Hammie’s The State of the Program for February 10th
This series is an ongoing tribute to Erik “Hamtastic” Friborg.
News and Discussion Items:
Dark Ascension Prerelease: The paper world has their cards, and the online prerelease has been announced. Details here. As usual, the prerelease will include Swiss drafts (triple DKA) and sealed events (3 INS, 3 DKA packs.)
Dark Ascension Release: The online release events for Dark Ascension have been announced. Details here. As usual, the Release events will include sealed queues with above average prize payouts, but TIX only entry costs. Drafts of all kinds will be available, and entry will be TIX or packs + 2 TIX, as usual. The release events begin February 22nd.
Weekly Blog: Not much news from the blog. It covered the Dark Ascension release, had another appeal for players to join the new interface beta, and covered the downtime. The next MOCS card is Living Wish, and the TNMO foil for this month is Despise.
Pro Tour Honolulu: PT Hawaii will be this weekend. My wife is there – I had to work. Sigh. I will, however, be watching the coverage this weekend. Wizards will be streaming video all weekend, plus the regular written and audio coverage. I’m eager to see what they can do, given their resources.
Tournaments:
Thursday Night Magic Online (TNMO) for the upcoming week (February 16th): Innistrad draft. This is the cheapest way to draft – NIX TIX. The TNMO card for February is an alternative art Despise.
Let’s look at the Constructed Tournaments breakdown for the week of February 1st through February 7th. 142 constructed events fired this week. Modern is back, Standard and Pauper are as popular as always, and even Legacy fired some events. Classic rung the bell once. The other formats are consistent, at least: not a single scheduled event has fired in K-Scope, Extended, or 100-card Singleton in many, many months.
Format
Fired
Format
Fired
Standard
47
Classic
1
Pauper
33
Legacy
2
Innistrad Block Const.
23
Modern
36
All others
0
FYI: I got the number fired from the list of results, here.
Cutting Edge Tech:
Standard: Paper events are now featuring Dark Ascension cards – just not very many. Here’s the top 16 decklists from the StarCity Games Open last weekend, together with the list of DKA cards they ran. Decklists here, and the mono-green list follows.
Modern: Modern is a blue, blue, blue world right now. (Well, maybe it isn’t quite that bad.) Here are the Top 8 decks from the two recent online PTQs. Full decklists here and here.
Finish
Feb 3 PTQ
Feb 3 PTQ
First
Caw Blade
Faeries
Second
Affinity
RUG
Third
UW Tron
Boros
Fourth
Caw Blade
Splinter Twin
Fifth
Scepter Delver
Melira Pod
Sixth
Esper Aggro
Jund
Seventh
Caw Blade
GW Aggro
Eighth
Faeries
RB Bump
Innistrad Block Constructed: IBC is a really popular format, but it all changes in a week or so when DKA hits. I'll talk about it then.
Legacy: SCG was back to running a Legacy Open, and the format was wide open. The Top 16 contained 15 different archetypes. On the flip side, I went through all the decklists and found one single Grafdigger’s Cage, and no other Dark Ascension cards. Interesting. Is it just that no one has found any new tech, or is there just nothing in DKA that Legacy needs right now. Only time will tell.
Classic Classic fired one events this week, and Merfolk had the best showing. It posted one 4-0 and a 3-1.
Bugs: Fact or Fiction is still bugged online. The caster ends up choosing what goes in each pile. The workaround in Classic matches is to simply tell your opponent what the split should be, and the caster splits it that way. Not perfect, but Classic players are a decent bunch, and don’t abuse that bug. On the good side, Painter’s Servant is fixed.
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 Primeval Titan is from M12. If I list a card as out of stock, don’t assume you can’t buy it. MTGOTraders stocks their Bots first, so the MTGOTradersBot1, MTGOTradersBot2, MTGOTradersBot3, or MTGOTradersBot4 often have the cards in stock even when the online store is out. Now, on to prices.
Standard prices are rebounding slightly, after their general fall last week. Standard, at the moment, is solved, and the pro-white Sword is insane – and priced like it. Two weeks from now, though, this may all change. Dark Ascension will be here.
Modern land prices fell like a rock last week, and they are still dropping. Only Steam Vents gained value – play UR much? Other cards are wiggling a bit – but Vendilion Clique is going nuts. Hmm – UR much?
Legacy prices are pretty stable. Not much has shaken the format recently. The last SCG Legacy Open did not show anything really new. The Top 16 was really varied, but had nothing new.
Note: cards which are staples in both Legacy and Classic may appear in either list. If you don’t see a card in one list, check the other.
Classic prices dropped a bit last week. Apparently, that adjustment was enough. Ichorid, however, is still falling. I’m thinking Dredge players fear Grafdigger’s Cage – but that may pass. Whenever people forget about Dredge and skimp on sideboard hate, Dredge wins another tournament.
Here’s this week’s list of the top ten most expensive non-foil, non-promo cards on MTGO. A few weeks ago, Natural Order and Wasteland fell off the chart. This week, the Ravnica block duals disappeared, but Sword of War and Pieces of Money is still climbing.
I played Pirates in the Tribal Apocalypse event. I did not do all that well, losing round two when my opponent topdecked one of three cards left in his deck that could steal the win, and match three to a serious mana flood. However, when I commented “Man, I wish there was another round”, I got my wish. I was challenged to another match, and Pirates did what it is expected to do. Pirates, for those who may not be familiar with the deck, is blue land destruction. Really. The deck is really old school. The deck had zero cards with new frames, until I caved in and added Jace, the Mind Sculptor. An amazingly fun deck to play, but a horribly unfun deck to play against. It does win, but it wins so slowly – it is like being beaten to death by a three-toed sloth on valium.
Here’s a video of that last match. Many, many thanks to ___ for that challenge, and for enduring death by pirates.
I accidentally left the blank in my intro to the video. I wanted to thank RJF67, but wanted to check that I had his handle correct. Then I forgot to fill in the blank. My bad.
5 Comments
I accidentally left the blank in my intro to the video. I wanted to thank RJF67, but wanted to check that I had his handle correct. Then I forgot to fill in the blank. My bad.
Thanks again for the games.
Disappointed that you failed to say "YAR!" even once during the Pirate recap. Good job!
Heard any more news regarding cube drafts coming to MTGO?
I'm very eager to hear more about that as well!
Hey can you guys get facebook or google IDs to link here? That would be sweet.
I read your article every week. 100 Card Singleton for life!