*Unfortunately with my wife sleeping upstairs and my schedule becoming very busy now I wasn't able to record the podcast this week, sorry to those that enjoy it, leave a message in the comments if this was a big negative on the article for you and I'll take account of that for next article.*
Pretty awesome banner huh? Great job on that Paul Leicht/Winter.Wolf
Season Finals announcement: Just before the first major revision of the Heirloom Legal Card list I will hold a season finals for these first few months of Heirloom. At that event I will give away twice the number of tix I have been giving out to finalists (so 12 tix to first 8 to second and 4 to 3rd and 4rth) and in addition everything I collect from donors from this point till then will go to the Season finals prizes and participation awards above and beyond my personal sponsorship (the exact distribution mechanism will be decided as we get there) As will always be the case this event will be open to anyone with an Heirloom legal deck and free to play in.
Contest announcement: Email me your Heirloom cartoons, pictures, videos etc and If I like them I'll put them in my articles. You can also win and get your content featured in my articles if you post new threads in various places, your own articles here or in other places, create resources for Heirloom players such as the excel list Neonwhite produced etc. Up to one Winner per week if I get decent submissions. I'll post all the stuff I like and the winner will get 3 tix from me.
We had two resources developed by players recently. Many of you may have already seen them but they are: An excel list of the Heirloom Legal Card List that is super useful for those that are at all proficient with excel, and a quick and efficient program for searching cards by name with card image when a name is selected, building decks, exporting decklists in forum friendly terms.
*With both these resources remember that the Heirloom Legal Card List is the absolute arbiter of legality in Heirloom, and it should be checked before any event to ensure the legality of your deck, there has been some unfortunate confusion of this at events and no one likes to work on something only to find that it's not legal in the event they just joined with it. (Mtgotrader's current prices do not hold any sway at all for card legality either)*
The excel list was developed by Neonwhite without any prompting. He's just a guy who likes Heirloom and wanted to make it easier for all of us to play successfully. Here's a screenshot of it working and a link to download it:
The Heirloom deck builder program was built by a fellow from New Zealand with the handle 'Rincewind' that hangs out in this forum. As far as I know he isn't even online yet but took a good deal of his time to support the pet format of an enthusiastic poster on his forums. Here's a screenshot and a link to download it:
Salutations citizens,
So is Heirloom a spike fest yet? Well the answer to that in my humble opinion is certainly still no. The players at our events have not yet resorted to netdecking the best decks from the week before or any other play patterns I'd really call all that spikey. Do I think players are getting more competitive and tuned in their challenges for victory? Sure. People are definitely getting better at Heirloom. As far as losing an initial casual quality the format had I don't really agree with that. So long as any deck in the format costs as little as these do I think that means it remains casual, or at least a different kind of spike than we are used to thinking about.
You don't have to be heavily invested in MTGO to play the format successfully. You only have to be barely invested. Are the players that test more, play more and have more skill and experience at magic going to do better consistently than those who don't? Yes. Absolutely. And they should. Skill and preparation should be rewarded.
That being said Heirloom is intended to be a big tent. It's a rule set that can overlay on top of most formats already being played. I fully expect to see and intend someday to more actively promote more applications of the essential price based legality. For example Heirloom Standard, Heirloom Highlander, Heirloom Casual, Heirloom EDH, and Heirloom Limited(yes with a little work this could easily be possible). Right now of course the focus of Heirloom is Heirloom Classic and events are certainly very competitive. Of course the events are still free and as they are swiss if you bring what you consider to be a well built "fun" deck it's not like you can't have a great time doing that as well.
Maybe I'm old school, a relic of ages gone by, an old rusty heirloom, but I believe in the value of a challenge. That by good, honest competition we become stronger personally and communally. Sometimes distributing reward evenly or randomly is fun, and a good thing but I do not subscribe to the notion that we should make all competition that is inexpensive silly fun. If I want to be my best I have to ask my opponent not to pull his punches, not to diminish our encounter with superficial imitations of contest. I want to know what I'm capable of and become capable of more and to do that requires true exertion that comes from hard fought victories and hard fought losses. It also requires that I not take it personally when I lose. That I don't let my self consciousness turn into resentment toward the person who just happens to be getting the better of a current struggle, that I don't let myself turn that disappointment inward to the self destruction of depression and anger. Heirloom is a forgiving arena. You won't die here if you lose, you won't become broke. You have all the time in the world to improve. The only thing that can get hurt are egos, and those among MTG players can probably use more strengthening than anything else anyway.
In this article I'm going to review the fifth Heirloom player run event. We had fourteen players in this event and so it was a four round affair to determine an absolute winner.
1st got taken by Bliven731 his win was with one of two Pestermite/Splinter Twin decks in the event(the first of our five events we've seen the combo at all I believe). There were some pretty amazing games for him to catch the event win there, awesome play Bliven.
"I'm running my survival vengevine deck, hope it's legal"
"Sideboard was pretty bad, only used confound and lightning bolt, had no idea what meta would be."
Link to buy the deck or download file: HereLink to deck statistics and sample hand generator: Here
mrjebus27(Don't-Mess-with-the-Jebus) and Kelgate tied for 2nd
Kelgate ran his black red discard deck with a small tweak from last time
"I used a similar decklist to my old B/R discard deck, but decided upon a few tweeks to see how it does against the meta. I went 3-1 once more with the deck so I must say it has been performing well as of late. A lot of close games, and a few squeekers along the way... I really do like this deck, and hope anyone that plays this deck or tweeks it can have similar success! Also if you find any tweaks that work better just let me know so I can improve as well"
Link to buy the deck or download file: HereLink to deck statistics and sample hand generator: Here
mrjebus ran a very well tuned mono-blue skies/tempo deck,
"Good against combo and control. Lost to an odd aggro rouge deck. Still can handle aggro very well I think with the sphinx as a big blocker and the bursts sided in to help. Changing SB around could help against aggro, not sure how I'm going to change it yet."
Link to buy the deck or download file: HereLink to deck statistics and sample hand generator: Here
All and all the top three prizes were taken by totally different deck types, one was pure combo, the next a tempo beatdown deck the last a discard deck that went for discard synergies for a very effective line of attack. The rest of the contenders all got participation awards.
Nagarjuna *HG-Thuh-Nagarjuna* played an affinity deck that would come at you fast and hard with the evasion to go the distance.
"Another amazing event with great decks, players...Mana Srew, Artifact Srew and some good decks/players gave me a strong competition here!"
Link to buy the deck or download file: HereLink to deck statistics and sample hand generator: Here
Winter.wolf, our banner artist also brough a variation on the Pestermite/Splinter combo.
"nice deck Olaw, very nasty theme lol"
"Put this together 20mins before the event. Was meh (2-2) though round 4 seemed like a squeaker...made several key errors in the 3rd game of that match."
HornedFish dropped out of the event early but came packing with his Crypt of Agadeem deck once again, some tweaks here from the last go around for sure
Stinkweed of Agadeem
I didn't get a complete decklist so I'm just listing cards I saw in the deck
SekKuar Deathkeeper *HG-Sek-you-up-Deathkeeper* brought his own infinite combo in the form of Hellkite Charger + Bear Umbra. Can't say I haven't lost practice games to it's realization.
Hellkite Umbra
I didn't get a complete decklist so I'm just listing cards I saw in the deck
I can't seem to find any record of Lozarian's or olaw's decks. Oh well, next time.
I wish I had time right now to narrate these but they're probably more enjoyable with some good tunes anyway. Here is the raw video capture of the event in chronological order.
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Thanks to all of you guys that have been supporting the format and making it grow so quickly. It's hard to believe we started only about two months ago. Good luck at the next event, hang out in the Heirloom channel so that new and veteran people can find people to play against and/or chat with, keep building, keep enjoying life.
For the contest I just noticed I didn't leave an address to email me submissions. My email name is "Xaoslegend" and the location is "@gmail.com", combine the two and you can email me. (I don't like to post my email in a form that programs can record automatically for spamming purposes).
Good luck trying to win the contest, I will give out 3 tix to someone so long as something even mildly acceptable as a submission comes in, I could decide to give out more depending on the quality of things of course! Invictus! (terrible movie, good story)
Thx for this detailed midseason report, i take it as that.
Taking the whole game more like a casual thing - surely i want to win my games- i only get angry for myself if i play bad. If an opponents kicks my a** even if i tested and tweaked my deck a lot, i learn to get better there and get a feeling for the power level of the format and my decks. If i like to play a casual build, i can ignore the power level and have fun with “flip a coin” or stuff like that!
Even if the metagame changes a lot, i think the event is moving to more competition, what is good to me, so after a while we can establish a casual event beside this one ;-)
Heirloom Limited:
I love limited because of the same reasons i like heirloom: Making more cards useful.
A few weeks ago the idea of a Heirloom-Limited format came up to me too. Maybe the host of an draft or sealed event could "trade" a limited pool to the players. Generating a card pool by the community on an extra account for that. Complaining about the randomness of the stuff provided guaranteed:-(
I would really like to try a limited format!
@Paul: amazing Banners u create! Thx for tuning the eye-catcher here :-)
Certianly a casual focused event at some point is not out of the question. I think you're right to some extent that it is becoming more competitive, but still a bit of a jumble. Nothing has really settled yet and no two events have looked at all like one another so far. We'll have to see if tribal dominates this event again or if people adjust and it gets hated out. I suppose we'll see.
A limited version would work in this way I imagine. Whoever were to run the event would set up the pack pool on a draft simulator off the site, then everyone would draft and the person running the event would give people their cards to play having bought all the cards while the players were drafting. It would take a bit more effort than a constructed event but certianly still feasible. Clearly drafting an Heirloom version of the current set would be enjoyable for a lot of people.
I've looked into PRE drafting from a Cube point of view and think it would be a very painful process with picking cards and passing the booster along etc.
Leagues on the other hand are easy to do, pack generation is very easy to sort out as I do this for the Coalition League and it could easily be adapted for Heirloom packs.
You could do a sealed event in a similar way as well, infact this may be better for you as the packs could be generated before an event so every one has time to buy the cards they are missing.
If you are interested in this let me know all I need to generate packs for a sealed Heirloom pool is your list of cards with rarities in an excel spreadsheet then I can work out the pack structure from there.
I like the idea of starting with sealed even though draft is my truer passion, with draft we'd have to have a program other than mtgo then import decklists in, so obviously that would be a bit of a hassle.
The proportion of mythics to other rarities would have to be decreased I think since there are so few mythics in Heirloom (like 15) and including too many in the sealed pools seems a little repetitive with them being the same card all the time. If they were just counted as rare they would probably show up uncommonly enough to make sense.
I'll try to figure out a day we can run that event and we can go from there, question is do we do SOM block, Standard sealed, classic ect? given enough warning people can let us know what their opinion of included sets aught to be(I'm thinking either block, standard, or classic as the three choices).
I think your pool for Block is a bit small, I just had a look at Shards of Alara block and in the spreadsheet there are only 104 cards. I think Std or Extended sounds best. Classic is a possibility or Legacy but would require quite a bit of work as the spreadsheet is not very user friendly for what I need as the set and rarity are in the same column.
It's all possible though just let me know what you want to do and I'll build the pool ready for deck generation.
I'll change the rarity of Mythics to rare and see how it goes.
Once you decide on your format any players wanting their booster contents can just pm me via the wizards forum (same name ((with Heirloom in the subject)) and I'll send them back their pack contents.
Why don't we go for standard first then, keep the mechanics involved a little lower and use cards that are familiar to more people? (seems like there should be more than 104 cards from shards legal though, a quick advanced search shows that just in reborn there are more than 175 that would be legal if their legality were set right now and I don't think prices have changes that much that systemically to go from more than 500 in the block to only 104)
So this would be like an Heirloom limited league then right? you can play it whenever you find an opponent? how does that usually work? Details to be worked out before execution to be sure, but I like the idea of an anytime league that lets people play during the week between constructed events.
Since there seems to be an issue using the excel list for this I suppose some other solution may have to be crafted, let me know what more you'll need from me to get that working and what you think about the mechanics of a league.
Actually I think this is a perfect next step for Heirloom, first the constructed event now the limited league.
*we'll certianly have to keep track of who has what in their pool of course right?
Ya with a flipper from hands, we can do.. wait I got something wrong there, oh well I'll figure it out later.
As always your enthusiasm and participation are great, maybe you could start promoting it soon once we get the particulars down as well, (website posts ect)
I was thinking more of a sealed event to start things off with that way you can run it as an alternative event one week.
You cant really do a league unless you have a large player base ie 30 players minimum. I'm not sure how many you have for your events.
I think a sealed event is the best option to start with as it wouldn't change peoples schedule.
I use a thread in the wizards forum that players have to post their pack contents in and this can be used in the same way for sealed and it makes it easier for you to use the info for articles etc.
Well we had 19 at the last event and as far as I can tell it's continuing to grow, and of course most players only attend half of events so without a specific time I could easily see more people for this.
Without having to have a single time to play the events, instead having people find each other (in the heirloom channel or buddy list) each week to play whenever they can (I'm thinking 1 match per player pair per week with ranking based on most total match wins (not win % since then you could just stop at some arbitrary minimum if you liked your score, and gives people incentive to keep trying to find new opponents, not sure if this is how yours works but that sounds like a natural system)
I would be hesitant to cut a week from the constructed schedule and I just think a league format fills in the gaps of player interest. (since we have a scheduled event this is then a non-scheduled event, and since we have constructed this then is limited)
I like the idea of people posting their league pool since then opponents can check for any fudging of the rules.
Maybe weekly additions of a new pack to each player's pool starting at 6 packs worth? And then new players can just get caught up on packs if they join mid-season. Have a weekly award and a monthly champ then start over each month.
A few points to note in my league I do a maximum of five games each week, although this dosent seem much it is when you consider the time zones your player base is spread across.
I will say that running a league is a lot of work on the hosts part and running them back to back does seem like a good idea in theory but would put a lot of pressure on the host. This is why I run mine every other month, but if you are keen to do it and have the time then go for it.
All the details of how I run my leagues can be found here or in my article this week.
I don't think I'll start it this week or anything but I'm looking at it as something to start working toward soon enough.
Maybe I'll be able to find some additional personnel to help me on this one.
Come to think of it I do have separate lists for the four rarities and if I use the list randomizer from this one website I can probably generate random packs pretty easily for classic at least since all i have to do is each rarity on it's own randomize the entire list and take the top x slots the rarity would normally get.(parsing out other sets/formats will be more of a headache)
Looks like my first Heirloom event will be next weekend! Very excited. Might even see if I can't get the deck together tonight and see if anyone is available for testing. I fancy doing an more controlly variant of Thuh's Affinity build perhaps splashing black for removal. When does SOM enter the legality list? Memnite seems an obvious inclusion and there are a few other metalcraft cards worth thinking about.
It's always great to see what someone brings to their first HeirloomPRE. A few times already that person has also won the event including the last event with goblins. I played vs a pretty strong blue black teachings deck yesterday that showed that blue black control can be very effective.
The first SOM card only minor revision will be up between the 24th-26th (I have 12 hours clinical on the 25th so it may not get posted that night as I fall asleep afterward exhausted) It will be legal for the next event after this next one so it's looking like the 31st event which I'll need to get someone to run that one for me since my wife is scheduled for c-section the day before and I have clinical that day and even if I moved it to Sunday it would probably still be a bit too tough for me to find the time for
Played a few games last night with my Affinity Control list vs the lovely Redman's Rift Cycle list. Very close match up it would appear but I have a lot of dead cards against him such as Shield Sphere and Cancel and we were playing without sideboards. Also played a few games in the Casual room. I was shocked at what some people consider to be a 'Casual' deck. Tezzeret / Academy Ruins / Tolerian Academy / recursion good stuff.dec? Really? Very frustrating.
Some interesting deck building choices - Courier's Capsule vs Compulsive Research being one of the key ones. Obviously Research is the 'better' card but Capsule is so much more synergistic in the deck.
My favorite card draw spell in affinity control is Vedalken Archmage and plenty of zero cc artifacts heh (I wouldn't be so thrilled about shield sphere int he maindeck without him).
to me Vedalken Archmage was a little slow, holding your 0 drops until he hits the board AND he is the target for every removal spell as well. But if he is on, its a really solid drawengine here.
I think you have to be fairly dedicated to him, but if you are he's great, but I'm not such a fan of running him as a random extra "good with artifacts" guy. and you want like 20 zero and 1 cc artifacts for him to be worth it.
Be interesting as always to see what you concoct. The next event will be on Sunday since we've had the two Saturday events in the cycle the last two events so that will be 10/24/10 and 11AM pacific standard time as usual(LA,CA,USA)
I do beleive Olaw was my round 1 opponent and as such I can attest that his deck ran the following:
4x Stone Rain 4x Pillage SB: Boil. I don't remember the rest off hand as the land destruction theme was very much the central one. I was actually impressed that he played it with gusto as most LD decks to my mind seem to slack off ...his kept going long after I expected it to just die out. Had to burn him out both games. One game saw me with multiple Mogg War Marshal's Splinter Twinned which was fairly funny. You take the hands you are dealt.
Round 2 vs Discard + strange stuff with Necroplasm was even more of a blue.
Round 3 I played vs Mr Jebus's mono blue control and all I know is he countered everything.
Round 4 I played vs the Abyssal Inquiry deck by Kelgate and was just discarded to death. Key mistakes in both later matches kept me out of the Winning circle imho.
@Thuh thanks bro. :) If you or anyone else wants one just message me in game and we can negotiate price and how you want it.
@Xaos I need to get my schedule into sync with this event. Is at all possible the time could be pushed to say 4pm? I love the tribal apoc event and when I have the time I try to play that as do many of my friends. That usually start starts around 1pm and ends before 3pm. If not I will keep trying to make it.
I recalled someone running a lando deck, wasn't sure who though.
I'm afraid for the moment moving the time of the event back would make it impossible for a lot of European players to participate in the event. I chose the 11AM time to try to include as many MTGO players from around the world as possible. I would certianly like to see events run at different times and days in the future but for now I think this is the way we have to halve the infant format. Sorry man.
We hope to see you as often as we can, but understand the conflict with other PREs and whatnot.
Amatlamittha here. You spelled my name wrong, but it's OK; we can still be best friends.
Decklist was just GW weenies: Twinblade Slasher, Loam Lion, Anurid Brushhopper, Tolsimir Wolfblood, Mycoid Shepherd, Shield of the Oversoul, etc... Too bad I had to drop without resolving the game's only Frog Beast at least once. :[
Ah sorry about that, I forgot that the list I worked from for the article had your name misspelled, I'm always forgetting what I already know. I'm glad we can still be best friends...
Ya I was looking for video of you playing but just didn't see much, I suppose I should have remembered the Tolsimir negotiating in any case.
i am realy competative by nature and lol i did go get the best decks form previous weeks i just didnt think any of them were better than gobs i gues tbh thats kinda untrue i just pick things on a whim moments before i play i figure i should win withmost things :P unless the contest involves grammar/typing i guess anyway still lts of fun i might miss on sunday which will make me sad but i will tr and make it even tho i am sure i will lose all rounds(i am not a very good player)
So I want to make sure, the excel sheet that was made for Hierloom is the legal list, not the prices on MTGO Traders? Also, the second app, I want to confirm it only has Hielroom cards in it as well.
The excel list is almost complete, but I believe it's missing two cards atm. The list at that address is the definitive list, no matter what the state of any other Heirloom resource or MTGOtraders prices is that list in that thread is absolute and definitive.
The second app I believe has all or might be missing one card. (the recent revision changes to the legal card list are at the end of the preface to the list in the thread) but everything in it is legal atm unless somehow something slipped past my review of it, but I'm fairly sure it's all good.
If an emergency banning is needed (the protocol for that is if a card reaches 5x the cap value between revisions of the list it can be instabanned) the card that is banned as an emergency will still be legal for the next event and only illigal afterward. So again the list at that link is the absolute argbiter and if your cards are on the list you're completely gtg.
The war effort has been bolstered by Robsonsmith aka Salsa Master with a donation of 3 promo spells 17 promo lands 1 promo guru land, and 5 foil promo lands.
i want that guru land if its the on with he eye in it looks like i have to try hard this time, sigh. guess i might have to lose some sleep and make the event so noone steals it away imean not that i will win or anything but i might getit as a dor prize who knows. but you never know i could get lucky twice
I'll be happy to receive any donations, it's always a good reminder of how much people like the format and the events and helps incentivize continued Heirloom prosperity.
The guru lands are the ones with the different phases of the moon on them. I've always liked them myself.
I'm going to include the non-foil card donations in with the the foil choices so as long as someone doesn't take it ahead of you it's all yours.
Might as well see if you can strike lightning twice, the question is: is the rule that lighting doesn't strike in the same place twice true (ie for the same deck?) or a myth?
I'd like to have a more robust site of course at some point and when time allows it's one of many things I'd like to ensure happens(not like anyone needs my permission to make one... lol, Heirloom belongs to us everyone after all),
There is the link hub on an Heirloom blog atm though which has all the links posted so that does serve the utility of an easy location where all the links are.
who says i would use the same deck i mean it doesnt seem to work what wins one week in this seems to almost be in last place the next week. but either way i guess if it comes down to skill and no luck i am at a huge disadvantage.:P
I wasn't suggesting that you would run the same deck only querying whether you would be successful doing so or more likely to succeed with something fresh. I think either approach has it's merits.
39 Comments
For the contest I just noticed I didn't leave an address to email me submissions. My email name is "Xaoslegend" and the location is "@gmail.com", combine the two and you can email me. (I don't like to post my email in a form that programs can record automatically for spamming purposes).
Good luck trying to win the contest, I will give out 3 tix to someone so long as something even mildly acceptable as a submission comes in, I could decide to give out more depending on the quality of things of course! Invictus! (terrible movie, good story)
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Hey Xaos!
Thx for this detailed midseason report, i take it as that.
Taking the whole game more like a casual thing - surely i want to win my games- i only get angry for myself if i play bad. If an opponents kicks my a** even if i tested and tweaked my deck a lot, i learn to get better there and get a feeling for the power level of the format and my decks. If i like to play a casual build, i can ignore the power level and have fun with “flip a coin” or stuff like that!
Even if the metagame changes a lot, i think the event is moving to more competition, what is good to me, so after a while we can establish a casual event beside this one ;-)
Heirloom Limited:
I love limited because of the same reasons i like heirloom: Making more cards useful.
A few weeks ago the idea of a Heirloom-Limited format came up to me too. Maybe the host of an draft or sealed event could "trade" a limited pool to the players. Generating a card pool by the community on an extra account for that. Complaining about the randomness of the stuff provided guaranteed:-(
I would really like to try a limited format!
@Paul: amazing Banners u create! Thx for tuning the eye-catcher here :-)
Thx guys
Thuh-Nagarjuna,
Certianly a casual focused event at some point is not out of the question. I think you're right to some extent that it is becoming more competitive, but still a bit of a jumble. Nothing has really settled yet and no two events have looked at all like one another so far. We'll have to see if tribal dominates this event again or if people adjust and it gets hated out. I suppose we'll see.
A limited version would work in this way I imagine. Whoever were to run the event would set up the pack pool on a draft simulator off the site, then everyone would draft and the person running the event would give people their cards to play having bought all the cards while the players were drafting. It would take a bit more effort than a constructed event but certianly still feasible. Clearly drafting an Heirloom version of the current set would be enjoyable for a lot of people.
Yeah the banner came together nicely.
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I've looked into PRE drafting from a Cube point of view and think it would be a very painful process with picking cards and passing the booster along etc.
Leagues on the other hand are easy to do, pack generation is very easy to sort out as I do this for the Coalition League and it could easily be adapted for Heirloom packs.
You could do a sealed event in a similar way as well, infact this may be better for you as the packs could be generated before an event so every one has time to buy the cards they are missing.
If you are interested in this let me know all I need to generate packs for a sealed Heirloom pool is your list of cards with rarities in an excel spreadsheet then I can work out the pack structure from there.
Hey Flippers,
As a lover of limited I'd certianly like to try this out sometime, we have an excel version of the card list already http://www.archive.org/download/heirloomexcelDB/heirloomlistexcel.xls (missing 2-3 cards i think)
I like the idea of starting with sealed even though draft is my truer passion, with draft we'd have to have a program other than mtgo then import decklists in, so obviously that would be a bit of a hassle.
The proportion of mythics to other rarities would have to be decreased I think since there are so few mythics in Heirloom (like 15) and including too many in the sealed pools seems a little repetitive with them being the same card all the time. If they were just counted as rare they would probably show up uncommonly enough to make sense.
I'll try to figure out a day we can run that event and we can go from there, question is do we do SOM block, Standard sealed, classic ect? given enough warning people can let us know what their opinion of included sets aught to be(I'm thinking either block, standard, or classic as the three choices).
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I think your pool for Block is a bit small, I just had a look at Shards of Alara block and in the spreadsheet there are only 104 cards. I think Std or Extended sounds best. Classic is a possibility or Legacy but would require quite a bit of work as the spreadsheet is not very user friendly for what I need as the set and rarity are in the same column.
It's all possible though just let me know what you want to do and I'll build the pool ready for deck generation.
I'll change the rarity of Mythics to rare and see how it goes.
Once you decide on your format any players wanting their booster contents can just pm me via the wizards forum (same name ((with Heirloom in the subject)) and I'll send them back their pack contents.
Why don't we go for standard first then, keep the mechanics involved a little lower and use cards that are familiar to more people? (seems like there should be more than 104 cards from shards legal though, a quick advanced search shows that just in reborn there are more than 175 that would be legal if their legality were set right now and I don't think prices have changes that much that systemically to go from more than 500 in the block to only 104)
So this would be like an Heirloom limited league then right? you can play it whenever you find an opponent? how does that usually work? Details to be worked out before execution to be sure, but I like the idea of an anytime league that lets people play during the week between constructed events.
Since there seems to be an issue using the excel list for this I suppose some other solution may have to be crafted, let me know what more you'll need from me to get that working and what you think about the mechanics of a league.
Actually I think this is a perfect next step for Heirloom, first the constructed event now the limited league.
*we'll certianly have to keep track of who has what in their pool of course right?
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Hello Guys!
Thx for doing the work for this project, im really looking forward to try that!
I would really like to help out in any way, only with computer subjects im not sooo familiar...
Ya with a flipper from hands, we can do.. wait I got something wrong there, oh well I'll figure it out later.
As always your enthusiasm and participation are great, maybe you could start promoting it soon once we get the particulars down as well, (website posts ect)
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I was thinking more of a sealed event to start things off with that way you can run it as an alternative event one week.
You cant really do a league unless you have a large player base ie 30 players minimum. I'm not sure how many you have for your events.
I think a sealed event is the best option to start with as it wouldn't change peoples schedule.
I use a thread in the wizards forum that players have to post their pack contents in and this can be used in the same way for sealed and it makes it easier for you to use the info for articles etc.
Well we had 19 at the last event and as far as I can tell it's continuing to grow, and of course most players only attend half of events so without a specific time I could easily see more people for this.
Without having to have a single time to play the events, instead having people find each other (in the heirloom channel or buddy list) each week to play whenever they can (I'm thinking 1 match per player pair per week with ranking based on most total match wins (not win % since then you could just stop at some arbitrary minimum if you liked your score, and gives people incentive to keep trying to find new opponents, not sure if this is how yours works but that sounds like a natural system)
I would be hesitant to cut a week from the constructed schedule and I just think a league format fills in the gaps of player interest. (since we have a scheduled event this is then a non-scheduled event, and since we have constructed this then is limited)
I like the idea of people posting their league pool since then opponents can check for any fudging of the rules.
Maybe weekly additions of a new pack to each player's pool starting at 6 packs worth? And then new players can just get caught up on packs if they join mid-season. Have a weekly award and a monthly champ then start over each month.
What do you think of all that?
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A few points to note in my league I do a maximum of five games each week, although this dosent seem much it is when you consider the time zones your player base is spread across.
I will say that running a league is a lot of work on the hosts part and running them back to back does seem like a good idea in theory but would put a lot of pressure on the host. This is why I run mine every other month, but if you are keen to do it and have the time then go for it.
All the details of how I run my leagues can be found here or in my article this week.
Thanks Flippers,
I don't think I'll start it this week or anything but I'm looking at it as something to start working toward soon enough.
Maybe I'll be able to find some additional personnel to help me on this one.
Come to think of it I do have separate lists for the four rarities and if I use the list randomizer from this one website I can probably generate random packs pretty easily for classic at least since all i have to do is each rarity on it's own randomize the entire list and take the top x slots the rarity would normally get.(parsing out other sets/formats will be more of a headache)
Something to work toward anyhow,
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Looks like my first Heirloom event will be next weekend! Very excited. Might even see if I can't get the deck together tonight and see if anyone is available for testing. I fancy doing an more controlly variant of Thuh's Affinity build perhaps splashing black for removal. When does SOM enter the legality list? Memnite seems an obvious inclusion and there are a few other metalcraft cards worth thinking about.
Hey midi2304,
It's always great to see what someone brings to their first HeirloomPRE. A few times already that person has also won the event including the last event with goblins. I played vs a pretty strong blue black teachings deck yesterday that showed that blue black control can be very effective.
The first SOM card only minor revision will be up between the 24th-26th (I have 12 hours clinical on the 25th so it may not get posted that night as I fall asleep afterward exhausted) It will be legal for the next event after this next one so it's looking like the 31st event which I'll need to get someone to run that one for me since my wife is scheduled for c-section the day before and I have clinical that day and even if I moved it to Sunday it would probably still be a bit too tough for me to find the time for
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I have a deck! It is terrible but at least I have now purchased one so I shall be around as much as poss to test the pile before next weekend's event.
Great,
It's bound to get less terrible the more you work on it.
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Played a few games last night with my Affinity Control list vs the lovely Redman's Rift Cycle list. Very close match up it would appear but I have a lot of dead cards against him such as Shield Sphere and Cancel and we were playing without sideboards. Also played a few games in the Casual room. I was shocked at what some people consider to be a 'Casual' deck. Tezzeret / Academy Ruins / Tolerian Academy / recursion good stuff.dec? Really? Very frustrating.
Some interesting deck building choices - Courier's Capsule vs Compulsive Research being one of the key ones. Obviously Research is the 'better' card but Capsule is so much more synergistic in the deck.
My favorite card draw spell in affinity control is Vedalken Archmage and plenty of zero cc artifacts heh (I wouldn't be so thrilled about shield sphere int he maindeck without him).
Hey Guys!
to me Vedalken Archmage was a little slow, holding your 0 drops until he hits the board AND he is the target for every removal spell as well. But if he is on, its a really solid drawengine here.
I think you have to be fairly dedicated to him, but if you are he's great, but I'm not such a fan of running him as a random extra "good with artifacts" guy. and you want like 20 zero and 1 cc artifacts for him to be worth it.
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Hey Xaos, is this weekend's event on Sunday or Saturday? I'm thinking of brewing a new deck together but don't know which day the tournament is.
LE
My-Lord-Erman,
Be interesting as always to see what you concoct. The next event will be on Sunday since we've had the two Saturday events in the cycle the last two events so that will be 10/24/10 and 11AM pacific standard time as usual(LA,CA,USA)
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I do beleive Olaw was my round 1 opponent and as such I can attest that his deck ran the following:
4x Stone Rain 4x Pillage SB: Boil. I don't remember the rest off hand as the land destruction theme was very much the central one. I was actually impressed that he played it with gusto as most LD decks to my mind seem to slack off ...his kept going long after I expected it to just die out. Had to burn him out both games. One game saw me with multiple Mogg War Marshal's Splinter Twinned which was fairly funny. You take the hands you are dealt.
Round 2 vs Discard + strange stuff with Necroplasm was even more of a blue.
Round 3 I played vs Mr Jebus's mono blue control and all I know is he countered everything.
Round 4 I played vs the Abyssal Inquiry deck by Kelgate and was just discarded to death. Key mistakes in both later matches kept me out of the Winning circle imho.
@Thuh thanks bro. :) If you or anyone else wants one just message me in game and we can negotiate price and how you want it.
@Xaos I need to get my schedule into sync with this event. Is at all possible the time could be pushed to say 4pm? I love the tribal apoc event and when I have the time I try to play that as do many of my friends. That usually start starts around 1pm and ends before 3pm. If not I will keep trying to make it.
Winter.Wolf,
I recalled someone running a lando deck, wasn't sure who though.
I'm afraid for the moment moving the time of the event back would make it impossible for a lot of European players to participate in the event. I chose the 11AM time to try to include as many MTGO players from around the world as possible. I would certianly like to see events run at different times and days in the future but for now I think this is the way we have to halve the infant format. Sorry man.
We hope to see you as often as we can, but understand the conflict with other PREs and whatnot.
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Amatlamittha here. You spelled my name wrong, but it's OK; we can still be best friends.
Decklist was just GW weenies: Twinblade Slasher, Loam Lion, Anurid Brushhopper, Tolsimir Wolfblood, Mycoid Shepherd, Shield of the Oversoul, etc... Too bad I had to drop without resolving the game's only Frog Beast at least once. :[
Amatlamittha,
Ah sorry about that, I forgot that the list I worked from for the article had your name misspelled, I'm always forgetting what I already know. I'm glad we can still be best friends...
Ya I was looking for video of you playing but just didn't see much, I suppose I should have remembered the Tolsimir negotiating in any case.
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i am realy competative by nature and lol i did go get the best decks form previous weeks i just didnt think any of them were better than gobs i gues tbh thats kinda untrue i just pick things on a whim moments before i play i figure i should win withmost things :P unless the contest involves grammar/typing i guess anyway still lts of fun i might miss on sunday which will make me sad but i will tr and make it even tho i am sure i will lose all rounds(i am not a very good player)
Be great to see you agian and give people a chance to unseat the new champion of course, but of course it's understandable when conflicts are present.
I was just showing badmalloc my weak play skills when I forgot to charge my jeweled amulets two turns in a row instep yesterday lol,
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So I want to make sure, the excel sheet that was made for Hierloom is the legal list, not the prices on MTGO Traders? Also, the second app, I want to confirm it only has Hielroom cards in it as well.
The excel sheet is not the legal card list the legal card list is at this address:
http://puremtgo.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2008&sid=137de5291f317db3...
The excel list is almost complete, but I believe it's missing two cards atm. The list at that address is the definitive list, no matter what the state of any other Heirloom resource or MTGOtraders prices is that list in that thread is absolute and definitive.
The second app I believe has all or might be missing one card. (the recent revision changes to the legal card list are at the end of the preface to the list in the thread) but everything in it is legal atm unless somehow something slipped past my review of it, but I'm fairly sure it's all good.
If an emergency banning is needed (the protocol for that is if a card reaches 5x the cap value between revisions of the list it can be instabanned) the card that is banned as an emergency will still be legal for the next event and only illigal afterward. So again the list at that link is the absolute argbiter and if your cards are on the list you're completely gtg.
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The war effort has been bolstered by Robsonsmith aka Salsa Master with a donation of 3 promo spells 17 promo lands 1 promo guru land, and 5 foil promo lands.
Always appreciated-
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i want that guru land if its the on with he eye in it looks like i have to try hard this time, sigh. guess i might have to lose some sleep and make the event so noone steals it away imean not that i will win or anything but i might getit as a dor prize who knows. but you never know i could get lucky twice
oh yea and i should be making a donation of somehtin this weekend.
I'll be happy to receive any donations, it's always a good reminder of how much people like the format and the events and helps incentivize continued Heirloom prosperity.
The guru lands are the ones with the different phases of the moon on them. I've always liked them myself.
I'm going to include the non-foil card donations in with the the foil choices so as long as someone doesn't take it ahead of you it's all yours.
Might as well see if you can strike lightning twice, the question is: is the rule that lighting doesn't strike in the same place twice true (ie for the same deck?) or a myth?
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We should talk about putting up an official format site so that there is a place people can go to get every pertinent link and application.
I'd like to have a more robust site of course at some point and when time allows it's one of many things I'd like to ensure happens(not like anyone needs my permission to make one... lol, Heirloom belongs to us everyone after all),
There is the link hub on an Heirloom blog atm though which has all the links posted so that does serve the utility of an easy location where all the links are.
http://xaoslegend.blogspot.com/2010/09/heirloom-links.html
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who says i would use the same deck i mean it doesnt seem to work what wins one week in this seems to almost be in last place the next week. but either way i guess if it comes down to skill and no luck i am at a huge disadvantage.:P
There is always skill and luck in magic hehe
I wasn't suggesting that you would run the same deck only querying whether you would be successful doing so or more likely to succeed with something fresh. I think either approach has it's merits.
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