A week of Legacy thoughts and interviews! Thanks to Orc_Ichor, Orc_Yawgmoth and Orc_Chaos and the other Orc's in game for letting me do this! Interview with Super_Loutron -
1) How long have you been playing MTGO?
I've played MTG since 1995, Fallen Empires. I'm 22 and from France.
2) What do you like about Online A) I like different things: First, there are a lot of possibilities of building, and we can find some top 8 with 8 different decks. Second, the cards you've bought or trade are a better investment than for Standard, because they'll keep their value. Finally, that was just "good old time of magic", with more game mechanics.
3) What would you change about Online Legacy. if anything?
A) If the online legacy will become the same format as in real life then I won't change a thing (I mean, ban list for example). I just regret that some cards are less available than irl (some are in Master's Edition only), so they cost... so much.
4) Have you ever played in a Legacy tournament, and how did you do?10:42 AM
A) Hmm, no, sorry, i cant (i wont pay 100 USD for a playset of Force of will i had bought 10 USD at the time of mirage block). I'd like to play online this format, but... Mtgo is much too polluted by the "net decking" phenomena. I mean, where there are like 20 decks that can be tier 1, too much people will just copy and paste top 8 decks of last PT/GP, and that will make this format more poor.
4a) Regarding Force of Will, what would the price need to be for you to buy them?
A) And for your question... Well, for me, that's paper. I regret the time where we were buying an unlimited dual land for 5 USD. And we were thinking that was SO expensive for ONE card (one piece of paper). So, more than 10 USD for a card, is too much (or just for moxen, alpha/beta/legends cards that are very rare).
Q) Are there any other cards that are impacting your deck building in the format?A) Yeah, cards that you can't find here because some of cards are not released yet (some extensions are not online yet) I know that legacy is not a "cheap" format, but that's a little bit hard to find a good reason to buy cards we have in real life 5 times the price we paid for them in real life. Some cards are more rare here, so more expensive.
Interview with Ayanm1 -
1) How long have you been playing MTGO?
A) I've been playing since MTGO first came out whenever that was.
2) What do you like about Online Legacy?
A) It's easy to find games, my cardshops didn't have many people playing legacy.
3) What would you change about Online Legacy?
A) I want it reverted back to 2.5, other than that nothing much.
4) Have you ever played in a Legacy tournament, and how did you do?
A) Yes, and did not make top 8.
5) Do you plan to play in an upcoming Legacy tournament?
A) Yes
6) Have you ever played Classic?
A) Yes; and since legacy came about, there's a lot less Classic going on.
6a) Do you think Classic can bounce back? Or is something drastic needed?
A)I only saw like 4 decks played often, Ad Nas, merfolk, reanimator, and oath. Absent the complete classics card list, power 9 included, its hard to see why players would pick classic over legacy. You get oath, and more consistent combos with more tutors... but its lacking the vintage feel.
7) Are you running the exact deck you wanted to run, or are you making any budget alterations?
A) I am running the deck I want to run, I have a good chunk of the staples for mtgo because I played since the beginning. But it seems the barrier to entry for new players is difficult. Force of will for 150? That's insane!
8) Do you have 4x Force of Will?
A) Yes, I drafted a set *grin*
10) Are there any other cards that are impacting your deck building in the format?
A) LED, Natural order, entomb, dual lands seem to be the main ones that are pricey. I don't see many people playing survival anymore It seems no one is running null rods in board or main as well. So i didn't really count those.
Interview with NO_1 - How long have you been playing MTGO?
A) 3 years on and off, got back into it during med 2 mostly for eternal play
2) What do you like about Online Legacy?
24/7 access to games,testing and i can win packs at 3 am.
In my boxers
3) What would you change about Online Legacy?
A) I think the price is skewing the meta, online has a lot of decks like Death and Taxes and Gobos due to the price of better decks. Like no one DnT hasn't made it in a big tourney in a long time(gp,5k
4) Have you ever played in a Legacy tournament, and how did you do?
I got top 8 on the primer with reanimator, but so far 0-2 in dailies. I blame DnT. (Death and Taxes)
4a) Interesting. Do you think DnT would be weakened if certain cards force of will were easier to get?
I think 100% that most people would love to play Natural Order/Entomb LEDS over Gobs n DnT
5) Do you plan to play in an upcoming Legacy tournament?
6) Have you ever played Classic?
Yes. I have another account under menace13. I have 1 top 8 in the challenge and a few dailies... when there were dailies of course.
7) Are you running the exact deck you wanted to run, or are you making any budget alterations?
8) Do you have 4x Force of Will?
A) Yes. I got them at 35 tickets... a long time ago.
And last but not least I decided to try my hand at the Legacy Tournament Practice room while I was in there gathering interviews... feel free to tear it apart!
Discussion Items: Changes to the UI - The latest build included some changes to the UI that appear to be further inspired by the Duels of the Planeswalkers' UI with what is allowed to be done will be highlighted as they are available. Of course, there's always frustrations when something changes that we're used to. Personally I don't mind this change at all and if I want to turn it off it's able to be disabled via the settings menu.
Requested changes to the rules of game rooms? - wilmheath has started a thread that kind of exploded this week. He has requested equal treatment in regards to either fully allowing accounts with the word "trade" in them vs the current layout of not allowing them at all. Since the current embargo is only really enforced by the players, and it allows for the typical issue of inconsistent enforcement of who is allowed to do what and when.
Card price discussions:
Force of Will topped out at 150 before sliding back to 145 this week. A five point dollar that represented less than three percent change. A three percent change that is more than the value of most cards in the system. At least it's starting to go down instead of up, up, up... but it's still ridiculously high...
As for other movers, Sovereigns of Lost Alara moved up with his inclusion in the Mythic Standard deck which abuses him with Eldrazi Conscription.
While there were some cards that lost value this week, many of them are minor decreases. I'm excited to see how Rise of the Eldrazi hits the system this next week!
Ohhh.. That explains why I could never figure it out... I have a Mac laptop that I partitioned to have a Windows side so I could play Magic. "Right" click for me = hold two fingers on the trackpad + click the button, so there's no way to do left click and right click at the same time. Thanks though.
Oh, in defense of DnT... I play it because I like all the card interactions and it fits my play style. It's not like I've tried every Legacy deck or anything, but playing that one isn't an issue of price or lack of money cards for me. It's a fun deck to play.
DnT is becoming very popular and I think part of it is accessibility, the deck isn't "budget" cheap, but compared to a lot of the decks it's not terribly expensive, not to mention it does do some crazy things and is a lot of fun to play, being like the branch between casual and competitive
and I gotta say I'm gonna disagree with the "'net decking' phenomena" I think that's an ignorant way of thinking, you see so many people complain about "net decking", but look at most of the decks even played in paper, people are always reading decklists from others and learning, not cheating, not being unimaginative, learning about those decks, sure most people don't make changes when perhaps they should, but to call "net decking" a new thing or an mtgo problem is silly because people do it with paper as well.. yes there are probably 20 t1 decks in legacy, but if you paid attention you'd see that while the winners list is heavily populated with a lot of similarities there are decks that pop up, some of which aren't even t1.. theres been rock, ASTRAL SLIDE has made a big showing, affinity, pox, gifts, sligh decks, landstill has made it's showings, charbelcher had two showings in one week, Elves, PainterStone decks, eva depths, baseruption, survival decks, mono black aggro for god's sake... and thats not even mentioning the over played ones! goblins, threshold, bant decks in many many forms, reanimator, enchantress, DnT, Counter/Thopter Top, merfolk, dredge, zoo... and I know there are more I'm missing off the top of my head, but the fact still remains anyone who thinks there isn't a diverse playing enviornment is a bit mislead, sure you may find yourself in a tourney that is half goblins, but you know what? that's going to happen from time to time in most formats where you don't get 50+ players showing up
don't take this wrong, but I think it would have been better to give some background as to who these people are you interviewed and why they were chosen, I mean I've seen NO play, but I'm not sure I know the other two and I'm sure I'm not the only one, let alone what that has to do with the orcs lol
Ouch, watery grave in ANT. My eyes are bleeding. Yet another reason not to always scoop when you think you've lost.
I think its funny that because a few people have piloted DnT successfully all of the sudden the meta online is lame. That seems almost as flawed as saying because Morgan_Coke wins with rifter the meta is flawed.
There are always certain players who take their pet decks and pound them away over and over with great results.
The online meta isn't going to mirror paper for awhile for a variaty of different reasons. And since when is a little change a bad thing. The difference in the meta sparks interest which is always good for business.
What i had meant to say was that a deck like DnT has not placed in a big event like 5k or GP in the last year, with the sole exception of one list in a 5k at 14th place. Goblins are capable, however they rarely take 1st and do not have a large top 8 penetration to number of times played ratio.
The meta is a budget kid's cheese bus meta./wrists
DnT is in 2nd place behind Goblins online. Did you think i just shoot shit out my ass impin? And c'mon really Morgan..He is the only person in theeee world no Universe who plays Slide, so it is only 1 Morgan/slide in a meta at once(oh and the dude has a 60% win%)
Sorry about my spelling, I am a slightly better Magic player than speller(isn't saying much i know)
I hope you shoot crap outta your butt. I am pretty sure there is a book out there called Everyone Poops.
No seriously, I wasn't targeting my comment directly at you but more less in general. Saying the cost of online cards is keeping people from playing certain decks isn't any different than saying price of paper cards keep people from playing certain decks. It happens in both areas.
Personally, I like the fact that Death and Taxes is viable, gives us variety and allows for a competitive cheaper entry for some people.
And I disagree that 100% of people would rather play natural order/LED and entomb. It is probably more like 97.3%
I agree not everyone's play style is so much along the lines of such high end decks, given unlimited budget I would still choose not to run a deck with FoW
Fow is a tricky card but the sort of tricky I like. Given 4 Id definitely run them in the right deck. On the other hand they do NOT fit in every deck. Far from it.
wouldn't it be practically impossible to get the online meta to mirror paper? WotC, if it eventually releases every card or just about every card, is not going to limit itself to the actual number of paper copies in circulation of scarce cards from the first few years of Magic
For example: If WotC prints Black Lotus on MTGO, why would they leave all the money to be made by the secondary market by only printing as many online as were printed in paper?
Or maybe I'm crazy to assume that the online print runs of some cards from pre-Ice Age (when I originally started) are not exceeding the actual number of paper copies in circulation ...
I really do seem to recall WotC claiming that MTGO was going to be its own entity and be an Invasion-block forward game - then I came back after 5 years away to discovered that most of the cards I remember from back in the day are online now.
What does the print run of paper have to do with MTGO? There is no redemption on old sets. So there is no actual print run online.. I mean if i went to the online store with 10 million dollars they arent gonna say hey we only can take 5.
Are the people you interviewed just a random bunch who happened to be in the room, or do they have some sort of claim to fame? Why do their opinions matter? This *really* needed to be in the article.
super_lourton: I know that legacy is not a "cheap" format, but that's a little bit hard to find a good reason to buy cards we have in real life 5 times the price we paid for them in real life. Some cards are more rare here, so more expensive.
I love that quote. It just goes to show that no one who complains Bout prices really pays attention to them. Sure force of will may be more expensive but you are getting a HUGE discount on dual lands and many many other cards. Also just play one of many decks without FoW.
With respect to legacy, I've found FoW to be no where near as required as in classic, or in vintage. Take a look at the top decks, and I'd dare say half of the winners aren't running FoW. So to say that the lack of FoW is keeping you out of the format seems silly.
21 Comments
How do you zoom in on the cards like you do in your video?
right + left click on the card and hold.
Ohhh.. That explains why I could never figure it out... I have a Mac laptop that I partitioned to have a Windows side so I could play Magic. "Right" click for me = hold two fingers on the trackpad + click the button, so there's no way to do left click and right click at the same time. Thanks though.
You can also use the mouse wheel click, but I'm not sure if that works on Mac with a partition... should.
Get yourself a real mouse. My #1 complaint about Macs is the unibutton. Quit being stubborn Jobs, just add it.
this hasn't worked for me for the past 2 months (it always used to)... I've been trying to figure out what happened for quite some time...
I have almost gotten used to hitting ctrl-Shift which is the other way of card zooming :)
Oh, in defense of DnT... I play it because I like all the card interactions and it fits my play style. It's not like I've tried every Legacy deck or anything, but playing that one isn't an issue of price or lack of money cards for me. It's a fun deck to play.
DnT is becoming very popular and I think part of it is accessibility, the deck isn't "budget" cheap, but compared to a lot of the decks it's not terribly expensive, not to mention it does do some crazy things and is a lot of fun to play, being like the branch between casual and competitive
and I gotta say I'm gonna disagree with the "'net decking' phenomena" I think that's an ignorant way of thinking, you see so many people complain about "net decking", but look at most of the decks even played in paper, people are always reading decklists from others and learning, not cheating, not being unimaginative, learning about those decks, sure most people don't make changes when perhaps they should, but to call "net decking" a new thing or an mtgo problem is silly because people do it with paper as well.. yes there are probably 20 t1 decks in legacy, but if you paid attention you'd see that while the winners list is heavily populated with a lot of similarities there are decks that pop up, some of which aren't even t1.. theres been rock, ASTRAL SLIDE has made a big showing, affinity, pox, gifts, sligh decks, landstill has made it's showings, charbelcher had two showings in one week, Elves, PainterStone decks, eva depths, baseruption, survival decks, mono black aggro for god's sake... and thats not even mentioning the over played ones! goblins, threshold, bant decks in many many forms, reanimator, enchantress, DnT, Counter/Thopter Top, merfolk, dredge, zoo... and I know there are more I'm missing off the top of my head, but the fact still remains anyone who thinks there isn't a diverse playing enviornment is a bit mislead, sure you may find yourself in a tourney that is half goblins, but you know what? that's going to happen from time to time in most formats where you don't get 50+ players showing up
don't take this wrong, but I think it would have been better to give some background as to who these people are you interviewed and why they were chosen, I mean I've seen NO play, but I'm not sure I know the other two and I'm sure I'm not the only one, let alone what that has to do with the orcs lol
Ouch, watery grave in ANT. My eyes are bleeding. Yet another reason not to always scoop when you think you've lost.
I think its funny that because a few people have piloted DnT successfully all of the sudden the meta online is lame. That seems almost as flawed as saying because Morgan_Coke wins with rifter the meta is flawed.
There are always certain players who take their pet decks and pound them away over and over with great results.
The online meta isn't going to mirror paper for awhile for a variaty of different reasons. And since when is a little change a bad thing. The difference in the meta sparks interest which is always good for business.
Nice article as usual.
What i had meant to say was that a deck like DnT has not placed in a big event like 5k or GP in the last year, with the sole exception of one list in a 5k at 14th place. Goblins are capable, however they rarely take 1st and do not have a large top 8 penetration to number of times played ratio.
The meta is a budget kid's cheese bus meta./wrists
DnT is in 2nd place behind Goblins online. Did you think i just shoot shit out my ass impin? And c'mon really Morgan..He is the only person in theeee world no Universe who plays Slide, so it is only 1 Morgan/slide in a meta at once(oh and the dude has a 60% win%)
Sorry about my spelling, I am a slightly better Magic player than speller(isn't saying much i know)
I hope you shoot crap outta your butt. I am pretty sure there is a book out there called Everyone Poops.
No seriously, I wasn't targeting my comment directly at you but more less in general. Saying the cost of online cards is keeping people from playing certain decks isn't any different than saying price of paper cards keep people from playing certain decks. It happens in both areas.
Personally, I like the fact that Death and Taxes is viable, gives us variety and allows for a competitive cheaper entry for some people.
And I disagree that 100% of people would rather play natural order/LED and entomb. It is probably more like 97.3%
I agree not everyone's play style is so much along the lines of such high end decks, given unlimited budget I would still choose not to run a deck with FoW
Fow is a tricky card but the sort of tricky I like. Given 4 Id definitely run them in the right deck. On the other hand they do NOT fit in every deck. Far from it.
wouldn't it be practically impossible to get the online meta to mirror paper? WotC, if it eventually releases every card or just about every card, is not going to limit itself to the actual number of paper copies in circulation of scarce cards from the first few years of Magic
For example: If WotC prints Black Lotus on MTGO, why would they leave all the money to be made by the secondary market by only printing as many online as were printed in paper?
Or maybe I'm crazy to assume that the online print runs of some cards from pre-Ice Age (when I originally started) are not exceeding the actual number of paper copies in circulation ...
I really do seem to recall WotC claiming that MTGO was going to be its own entity and be an Invasion-block forward game - then I came back after 5 years away to discovered that most of the cards I remember from back in the day are online now.
In the words of the mighty DL Buh wha????
What does the print run of paper have to do with MTGO? There is no redemption on old sets. So there is no actual print run online.. I mean if i went to the online store with 10 million dollars they arent gonna say hey we only can take 5.
Are the people you interviewed just a random bunch who happened to be in the room, or do they have some sort of claim to fame? Why do their opinions matter? This *really* needed to be in the article.
Yea I was curious about that as well. I do know of menace, he has been around awhile.
My friend, if you use parallels the shortcut for zooming in is to hold control and shift, and then press the function key :)
...does anyone know the reason for Goblin Bomb's price increase? Does the new set have a combo for it or something?
super_lourton: I know that legacy is not a "cheap" format, but that's a little bit hard to find a good reason to buy cards we have in real life 5 times the price we paid for them in real life. Some cards are more rare here, so more expensive.
I love that quote. It just goes to show that no one who complains Bout prices really pays attention to them. Sure force of will may be more expensive but you are getting a HUGE discount on dual lands and many many other cards. Also just play one of many decks without FoW.
With respect to legacy, I've found FoW to be no where near as required as in classic, or in vintage. Take a look at the top decks, and I'd dare say half of the winners aren't running FoW. So to say that the lack of FoW is keeping you out of the format seems silly.
Well, mtgotraders now has prices up for ROE. Let the madness begin...