Not sure I would have been able to avoid switching into red for the big mythic maybe splashing blue for carddraw and a couple flyers. In any case I like safe passage a lot more than Ice Cage, but maybe my disdain for Ice Cage is a little pathological. I would have liked picking up that pack 3 crystal ball as well I think. Just my two cents anyhow.
Love the NES reference, Nostalgia is mondo my thing. Sorry to hear about the money issues, phone companies are full of smurfs for what they're allowed to get away with sometimes. I remember the first time I had a huge phone bill when it was being paid by my parents way back when. (parachute pants were just becoming lame even to lame people) Well after the sting of my parent's reaction to that I swore off any circumstance that would allow a phone company to rip me a new one, needless to say I do not text atm and lived without a cell phone until about five years ago.
Liquidating your collection for cash is rough, but so long as one realizes that players make the game and that having the priciest cards is just the gold plating on your grill you'll find that the best thing in this life are of very modest greenback cost once you have enough food, shelter, medical care and clothing to get by healthily enough.
In many ways I find magic on a budget to be more rewarding than magic with unlimited resources. It becomes about your ability to innovate and scrounge instead of defaulting to the "good stuff" decks.
Your P1P8 is exactly the reason why I don't draft anymore. I mean, there's a Dragonskull Summit sitting there and you are "strong enough" to pick Excommunicate over it. P2P3 is the same. You have the determination to pick an Azure Drake over that nice and juicy Cyclops Gladiator. I just can't do that (Lack of will? Yeah, I guess so).
And therefore I always end up with lots of nice rares and uncommons in drafts which are sadly not playable for the deck I'm trying to draft (foil White Knight for my RB deck? Hell yeah!). Which of course lead to a first turn loss :(.
Is rare drafting something that can be cured?!
Anyway, nice article as always. I'm, however, waiting you to return to "your roots". I'm always hungry for new and fun casual stuff, and you seem to have a few nice ones.
It used to be a magic maxim that drafting green was an autoloss. Then cards started showing up that were actually good. And other colors lost some power. Green isn't always a good choice but it can be quite viable. Now that guy was a rare drafter with incredible luck but I think you could have still won it given a better draw. Better luck next time eh?
I haven't found opening it in openoffice to be a great experience so far, I suggest the excel viewer for most people (much faster processing and better presentation ect) but I may be able to edit it with office so that's something for me to look at.
I'm thrilled about the excel list and Neonwhite did this spontaneously without any prompting for everyone to be able to use as a great Heirloom resource.
I would certianly love to have something that can be opened in a browser as well as the excel list as for various reasons each would have it's pros and cons and having both is better than either one alone.
I've emailed you more of my thoughts about this and so you'll have to let me know what you think in those regard.
Well you can open it in Open Office too so that is a possibility for those who need to use it but as I said above, not thrilled with the formatting. (Really not a fan of excel to begin with.)
The problem is a) it is ugly (no offense to whomever made it, kudos on all that work eh?) and thus hard to read coherently b) as it is, it is not terribly much more useful than the client editor and having the puremtgo forums list open.
But it did inspire me to start something codewise.
which I sent to you in email already along with further comments.
It only has a few entries at the moment as I am not fast or prolific data entrant. have about a dozen more typed out in my own offline copy. But it shows you what I think are the important aspects of such a list (sorts by color, name, type, and rarity though descending only.) My initial thought was being able to search up a name and have the list bring the closest fields up top. But that is another step.
NeonWhite has developed an excel list of the Heirloom legal card list for us and so I just wanted to make everyone aware of the location to download it(http://www.archive.org/download/heirloomexcelDB/heirloomlistexcel.xls) It has all the cards for the set listed with card information next to them and hyperlinked to gatherer. You can also filter the list in many ways such as by creature type casting cost card type ect. It is a thing of beauty and diminishes even more the effort needed to play Heirloom with as much convenience as any other format.
This would be great. We use ventrilo presently and it is an awesome addition to the gaming experience. If that service, or something similiar was provided by the client, it would be great.
I don't see the voice thing an issue. I can't imagine it will be active for the game rooms, but only when you start a game. I imagine there will be a mute feature added then. Most games have them nowadays. And there are some clans that use teamspeak and ventrillo already as it is.
Agreed. Definitely needs more discussion. I believe they won't, but hope they do. If there was a way of getting the control right, it would be an epic addition to the game.
I don't see why it's so hard to justify 2x Crystal Ball, unless you subscribe to the belief that not playing a creature on Turn 3 ruins an aggro deck's chances to win. The deck is extremely light on 3 drops, so Crystal Ball fits in very nicely. The only thing you have to worry about is drawing them both in your hand; otherwise you can just scry the other one away.
I also agree with the comment that questioned Safe Passage over Chandra's Spitfire. A 1/3 Flier for 2C isn't all that exciting, but it does block a lot of things in this format. Also it gets ridiculous with multiple Outrage and other Burn. Dealing 7 damage with a Lightning Bolt/Chandra's Outrage is a huge virtual card advantage for a red deck.
A recent article on SSC commented how Safe Passage was nice in M10 because the format was slower (God knows Ruel drafted the hell out of them), but that the speed of M11 makes it hardly playable.
You're right. I haven't had that experience in multiplayer but I have had enough negative experiences with multiplayer players that I tend to not go for random games. The players themselves can be very rude and annoying without worrying about bystanders harassing people. And your point is well taken with multiplayer which really needs an overhaul in many ways. And I hope the guys/gals in WOTC who have some influence over this stuff will take this into consideration when redesigning multiplayer assuming they do.
Interestingly the application where voice chat probably works best is clan chat and multiplayer so your complaint (and Shard's is certainly valid.) The only thing I can tell you is keep saying it. Keep putting it out there for discussion and maybe someone important to the situation will take notice.
Most of the complaints, most of the issues, most of the bad will that drives kids from the game is not arising from tourney's. My point remains, in a game, when someone starts flaming, you can't block them.
1v1 one and tourney centric I think you may be... So what you can't see is what you are not looking for. Quite understandable I guess, but is a microcosmic example of how WOTC sees MP and cas kids.
In MP a player can join your game, someone not even in the game, and can start flaming. There is nothing in the client that can address this.
Simply blocking people and moving on does not address the point I made, which is 'In game you are forced to listen to what they write. If you don't want to, you shouldn't have to. Given this, I side with Shard, they can't control simple chat, they are not going to be able to get voice chat right.
There is nothing simple about MP, if there was it would be fixed.
Right, but you are not forced to play with people you don't want to and you can simply block them and move on. In tourneys I would think you'd want your attention on the game and not on what people are chattering about so I don't see the conflict here.
BUT..... We can't even mute players in game, and have to ask an ORC to have them stop flaming. I don't see voice chat working without some fairly sophisticated controls. Controls that should, would? be easier to implement in a text based chat and haven't been, so my guess would be shard is right. OR WOTC is stupid and he is wrong about it being implemented, but not wrong about what the outcome will be.
I wanted to make some comments on your picks, but RoninX and others have already said it. The main point I'd still reiterate is that you should grab Doom Blade with both hands when its offered, as it's eminently splashable when you're in green. I'd probably have take the second cultivate too, but I forget what the alternatives were now.
I just posted my last M11 draft article too, where I came to the conclusion that I've been wrong to have been avoiding green for so long. Nice that we learn something from every draft, although a shame that (for me at any rate), I feel like I've finally got a good all-round understanding of the format just as I'm about to leave it for SOM.
Five stars for the excellent videos and top quality article.
Oh and one last pick comment since I evidently can't resist it. I'd pick Blinding Mage over Cudgel Troll too.
Splendid,
Not sure I would have been able to avoid switching into red for the big mythic maybe splashing blue for carddraw and a couple flyers. In any case I like safe passage a lot more than Ice Cage, but maybe my disdain for Ice Cage is a little pathological. I would have liked picking up that pack 3 crystal ball as well I think. Just my two cents anyhow.
X-
ShardFenix,
Love the NES reference, Nostalgia is mondo my thing. Sorry to hear about the money issues, phone companies are full of smurfs for what they're allowed to get away with sometimes. I remember the first time I had a huge phone bill when it was being paid by my parents way back when. (parachute pants were just becoming lame even to lame people) Well after the sting of my parent's reaction to that I swore off any circumstance that would allow a phone company to rip me a new one, needless to say I do not text atm and lived without a cell phone until about five years ago.
Liquidating your collection for cash is rough, but so long as one realizes that players make the game and that having the priciest cards is just the gold plating on your grill you'll find that the best thing in this life are of very modest greenback cost once you have enough food, shelter, medical care and clothing to get by healthily enough.
In many ways I find magic on a budget to be more rewarding than magic with unlimited resources. It becomes about your ability to innovate and scrounge instead of defaulting to the "good stuff" decks.
All the best,
Mike-
Very informative and useful...this should be tacked up somewhere on this site for reference!
Your P1P8 is exactly the reason why I don't draft anymore. I mean, there's a Dragonskull Summit sitting there and you are "strong enough" to pick Excommunicate over it. P2P3 is the same. You have the determination to pick an Azure Drake over that nice and juicy Cyclops Gladiator. I just can't do that (Lack of will? Yeah, I guess so).
And therefore I always end up with lots of nice rares and uncommons in drafts which are sadly not playable for the deck I'm trying to draft (foil White Knight for my RB deck? Hell yeah!). Which of course lead to a first turn loss :(.
Is rare drafting something that can be cured?!
Anyway, nice article as always. I'm, however, waiting you to return to "your roots". I'm always hungry for new and fun casual stuff, and you seem to have a few nice ones.
LE
It used to be a magic maxim that drafting green was an autoloss. Then cards started showing up that were actually good. And other colors lost some power. Green isn't always a good choice but it can be quite viable. Now that guy was a rare drafter with incredible luck but I think you could have still won it given a better draw. Better luck next time eh?
Honestly I would have taken the pack one Memnite in hopes of getting an aggressive- Oh wait, I'm getting ahead of myself... Excellent as always!
I haven't found opening it in openoffice to be a great experience so far, I suggest the excel viewer for most people (much faster processing and better presentation ect) but I may be able to edit it with office so that's something for me to look at.
X-
I'm thrilled about the excel list and Neonwhite did this spontaneously without any prompting for everyone to be able to use as a great Heirloom resource.
I would certianly love to have something that can be opened in a browser as well as the excel list as for various reasons each would have it's pros and cons and having both is better than either one alone.
I've emailed you more of my thoughts about this and so you'll have to let me know what you think in those regard.
X-
Well you can open it in Open Office too so that is a possibility for those who need to use it but as I said above, not thrilled with the formatting. (Really not a fan of excel to begin with.)
The problem is a) it is ugly (no offense to whomever made it, kudos on all that work eh?) and thus hard to read coherently b) as it is, it is not terribly much more useful than the client editor and having the puremtgo forums list open.
But it did inspire me to start something codewise.
http://outofthebrokensky.com/mtgo/heirloom/cardsorting.html
which I sent to you in email already along with further comments.
It only has a few entries at the moment as I am not fast or prolific data entrant. have about a dozen more typed out in my own offline copy. But it shows you what I think are the important aspects of such a list (sorts by color, name, type, and rarity though descending only.) My initial thought was being able to search up a name and have the list bring the closest fields up top. But that is another step.
You can download excel viewer for free, you just won't be able to edit it.
most people can open it and look through it if theyre using any microsoft operating system I think, just not edit it?
Not so useful for people without Windows Office. Might want to convert it to a more open format??
Hey everyone,
NeonWhite has developed an excel list of the Heirloom legal card list for us and so I just wanted to make everyone aware of the location to download it(http://www.archive.org/download/heirloomexcelDB/heirloomlistexcel.xls) It has all the cards for the set listed with card information next to them and hyperlinked to gatherer. You can also filter the list in many ways such as by creature type casting cost card type ect. It is a thing of beauty and diminishes even more the effort needed to play Heirloom with as much convenience as any other format.
Thanks again Neon,
X-
This would be great. We use ventrilo presently and it is an awesome addition to the gaming experience. If that service, or something similiar was provided by the client, it would be great.
I don't see the voice thing an issue. I can't imagine it will be active for the game rooms, but only when you start a game. I imagine there will be a mute feature added then. Most games have them nowadays. And there are some clans that use teamspeak and ventrillo already as it is.
Agreed. Definitely needs more discussion. I believe they won't, but hope they do. If there was a way of getting the control right, it would be an epic addition to the game.
I don't see why it's so hard to justify 2x Crystal Ball, unless you subscribe to the belief that not playing a creature on Turn 3 ruins an aggro deck's chances to win. The deck is extremely light on 3 drops, so Crystal Ball fits in very nicely. The only thing you have to worry about is drawing them both in your hand; otherwise you can just scry the other one away.
I also agree with the comment that questioned Safe Passage over Chandra's Spitfire. A 1/3 Flier for 2C isn't all that exciting, but it does block a lot of things in this format. Also it gets ridiculous with multiple Outrage and other Burn. Dealing 7 damage with a Lightning Bolt/Chandra's Outrage is a huge virtual card advantage for a red deck.
A recent article on SSC commented how Safe Passage was nice in M10 because the format was slower (God knows Ruel drafted the hell out of them), but that the speed of M11 makes it hardly playable.
You're right. I haven't had that experience in multiplayer but I have had enough negative experiences with multiplayer players that I tend to not go for random games. The players themselves can be very rude and annoying without worrying about bystanders harassing people. And your point is well taken with multiplayer which really needs an overhaul in many ways. And I hope the guys/gals in WOTC who have some influence over this stuff will take this into consideration when redesigning multiplayer assuming they do.
Interestingly the application where voice chat probably works best is clan chat and multiplayer so your complaint (and Shard's is certainly valid.) The only thing I can tell you is keep saying it. Keep putting it out there for discussion and maybe someone important to the situation will take notice.
Most of the complaints, most of the issues, most of the bad will that drives kids from the game is not arising from tourney's. My point remains, in a game, when someone starts flaming, you can't block them.
1v1 one and tourney centric I think you may be... So what you can't see is what you are not looking for. Quite understandable I guess, but is a microcosmic example of how WOTC sees MP and cas kids.
In MP a player can join your game, someone not even in the game, and can start flaming. There is nothing in the client that can address this.
Simply blocking people and moving on does not address the point I made, which is 'In game you are forced to listen to what they write. If you don't want to, you shouldn't have to. Given this, I side with Shard, they can't control simple chat, they are not going to be able to get voice chat right.
There is nothing simple about MP, if there was it would be fixed.
Right, but you are not forced to play with people you don't want to and you can simply block them and move on. In tourneys I would think you'd want your attention on the game and not on what people are chattering about so I don't see the conflict here.
"We can't even mute players in game"
You can in a sense mute someone by blocking them. I am certain this would also include voice chat.
BUT..... We can't even mute players in game, and have to ask an ORC to have them stop flaming. I don't see voice chat working without some fairly sophisticated controls. Controls that should, would? be easier to implement in a text based chat and haven't been, so my guess would be shard is right. OR WOTC is stupid and he is wrong about it being implemented, but not wrong about what the outcome will be.
I wanted to make some comments on your picks, but RoninX and others have already said it. The main point I'd still reiterate is that you should grab Doom Blade with both hands when its offered, as it's eminently splashable when you're in green. I'd probably have take the second cultivate too, but I forget what the alternatives were now.
I just posted my last M11 draft article too, where I came to the conclusion that I've been wrong to have been avoiding green for so long. Nice that we learn something from every draft, although a shame that (for me at any rate), I feel like I've finally got a good all-round understanding of the format just as I'm about to leave it for SOM.
Five stars for the excellent videos and top quality article.
Oh and one last pick comment since I evidently can't resist it. I'd pick Blinding Mage over Cudgel Troll too.