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By: JXClaytor, Joshua Claytor
Sep 23 2020 9:33pm
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State of the Program for September 18th, 2020
 
In the News

Zendikar Rising:  Magic Online Edition:  You can see all the avatar options, the upgrades to the client to handle parties, and event options here for Zendikar Rising on MTGO.  You can see the patch notes for Arena here, as it also had some updates to the client. 

Modern Cube:  You might have been playing the cube for a couple of days by now, but did you know that it has been updated?  You can check out the updates here.
 

The Timeline

This is a list of things we have been promised, or we just want to see coming back. Another good source for dates and times is the calendar and the weekly blog, while the best source for known bugs is the bug blog which appears sporadically on MTGO.com. Not listed, but important: Wizards offers either one or two online MCQs each weekend, with qualifiers for limited MCQs running the days immediately prior to the MCQ.
 
Upcoming Events
Dates
Scheduled Downtimes
Unknown
Constructed Leagues End
January 27, 2021
Sealed Leagues End
January 28, 2020
Next B&R Announcement
Unknown
Ikoria Redemption Guarantee
Ends September 2nd 2020
Core Set 2021 Redemption
Starts July 22, 2020
Zendikar Rising
Fourth Quarter 2020
2018 Magic Online Championship Series and other events
Complete details, including schedule, rules, and which online events qualify you for which online or paper events is here. In addition, Wizards will be offering these special formats:

September 16 - October 7: Modern Cube
October 7 - October 14: Mystery Booster: Magic Online Edition
October 14 - October 21:  New Cube
October 21 - October 28:  Innistrad Supreme Draft
October 28 - November 4:  Triple Innistrad Draft and Commander Legends release.
November 4 - November 18:  Vintage Masters Flashback
November 18 - November 25:  Supreme Chaos Draft
Novemver 25 - December 2:  Core Set Cube
December 2 - December 9:  Chaos Draft Masters
December 9 - December 16:  Another New Cube
December 16 - December 23:  Vintage Cube Supreme
December 23 - ???:  Kaldheim Vintage Cube
 
Magic Online Format Challenges
These are high stakes events that happen every weekend. They cost 25 Tix / 250 play points, and last a number of rounds based on participation (assume 5-8), plus a single elimination Top 8. Details, including prize payouts, are here. Start times are:

TIME (PT) SATURDAY SUNDAY
12:00 a.m.   Vintage Challenge
2:00 a.m. Pauper Challenge  
4:00 a.m. Legacy Challenge Modern Challenge
6:00 a.m. Standard Challenge Pioneer Challenge
8:00 a.m. Modern Challenge Legacy Challenge
10:00 a.m. Vintage Challenge Pauper Challenge
2:00 p.m. Pioneer Challenge Standard Challenge
 
 



Cutting Edge Tech

Standard:


Modern Part 1:  Okay, so I found out that Belcher was a thing in Modern and I had to find a list to show off to you all, because that really is cutting edge, and you can read about it here.


Standard Part 2:

 


Modern Part 2:   Featuring decks with new cards in it seemed to be pretty easy when eight of those new cards are pretty powerful Mill effects. 
 
Pioneer:  You can check out a primer for this deck here.  It may be the best thing on Reddit right now. 


Standard Part 3: Yes we're going a bit hard on standard decks this week, but that is to be expected, since Standard is the most pushed format by some margin.  Here is one of Mason Clark's new ones, and make sure you check out the podcast here at PureMTGO as well! 



 
Winner's Circle

The Winner's Circle is where I will recognize winners of the past events on MTGO. 

Challenge Winners

Saturday Legacy - AlphaBlade - Lands
Saturday Modern - _Logic_ - Bant Flicker
Saturday Pauper - Leobertucci - Orzhov Metalcraft
Saturday Pioneer - Scalli323 - Esper Control
Saturday Standard -  L1X0 - Sultai Ramp
Saturday Vintage - IamActuallyLvL1

Sunday Legacy - Bryant_Cool - ANT
Sunday Modern - kanister - Humans
Sunday Pauper - cicciogire - Dimir Control
Sunday Pioneer - claudioh - Reborn Control
Sunday Standard - jankyb - Mono Green Aggro
Sunday Vintage - Fnoop

Other Event Winners

Modern Champ Qual - bomberboss - Humans
Legacy Champ Qual - Bryant_Cook - ANT

Around the Web

MTGOTraders YouTube:  Did you know that MTGOTraders.com has a YouTube page with videos added Monday, Wednesday and Friday?  Well if not, now you do, and you can find it here

Card Prices
Note: all my prices come from the fine folks at MTGOTraders.com. These are retail prices, and generally the price of the lowest priced, actively traded version. (Prices for some rare promo versions are not updated when not in stock, so I skip those.) You can get these cards at MTGOTraders.com web store, or from their bots: MTGOTradersBot(#) (they have bots 1-10), CardCaddy and CardWareHouse, or sell cards to MTGOTradersBuyBot(#) (they have buybots 1-4). I have bought cards from MTGOTraders for a decade and a half now, and have never been overcharged or disappointed.
 
In some unfortunate news, my main computer decided it no longer wanted to communicate with any displays and my secondary computer decided it no longer wanted to have power for longer than 30 seconds.  I am writing this from my mother's computer, and it does not have the tools I need on it to make the price tables. Hopefully next week after a new computer is delivered to me, I will be able to make price tables again.  I am very sorry for missing this feature this week. 

Standard Legal Sets: This table tracks the cost of a single copy of every card in each Standard legal set, plus Treasure Chests and the current booster pack. I’ll keep tracking these because they are interesting (at least to me).  This is being kept as a small tribute to Pete!

The Good Stuff
The following is a list of all the non-foil, non-promo cards on MTGO that retail for more than $25 per card. These are the big ticket items in the world of MTGO.  The list is interesting, at the least. This is interesting to me because a lot of these cards have been reprinted more than once, and they are still commanding a high price. 

The big number is the retail price of a playset (4 copies) of every card available on MTGO. Assuming you bought the least expensive versions available, the cost of owning a playset of every card on MTGO is approximately a number that I cannot figure out still. I have actually asked Pete to do this for me, because Open Office is weird, and I have no idea what I am doing, and I am pretty close to just being a dog in a labcoat.


 
In Closing

I took part in the early access event, streamed a lot, and then watched my computers not do anything. My fire stick and my Xbox also decided that they needed to give me issues as well this week so I may just move to a cave since nothing I want to do is going to work I guess. 

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