Firstly @ FTFY - Really?!? if that annoys you then wow.
Great stuff as always George - I would love for a body language expert to take a look at the response on the Power 9 question those eyes are all over the map and there were distinct pauses as he juggled hi way through the quicksand.
If you want to develop yourself as a knowledgeable, professional MTGO writer/journalist/whatever, I would suggest spending the time to properly edit out fiddling with windows, writing things in notepad, etc, as well as logging out or silencing Skype, IM, or any other distractions beyond the ones you absolutely can't control. It detracts from your presentation quite a bit.
I don't think so. The card frame makes such an excellent marker for legality. Something like 99% of the cards that have been printed with the Modern style will be legal (barring bannings). I imagine that this will make paper tourneys in Modern a little easier for beginners to grok, a problem we won't have online.
Here's an interesting question though. I can foresee a time, say 5 years down the road we're on now, the Mythic/Planeswalker era of Magic, where yet another eternal format can be carved out that starts with either Lorwyn or Alara, a format that reflects the way the game has changed since the events of TSP block.
The answer is simple with the "i want ot draft more of recent set" wizards needs to make a draft where the contestants can choose which of the 3 packs to bring to the table. that would also be so much fun, if you think about it
I'm cautiously optimistic that they are going with Invasion forward despite the name being the Mirrodin-forward one. Obviously when they used Modern as the name for the Community Cup it meant they like it as the name for the new eternal format.
Therefore this doesn't mean much for the cut-off. I'm optimistic that if they paid attention to the players (as they said they would) they will have to go with Invasion forward (thanks to the efforts of the Overextended community, Gavin in particular). But WotC also has some track record of being stubborn, so I'm just cautiously optimistic. I will be extremely disappointed if they go with Mirrodin-forward. There are top-tier decks without a single card from the extra sets, so the supporters of Mirrodin forward need not be upset if Invasion-forward is selected, whereas conversely some cards just are not legal so there is an objective reason for being upset. There is just no good reason to alienate a fraction of the potential player base of the new eternal format, the extra sets don't really make a big difference in terms of power-level of the format and it's not those extra sets that change whether the new format is a threat to Legacy or not (Legacy is just much more powerful than either option and a very different format in its own right).
In either case, they really need to revise the ban list. Hypergenesis needs to stay banned, possibly Sword of the Meek as well (or Thopter Foundry), Dark Depths and the artifact lands can come out and Vial actually looks safe to keep unbanned (I was surprised at that last one) - this is all information that the Overextended community has provided for WotC.
Pete, looking forward to the price changes next week - I think the fluctuations will be noticeable.
I'm personally hoping for more sets, although I really doubt they will go as far back as masques since they haven't released it online and stated they want the format to be identical online and off.
I'd be shocked if they didn't ban Hypergenesis, and I'm hoping they unban artifact lands - they have legitimate uses beyond affinity which can be stopped many other ways.
The question now is how much Wizards will change the format. Almost certainly, a few cards will be banned, and possibly some unbanned. The bug question is whether they will add more sets to the mix.
"During today's panel at Comic Con, Aaron Forsythe answered a question from the crowd concerning the Modern format played at this year's Community Cup. The audience member asked what the future for the format held and Forsythe said that Wizards of the Coast would be 'moving forward with the Modern format."
I was pretty much like you in terms of casual commander gaming. I never thought I would play it, I didn't even know the rules and never even cared to learn them for years... until recently. Now I'm an addict. I can't explain how this happened and why this happened (though I know that Leviathan's articles played a part in this). So as you say: Magic is still enjoyable when played for fun and one doesn't have to be in the cutthroat tournament player mindset all the time.
Like the videos as always. Match 3 game 1, you can take out the Clique with Skinrender and it won't persist since it has -1/-1 counters on it. You probably noticed that if you watched the replays anyway, but in case not, then next time you'll know :).
Also, Kokusho's ability uses the stack, so you can bolt Drew's face taking him to 1, bring back the kavu, dealing the 4 to Kokusho and attack in with both for the win.
Yup, that's the idea. It is frustrating to no end that MBS packs are worth so many tickets due to the fact that payouts slightly favor SOM and heavily favor NPH.
You could propose a lot of more complicated answers like having pauper/block constructed pay out in MBS or some such nonsense, but really we need a way to even out the packs to a reasonable degree so that people can draft for the sets and cards they want.
The section on draft packs opened is either bad math (although not that bad, just multiply by 3), or poorly worded. You say in the text a draft junkie could have 4 per week or 20 per month. I will ignore the fact that 20 per month is more like 4.5 per week, and stick to that number anyway. That would mean 60 (!) drafts per 3 month window for each set. Your math of packs opened seems to be assuming 20 drafts per 3-month set window, which would indeed give you 120, 40, and 20. Sure it's a nit pick, but incorrect math gets stuck in my craw so to speak.
I like char49d's idea of leaving up a single queue of triple small set (that's how I'm interpretting his/her comment at least). While you can probably fill out a single playset by spamming those queues during the release events, only jobless MTGOers (or someone whose job it was to do this) could realistically fill out an entire online playset in the 2 weeks these queues are available. Collections fill at a snail's pace once those queues go away. I know "it's not a real format" and they were never meant to be drafted by themselves, but many people enjoy them and they are very useful to help fill out collections. If nothing else, I think Wizards should bring these queues back for maybe 1 week per month, or at least the last 2 weeks or so before the next set's prerelease. Personally, I have 20 packs of NPH in my account, but just 2 MBS, and 0 SOM. It'd be nice if I could just run 3xNPH instead of trading in for SOM or MBS to keep drafting cards I don't need anymore. Oh well, C'est la vie.
It would be a great idea to keep a 4-3-3-2 queue firing to use only packs from the third set. People typically end up with an excess of these packs due to the payouts, and often end up with a shortage of the 3rd set. This would be a great way to easily kill two problems with one simple solution.
Ah yes, the whole "people want more of the most recent set" argument that they always use to justify their payouts. Putting it in the context of the shorted 3rd set actually makes sense. However, people also want complete draft sets paid out. Their current payouts also don't make sense for classic sets that have been draftable for over a year.
There is no need to do any complicated change to how sets are released to fix the problem, just leave up the 4-3-2-2 queue's (8-4's would be better, but who am I kidding) for each individual set. Now you have a legitimate sink for extra MBS/NPH packs, and people can buy them and use them in bulk if they so desire.
Every time one of those queues fire, you help with the discrepancy between the first set and the second/third.
I understand why Koth isn't insanely valuable, more of them have been opened compared to Karn or Tezzeret, but I can't for the life of me imagine why just before he's being reprinted Gideon has shot up online. I realize he's a 2-of in a competitive deck, but his price is obviously going down once a ton of M12 are cracked. That goes double for Lavamancer and especially solemn who has will have been printed 3 times.
I would suggest shifting the times and set sizes to account for the whole third set debacle. Actually, I think this year was worse for New Phyrexia because it had a larger set size than most small expansions (all in the uncommons, hence the price of dismember) and had less time before the next set came out than, say, Rise of Eldrazi.
so ideally do something like this:
big set 2 months
small set A 3 months
small set B 4 months
core set 3 months.
This would give 7 months of the full expansion. To avoid having it get stale, they would probably have to move the way the PTQ seasons happen. I would make block be a format for 1 or 2 months after the third set comes out, then a couple of months of standard, just before the new core set, then put the extended (or whatever other popular PTQ format there is) PTQs at the end, to avoid having people get tired of the same decks, then focus back on standard when the new large expansion comes out.
Also, they could instead, or in addition to, reduce the size of the last small set and move into the first big set, specially at the rare/mythic level, therefore making the bigger set harder to complete and the last set easier.
I'm not sure just how making cards in one particular set more expensive benefits wizard's bottom line so I assume there are other logistic reasons for not having done something like this. I assume, that if they changed the timing of the expansion releases, they may also have to shift the whole schedule around to fit with the holiday seasons properly.
a fireball for getting my heart jumped up and then crashed down on the M2012 stuff..lol..
I like the addition of the PTSD prices, prosbloom was fun back in the day. Hopefully once we get all cards online you can go back and price out the other PTSD's...maybe I'm just lazy.. thanks
When I went to look at the link for the Beta set I get a web page with the message "That is either a non-valid product number, or an item that we have removed from stock." I wonder if that means they sold it???
He makes a fairly valid point. There isn't really any reason to be logged into skype when recording, for instance.
It doesn't particularly irritate me, but it would be so easy to eliminate that it seems worthwhile.
Firstly @ FTFY - Really?!? if that annoys you then wow.
Great stuff as always George - I would love for a body language expert to take a look at the response on the Power 9 question those eyes are all over the map and there were distinct pauses as he juggled hi way through the quicksand.
Wow, that sounds like a horrible experience!
If you want to develop yourself as a knowledgeable, professional MTGO writer/journalist/whatever, I would suggest spending the time to properly edit out fiddling with windows, writing things in notepad, etc, as well as logging out or silencing Skype, IM, or any other distractions beyond the ones you absolutely can't control. It detracts from your presentation quite a bit.
This is awesome! I especialy like the game commentary, it's great to be able to see that without having to pull an all-nighter. :-)
At this point I'm just hoping Tezz turns out to be Standard's next big Jace.
I don't think so. The card frame makes such an excellent marker for legality. Something like 99% of the cards that have been printed with the Modern style will be legal (barring bannings). I imagine that this will make paper tourneys in Modern a little easier for beginners to grok, a problem we won't have online.
Here's an interesting question though. I can foresee a time, say 5 years down the road we're on now, the Mythic/Planeswalker era of Magic, where yet another eternal format can be carved out that starts with either Lorwyn or Alara, a format that reflects the way the game has changed since the events of TSP block.
The answer is simple with the "i want ot draft more of recent set" wizards needs to make a draft where the contestants can choose which of the 3 packs to bring to the table. that would also be so much fun, if you think about it
I'm cautiously optimistic that they are going with Invasion forward despite the name being the Mirrodin-forward one. Obviously when they used Modern as the name for the Community Cup it meant they like it as the name for the new eternal format.
Therefore this doesn't mean much for the cut-off. I'm optimistic that if they paid attention to the players (as they said they would) they will have to go with Invasion forward (thanks to the efforts of the Overextended community, Gavin in particular). But WotC also has some track record of being stubborn, so I'm just cautiously optimistic. I will be extremely disappointed if they go with Mirrodin-forward. There are top-tier decks without a single card from the extra sets, so the supporters of Mirrodin forward need not be upset if Invasion-forward is selected, whereas conversely some cards just are not legal so there is an objective reason for being upset. There is just no good reason to alienate a fraction of the potential player base of the new eternal format, the extra sets don't really make a big difference in terms of power-level of the format and it's not those extra sets that change whether the new format is a threat to Legacy or not (Legacy is just much more powerful than either option and a very different format in its own right).
In either case, they really need to revise the ban list. Hypergenesis needs to stay banned, possibly Sword of the Meek as well (or Thopter Foundry), Dark Depths and the artifact lands can come out and Vial actually looks safe to keep unbanned (I was surprised at that last one) - this is all information that the Overextended community has provided for WotC.
Pete, looking forward to the price changes next week - I think the fluctuations will be noticeable.
Ivo.
I'm personally hoping for more sets, although I really doubt they will go as far back as masques since they haven't released it online and stated they want the format to be identical online and off.
I'd be shocked if they didn't ban Hypergenesis, and I'm hoping they unban artifact lands - they have legitimate uses beyond affinity which can be stopped many other ways.
The question now is how much Wizards will change the format. Almost certainly, a few cards will be banned, and possibly some unbanned. The bug question is whether they will add more sets to the mix.
Over at GatheringMagic they posted this yesterday.
http://www.gatheringmagic.com/aaron-forsythe-gives-modern-the-nod/
"During today's panel at Comic Con, Aaron Forsythe answered a question from the crowd concerning the Modern format played at this year's Community Cup. The audience member asked what the future for the format held and Forsythe said that Wizards of the Coast would be 'moving forward with the Modern format."
I was pretty much like you in terms of casual commander gaming. I never thought I would play it, I didn't even know the rules and never even cared to learn them for years... until recently. Now I'm an addict. I can't explain how this happened and why this happened (though I know that Leviathan's articles played a part in this). So as you say: Magic is still enjoyable when played for fun and one doesn't have to be in the cutthroat tournament player mindset all the time.
And it's good to see you back writing.
LE
Like the videos as always. Match 3 game 1, you can take out the Clique with Skinrender and it won't persist since it has -1/-1 counters on it. You probably noticed that if you watched the replays anyway, but in case not, then next time you'll know :).
Also, Kokusho's ability uses the stack, so you can bolt Drew's face taking him to 1, bring back the kavu, dealing the 4 to Kokusho and attack in with both for the win.
hmm - seems to be under both. Looks like I misnamed the LEgacy deck I had in cutting edge tech last week.
I'll figure out what went wrong and fix it next time.
the Hermitic Solifuge deck is listed under Legacy decks at the end, but should be under classic as Hermit Druid is banned in legacy =)
Yup, that's the idea. It is frustrating to no end that MBS packs are worth so many tickets due to the fact that payouts slightly favor SOM and heavily favor NPH.
You could propose a lot of more complicated answers like having pauper/block constructed pay out in MBS or some such nonsense, but really we need a way to even out the packs to a reasonable degree so that people can draft for the sets and cards they want.
The section on draft packs opened is either bad math (although not that bad, just multiply by 3), or poorly worded. You say in the text a draft junkie could have 4 per week or 20 per month. I will ignore the fact that 20 per month is more like 4.5 per week, and stick to that number anyway. That would mean 60 (!) drafts per 3 month window for each set. Your math of packs opened seems to be assuming 20 drafts per 3-month set window, which would indeed give you 120, 40, and 20. Sure it's a nit pick, but incorrect math gets stuck in my craw so to speak.
I like char49d's idea of leaving up a single queue of triple small set (that's how I'm interpretting his/her comment at least). While you can probably fill out a single playset by spamming those queues during the release events, only jobless MTGOers (or someone whose job it was to do this) could realistically fill out an entire online playset in the 2 weeks these queues are available. Collections fill at a snail's pace once those queues go away. I know "it's not a real format" and they were never meant to be drafted by themselves, but many people enjoy them and they are very useful to help fill out collections. If nothing else, I think Wizards should bring these queues back for maybe 1 week per month, or at least the last 2 weeks or so before the next set's prerelease. Personally, I have 20 packs of NPH in my account, but just 2 MBS, and 0 SOM. It'd be nice if I could just run 3xNPH instead of trading in for SOM or MBS to keep drafting cards I don't need anymore. Oh well, C'est la vie.
It would be a great idea to keep a 4-3-3-2 queue firing to use only packs from the third set. People typically end up with an excess of these packs due to the payouts, and often end up with a shortage of the 3rd set. This would be a great way to easily kill two problems with one simple solution.
Ah yes, the whole "people want more of the most recent set" argument that they always use to justify their payouts. Putting it in the context of the shorted 3rd set actually makes sense. However, people also want complete draft sets paid out. Their current payouts also don't make sense for classic sets that have been draftable for over a year.
Alternately you could play with others who own copies of everything in the cube pile as well?
There is no need to do any complicated change to how sets are released to fix the problem, just leave up the 4-3-2-2 queue's (8-4's would be better, but who am I kidding) for each individual set. Now you have a legitimate sink for extra MBS/NPH packs, and people can buy them and use them in bulk if they so desire.
Every time one of those queues fire, you help with the discrepancy between the first set and the second/third.
I understand why Koth isn't insanely valuable, more of them have been opened compared to Karn or Tezzeret, but I can't for the life of me imagine why just before he's being reprinted Gideon has shot up online. I realize he's a 2-of in a competitive deck, but his price is obviously going down once a ton of M12 are cracked. That goes double for Lavamancer and especially solemn who has will have been printed 3 times.
I would suggest shifting the times and set sizes to account for the whole third set debacle. Actually, I think this year was worse for New Phyrexia because it had a larger set size than most small expansions (all in the uncommons, hence the price of dismember) and had less time before the next set came out than, say, Rise of Eldrazi.
so ideally do something like this:
big set 2 months
small set A 3 months
small set B 4 months
core set 3 months.
This would give 7 months of the full expansion. To avoid having it get stale, they would probably have to move the way the PTQ seasons happen. I would make block be a format for 1 or 2 months after the third set comes out, then a couple of months of standard, just before the new core set, then put the extended (or whatever other popular PTQ format there is) PTQs at the end, to avoid having people get tired of the same decks, then focus back on standard when the new large expansion comes out.
Also, they could instead, or in addition to, reduce the size of the last small set and move into the first big set, specially at the rare/mythic level, therefore making the bigger set harder to complete and the last set easier.
I'm not sure just how making cards in one particular set more expensive benefits wizard's bottom line so I assume there are other logistic reasons for not having done something like this. I assume, that if they changed the timing of the expansion releases, they may also have to shift the whole schedule around to fit with the holiday seasons properly.
a fireball for getting my heart jumped up and then crashed down on the M2012 stuff..lol..
I like the addition of the PTSD prices, prosbloom was fun back in the day. Hopefully once we get all cards online you can go back and price out the other PTSD's...maybe I'm just lazy.. thanks
When I went to look at the link for the Beta set I get a web page with the message "That is either a non-valid product number, or an item that we have removed from stock." I wonder if that means they sold it???