
-22%
$3.40
$3.63
($0.23)
-6%
$5.56
$5.25
$0.31
6%
$2.00
$2.08
($0.08)
-4%
$1.28
$1.06
$0.22
21%
$1.10
$1.10
$0.00
0%
$1.33
$1.10
$0.23
21%
$0.53
$0.53
$0.00
0%
$1.16
$1.22
($0.06)
-5%
$2.12
$2.74
($0.62)
-23%
$1.96
$2.20
($0.24)
-11%
$2.41
$2.08
$0.33
16%

 

The Good Stuff:

Here’s this week’s list of the non-foil, non-premium cards on MTGO that cost more than $25 each. More and more cards from new sets are making the list, while the MED events have moved all the dual lands under $25.00, at least for now. Here’s this week’s list of MTGO gold:
 

Card
Rarity
Set
Price
Force of Will
R
MED
$  102.42
Lion's Eye Diamond
R
MI
$ 82.93
Rishadan Port
R
MM
$ 65.14
Tarmogoyf
R
FUT
$ 63.33
Jace, the Mind Sculptor
M
WWK
$ 47.99
Gaea's Cradle
R
UZ
$ 40.15
Tangle Wire
R
NE
$ 37.38
Show and Tell
R
UZ
$ 36.40
Misdirection
R
MM
$ 36.21
Bonfire of the Damned
M
AVR
$ 34.35
Wasteland
U
TE
$ 31.68
Thundermaw Hellkite
M
M13
$ 31.13
Vendilion Clique
R
MOR
$ 30.47
Vampiric Tutor
R
VI
$ 28.10
Falkenrath Aristocrat
M
DKA
$ 27.84
Null Rod
R
WL
$ 27.38
Tamiyo, the Moon Sage
M
AVR
$ 27.28
Geist of Saint Traft
M
ISD
$ 26.78
Karn Liberated
M
NPH
$ 26.73
Vindicate
R
AP
$ 25.43
Flusterstorm
R
CMD
$ 25.23

 
I’m going to revise the “big number” section. I’m going to list the retail price of a playset (4 copies) of every non-foil card available on MTGO. Using this new method, the cost of owning a playset of everything on MTGO, is $22,647.   That is a big number.  
 

Weekly Highlights:

I got to play a fair amount of limited this week. I had a decent run, then got into a M13 4 pack sealed. My pool had a nice UB build with Liliana of the Dark Realms, a couple Welkin Terns and a Sands of Delirium. I was dead on board, so I used Sands to see his deck. Here’s what I saw:
 
 
 
Two Thundermaw Hellkites is insane. It is also really bad when your deck relies on Welkin Terns. I did not win that match, but I did win the other two.  Overall, not a bad week at all.
 
PRJ
 
“one million words” on MTGO. 

13 Comments

Pete, I can't wait to hear by caliban17 at Fri, 12/07/2012 - 14:37
caliban17's picture

Pete, I can't wait to hear your take on how to solve the "getting the bad cards online without drafting them" problem.

I also agree, they really need an next year ME5 with Legacy/Classic staples and the Power 9 at Mythic. I'm also working on an article along these lines.

You forgot to mention the by RexDart at Fri, 12/07/2012 - 16:29
RexDart's picture

You forgot to mention the cards that they don't want to print online because of political correctness (i.e. they are arguably offensive, or at least insensitive in some way, to an ethnic group.) Invoke Prejudice and Jihad are the two that most come to mind. They both see actual play in EDH and casual, unlike most of the unavailable cards remaining. They are basically just too embarassed of those cards to release them online, and/or don't want to stir up controversy. I also suspect that Earthbind would not be printed now because the art would be considered sexist, and that WotC may have a problem with that one too.

dangerlinto's picture

Same goes for Earthbind. But I'm afraid Jihad and Army of Allah will be amongst the cards that never make their way online.

could be by one million words at Fri, 12/07/2012 - 23:08
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Earthbind, and Invoke Prejudice, could be fixed with new art. Jihad and Army of Allah might be trickier.

Earthbind was my favorite art by Calavera at Sat, 12/08/2012 - 08:59
Calavera's picture

Earthbind was my favorite art as a kid... I even collected them...

As to DE times.. I believe they are up for 12 hours as well and that other events (8mans) are up for 15 minutes only.

Two other cards I haven't by KaraZorEl at Fri, 12/07/2012 - 18:00
KaraZorEl's picture

Two other cards I haven't seen online:

Lady Sun

Zhuge Jin, Wu Strategist

Legacy players might like Zhuge because he makes creatures unblockable. Lady Sun might good in limited. Not sure if the blue would support it, though.

Has Timetwister ever come online? It's legal in Commander.

I believe the goal should be to create a limited environment where new cards are released, but powerful creatures and spells are also present.

Doran, the Siege Tower players might like Pang Tong, "Young Phoenix" as well.

Zhuge is a strictly worse by Kumagoro42 at Sun, 12/09/2012 - 13:47
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Zhuge is a strictly worse Jhessian Balmgiver, but Lady Sun is a powerful card in Commander, where she can become a repeatable Unsummon for 3 when paired with Lightning Greaves. The best Portal: Three Kingdoms legend that's not online is possibly Diaochan, Artful Beauty.

Timetwister is one of the Power 9, the coming online of which is what we're discussing. It's not really legal in Commander, anyway. Commander is defined by the official rules as a MTGO format only, as opposed to EDH, which is the paper format (despite the fact that the EDH site now calls the format Commander as well). Therefore, cards not online are neither legal nor illegal in Commander: they've just not been taken into consideration yet.

It seems the solution is by CottonRhetoric at Sat, 12/08/2012 - 19:28
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It seems the solution is selling packs that aren't meant to be drafted.

Yes, I know that drafting is what drives pack sales, but if the power nine are in the card pool, the packs will sell by the boatload anyway. Even if all 800 unprinted cards are in there. The power nine will ensure these packs sell.

On the Knutson thing, I have by Psychobabble at Sun, 12/09/2012 - 19:35
Psychobabble's picture

On the Knutson thing, I have no idea what effect it had on the format or prices, but it's interesting that the big spec probably hasn't actually made him very much, if any, money. Of the 12 cards he bought, five have gone down in price and seven up. I don't know what proportion he bought of each of the cards in the basket, but the total basket has gone up by a grand total of 6% since he bought in. If you assume that you can sell them at 80% of retail, that's a loss of 15%. If he actually bought a large enough proportion of the total supply that liquidating his stock would have, say, a 5% price impact then he's lost closer to 20% of his investment. And then you'd realistically lose another 2% or more converting tix into paypal. Seems like a pretty silly move to me, completely independently of any effect that it had on the health of the format.

Of course, if he was a genius and bought a lot of volcanic islands and savannas but stayed away from plateus and taigas then he could have made a lot of money, but I don't know whether he did that or not.

Here's a cut/paste of the by Psychobabble at Sun, 12/09/2012 - 19:37
Psychobabble's picture

Here's a cut/paste of the data for reference.

Then Now %
Badlands 9.25 11.59 25%
Bayou 13.5 12.59 -7%
Plateau 9 6.08 -32%
Savannah 14 19.79 41%
Scrubland 12.5 13.12 5%
Taiga 12 9.32 -22%
Tropical Island 15 17.32 15%
Tundra 16 18.85 18%
Underground Sea 26 21.88 -16%
Volcanic Island 9.75 15.27 57%
Maze of Ith 8.5 7.65 -10%
FOIL Tundra 52 56.55 9%
197.5 210.01 6%

This doesn't prove much of by Xaoslegend at Mon, 12/10/2012 - 01:22
Xaoslegend's picture

This doesn't prove much of anything. If the hoarder makes an already small format even more unpopular it can be the tipping point to irrelevance. So he would not have made the cards hoarded more expensive but made their use irrelevant and harmed the player's ability to enjoy the game. Another scenario is that the prices are still inflated and should be much lower based on their natural demand. Again this harms player's ability to enjoy the game. One way or the other hoarding is bad for the community. It can certainly be argued however that a system that doesn't allow hoarding would crash the game altogether. Again though your evidence isn't evidence of much.

I wasn't trying to prove by Psychobabble at Mon, 12/10/2012 - 02:14
Psychobabble's picture

I wasn't trying to prove anything, I was just presenting data that I thought was kind of interesting seeing as how bullish he was on his idea in the article.

If anything I think the data would discourage people from trying to do something like Knutson did because it looks like he's facing a loss, and potentially a pretty substantial one depending on the exact size and nature of his investment. It certainly wasn't the "sure thing" that he seemed to think it was at the time. But there's lots of things that you could read into it one way or another - I wasn't trying to do anything of the sort.

The interesting thing is that by Paul Leicht at Mon, 12/10/2012 - 04:19
Paul Leicht's picture

The interesting thing is that you grabbed that data shortly after a large dip in prices. Duals plunged last week to the point where I was able get some at reasonable prices ($7.5 @ for taigas $14 for a tundra, etc.) If you waited a few more weeks or went back a few weeks the percentage between then and now would be much higher than 6%. Also I didn't realize Maze of Ith was included in his speculation. That dropped like a rock after Realms was published. I expect it will climb back to $12-15 when people stop buying Realms.