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By: Drbenwayy, Mike Savage
Dec 03 2010 3:44am
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I've been pretty consistent publishing these articles on a weekly basis but it has been a busy few weeks.  I currently have results from 11/05-11/09 but then lapsed on the final few days of the week because of school, the holidays, an illness, and my son's first wrestling tournament.  I started working on this article a few weeks ago and then didn't finish it and I didn't want to publish this with all old information so I updated the results with 4 days of results from last week and the latest Premier Events.  I will probably be moving the article to a bi weekly format for the next few weeks until the semester is over.  Lots of final exams, papers, and that sort of junk that I honestly don't even want to think about.  I can't wait to be done with it.  Lets get to Magic!

Most Boosters Won In The Last Week

I don't know if anyone has noticed but they have updated the "What's Happening" page with a new section titled " Most Packs Won In The Last Week."  This shows the players who have won the most packs on  MTGO.  There are some players that play Magic Online quite often but I wasn't aware of the scope of just how many packs a player like this could win in the average week.  I assumed somewhere in the range of 100-150 but these numbers are just off the chart.  We see that Daestrom leads the way with 452 boosters.  This equals out to almost 65 boosters won each day.  That is just a crazy amount and I wonder how many hours he's putting in the game to win that much.  That is close to 2000 dollars worth of product (at suggested retail of 3.99 a pack) and is most likely a source of income for some of these top players.  Converting the packs to tickets and then selling the tickets through ebay or another service could net them a nice chunk of income each week.  The results after him are pretty extraordinary too, with players in the high 300's to 250.  The most talented players in the world are using this service and this give you an idea of just how many strong tournament players there are on the client. 

Results

With the addition of SoM Block Constructed, we see less Standard Daily queues.  During the summer, there were up to nine Standard Daily Events each day.  We usually have around 3-5 firing each day and it seems like there are more Scars of Mirrodin Block queues available than Standard.  In actuality, the number of each are probably quite close. 

There were three Premier Events during weekend period of the 5th through the 8th which had an attendance of 47, 46 and 58 players.  Prizes are awarded to the top 8 after the swiss rounds.  

Deck Name Appearances Placing
Valakut Titan 6 1,1,7,7,8,8
Vampires 5 2,3,3,5,5
WW Quest 5 2,4,5,6,7
U/B Control 3 1,4,8
RUG 1 2
U/W Control 1 3
Red Deck Wins 1 4
Boros 1 6
Eldrazi Green 1 6

There were two Standard Premier Events from the 27th-29th, with an attendance of 45 and 55.

Deck Name Appearances Placing
Valakut Titan 5 1,2,4,5,7
Boros 3 3,4,6
U/W 3 1,5,7
U/B Control 2 6.8
WW Quest 1 3
BR Vampires 1 2
RUG 1 8

Daily Events from 11/05-11/10

Deck Appearances
 Valakut Titan  99
 U/B Control  59
 Vampires  55
 Boros  42
 Quest WW  41
 RUG  30
 U/W Control  25
 Eldrazi Green  15
Mono Black 11
 RDW  9
 Goblins  9
 Elves  6
 Pyromancer's  6
 Fauna Shaman (BUG)  3
 Other Decks 14

We see Vampires rising again this week and Mono Black dropping as the initial hype of Mimic Vat starts wearing down.  I still believe that card to be incredibly fun and strong.   Red Deck Wins has fallen off the charts the past two weeks.  The deck does poorly against the control builds and was usually fast enough to beat Valakut.  The addition of Vampires and lifegain off Kalastria Highborn, as well as other lifegain options available for most decks such as Consuming Vapors and Obstinate Baloth no doubt punishes the aggressive red.   Kalastria Highborn has risen to more than 8 tickets. Wow, never thought I'd see this. I can only think of pros such as LSV uttering constantly that "Vampires isn't a deck".  It certainly wasn't a tier one deck throughout the whole Jund Rein but the deck has had a differing amount of success in the last year. 

Daily Events 11/18,11/19, 11/24, 11/25

Deck Name Appearances
Valakut Titan 111
Quest Decks 35 Mono White, 8 WG, 9 W/U
Vampires 17 Mono Black, 26 B/R
U/W Control 41
Boros 25
RUG 15
Fauna Shaman (BUG) 10
Eldrazi Green 9
RDW 6
Goblins 4
Other Decks 20

With the newer information, we see some shifting of strategies.  Vampires has added Red for Mark of Mutiny and burn spells.  Mark of Mutiny has been a great sideboard card for RDW against decks such as Valakut and using it to steal a guy and then sacrifice him is always a powerful play.  Whenever I see this I can't help but think of Rise of the Eldrazi and M11 sealed, where this would happen quite often.  Dark Tutelage is another recent addition to the deck.  Whereas in the beginning of this recording period Mono Black Vampires was more represented, in the last two days of the recording B/R Vampires were recording many more results.  We see U/W rising as it can deal well with decks such as Vampires with Day of Judgment, Condemn, and Journey to Nowhere,  while U/B declines because of dead cards against Vampires such as Doom Blade. We can see this in the price of Frost Titan which was hovering around 15 tickets a few weeks ago and has recently dropped to around 10. 111 Results from Valakut Titan in a four day period is just astronomical.

Screenshots

Due to my lack of playing, I don't have anything to put here.   If anyone comes across an interesting screenshot they'd like to share, please e mail me at drbenwayy at gmail dot com.  Taking a screenshot is as simple as pressing the "Print" or "Print Screen" key and then going into Microsoft Paint and pasting and saving the image. 

Decks of the Week

There have been articles on some of the premium magic sites the last few weeks trying upgrade the WW Quest deck into a more competitive deck.  These authors could recognize the power behind the deck while trying to build upon its shortcomings.  If you get a perfect hand, there is little an opponent can do to do stop you.  But perfect hands don't come often.  After playing the deck, it is those times that you get a slow hand without a Quest for the Holy Relic or the lack of land in the deck that causes a high amount of mulligans.  And then there are the times where you're in a seemingly good position to have you opponent Doom Blade your newly equipped beater or Into the Roil your Quest.  The general consensus was that adding green to the deck for both Fauna Shaman and Vengevine would make it a lot stronger.  While I haven't tested this theory, on paper it seems much stronger.  Here we have another update to the list with the addition of Blue for Trinket Mage, Shared Discovery, and Unified Will.  Both of those blue spells are inexpensive, powerful, and a great fit in a deck that lays down so many guys so quickly.  Countering a critical threat or removal spell will preserve you in a game and refilling your hand with possible threats is the core of blue.  Trinket Mage can fetch you the Mox Opal in addition to your zero cost guys.  Ajani Goldmane solidifies the weenie beatdown theme without depending on the combo.

U/W Quest
Played by: Filipe_LC (3-1) Standard Daily #1783847 on 11/18/2010
Creatures
4 Glint Hawk
4 Kor Skyfisher
4 Memnite
4 Ornithopter
4 Squadron Hawk
3 Stoneforge Mystic
3 Trinket Mage
26 cards

Other Spells
3 Ajani Goldmane
2 Argentum Armor
1 Mox Opal
4 Quest for the Holy Relic
3 Shared Discovery
1 Sword of Body and Mind
14 cards
Lands
4 Glacial Fortress
12 Plains
4 Seachrome Coast
20 cards

Ajani Goldmane

 

Here's a new variety of U/W Control that Bolovo0 has taken to two top 8 finishes this past weekend. What is most apparent about this build is the lack of creatures mainboard.  None at all!  Most U/W builds over the last year have had a few different creatures in the finisher role, most notably Baneslayer Angel but there have been others such as Sphinx of Jwar Isle, Emeria Angel, and Frost Titan.  I fully expect to see Sunblast Angel become one of these creatures, as he is already a finisher in the Block Constructed. The rest of the deck features planeswalkers with 6 copies of Jace and three copies of Elspeth.  Elspeth Tirel is a card that I hadn't seen much in standard since her release a few weeks ago but I've enjoyed playing with in SoM Block.  While not nearly as powerful and loved as the first Elspeth, this new Elspeth is a fine card.  The rest of the deck is pretty standard except for the maindeck Leyline of Sanctity which is useful not only against burn but cards like Memoricide.

U/W Control
Played by Bolov0 (7th Place Standard Premier 11/29)
Creatures
0 cards

Other Spells
4 Condemn
4 Day of Judgment
4 Elspeth Tirel
3 Jace Beleren
3 Jace, the Mind Sculptor
3 Journey to Nowhere
3 Leyline of Sanctity
4 Mana Leak
4 Preordain
2 Ratchet Bomb
34 cards
Lands
4 Celestial Colonnade
4 Glacial Fortress
5 Island
1 Mystifying Maze
4 Plains
4 Seachrome Coast
4 Tectonic Edge
26 cards

Elspeth Tirel

 


Personal Magic
Did poorly in my Coalition Games this week going 0-5.  My deck is pretty horrible and playing against what seemed like Mythic Rares every round got me kind of aggravated with it.  During one game my opponent and I were deadlocked until he drew into Elspeth Tirel.  He beat me next game with the help of Lux Cannon and Molten-Tail Masticore.  Wish I could open three playable mythics in 7 packs.  Just being a jealous here .  My next round opponent beat me with Koth.  I love limited but sealed finds a way to aggravate me. I got to play in the weekend tribal and went 1-2 with Eldrazi.  My third round opponent was playing Eldrazi as well, basically a race to get one out.  He won that race both games.  I was running Cloudpost but I don't own Vesuva.  He did and could power out his Eldrazi by turn four and five. Vesuva is one of those cards that can come in handy for fun formats and I should pick up a playset sometime soon.  Got my Heirloom League Card Pool and I'm glad there is no limit on how many games are played each week.  That was one of my favorite parts of playing the old leagues, getting in as many games as I had time for.  

Most of my Magic in the last few weeks has come in the form of the Leagues.  I opened another Galvanic Blast for my Coalition League and decided to go into Red and move out of the metalcraft deck. I did well the third week going 4-1 but then didn't get any games in for the fourth and final week.  I couldn't have finished in the prizes because of the poor showing the first two weeks. For the Heirloom League, I started out quite strong, losing my first match but then winning the next eight.  Finished out the week at 13-6, which qualified me for third in the league. It's a great league to join and very low cost.  I didn't get to compete much in the second week but I hope to get in my games during the third week. Have a great week everyone!

8 Comments

Apologies on the Title which by Drbenwayy at Fri, 12/03/2010 - 04:25
Drbenwayy's picture

Apologies on the Title which should say 11/18-11/24. I spent the time to edit the article and then forget one of the most important parts :(.

Keep in mind that last week by Fragoel2 at Fri, 12/03/2010 - 04:33
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Keep in mind that last week there were the gold and standard queues that surely increased the number of packs that top players won compared to average.

Thanks for pointing this out, by Drbenwayy at Fri, 12/03/2010 - 09:45
Drbenwayy's picture

Thanks for pointing this out, I didn't even think about it. With the ability to win 5 packs in 2-20 minutes, the pack generating ability for skilled players that week is quite high. The ten ticket buy in, especially for the gold queues could have put a serious damper in some people's ticket reserve. I have that "keep going" mentality and I know I've been at the wrong end of the regular two man queues where it seems like a small fortune is gone in a few hours time if I went on a bad losing streak.

It's too bad that they didn't put a date range on the "Most Tickets Won" feature because they've updated it from yesterday with the leader winning 340 packs up until this point. I don't know if this figure refreshes itself daily/bi daily or for what specific date range it is. Still a neat thing to look at though.

Holy online gambling by Xaoslegend at Fri, 12/03/2010 - 05:12
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5

Holy online gambling Drbenwayy!,

Friggen almost 500 boosters in one week on one account =P, It's a good thing Wizards/Hasbro has enough cash to bribe government officials and keep MTGO alive lol. (I don't know the actual mechanism of this game being kept off of ole Mr. Gov's radar, but hey, not like I want the gravy train to stop, it's the limited gambling that keeps singles flowing into the secondary market =))

I've always liked asymmetrical deck builds (like creatureless decks that can board wipe) though I can't say I've liked control much for awhile.

Surely it's been great having you in the league (sorry for calling you "surely" though =P)

X-

Thanks for reading Xaos. by Drbenwayy at Fri, 12/03/2010 - 09:48
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Thanks for reading Xaos. I've been having a lot of fun in the league, even though I didn't get to play much last week. I'll make another donation to the league for the next week, I'll hit you up online when I see you.

It's a good thing the program has been off the government radar (hopefully) because if they had to do away with the current prize structures, I don't see how it could survive.

Some intersting data here. I by Paul Leicht at Fri, 12/03/2010 - 14:40
Paul Leicht's picture

Some intersting data here. I had no idea there was a most packs won display.
RE Tribal Wars Eldrazi: Yeah posts require at least 8 and 12 is probably best for Eldrazi. The alternative is to run the spawns in addition to posts. Vesuva is a big deal I guess. At $3 a pop not a cheap card to get but it could be a lot worse. I built my own Eldrazi version using Mass Polymorph and Warp World. But it is more of a fun deck than anything else.

great read! 500 boosters a by Nagarjuna at Sat, 12/04/2010 - 06:11
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5

great read!

500 boosters a week...

brandonQDSH's picture

I wonder if the Gold queues that went up over Thanksgiving had anything to do with it? Instead of the usual 2-man where you pay 2 tix with a chance to win 4 (one pack), they just quintupple? the payout so you pay 10 and the winner takes 20 (5 packs). With a healthy pile of tix and a confident player, you could earn a lot of packs.