State of the Program for August 30th, 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, Phyrexia: All Will Be One, and March of the Machine. As of May 23, 2023, Redemption Tokens are non-refundable! A limited amount of Dominaria United is back in stock. You can check the new redemption page here. Wilds of Eldraine Redemption Tokens will go on sale on October, 4th.
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.
Prize Increases: Prizes are now being paid out to the top 128 of Showcase Challenges. Increases are a full regular set to 9-16. A full regular set for players that finish the Swiss X-2. 33-64 will get 200 play points and 10 Treasure Chests. 65-128 will get 150 play points and 5 treasure chests. Super Qualifiers are also getting a boost, 33-64 are getting 400 play points and 10 chests. 65-128 is getting 200 play points and 5 chests. Players that finished that highly in Super Qualifiers since July 30, got a retroactive prize increase as well.
Vintage Cube: Ryan Spain worked on the new version of the Vintage Cube, with help from Chris Wulf. They made 108 changes to the cube and you can see the changes they made and the reasoning behind them here!
MOCS Showcase Championship: Lukas Jaklovsky took Rakdos Reanimator to the victory in the Magic Online Champions Showcase! After winning the Legacy Lukas took on the Vintage Cube pod winner, Sebastian Pozzo. Pozzo was on Lands. You can check out coverage and decklists here.
Wilds of Eldraine: With the Lord of the Rings, Commander Masters and upcoming Doctor Who set, I completely forgot that Wilds of Eldraine was coming out. You can check out the card image gallery here and the Commander decklists here.
Wilds of Eldraine on MTGO: Lots of super cool stuff happening on MTGO with the Wilds of Eldraine update! Let's kick things off with a new version of the All-Access Pass, the Deck Brewer's Pass. It's cheaper, coming in at 20 dollars per pass, but does not come with the option to buy a second for Super Qualifier entry options. This will start next Tuesday and last until September 13th. Limited events are getting a bit more in terms of prizes, with Draft Leagues getting one additional booster per prize level. In addition Competitive Sealed Leagues are getting an additional 33% per wins. 5 wins will be 8 packs now. 4 will be 3 packs now. 3 wins will stay the same! Friendly sealed leagues are getting an entry adjustment, with leagues going to 2 stages. Challenges are getting changes too. MTGO is the place to play Modern and the Saturday 8 a.m. Challenge is getting a new prize structure that will see payouts go to the top 96! Limited Challenges are seeing a slight reduction in entry and the same reduction in prizes slightly but are now 35 tickets to enter. Super Jump comes back on September 27th. Magic Online Player Rewards for October and November include the foil version of Wilds of Eldraine's basic lands and the uncommon Enchanting Tales cards. There will only be one Avatar in Treasures Chests this time around, Syr Ginger, the Meal Ender (is that a real card?) is the treasure chest avatar. The Goose (Mother) is loose (mother?) in the New account kits. Finally, there will be store bundles to buy, the Anime versions of Enchanting Tales are the store exclusive this time around. $19.99 for each bundle, 4 cards in each color. You can read about everything here.
Wilds of Eldraine Commander on MTGO: Moving on to Commander stuff, there is a slight delay in a few cards due to crunch. Two cards from the Virture and Valor deck will not work until the September 6th patch. Two Commander cards outside of decks will not work until the September 13th patch. Loamcrafter Faun and Liberated Livestock are the two precon cards and Court of Locthwain and Throne of Eldraine are the non-commander deck cards that we will wait on. While we are on the topic of Commander, we're getting some new cards from the Backlog. Galea, Kindler of Hope
, Harper Recruiter
and Share the Spoils
are coming to treasaures. In addition we are getting the first of the Unfinity cards! ____Goblin, Comet, Stellar Pup, Embiggen, Pair o' Dice Lost, and Saw in Half are coming as well. You can see how the Goblin will work here, it's a unique workaround that will hopefully lead to something closer to paper later. Finally, the new player experience on MTGO is adding the Starter Commander decks to a queue to single player battle with. I might has missed something, but here is the full article.
MTGO Improvements: Aaron Penfold, Associate Product Manager for MTGO had an article that shows off the improvements made to MTGO recently. Starting off with Event filtering which will make it easier to find what kind of Constructed match you want to play. There is a filter on the home screen to show off either all upcoming scheduled events or just the biggest events of the week! Deckbuilding gets some changes as well, giving you a favorite land option when adding basic lands. Improvements to the Duel Screen include moving clock location in multiplayer matches, showing how many times a Commander has been cast, and making Atraxa, Grand Unifier
a bit easier to use. You can check out the changes here.
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
|
|
Scheduled Downtimes
|
August 30, 2023 |
|
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 and Vintage Cube
September 5-20 Wilds of Eldraine, and Wilds of Eldraine Best of 1 Leagues
September 20 - The Final Run of the Magic 30 Cube.
September 27 - Super Jump and CubeCon Cartographia Cube
October 4 - Not known
Octover 18 - Innistrad Chaos Draft
October 25 - Not known
November 1 - Wilds of Eldraine Supreme Draft
November 8 - Not known.
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:
I have a plan that I am working on, it involves me playing as much Commander as possible with the decks that I have and deciding if I am going to keep it on MTGO, with constant updates, or move it to a retired status, maybe to try again later. I started the process of playing the decks, which might seem like a mistake as I have more then 200 on my account.
You see in Paper, I have several constraints in deckbuilding. The first is I am poor and living in a tiny house, so I have limited deck storage space. MTGO fits on my computer, but it might also have limited deck storage space, and the client slows to a crawl when I switch between decks and sometimes takes upwards of an hour to load. In real life, I build decks around the Universes Beyond cards, but with Lord of the Rings out, Dr. Who coming soon and Assassin's Creed, Final Fantasy, Fallout and Jurassic World coming out next year, I am having to make choices at the house as well. Originally, I went with Universes Beyond decks only because I thought I could limit what I want to build, but my ADHD brain is at war with the part of my brain that says no, you don't need may a Friends Forever deck in paper for each Stranger Things character.
Even if the Will, Dustin Gyruda companion deck you have online is dope.
So I'll be taking care of that on my blog, if that's a thing you're interested in.
Standard: It's going to be weird looking at Standard decks with cards that should have rotated, but didn't. I'm interested in seeing how the new Standard rotation goes for the format, I think there are more issues than what cards you can play with, mainly being Arena, but that's not up to me to confront.
Legacy:
Modern: I love that
Flame of Anor
is getting more play. It's a really solid card.
Pauper: This is the hot new thing in Pauper right now. It's a really fun deck to play!
Pioneer:
The Winner's Circle is where I will recognize winners of the past events on MTGO.
Challenge Winners
Friday Modern - claudioh - Yawgmoth Counters
Saturday Legacy - Oxdizzle - Orzhov Stoneblade
Saturday Modern - gurig - AmuLIT
Saturday Modern - sokos13 - Rakdos Evoke
Saturday Pauper - NickNorman - Golgari Initiative
Saturday Pioneer - TheManLand - Rakdos Midrange
Saturday Standard - Edel - Domain Control
Saturday Vintage - Capriccioso
Sunday Legacy - CliffBoyardee - Boros Initiative
Sunday Modern - toondoslav - Yawgmoth Counters
Sunday Pauper - Oceansoul92 - Affinity
Sunday Pioneer - joaoclaudioms - Rona Helix
Sunday Standard - Graciasportanto - Esper Control
Sunday Vintage - Mogged
Other Event Winners
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:
Elesh Norn
has come off the list.
Modern Staples:
Cavern of Souls
is off of the list.
Seasoned Pyromancer
came off.
Eternal Staples:
Pioneer Staples:
Cavalier of Thorns
is off the list.
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 |
$75.81 |
$79.54 |
($3.73) |
-5% |
| Dominaria United |
$64.21 |
$91.58 |
($27.37) |
-30% |
| Innistrad: Crimson Vow |
$52.74 |
$57.77 |
($5.03) |
-9% |
| Innistrad: Midnight Hunt |
$73.56 |
$76.49 |
($2.93) |
-4% |
| Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty |
$91.49 |
$101.54 |
($10.05) |
-10% |
| March of the Machine |
$136.29 |
$134.87 |
$1.42 |
1% |
| March of the Machine Booster |
$1.71 |
$1.78 |
($0.07) |
-4% |
| Phyrexia: All Will Be One |
$178.33 |
$180.28 |
($1.95) |
-1% |
| Streets of New Capenna |
$38.27 |
$40.09 |
($1.82) |
-5% |
| Treasure Chest Booster |
$2.29 |
$2.32 |
($0.03) |
-1% |
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 |
257.85 |
| Mox Jet |
1E |
Rare |
112.92 |
| Ancestral Recall |
1E |
Rare |
93.93 |
| Mox Emerald |
1E |
Rare |
70.85 |
| Mox Sapphire |
1E |
Rare |
69.54 |
| The One Ring |
LTR |
Mythic |
68.62 |
| Time Walk |
1E |
Rare |
68.51 |
| The One Ring |
LTR |
Mythic |
67.94 |
| The One Ring |
LTR |
Mythic |
62.69 |
| Mox Pearl |
1E |
Rare |
58.66 |
| Cavern of Souls |
UBT |
Mythic |
57.78 |
| Liliana of the Veil |
UBT |
Mythic |
55.91 |
| Mox Ruby |
1E |
Rare |
52.39 |
| Karakas |
UBT |
Mythic |
46.44 |
| Mox Diamond |
ST |
Rare |
44.39 |
| Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth |
UBT |
Mythic |
43.39 |
| Mox Diamond |
V10 |
Mythic |
42.36 |
| Timetwister |
1E |
Rare |
40.81 |
| Dark Depths |
UBT |
Mythic |
40.3 |
| Demonic Tutor |
UBT |
Mythic |
39.49 |
| Mox Diamond |
TPR |
Mythic |
36.86 |
| Grief |
MH2 |
Mythic |
34.4 |
| Kozilek, Butcher of Truth |
UBT |
Mythic |
33.58 |
| Reanimate |
UBT |
Mythic |
33.48 |
| Chalice of the Void |
TSR |
Bonus |
33.23 |
| Boseiju, Who Endures |
NEO |
Rare |
32.01 |
| Orcish Bowmasters |
LTR |
Rare |
31.72 |
| Breath of Fire |
PZ2 |
Common |
31.63 |
| Force of Negation |
2X2 |
Rare |
30.87 |
| Force of Negation |
MH1 |
Rare |
30.84 |
| Underground Sea |
ME4 |
Rare |
30.44 |
| Sheoldred, the Apocalypse |
ONE |
Promo |
30.35 |
| Snapcaster Mage |
UBT |
Mythic |
29.84 |
| Underground Sea |
ME2 |
Rare |
29.49 |
| Subtlety |
MH2 |
Mythic |
29.02 |
| Wasteland |
ZNE |
Mythic |
28.52 |
| Chalice of the Void |
MMA |
Rare |
28.24 |
| Armored Whirl Turtle |
PZ2 |
Common |
27.88 |
| Orcish Bowmasters |
LTR |
Rare |
27.75 |
| Force of Will |
MED |
Rare |
27.51 |
| Chalice of the Void |
A25 |
Mythic |
27.2 |
| Chalice of the Void |
MS2 |
Bonus |
26.63 |
| Polluted Delta |
ONS |
Rare |
26.41 |
| Unmask |
V16 |
Mythic |
26.11 |
| Life from the Loam |
UBT |
Mythic |
25.91 |
The big number is the retail price of a playset (4 copies) of every card available on MTGO. Assuming you bought the least expensive versions available, the cost of owning a playset of every card on MTGO is approximately a number that I cannot figure out still. I have actually asked Pete to do this for me, because Open Office is weird, and I have no idea what I am doing, and I am pretty close to just being a dog in a labcoat.
Prices were done Tuesday night, and it was a real struggle because new stuff happened in Battlegrounds and a new season of Fortnite and trying to play Blossom Tales all distracted me. All I want to do is make time for the stuff I want to do, but never get around to. More Commander more replays of the Persona series. More...trying to be happy.
This series is an ongoing tribute to Erik “Hamtastic” Friborg.
