Author's note for Full Disclosure: Erik is the manager for Accidentally Cool Games, located in Bemidji, MN. The author is solely responsible for any and all opinions and statements.
Editorial Section:
Having spent a good chunk of free time this week going over the MTG:Paper rules I couldn't help thinking about Pete Jahn and how much the rules of MTGP impact his day to day life of Magic playing. In his years of writing, he has the rules aspects of the game with amazing depth and dedication. And after having spent that much time in the rules I have even more respect for his ability to make them interesting in any way, shape or form! I have however learned some pretty cool things that I can apply to my MTGO perspective. For example:
"When a player is disqualified during a tournament, he or she is removed from the tournament and does not take up a place in the standings. This means that all players in the tournament will advance one spot in the standings and are entitled to any prizes the new standing would offer. If the Disqualification takes place after a cut is made, no additional players advance in place of the disqualified player although they do move up a spot in the standings. For example, if a player is disqualified during the quarterfinal round of a Pro Tour Qualifier, the former 9th place finisher does not advance into the single elimination top 8, but he or she does move into 8th place in the standings. "
With this in mind, it makes more sense about the way things happen in MTGO in regards to tournament disqualifications. For a long time I was frustrated by the fact that in leagues when someone was disqualified that no one else would move up in the prizes. Later, I had the same concerns during Premier Events and Daily Events. Understanding that this is the requirement for paper tournaments, suddenly the client being coded the way it is makes a lot more sense. Or it could just be a coincidence... but possibly it was intentional based on what was meant to happen in paper tournaments.
You might be wondering why I'm doing all this studying and figuring out what the heck happens at paper tournaments. Well, I'm working on getting my Level 1 judging certificate for my store. So I'll be at the Fargo PTQ held by Paradox Games at The Bowler in Fargo, ND. (And of course I invite anyone in the Fargo/Moorhead area to swing by The Bowler to say "hi!").
Anyway, I'm working on getting my MTG Paper rule skills up to where they need to be and in the meantime found a brand new sense of happiness for having MTGO handle the rules for me. Even if it's imperfect. Even if it's missing some things. Especially in the higher level events where there's a LOT of room for craziness. For example, for the PTQ items on MTGO a deck mismatch error (like shuffling in an opponent's pacifism and moving onto the next round) equals a game loss. Yeah. Oops, game loss. The list of high level game loss items isn't huge, but there are quite a few ways to get yourself on the wrong side of the judging situation in a high level paper tournament. Things that are either impossible or improbable on MTGO. Like insufficient randomization... or Unsporting Conduct - Improperly finding a winner... etc. Luckily enough they have some handy-dandy little guideline cards that help newbie judges like me because not all of the above are game/match losses at an FNM or a pre-release but would be instant problems at the higher events. MTGO simply forces everyone to play at that highest level of enforcements which I kind of prefer having seen the insanity that can happen when players play magic without consistent rules enforcement.
I think the world of Magic would be much better off if everyone hade to play a few dozen games on MTGO first before playing in paper. So many rules confusions would be stopped far earlier in each player's lifecycle this way. Granted that would be impossible but who says every good idea needs to be possible?
The other side of the coin:
Of course I know that there are two sides to the coin. MTG Paper tournaments don't randomly not add qualified people. They don't make people play with 100+ card sealed decks due to a deckbuilding error.... and forces to run that for eight rounds or something. The high level MTGO side is sadly far from perfect currently and seems to run into some issue with each big event, even though it's not *every* event that runs into an issue it's often enough to leave a distinct memory of a pattern. The crazy things, is that despite the issues I know MTGO has had, I still think that it's the better option for MTG events due to the numerous items it fixes.
Discussion Items:
Promo cards for the month announced!
Some really nice promos this month again!
Removal of formatted text:
Due to many issues the formatting of special text colors, sizes and types has been removed from the client. This has removed the ability for users to hide messages in their marketplace advertisements. Items like encoding "1286432196" in the hidden section of their text to pull in additional players who are searching for specific deals. It also no longer looks like the aftermath of a geocities page orgy... so it's got that going for it, I guess.
MED 3 off sale announced:
Fair warning! The end of Master's Edition 3 is approaching quickly!
Change to Intro Packs:
From here on out, intro packs are retired when the NEXT big set hits instead of rotating out with the store. This probably makes more sense I suppose. I don't suspect too many of these things sell after the initial set is out of the spotlight.
Change to tradable account settings:
If you have more that 2500 unique items and try to set them all to tradable or untradeable you will get an error. No news about this impending change was in the trade notes which has led to some extra frustration about this change.
February banned and restricted update:
At long last, the Tribal Classic banned list removed Unnatural Selection and Endemic Plague. These haven't been 'broken' since the Kamigawa legends changes.
Card Price Discussion:
A lot of movement of the Worldwake card, which is to be expected during the first few weeks. Sadly we're starting off right on the heels of a Pro Tour which threw the MTG Metagame on its head. Generally cards like Basilisk Collar and Stoneforge Mystic would have stayed lower a bit longer until they were shown to be high quality cards. However, thanks to PT: San Diego we have experienced an amazing surge in some of these cards well before they normally would have risen.
Knight of the Reliquary took a huge leap on the back of the new man lands and the new specialty lands that provide some solid instant speed tricks for Naya decks.
Moving lower are the M10 mythics that had more demand due to the redemption process. Without that balance ability between MTGO and MTGP there is a bit less demand for those high end mythics that fetch such a high price in paper right now. Because let's face it.. Baneslayer Angel is just as awesome as last month but she's now about 10 tix lower... due namely to redemption removal for M10 sets. I'm not sure where her balance point will be until redemption returns or how she'll react once it's back.
Card Price Graphs:
abyssal persecutor chart
raging ravine chart
celestial colonnade chart
stoneforge mystic chart
basilisk collar chart
stirring wildwood chart
knight of the reliquary chart
kalastria highborn chart
mox diamond chart
pernicious deed chart
raging ravine chart
celestial colonnade chart
stoneforge mystic chart
basilisk collar chart
stirring wildwood chart
kalastria highborn chart
abyssal persecutor chart
jwari shapeshifter chart
talus paladin chart
wolfbriar elemental chart
sorin markov chart
baneslayer angel chart
vampire nocturnus chart
time warp chart
tarmogoyf chart
engineered explosives chart
oath of druids chart
lotus cobra chart
thoughtseize chart
time warp chart
goliath sphinx chart
selective memory chart
mordant dragon chart
stone idol trap chart
terra eternal chart
archon of redemption chart
butcher of malakir chart
quest for ula's temple chart
strength of the tajuru chart
death's shadow chart
Card Price Tables:
Conclusion:
Until next week, may you open the right Jace!
21 Comments
Heya Eric Good luck with your j1. I never did go for mine. Seems like your prices are a bit off unless they were delayed a week but as per usual with new sets stuff goes up and down like a yoyo. I did not notice the "Tradable" items "feature." I am certain I would have had a small fit if I did. This is upsetting indeed.
Yeah, the graphs for Stoneforge Mystic and Basilisk Collar do not look right at all. For a couple of days both cards had spiked really high (9-11 range) due to the shortage of supply and demand created by the results from PT San Diego. Prices have now settled down a bit since enough cards have been put into the pool via draft and the initial rush to acquire chase rares is over. Probably a good time to buy actually. I think both cards will trend upwards in the long run.
The graphs for Stoneforge Mystic and Basilisk Collar look like that because they have data points taken only on Fridays. So essentially we're looking at the price of both cards before the went on sale, and after all the prerelease/release craziness settled down a bit.
is it possible for you to bring back the MTGO Daily Events calendar? i liked seeing the times for the weekend events on Friday. Thanks!
Love the column.
Best of luck in your commercial venture. I suspect that you will have less time for your electronic addictions?
I looked around, including the MTGO Traders but was not able to find very many of the cards that you quote price differences on. Granted, I was not looking 24x7 mind you, but I certainly had earmarked some of the cards that have subsequently shot up in price. My question is where do you get your pricing info, and what sort of volumes are you talking about, especially with so little time to get high volumes? You probably have answered this elsewhere, but I was not able to find it in my quick search.
Thanks for your articles (and community efforts), always a staple in my Friday schedule.
It's nice that they removed formatted text from the adds, but it would also be nice if you could enlarge the types at will while looking at the adds, because the default size is really small and pretty difficult to read, especially in yellow.
why bother posting those wildly innaccurate price charts? The "Last week" prices for all those WWK cards are completely incorrect.
not really last week those were the prices heath had posted...true the set only released last weekend but the prices were accurate according to mtgotraders.
...there's no price differentiation based on card; *all* the rares are at 1.5, and *all* the mythics are at 4. I agree; it's good to know where the prices are now, but it doesn't make sense to put these on the charts of movers when you couldn't actually buy them at those 'default' prices at any point.
I have to agree - any price point based on zero quantity is unreliable data. And such was the case for all of last week's scores.
Of course that means a chart this week would be a dot, and thus no chart at all. So it's irrelevant for the moment. But going forward it would be wrong to put 1.50 as a starting price for something that was never really sold below 5.
Only because Heath has posted prices does not mean that those are useful or accurate in any way. He often puts up arbitrary prices before a set is released just to fill the columns. Raging Raving, Stoneforge Mystic, etc. have never been 1.5 and the price chart for the Worldwake part is therefor completely of. One disadvantages of basing price charts on lists from one dealer instead of taking average buy and sell prices on classified into account.
Yeah nonsensical charts. Someone bring me back in a time machine to where you could buy Ravine's for 1.5
well technically since they only got released last friday their were no charts....so complaining about growth doesnt really matter. The prices wax and wane too drastcially on the back of release weekend plus a pro tour anyways to have any accurate data. So complaining about it is genrally pointless anyways
I would claim that ignoring cards that don't have a relevant second data point would be much better solution
than rendering 2 of the lists (% ones) completely useless and 1 nearly useless.
All I can tell from the lists is, which Worldwake cards start high priced and which are bottom of the barrel.
y'all should stop drinking the haterade.
part and parcel of how hamtastic gets his prices and makes the fabulous charts that everyone loves is based on a program (see his last article for the inside scoop). because of that method, sometimes prices might seem "wildly inaccurate" but that's expected with the massive fluctuations as a result of the prerelease weekend, followed by packs being sold at the store, then followed by premier/daily events.
i'd rather have these price charts then no price charts at all - ever. deal with it.
rainin6 out-
p.s. hamtastic = the man.
I gotta say you might be a bit off base here. Or at least coming on way too strong. I don't think a single reader on Puremtgo.com has hate for Hammy. In fact Id say he is by and large the most popular writer here (no slight to any others intended of course). So I think what this is, is just the usual grousing that goes on when things don't work as expected. No need for the rant or the chide.
if MED 3 is no longer sold how will ppl get the new dual lands and mana drains?
Obviously, by trading for them and by playing in future ME123 nix-pax events. Actually, did you know that this week (until 3/3) you can crack a new FoW in a draft? Your next chance will be 6/9 - 6/16.
Of course, that's assuming the MED drafts fire. :P Which they're currently not.
Not sure how many, but I know some did fire this weekend.
....the same way people get the old dual lands and Force of Wills perhaps?
Heh, funny that, I was just looking at the Tournament Rules and Floor Rules myself this week. I had a kind of bllalargh experience drafting at an unsanctioned store last week and I was wondering what the official rules were. The store I went to had no intention of ever becoming sanctioned, surprisingly. But now I certainly prefer sanctioned play. And yeah, MTGO rocks for all the little technical things.
Again, best wishes for you and your new B&M store! I hope it works out great for you.