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by Amar 32 min 25 sec ago
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by Paul Leicht 36 min 52 sec ago
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by Xaoslegend 1 hour 18 min ago
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by Doomhed 2 hours 36 min ago
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by Lythand 3 hours 24 min ago
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2 days 23 hours agoand of course the site has a 504 gateway timout now as well :/
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2 days 23 hours agoAlong with the podcast comes Lord ERman looking at Extended decks
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2 days 23 hours agoPodcast just went up tonight.
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6 days 13 hours agoand Dave Lombardo drafts m11
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6 days 13 hours agoarchgenius has a good over view of the 4 pack sealed, which seems awfully popular
I love the idea. It's basically pauper in Spirit, if not in Letter. And that's good. It's why our Sunday evening Peasant PRE has a $10 cap on card prices.
The problem of course is the logistics. It's of course very helpful to have MTGOTraders as a single definitive source, and better to over-exclude than to have ambiguity. But in theory, you could lose a card legality not only week to week but in a few hours due to outside sources. Say for example Punishing Fire just after the Grove of the Burnwillows combo took PT Hawaii. That's a rare case certainly (and the card came down again eventually) I'd hate to be in a situation where you say "that card is illegal" and they say "I just checked yesterday, it was fine!" Which is likely to happen eventually.
OTOH, pre-listing every legal card sounds like a tremendous amount of work as well. It's probably the best way to go, just awkward.
Anyway it does sound like fun and I might like to check it out myself.
Fat chance of heirloom affecting card prices. No offense but it would have to be huge for it to start really having an impact. The reason pauper does is because it is huge. I am not saying it couldn't ever happen but the likely outcome is prices may slightly fluctuate a little while people fill out gaps that they need but overall the price increases/decreases will come because of outside forces (standard cards becoming staples/losing staple status for example. .1 Rares have the most likelihood of gaining value because most of the time this is just the deflated value until people find out what the card is good for. Then it rushes up overnight and levels off somewhat higher.)
What bothers me about this format and makes it a definite no go for me is what Doomhed alluded to. The fact that the format is tied to the secondary market which is not only volatile but interpretable. (You can buy certain rares on certain bots for 50% or less of their price on traders.) Making Traders the arbiter is fine for simplicity's sake and why not? Heath deserves a bit of advertisement considering all he does for us. But I don't think it is a healthy idea. I did try it as I said before and I do think it is intriguing if painful. What I would like to see is a concrete and complete banned/restricted list that will NOT change every month much less every hour. Then you might have something. Maybe a quarterly review (about the time that the new sets come out.)
Hey Doomhed,
Thanks a lot for your perspective and for contributing to the conversation. I can obviously relate to the feeling that you know a format is awesome and that if everyone else could just see what you see that we'd have MTGO Utopia.
I understand that the idea of the most popular Heirloom cards becoming illegal immediately or at the end of each month is something that you don't like the idea of. For me it's one of the best things about Heirloom. I don't want to be playing against the same decks a year from now that I'm playing against now. I like building decks and if the main components of my decks quickly become banned I'll take that as the greatest compliment(if its because of me) and then go on to try to get the next set of cards banned(through the market). Eventually as cards have been banned long enough people will forget about them and they'll be legal for a month or two again and we'll have a constantly dynamic format.
The best thing about playing magic online to me is the playing not the conformity of ideas. When I first started playing magic it was casual and much like the wild wild west. You never knew what they'd bring and they didn't know what you had, and that made it awesome. I think sometimes people are so used to certain conventions that they can't see the value of alternative paradigms.
I don't think it's very likely that wizards will support another budget format officially unless pauper were somehow to lose 90% of it's players.
I also don't think wizards particularly cares for budget competitive formats. They like formats that promote people buying things from the MTGO store.
I think 15 point magic has a lot of merits but I don't think it occupies the same magic utility space as Heirloom does. 15 point magic is a moderately budget format vs official formats but not when compared to pauper or Heirloom. It's a singleton format which takes it into it's own realm of magic playing experience dramatically different than most constructed formats in fundamentally structural ways.
Both formats are good, but they don't compete for the same motivations people have to play them and so shouldn't try to displace one another.
Xaoslegend-
Please take this as constructive criticism-
The problem with the format you have listed is that it totally relies on the secondary market. This is why the building on a budget MTGO series is such a joke currently. They build a "budget" deck that drives up the cost of the obscure gems in it to way beyond the average budget if you don't buy them 5 minutes after the article publishes. If you picked a format like the one I suggested, you increase the odds of being able to get that format turned into something wizards could actually support with a deckbuilding option.
I could see 15 point magic being a viable format if we actually got enough people behind it. Any attempt to make a format based only on price is going to backfire. It already happened with pauper. You are going to have cards inflated in demand until they reach exactly over the format limits, then they will not sell. This is not good for a format to lose cards due to them being popular. It seems the only thing you are trying to do is stop any form of netdecking or constructive collaboration and in the same shot, have a way to complain if someone "rips off your idea" and causes your pet cards to be illegal. I don't find having my cards made illegal based on other people liking the same cards to be a fun idea. It seems kinda odd that a format being published online has the inherent ability to shut down online collaboration.
for example, the most expensive deck you could build right now with the system I described would run a few hundred, but it would not be very good. the better decks would be the obscure and the aggro/midrange.
I understand it is currently your pet format, and your writing shows you care about casual competitive formats, but this is not going to be the way to do it.
My point exactly Westane. It is ok to abbreviate after it has been identified the first time around.
Hey Doomhed,
Singleton and point systems are certianly interesting ways to go. The point system and singleton aspects help control the power level of the decks and make for a whole different play experience and that's always fun.
Xaoslegend-
we used to play a singleton format where you could have only 15 points worth of cards. rares were 3 points, uncommons 1 point and commons free. This was prior to the release of onslaught.
Do I play that bomb rare when I could run 3 uncommons instead?
I tried to resurrect the format years later and the most popular deck was blue/red with scepter, top, counterbalance, trinket mage, fire/ice, counterspell, mana leak, daze, man lands x5, brainstorm, ponder, tinker, serum visions, etc. I think it might have only had one rare, which was a platinum angel.
Hey there Lythand,
Thanks for the positive appraisal of my article. You may be right about the bold text, I may have gone a bit Bold crazy, I'll try to tone it down next time. Thanks for letting me know it bothered you.
For time issues I'd like to mention again that what Paul Leicht brought up: The mtgotraders advanced card search is amazing.
All Heirloom commons that are legal on MTGO
http://www.mtgotraders.com/store/advanced-search.php?search=1&ProductNam...
All uncommons
http://www.mtgotraders.com/store/advanced-search.php?search=1&ProductNam...
All rares
http://www.mtgotraders.com/store/advanced-search.php?search=1&ProductNam...
All mythic
http://www.mtgotraders.com/store/advanced-search.php?search=1&ProductNam...
(The advanced search will be on the top of the page for further adjustment such as by color key word set ect. Just make sure you pay attention to the caveats of the legality rules which are pretty common sense eg. Necropotence is not a mythic, it's rare. premade decks do not establish rarity)
I tried to focus on the potential expensiveness of pauper and its upward trend but I can see how I may have lost the fact that the avg competitive pauper deck is still probably about $8(maybe slightly lower) I wasn't trying to say pauper was bad I was just trying to illustrate how much cheaper this format is and to make clear the differences between the two formats to demonstrate the value of playing either one or both.
Maybe price gouging is not the correct phrase here. I meant to express my belief that wizards are well aware of pauper and that their motivation for printing exceptional commons(in premade sets/decks) that have not been released online yet previously is often an economic calculation, and one that frustrates part of the purpose of pauper.
I really hope you give the format a try. It's been so much fun playing these last few weeks for me and the more people who are involved slightly or majorly the better Heirloom will be for everyone (including me of course).
I believe I'll run the free entry Sunday tournament with tix prizes supplied by me at 12 AM Pacific standard time(in California USA). Let me know if anyone thinks that's a bad time to do it or if you plan on coming. (there will be a door prize to a random person that attends to the end that doesn't win a prize otherwise.
Xaoslegend-
No, i mean, just look at his uniform.
Red - White.
That's all.
Yes a better article than last time, I enjoyed the Legacy report.
That said, I enjoyed the report, but not so much reading it. With tournament reports especially I think good formatting is particularly important. It's easy for rounds and games and whatnot to run together, and I had to re-read a paragraph or two to find my bearings. Of course, that could just be me.
@Lythand: I agree with card abbreviations to a point. I think that after a card's been identified it's perfectly acceptable to shorthand it so long as it's not the focus of the sentence. Example, "He swung with both his 'Gofys only to meet a (Wing Shards).". Also there's some could that really just should be abbreviated after they've been identified. I can't even say Krark Clan Ironworks three times in a sentence let alone spell it! The key, I think, is to identify the card prior to shorthand'ing it. But then, that could just be me too XD
I had to go back and re-read the Mother of RUnes joke and it finally got to me. Funny.
Glad to see you used the card links this time. There are a few that are broken. That can either be due to mispelling or sometimes the auto link does not work and you have to manually link them. Some cards you did not link at all.
A suggestion. I see this not only in your article, but in articles of more experience writers. When writing about a certain "Something" try not to use abreviations for cards, or nicknames. Use the actual name. Sure experienced players know what "Goyf" is, but a new player just learning Magic and reading over articles for suggestions is not going to know that "Goyf" is Tarmogoyf or Bob is Dark Confidant. A better article then last time, keep at it.
It magnifies something that has been true since Alpha. You crack a pack and you hope to get relevant cards but your pool is so large to choose from that you are guaranteed a poor crack every now and then and more now than then if you are like me and have 0 luck. With the addition of another rarity it gets worse because now you are hoping for good cards in the 1 in 8 pack slot (which is more like 1 in 60 at the minimum) and then if not a mythic then you hope for a nonjank rare. Nonjank rares are always outnumbered. This was done deliberately by Dr. Garfield (I have this on second hand account) who felt to make the game interesting on a collectible level you needed to be able to have bad cards opened, so that your opening of something good becomes spectacular. It's a theory similar to why gambling is so popular.
Seems like an interesting format. One I may give a try. I do admit like others before me, that the time constraints to look up pricing will be a pain, but it seems like it can be a fun format. Hopefully you can get the price issues worked out. You have a tough road ahead of you.
Article wise I think you did a good job. I don't like all the bold text. I understand you were trying to exagerate your point, but I am not a fan of all the bold. A few can be ok.
Pauper being expensive, I have to disagree with. You mentioned some commons that are expensive. True, but a majority of the decks are not expensive. And even the ones that do have the mentioned cards, or others of the same price range, usually do not run a bunch of expensive commons. So if a deck that runs Crypt Rats is 10 tix, then 8 of that comes from Crypt Rats, and the remaining 54 cards fall into the remaining 2 tix of the cost. Still cost effective. I do see where your point is comming from, but an exagerating I think.
Another point I want to comment on and let me quote from the article. "For a format with it's name it has some pretty expensive singles in it. Some of this is because of natural market forces and some is straight up wizards exploitation and gouging by printing up-coming commons in preconstructed decks."
I have to disagree with the point about WoTC exploiting and price gouging. If they did price gouge, then From the Vaults: Relics would of been $100 straight from thier store. I also have a friend of mine who used to run a card store and he said that it would be illegal for them to price gouge thier stuff. Price gouging is a result of a secondary market reselling a product in high demand. WoTC is not the secondary market.
A good article overall and as I mentioned, I hope your format works out for you. It would be fun to play something different and cost effective.
Or classic and take your lumps?
Jace the mind sculptor is the planeswalker that wins games whether it is 1vs1 or ffa. I agree they should gang up on said user but it seems ffa really only works that way when the players are social enough to care. A lot of the players Ive seen seem to me to be rather shortsighted.
@Deckwizard: first off thanks for all the critiques!
P1P3 The problem I have with Knight is that there is only one common card it helps, and a 2/3 flier doesn't actually get that big a boost from +1/+1 and indestructibility. However! I think you're definitely right about this pick. If it were Cloud Crusader, Stormfront Pegasus, or Assault Griffin than that would be the pick, but Wild Griffin simply isn't strong enough to edge out the potential of the knight lord. Good call!
P1P13 I have seen Thunder Strike played as essentially a Giant Growth for fine value, but Demolish is defensible too.
P3P3 Like I said, this pick was very close and I essentially just erred on the side of caution, but Ascension does have potential to be a lot better.
P3P6 If we were discussing Vengeful Archon I would agree, but I don't think Arbiter is quite a "game-winning bomb". It is a bomb, but since it comes down so late I find my opponents will often already be in topdeck mode, so the ability doesn't actually have much of an effect. I'm gonna stick to my smaller, but way cheaper Griffin.
P3P10 True that.
P3P11 You're absolutely right, and I think if I'd had more experience with red I'd've taken and played the Strongbox too.
RE Safe Passage, I actually love that card too, but I don't think this is the deck for it. I won't be able to set up any big blow outs and I just want to pounding face, I like Safe Passage in more defensive decks mostly.
Multiplayer games are a little different when it comes to Planeswalkers. Yea they are still powerful, but they are a threat and if there are three other guys, they should be ganging up to take out the Planeswalker or the player with him on the board. Planeswalkers to me are not as powerful in Multiplayer and the only one I have had success with is Nicol Bolas, and only because the other players left him alone.
Opening a mythic is just rare is all. Then you basically spin the dice between the good mythics in the set...and the ones that are worth like 2-3 tix. They were a horrible idea, no playset of a new card should ever cost $400. Their cost reflects their rarity, and their rarity reflects your frustation. The pack-ripping game isn't rigged, it just stinks.
Absolutely. That is what EDH is and Commander should be no different. Sadly not everyone online follows that rule, but I try to make attempts to.
The way i see it, if you want to play combo oriented decks that are geared to just winning, play 100 card singleton.
It's no big deal. Everyone's interprutation is different. It goes back to the arguement of "what is casual". If you start to get a lot of flack for it, maybe consider changing it up.
And thanks for being a player of commander
I also would have done it in other way, but my question is - Pack 1 Pick 6 - why didn't you mention Terramorphic Expanse? It's really good mana fixer and I don't think that serpent is going maindeck if you have any other bear to play.
For your standard tournament, in the first 2 matches, you lost 4 games in a row and was out of contention. For 3 of those 4 losses, you gave no details other than "land flooded and lost." I mean for playing with a deck that is 27 lands and at least half of the remaining non-land spells does nothing but search for land, that is really not saying much.
"Round five vs Runeflare Trap." ... except that he did not play a single runeflare trap?
Your mother of runes comment, i remember having those conversations like 10 yrs ago, timeless joke tho, never gets old!
I do like the more descriptive parts of your article tho, just seems like some parts could use more work.
Thanks for sharing your experiences!
The below was in first place, undefeated last week till the top 8 (losing to goblins in semifinals)
Cvalenti90 (3rd Place)
Pauper Challenge #1530181 on 08/29/2010
Main Deck
60 cards
4 Forgotten Cave
16 Mountain
4 Keldon Marauders
4 Kiln Fiend
4 Chain Lightning
4 Fireblast
4 Incinerate
4 Lava Spike
4 Lightning Bolt
4 Needle Drop
4 Rift Bolt
4 Staggershock
Sideboard
3 Martyr of Ashes
4 Molten Rain
4 Searing Blaze
4 Smash to Smithereens
oops
definitely cheaper than going to the movies...
I sold a lot of my spares to MTGO Traders, got 54 TIX, and I am pretty close to playsets of all the commons, uncommons and maybe halfway on the rares. Got my second Primeval Titan too. WOOT!