State of the Program for August 2, 2023
MTGO Socials: Daybreak has set up forums for MTGO, which you can find here. In addition to the Forums, Daybreak has set up a Discord for MTGO. You can get the invite here. MTGO has a Twitter account, and can now add an account for Facebook and Instagram.
Two-Factor Authentication: This is in Account Settings. To turn it on you will be asked for your account password and a 6-digit code sent to the email associated with your account. You can use either an email or authenticator based system. This will help keep your accounts secure, you can read about the system here.
Redemption: Redemption is up and running! Remember that redemption runs now until supply is gone. Currently being redeemed is The Brothers' War (About Half-Gone) Phyrexia: All Will Be One, and March of the Machine. As of May 23, 2023, Redemption Tokens are non-refundable!
Challenge Schedule Changing: Two Prelims on Friday nights are now becoming small Challenge events.This helps players in the Asia-Pacific region. Saturday is also getting another Modern Challenge. Both of these are 32 player events. The Saturday 6 a.m. Standard Event is going back to a small event prize structure.
Pro Tour Lord of the Rings: Congrats to Jake Beardsley for winning Pro Tour The Lord of the Rings, with Rakdos Evoke. You can see the list in Cutting Edge tech this week, and check out coverage of the event by going here.
Commander Masters: Set is live on Thursday on MTGO. Will have Keeper and Phantom leagues. Will have a Treasure chest update. New Bundles in the store for the release of this set consist of the Unfinity Atomic, Orbital and Planetary Shocklands. The basic lands, with ten of each land sell for 24.99. the shocklands, 1 of each, sell for 39.99. 6 cards from the Commander backlog will be added to Treasure chests. The September MOPR update wil feature the borderless commons and uncommons from Commander Masters. There are no avatars for this set. The Commander Masters Precons will be on sale. You can see the full article here.
64 player Single-Elimination Drafts: Coming back with Vintage cube are large scale 64 player events. These, of course, Single-Elimination. Will be Vintage Cube, and start on August 25.
Patch Notes: You can check out the notes for this update here.
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.
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Upcoming Events
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Dates
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Scheduled Downtimes
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August 3, 2023 |
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Constructed Leagues End
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September 5, 2023
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Sealed Leagues End
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September 5, 2023 |
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:
Ongoing - Commander Masters (as of Thursday)
August 5 - Limited Super Qualifier
August 6 - Limited Super Qualifier
August 9 - Chaos Draft
August 16 - Vintage Cube
Magic Online Format ChallengesThese are high stakes events that happen every weekend. They cost 30 Tix / 300 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:
There is ban discourse going around and I'm not above dipping in to the discourse pool for something to talk about. It's going to be the first banning of the new yearly ban cycle. Well outside of the ban window that exists after a set releases, but this is the first one! Standard seems pretty good, let's see how the three year rotation goes before we ban anything else in the format. I do not have any Legacy or Vintage experience so I'll keep quiet about that one, though with one comment. Maybe
Orcish Bowmaster
can develop into a problem, or maybe it's really nice counter play to all the card draw in the fomat, I'm looking at you
Brainstorm
!
Now I do have some practice with Pioneer, Standard, and Modern, so I will write my banlist wishes.
Starting with Pauper, we're getting a lot of really cool reprints and downshifts from Commander Masters tomorrow, I know I can't wait to cast All that Glitters
in the format. Pauper is largely fine, Affinity is in check, Tron is in check, and no specific card feels like an issue to me. I know they won't do anything about the format, but I'd really like to see two mechanics removed from it. They have tried to give Monarch and Initiative the Dredge treatment (where they banned the best cards with the mechanic and the format adapted around it) but there is really nothing outside of combat that deals with Monarch, and there is no clean answer to Initiative. Monarch is slightly better, because you do get the emblem, but they are both multiplayer mechanics meant to speed up slow, plodding games that eventually come down to Cyclonic Rift
anyways, amiright? (No, we know I am not). In Legacy you have higher powered cards that can manage these mechanics a lot better. In Pauper they snowball so much card advantage! I appreciate the chances that they took, but the mechanics, to me are out of place, and should be removed. The Gruul Cascade deck is just as good without Avenging Hunter
. the Izzet decks don't need Crimson Fleet Commodore
.
Moving on to Pioneer, something has to give. The format isn't nearly as good as it should be. It's stat proven to be a play draw format, which can't be fixed by banning cards, or can it be? Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx
is a really cool card. I don't think it should go, because removing it does kill the Mono Green deck, but it also kills the more fair devotion decks, you know, the ones that don't have Kiora, Behemoth Beckoner
or Karn, Great Creator
in them. Those are the cards that should go. Fable of the Mirror-Breaker
should go for the same reasons it went away in Standard. I'm willing to entertain the ideas that Hidden Strings
should be banned as well. But mainly those three cards are the ones for me.
Finally, Modern. Modern has been really weird since it started to rotate with the every other year Modern set. This year saw The One Ring
and Orcish Bowmaster domate, but we haven't really had a solid rotation since Modern Horizons II. Sure, The One Ring is powerful and in nearly everything. Will WotC ban the card that was in the news? I hope so! After all, it's "ability to generate resources, card flow, and be a must-kill threat is unmatched at its level of efficiency" and it's indestructible, so it's even harder to kill! My biggest worry about Modern isn't the ring though. It's Fury
which invalidates all low to the ground aggro decks and Grief
which forces fair decks to mulligan to five on turn one. If they did card errata anymore, they could fix it to be a comes into play from hand trigger, but they don't do those anymore. In addition Mycosynth Lattice
died so that Karn, Great Creator could live. That dork is reaching Birthing Pod
levels of issues now. It's time to let him go and bring back the Lattice.
I won't say anything about Historic or Alchemy, because people on Twitter say that no one plays those formats, so why care about them at all?
Standard:
Legacy: The question mark is there because I no longer know what to call decks anymore, and this seems like a hatebears deck, but is also missing hatebears.
Modern:
Modern 2: Went with a second Modern deck this week. It's Zoo, I enjoy it. I guess that's all that matters?
Pioneer:
The Winner's Circle is where I will recognize winners of the past events on MTGO.
Challenge Winners
Friday Modern - Nammersquats - Rakdos Scam
Saturday Legacy - CoolUser - Orzhov Aggro
Saturday Modern - Parrotlet - Temur Rhinos
Saturday Modern - Magic_Dan - Grixis Death's Shadow
Saturday Pauper - twister66 - Mono Red Prowess
Saturday Pioneer - VictorCarvalho01 - Mono Green Devotion
Saturday Standard - ht991122 - Domain
Saturday Vintage - Lord_Beerus
Sunday Legacy - Magic_Dads712522 - Reanimator
Sunday Modern - gurig - AmuLIT
Sunday Pauper - Lorwy - Mono Red Kiln Fiend
Sunday Pioneer - Lavaridge - Rakdos Sac
Sunday Standard - Arianne - Dimir Midrange
Sunday Vintage - Wiztech93
Other Event Winners
Modern Super Qualifier
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.
Standard Staples:
Modern Staples:
Eternal Staples:
Pioneer Staples:
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!
| Complete Set |
Price |
Last Time |
Change |
% Change |
| The Brothers' War |
$76.64 |
$76.31 |
$0.33 |
0% |
| Dominaria United |
$63.60 |
$61.18 |
$2.42 |
4% |
| Innistrad: Crimson Vow |
$53.16 |
$51.45 |
$1.71 |
3% |
| Innistrad: Midnight Hunt |
$74.06 |
$74.86 |
($0.80) |
-1% |
| Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty |
$81.97 |
$74.01 |
$7.96 |
11% |
| March of the Machine |
$157.53 |
$160.12 |
($2.59) |
-2% |
| March of the Machine Booster |
$2.06 |
$2.15 |
($0.09) |
-4% |
| Phyrexia: All Will Be One |
$159.61 |
$146.74 |
$12.87 |
9% |
| Streets of New Capenna |
$36.96 |
$35.51 |
$1.45 |
4% |
| Treasure Chest Booster |
$2.42 |
$2.32 |
$0.10 |
4% |
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.
| Black Lotus |
1E |
Rare |
265.22 |
| Mox Jet |
1E |
Rare |
118.63 |
| The One Ring |
LTR |
Mythic |
118.13 |
| The One Ring |
LTR |
Mythic |
112.28 |
| The One Ring |
LTR |
Mythic |
105.06 |
| Ancestral Recall |
1E |
Rare |
102.68 |
| Mox Emerald |
1E |
Rare |
74.67 |
| Time Walk |
1E |
Rare |
73.23 |
| Mox Sapphire |
1E |
Rare |
72.4 |
| Mox Pearl |
1E |
Rare |
59.49 |
| Liliana of the Veil |
UBT |
Mythic |
55.91 |
| Mox Ruby |
1E |
Rare |
53.7 |
| Mox Diamond |
TPR |
Mythic |
46.94 |
| Mox Diamond |
ST |
Rare |
44.88 |
| Cavern of Souls |
UBT |
Mythic |
43.68 |
| Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth |
UBT |
Mythic |
43.39 |
| Subtlety |
MH2 |
Mythic |
42.42 |
| Karakas |
UBT |
Mythic |
42.29 |
| Timetwister |
1E |
Rare |
40.81 |
| Mox Diamond |
V10 |
Mythic |
40.5 |
| Dark Depths |
UBT |
Mythic |
40.3 |
| Fury |
MH2 |
Mythic |
39.77 |
| Demonic Tutor |
UBT |
Mythic |
39.49 |
| Orcish Bowmasters |
LTR |
Rare |
39.38 |
| Orcish Bowmasters |
LTR |
Rare |
38.23 |
| Force of Negation |
2X2 |
Rare |
35.51 |
| Force of Negation |
MH1 |
Rare |
34.21 |
| Grief |
MH2 |
Mythic |
32.09 |
| Kozilek, Butcher of Truth |
UBT |
Mythic |
31.43 |
| Snapcaster Mage |
UBT |
Mythic |
29.84 |
| Wasteland |
ZNE |
Mythic |
29.59 |
| Force of Will |
MED |
Rare |
29.14 |
| Underground Sea |
ME2 |
Rare |
28.39 |
| Breath of Fire |
PZ2 |
Common |
27.9 |
| Gaea's Cradle |
UZ |
Rare |
27.58 |
| Reanimate |
UBT |
Mythic |
27.35 |
| Flooded Strand |
ZNE |
Mythic |
26.74 |
| Endurance |
MH2 |
Mythic |
26.67 |
| Ragavan, Nimble Pilferer |
MH2 |
Mythic |
25.8 |
Prices were done on Tuesday. I really need to take a vacation still. I might do that soon. I might not.
This series is an ongoing tribute to Erik “Hamtastic” Friborg.
