Disclaimer:
This is as per usual an opinion editorial. You are welcome to agree, disagree (civilly) or otherwise question various aspects of it, in the comments. As this is as much a Tribal Wars history lesson as it is a discussion of WOTC policy, interwoven in the article below are some of my favorite decks from the various great players who have graced our community. Unfortunately time is short as is my patience so I will only be adding a few but I hope you enjoy them, starting with AJ's amazing landless monstrosity:
The Desk Veto:
I am not a patient person. I have learned over time to practice patience but I am not inherently interested in waiting a long time for results. Part of this is the addictive personality's need for "instant gratification". A part is me being hysterical which is an unfortunate family trait. Another part of it is because experience tells me that procrastination and giving excuses is the oldest way to kill an idea or proposed benefit without actually saying "no".
American Government even has a name for this: The Desk Veto. Sometimes when a bill hits the desk of the President of the United States, instead of signing a veto directly on it, or signing it into law a president will just let it sit there. On his desk under piles of papers. Or in a drawer. This method is effective because most bills in US Governance have a short half-life, after which they are no longer valid and must be reintroduced to congress to again be passed or not.
Delaying tactics in business and government are just par for the course and we even are quite familiar with this pattern in M:TG and M:TGO in particular. Waiting can be fun, if we are anticipating some change that will benefit us all such as a new set. It builds excitement and when the event finally arrives we are happy to finally have it occurring we instantly forgive any delays. However when something is taken away, players get grumpy. This is me feeling grumpy.
The Start:
So let me start at the end for a change. After this week's downtime (earlier on Wednesday the 18th of February) many players expected to see a change in the client. To reverse what was undone last week. What was undone was a decade+ of history in the form of the Tribal Wars formats. No one really cared about Tribal Wars Standard because that was rather limited in its applications and too easily solved and thus not very fun. "Good riddance!" if I may.
Tribal Wars Legacy, on the other hand, is another story. Tribal Wars Legacy is a Johnny's paradise and Timmy and Spike also have a good time with it if they settle in. Our collective outcry was heard over the removal and there was a response within hours of Kumagoro's article. I deleted my own article decrying this underhanded move based on the theory that WOTC would act quickly to undo the mess that they created.
Now the expectation was not based on a statement by WOTC this week, nor even their statement after Kuma's excellent article. It was based on the idea that WOTC does not like to be seen breaking their word and they gave us their word back when they changed Tribal Wars (via Aaron Forsythe, director of Research and Development.) They promised a home on the client.
“That's where you, the public, come in. You spoke and we heard. Your Specter and Volver and Sliver decks will never be without a format to call their own. ” -- Aaron Forsythe, from the article linked above.
That means the pull-down menu entry and a place in the formats legality page (or whatever replaces it.) Our newest Associate Community Manager (aka community liaison?) in the community forums Wizards_Alison had this to say:
“
Sorry for the delay in response, everyone.
Our team has discussed and deliberated the response we've gotten for the format retirement announcement. Based off of the reaction we've received, MTGO will be bringing back Legacy Tribal Wars in the future. The other formats will remain in retirement. Our reasoning for the retirement of the other formats is primarily for the sake of new players. Removing options that players have shown less interest in removes the frustrating experience of a player building a deck in one of these formats, only to discover that very few people play them and they have few opponents to play against. Additionally, newer players can be overwhelmed by the number of format choices, and this removal helps these players more easily find an experience that is right for them.
I cannot provide an exact date for the return of Legacy Tribal Wars, but I can assure you that we listened to your reaction, and it will be returned in due time.”
That read, last Thursday like "Oh we may have to wait for a downtime to reinstate the format." Since they removed it during a downtime. But we had a downtime today. And no format reinstatement. And then I reread what Alison wrote and thought "oh oh...what does 'due' time mean??"
Immediately the comments about Leagues, came to mind. The one where WOTC employees repeatedly promised to bring Leagues backs for its many die-hard fans. This promise is so legendary in Wizards history that it is usually the butt of any joke involving promised inclusions or upgrades with the client: "Will that be before or after Leagues is reinstated??"
In my personal interactions with Wizards and other Players I have often been the apologist for the company because I see and sympathize with their position as being in tight tension between making enough money to justify a continued existence and also pleasing us, their very diverse community of players. I should say "communities" since there are many different types of players that use the game in ways that may seem to even be in conflict with each other. I am a booster for all things Wizards of the Coast. Well wait no. I absolutely loath what they did to D&D post 3.5. So there is that. In fact I think that points in some ways the problems we face today on MTGO.
On to the beta (a new day?)
The whispers of a new beta started well over 4 years ago, right before the first annual Community Cup, in the fall of 2009. Our dear Hamtastic brought back photos of a mockup from PT Austin. He posted the video of it in his interview with then lead designer of the new client, Adriana Moscatelli.
That was when they thought they could develop the new client on Silverlight. And then MS threw developers a curve ball by announcing a cessation to support for said platform. So out the window went that idea and all the wonderful things they planned to do: Web Page MTGO, playing on a phone, managing your collection on devices, etc.
Those of us who have played on MTGO since v3 know all about this history in general so I will just go on to say that after several years including bringing in Ryan Spain among others, a couple of "wide betas" and rehashes, the beta client is still not yet ready for prime time.
And by that I mean they have problems with the back end server architecture to the point that in November 2013, they CANCELED one of their main revenue streams: The Daily and Premier events. This after a scathing article by famed Pro Tour Hall of Famer and Game Designer Brian Kibler who complained about consecutive crashes that caused the cancellation of big ticket events with major prizes.
My thinking at the time was mixed. On the one hand this is good for those of us who play casual: The crash of the market the subsequent panic caused allowed cards to become affordable that weren't previously. Mid November was a great time to pick up a play set of Sphinx's Revelation if you lacked them as they dipped into the mid 20 tix range for the first time in ages. Then WoTC announced the return of events, the Sky stopped falling and the market picked up again. Prices in January did an interesting over-correction where almost every card online had a brief spike before settling into new brackets.
On the other hand, perhaps this was a portent of bad things to come. I mean they talked about back end stuff for the first time I can remember in anything to do with the beta. Which means they are considering changing how the game is served. Which could affect everything from our collections to our access.
So back to the axing of the 22 formats (21, but Tribal Wars Legacy is still out as of now.) The stated reason for getting rid of them was because a) New Players were frustrated by them. Because not enough opponents were available. b) They cluttered up the menus, making it harder for new players to successfully navigate the menus.
New players are confused and frustrated by the Planeswalker format for sure. A bigger fail on MTGO is hard to point to in terms of implementation unless you want to talk about Planescape which while a charming format is so bad on MTGO that very few if any games of that ever fire. (And yet they kept that in the menus...) To my mind it is better to have more options than less. This business of "options clutter" is utter nonsense brought by overly educated popinjays.
A few of the commenters on the forums had some interesting things to say about the UI which just seemed like common sense to me:
“One reason I can think of for killing these is that players were having trouble accessing some formats because the drop down box had no scroll bar. The options had become crowded and fell off the bottom of the screen.
An easy fix for this would have been to re-order the options so that the least popular formats were at the bottom of the list. No functionality lost.” -- Lawnmower Elf
and
“I never understood why the filters have to be so restricting. Why can't we choose pauper AND prismatic AND singleton for example? If we could have chosen pauper AND standard then there would have been no need to clutter up the game with standard pauper, and maybe modern AND pauper would still be popular. As for block constructed, why not have one block option and make the particular block a second variable? If someone thinks that people are just going to switch to standard and modern through this then they just don't understand people very well.” -- Jmason
What is really at the heart here is that in order to make major changes to how the new client works (and so it remains stable in the process) there probably needs to be a basic simplification of the client. The problem is, that was the justification for the loss of Leagues (temporary). Let's just point out that this was 7 years ago. And every year since then there has been some sort of mumbling from the 'Powers That Be' that Leagues will be back. Even this year. See my commentary above about how likely that is. I am hoping that Wizards will not break their promise via Mr. Forsythe by desktop vetoing the reinstatement of Tribal Wars Legacy.
I expected it back today but there was no actual update so maybe they decided to wait for a day that is prescheduled for that. I mean after all it seems like a simple yes/no Boolean that needs to be changed but I don't know how complicated that may be. It may be that when they removed all those formats they erased something critical that allowed Tribal Wars formats to exist on the client.
So you may be wondering "Why this article?" if it is only a week into this, and that is a good question. The answer is: WOTC has shown that they will respond positively only if they are given reminders that people are counting on them to do the right thing. In this case, that being the restoration of our beloved format. Looking at this site alone there are hundreds of articles on Tribal Wars. If that doesn't provide a positive incentive then I don't know what will.
The biggest irksome trait that Wizards Employees have shown over the years is not the condescension they sometimes display, nor the fact that they don't play with us casually anymore. It is that they don't give us good communication. Things happen in draconian fashion, information about them come out sporadically and with no sense of cohesion or centrality, and we end up having to swallow our pride and deal with it because complaining after the fact is almost useless. Sort of like having a drunk for a parent who can't be reasoned with, forgets what they were doing and apologizes afterward only to do whatever thing it is they did before, again. Except the beatings here are of a purely emotional impact. Except when they hit us in the wallet (such as when Old Extended was turned into a 4 year abomination and ironically was just removed from the client as one of the 22 ousted formats.)
There are plenty of people who spend money on this game via the secondary market who will stop if the format is not returned. They will probably also not buy quite as many boosters to crack. That may not seem like much of a stick but as AJ_Impy said in this week's podcast of Freed From the Real, we casual players outnumber the pros thousands to one. You would think, this would be important to WOTC.
Trust in a company and trust in a brand comes from knowing they have integrity. The promise that we would always have a home should not be interpreted as "Until we decide otherwise." That will only give short term gains, if it pisses off enough of the casual population. Sure, sure, I expect no matter what happens that M:TG will be around in 2020 or even long after I am dead. (Assuming that happens after that date.) But the stench of a failed promise like the one to the Leagues players is likely to stick around too. I fervently hope that WOTC finds it in their hearts to expedite this reversal for the benefit of all.
Maybe what we need, for both the beta client and this latest disgrace is merely to have some patience. Bide our time and wait for WOTC to get its act together. Maybe. Or maybe we should rattle our cages and let them know of our discontent and dissatisfaction...
Something Different:
And now all that doom and gloom is out of the way I want to share with you some decks I have been working on. The decks interspersed above are by great deck builders in the format. The ones below are by me. I've been brewing both in Standard and in Tribal Wars with mixed success.
This deck is symbolic of my love of wolves and what better card to showcase this than the brand new BNG card Raised by Wolves? Auras are becoming very popular now so perhaps I am just infected by this newfound enthusiasm, but I really like cards that give extra tokens when they enter the battlefield. This card can make a ridiculous threat out of anything given a few more wolves from your hand. Seven of the 27 creatures listed above are humans because they are both wolf providers. I thought about splurging for some Masters of the Wild Hunt but decided this was enough.
Of course the next logical deck from Wolves has to be Bulls, but by this I am really referring to the new super tribe given to us by R&D who clearly want people playing with Minotaurs. I suspect someone high up in R&D is secretly hording a ton of Didgeridoos and is just waiting for their value to pop and then cash them in. No I don't really believe that but I would LOVE to hear a good rationale as to why so many good Minotaurs are in existence now when a few years ago it was a struggle to put a decent minos deck together. I know that Theros brings us the Greek Mythos in disguise just as Kamigawa brought us Samurai and Ninja but I have to think this is a bit of overkill. Nonetheless, I will take advantage since we have them. The vials are sometimes better than Didgeridoo, sometimes worse. Slaughter Games is just for comedy value and what black deck could I build if I didn't add in some reanimator?
I have yet to really delve into BNG tribal in detail but I have accumulated enough Sirens for a deck. I just need to find a good enough hook to make them fun for me. So far I've considered Thornbite Staff and Springleaf Drum as possibilities. I am also imagining a really good convoke deck is out there now that "inspired" is a keyword mechanic.
All of my latest standard decks have involved trying to abuse inspired or Chromanticore. I'll leave you one below for contemplation:
Yes this is the newest flavor of the day in that there are plenty of variations of this kind of list running around. Mainly because it is insanely fun to play with. Yes bestow makes auras much cooler than they used to be, but there is also something very fun about playing 
control and also landing big monsters. Because this deck ramps somewhat I like using Clan Defiance and Aurelia's Fury as my X spells. The 1 Fated Return acts as way to recover if you end up hosed on the board by the equally many variations out there. In addition you can use it to set a powerful opposing monster onto your side of the table if one ends up in your opponent's graveyard.
Help, my article has fallen and can't get up! (Or how to survive creating your first article on Puremtgo.com)
This subject requires some addressing, but I didn't feel like basing another article on it. New writers are encouraged to try their hand at the quill & ink here on puremtgo. We want players who love the game to write about their passion. We want to hear what you have to say whether you are an aficionado of niche formats or strictly into drafting or block dailies. We want your insights into Classic and Commander and all those formats deleted by WOTC in their zealous attempt to streamline our experience. If you have an article in your head you should get it on to digital paper as quickly as you can so others can share it. There are some pitfalls in this venture I invite you to join us in, so I will cover them and tell you how to get through/over/past them.
a) Writer's Block: This one is tough as you must be interested in the subject at hand. If you are just writing to collect a few credits you are better off playing in Player Run Events or doing something else that isn't a waste of our time. I say this not to be cruel but to alert potential slackers that they must not see this as an invite to just make slop and call it a day. If you are genuinely stuck there are a number of things you can try. The first and foremost thing I suggest is you play what you want to write about. Play it, think it, eat it, sleep it, excrete it. Bother your neighbors, family and friends with your thoughts. And when they are good and sick of it, you may have the material you need for a decent article.
b) It looks like trash! Well this can be subjective so let me be clear. We consider it to be trash if it has many spelling errors, basic grammatical errors, and has little to no breathing room. Walls of text without anything to break them up are hard to read. At the very minimum use that Enter key. It also helps to have a friend/family member/neighbor proof it and tell you if they understood it and or if they have questions, comments, or helpful hints. You can use images, (particularly cards), and embedded videos to spice things up. (For an extreme example look at BlippyTheSlug's articles.) You can center those images, add in sidebars (though that is advanced) and use the RTE (Rich Text Editor) to help you with links. You can also, if you know what you are doing add in style sheets to help decorate the page. I don't recommend this unless you have a decent grasp on what you are doing. It is fairly easy to make html/css go badly awry by a seemingly small error. It isn't a hard language but it does have rules that can cause panic in the unwary. If you need mentoring in this, definitely seek one out.
c) Ack, where is my text?? Speaking of the RTE, you may notice if you use Firefox or some other browser that your text is disappearing when you save it for the first time in the article. This is a bug that will eventually be fixed. In the meantime you can use Chrome (I don't recommend any other browser because I don't know which browser work properly other than Chrome) to save it once. After that the RTE will work as it should in any browser. I also highly recommend you saving your text first in notepad, or some other text editor so that you don't fall prey to this problem and have to start over from scratch.
d) I posted an article once, it was returned and I never heard anything since. Our manager Joshua Claytor is a busy man. He wears many hats and does many things for very little and he needs his time. If you have a problem, however don't hesitate to contact him via the client or by email.(Manager Note: The best way to get in contact with me is at puremtgoeditor@gmail.com, you can also message me at JXClaytor on the client. Also please check the workflow tab, 100% of the time when I send something back I leave a message in that tab with my thoughts on the article and any need for improvement.) Meantime if he returned an article it probably in some way either looked like trash (b) or lacked good content (a). If you feel that is an unfair assumption, do contact Josh. But be polite and respectful. Josh is a very sweet guy and will not lose his temper easily but he should not be taken advantage of. And if you do get on his bad side, you will deserve whatever happens after that.
If you have any other suggestions and complaints you'd like to add to list please do so in the comments. For now I am off to find some relaxation and eventual Zzzs.
Magically,
Paul Emerson Leicht aka Winter.Wolf & Telir on the client.
23 Comments
Excellent summation. I'll have to revisit landless clerics at some point, that deck is several years old at this point, and predates Lotus Petal and Mox Opal.
Is there a reason not to throw in (for instance) 4 Gemstone Mine or City of Brass? Other than the aesthetics of it of course.
It wouldn't be landless otherwise. :D AJ likes freaking out his opponents with "Nah, I didn't draw any land but don't you worry..."
Uhm, how can it predate Lotus Petal (circa 1997) if there's Lotus Bloom (circa 2006) in it? Were you thinking that was Lotus Blo(ss)om (circa 1998)?
He means lotus petal being online (tempest was reintroduced later on.)
Precisely this. The deck was from an article published nearly seven years ago: At the time, our zero-mana mana generation options were Chrome Mox, Lotus Bloom, Simian Spirit Guide and Lion's Eye Diamond. It predates the December 2008 launch of Tempest by a year and a half.
Paul hit it pretty well; I just want to emphasis a few points.
If you want to write, write: If you have something to say, say it. Write it out. If you are passionate about it, put that passion on paper. If it is important to you, others may want to read it. So write, and submit. But don't be too upset if your first draft gets rejected. Writing is like Magic - it takes a lot of practice. Odds are pretty good you didn't win the tournament first time out. Same with writing - you may need to tune that article quite a bit to make it a winner.
Grammar is tech: When you have published a couple hundred articles, and proven that you have something important to say, then you can write in haiku, or l33t speak, or slang. If you are a new writer, then keep the language straightforward and get straight to the tech. Inside jokes, stories about your pets or the RPG you play on Weds. are all interesting to you and your friends, but keep them out of your articles. Avoid anything that makes it harder for your reader to get what you are saying is bad - and that includes bad grammar, misspellings, etc.
Keep the editor happy: Joshua is buried in work. If you want him to publish your work, don't make it any harder on him. If he has to fix grammar, correct the spelling of a bunch of cards, and edit all the links, the article will have to be incredible to justify all that work. Make it easy on him: run the spell check, run the grammar check, and test all the links before submitting.
Have someone else proofread it: Seriously. Have a Magic-playing friend read it - and maybe a non-player as well. You know what you are writing about, but that can lead to assuming you explained something when that happened in mentally drafting it, or the version that got scrapped and rewritten. A non-player will not get caught up in the excitement, and will pay more attention to the technical stuff.
A secret to my success - my wife proofread everything I wrote for the first couple years, and I still run a lot of stuff past her. That was particularly useful because she had an English degree and used to work as a professional proofreader. She is also a high-level Magic judge, former PTQ grinder and a rules guru. That's a useful combo.
Making money: Don't start out writing because you want to make money. Write because you want to write, and the money may follow. Even so, the money is small. Given the time I spend on each article, even after the generous compensation PureMTGO provides, I make a lot less than minimum wage on my writing. That said, it is a hobby, not a profession.
But if you have something to say, write an article.
Keep the editor happy: Joshua is buried in work. If you want him to publish your work, don't make it any harder on him. If he has to fix grammar, correct the spelling of a bunch of cards, and edit all the links, the article will have to be incredible to justify all that work. Make it easy on him: run the spell check, run the grammar check, and test all the links before submitting.
I do this anyways. Unless I am just completely buried or want someone to learn the system (like using the deck creator) I just get it done.
I do think my mistake rate has went down again though, I missed one in this article, but I blame that with not knowing the multiplayer offerings as well as I should.
I want Planescape (torment) to have a sequel so subconsciously I insert that where I can. :p Either that or...I am just an idiot lol. I did mean Planechase but Planescape is thoroughly the better format :p
Such a great game - will go and fetch my planescape shirt out of the dark and wear it tomorrow with prüde :-)
Fortunately the people who worked on it originally are hard at work on the spiritual successor, Torment: Tides of Numenera.
Hm, reply was lost- Anyway, Tx for sharing AJ, that info really made my day!
This article is just perfect. Absolutely pro-level journalism: concise, articulate, argumentative, the right amount of objectivity and personal involvement. Kudos.
Only nitpick: Planescape = Planechase, I assume.
Whoa, where did you find that Giant deck? I remember playing it, but just that one time, probably ending 2-1 or such. I wonder what caught your attention about it. :) (I would have thought my Sphinx build is more iconic, even just by being the rare deck I played consistently over the years, and with good results. Plus it's a passion we share, don't we?).
Now, to the important things: You HAVE to tell me all about those quote boxes! I want to use them badly! (Feel free to send me the code in email if you feel it's out of place here, but maybe other writers would like to know.) Your deck boxes are also cooler than mine, do you use a different editor?
Thank you very much. The giant deck stands out to me because it is simple brutal and yet not goblins/elementals, and what not. Plus the name fit. :D Sure sure in your history Sphinges stand out. And I agree they are great but I was looking for format defining decks.
That's all hand edited css changes. If you right click on the document and click view source and look at the style tag near the top of the page you will see I added a bunch of custom classes that let me change the look & feel of the page. A few of those classes have styles from CSS2 & 3.
The deck lists use those classes too. What I did was start the deck in Jam's generator, only using the part of it from the <tbody> tag down. Then I have my own modified top part that contains the classes I use to make the gradients, rounded corners and the text decoration.
I imagine you have templates for those? I'm not familiar with CSS, but I can copy and paste HTML code and see what happens. :)
I have some ready to use html and css if that's what you mean but you still have to do some work when setting the decks up. The last step of adding deck lists to my articles always takes a minimum of an hour to do and that with me knowing what I am doing. (Part of that is because by that point I am usually already very tired but part is that it is tedious especially when Jam's generator doesn't fully autocard the list.)
We can talk online sometime and I'll explain in detail.
It's not a problem for me to work on the list boxes once I know how to do it. I usually always correct a lot of stuff there, like fixing the card links that don't show (Exodus, I'm looking at you) or the ones that show out of place (Avacyn Restored, I'm looking at you), changing the size of the names that would take 2 lines, replacing the automatic link to the big picture with one that I like better, and such. One hour of work sounds about right.
Thanks for the Exodus reminder. I'll ask Gus again in the morning to send set lists to Jam in case they have not been done yet!
I've actually more troubles with Avacyn Restored, because in Tribal and Commander EVERY DECK uses Cavern of Souls, and the editor doesn't recognize it as a land, so I have to move it essentially every single time I edit a deck (and there are other frequent offenders in that set, like Craterhoof Behemoth).
Then again, Exodus is the set of Recurring Nightmare and Survival of the Fittest, two of my all-time favorite cards.
I don't have anything to add to the discussion (been away for too long) but I wanted to say hello and thumbs up!! Awesome formatting by the way, you're raising the bar really high.
Oh wow holy crap yeah, what e'eryone else said prior this article is really good. Especially that last part that kind of hits home since I know I wrote to my 12th article and I just haven't made any more sense. I blame not having as much time for Magic lately. Anyway Paul, what Erman said above me, you're raising the bar really high, and it's a good thing. So keep it up. =)
Back to that Giant deck, there are so many little bits of history in there, both personal and universal.
Remember the time when Cloudpost only had Vesuva as a backup? (I even remember the time when Cloudpost was just a land that occasionally would give you 2 mana).
And look, I couldn't afford Plateau at the time – while today, Sacred Foundry is about the same price as Plateau, not the budget option – and was using the bounce lands in conjunction with that new, crappy $0.2 Worldwake artifact nobody would ever think of using, Amulet of Something. You know, dropping the bounce land and tapping it before it bounces back, you ever heard of that tech?
And Rolling Thunder! Because I was playing Pauper at the time, I think.
@Kuma yeah Amulet of Vigor, Summer Bloom + Ravnica lands...I featured that in my Admonishing Angel article back when Worldwake came out. (Thanks to Brian David-Marshall who pointed me to it via MTG Salvation's forums which are a haven of hidden mtg tech.) Also Sacred Foundry is actually the MORE expensive option now lol. And Promo Plateau alt art ftw. :D Thanks for the details on the Giants deck. I was certain that the land choices were budgetary but the Wooded Foothills are the most pricy of the bunch now!
@3Drinks and Lord E, thank you very much. I am happy to be part of such a great group of writers at Puremtgo. Makes me proud that we have had many community cup members and our guys are in the forefront of many good things happening on MTGO. If I can be a small part of that bit of history, it all becomes worthwhile.
About Jam's generator: It is still quite functional and works as a great basis for what I and other authors do here. It would be nice if he updated it more often, but I am glad for it. Thanks for the comments all! :D