right now I am 2-4 in the 2 man queues. beating jund by attacking 1 color with spreading seas and ruinblaster while going to 7 with cruel. and burn with removal and hitting my cruel to end the game.
I lost to UW control opponent was down to 7, I had 3 all he had in play was a sphynx of lost truths and tapped out. I was sitting on 6 lands and a cruel ultimatum in hand but i drew into a blightning. RG eldrazi won because they dropped a manabard and eldrazi. and lost to 2 jund decks, it just felt like i couldn't hit my 7th land drop when i needed it the most resulting in loses 3 out of the 4 times.
I need to change my SB again after doing this article i dropped the 3 hexmages and added in (Suffer the Past) works beautifully against Vengevine, Hellspark, Hell's Thunder, and plus gaining x life while doing x damage is just beautiful seals the deal or buys you more time to dig for anwsers. but im thinking about cutting the hexmages and going 3 pithing needle, 3 negate, 3 ruinblaster, suffer the past, 3 consuming vapors. vapors should help against the more aggro decks since your killing and gaining life at the same time.
Hey Welcome back! It's been far too long since your last article. Gargoyle Castle works nicely with Knight of the White Orchid if you draw the knight late game. You can make the token at the end of their turn then play knight to fetch a land on your own. (I've noticed KotWO garners a similar response to Tithe and or Land Tax. Opponents tend to try and play around it, holding back land in case of Armageddon etc and to keep parity.) On the other hand a 3/4 flier for 6 mana (5 + the castle) isn't awesome even if it is uncounterable. I'd say it's more of a combat trick than a great creature. However, it does survive wrath of god if you wait so there is that.
I can't say I am a huge fan of sigil. It is annoying to face with enchantress.dec but otherwise you are dependent on draw to make it work.
at some level you have to just give people benefit of the doubt and hope people will be honest, the lowest level of everything in life there is a sense of trust where you have to give the benefit of the doubt
Im actually very conservative about splashing in Limited. I could have probably splashed it but I didn't think I'd really need it especially because I liked my deck and swamping it for 2 or 3 seemed a bit of a strech. I wouldn't criticize anyone who'd actually splash it but I didn't felt the need for it. I actually sideboarded it in game 3 of round 1 as an alternative Magmaw kill.
If the situation comes up where people are having problems finding other players to complete their five games what I used to do in the leagues I ran before was on the last day of each week I offered those players a chance to play anyone else and I would only record their scores but the games would have to be watched to make sure no one dropped their games without playing.
1. I think all PRE events are for fun and should never be about the prizes if thats what people look for they should stick to sealed events or drafts.
2. This is a possability but would people really keep busting packs until they get a good one, it would cost them a fortune and what would they gain from it $10 max minus the packs that were opened.
3. It would be very hard to photoshop the New cards screen as its not presented very well in the first place in the client. If you look at the example in the article you can see where the mana cost is much larger than normal overwriting part of the card and they are not easy to read.
They are all good points but I'm hoping no one would go that low, it would be hard for them as per my comments above.
I have thought a lot about how to stop cheaters and believe how its being done as per the article is the best way forward.
My first cart was 'Zelda: the adventures of Link' which blew my mind when I saw it and prompted me to get an NES. First "rpg/adventure" I'd seen with such cool graphics and problem solving. That was around '89. A little korean boy was playing it in the local music shop around the corner and spent like 30mins explaining the whole saga to me. I have to say, it was a real eye-opener. Before that I was exclusively into arcade video games.
Shadowgate was a disappointment. Got it brought it home and immediately finished it. Favorite cart was Romance of the 3 Kingdoms and the Ancient Bandit Kings of China came in as close 2nd. Destiny of an Emperor was also great.
I remember back in the day when we did paper Leagues. I miss the leagues.
I have a few concerns though.
1. The payout versus the prize. If your playing this event then I would say you are strictly doing it for the fun and not the prize. Even if you purchased all your packs from 9th edition at $1.75 you would be spending $14 and 31.92 for any of the packs at 3.99.
2. And even if we are doing this for the fun, it's not going to stop anyone from say, taking multiple screenshots of opened packs, and hand picking the packs with the best card pool.
3. Lets say that you don't have the money to buy a bunch of packs. You could pick cards from a certain set and Photoshop the perfect pack.
/me is sad. I thought the booster builder would just randomly generate a list of the contents of five booster packs. I didnt know i had to own the cards. Ugh time to find a nother way to explore archetypes
I understand that there would be a higher likelihood of picking the best packs when you are screen capturing draft packs, however that is an advantage that all players could use. It's sort of like watching replays of your opponent's matches during a draft. It's something that is less than ideal in my mind, but it's a factor that is given to all players, so I consider it fair. However, I realize that it's early and you are waiting to see how things go before considering changes.
Right now, my concern would be that the participation level will make it difficult to find matches. The old leagues had 250+ players and players could play extra rounds for tie-breaker points. With only 40-50 players, no set times to get together, and each player being done after 5 matches each week, I'm thinking that it will be difficult for many players to get 5 matches played in a week unless you are online A LOT.
Yeah apparently all three combined parts of sith code can get quite long...
Fear leads to anger.
Anger leads to hate.
Hatred leads to power.
Power leads to victory.
Let your anger flow through you.
Your hate will make you strong.
True power is only achieved through testing the limits of one's
anger, passing through unscathed.
Rage channeled through anger is unstoppable.
The dark side of the Force offers unimaginable power.
The dark side is stronger than the light.
The weak deserve their fate.
Peace is a lie
There is only passion
Through passion I gain strength
Through strength I gain power
Through power I gain victory
Through victory my chains are broken
The Force shall set me free
Thanks guys for the comments. It makes me really happy to see that these articles were fun to read because they all were fun to write. I did put a lot of effort into each part, a lot more that you can imagine, and it is a great pleasure for me to see that the majority of my "dear readers" liked them at the end.
Shard, I may be wrong but the whole Sith code includes both the part I took and the part you just wrote. So it's something long. But as I said I may be wrong (which indicates that I'm an amnesiac and stupid Sith lord) but this is how I remember it was.
By the way, as I said in the article as well, the Blightning deck is all I play these days. It's an excellent deck and I just can't stop playing it. It's a lot of fun but it is also very powerful.
And welcome back Mr. Splendid. I'm sorry (I think) that your evil master plan to destroy the world has failed but I'm happy to see your colorful writing back.
Awesome Decks LE. I really enjoyed this whole series, even if I cant afford most of the decks. (Curse you stupid higher education costs)
Though any true Sith Lord knows what you listed was not the Sith Code...this is:
Peace is a lie
There is only passion
Through passion I gain strength
Through strength I gain power
Through power I gain victory
Through victory my chains are broken
The Force shall set me free
I'm supporting this idea since day one and I strongly believe that this will be a great experience for all of us who miss the leagues. Thank you Flippers for running this and thank you mtgotraders for sponsoring it.
Just one question Flippers: Why 90min games? Isn't this a bit too long? Shouldn't it be 30mins as usual?
Other than that I think that every point makes sense and well covered, even though I'm not very comfortable with sharing my card pool with the rest of the world. I know that this is the only way to prevent cheating but I'm just saying.
This is a booster builder program written by a player (LordHastur on MTGO forums). It is a perfect tool to try the booster combination before you actually crack packs. You just select sets and enter how many boosters you'd like and the program gives you your card pool. The program saves your card pool as a deck which is located under decks on MTGO. After creating the pool just go to the deck builder screen, click "load", select the "Booster Builder Decks" folder and voila; your pool is there.
I created almost 50 card pools with this program and now I KNOW FOR SURE how many boosters of which sets I will crack.
I'm going to leave Snow-Covered lands as unlimited (can be used as basic lands) for the first league and see how it plays out.
There is no meta yet and with so many possibilities I'm going to play it by ear.
5 packs of Eventide could be powerful like Coldsnap but there is also affinity to watch out for and a number of other possibilities in each set which makes them strong, Eldrazi could be a contender who knows.
@ ArchGenius I did think of doing it from taking screenshots of draft packs, infact it was my original idea but I felt this was more prone to people picking their choice of packs from drafts and so decided to do it by busting packs instead. There's not a great deal of people who would keep busting packs to get good cards for a $10 prize.
Also note if there is a lot of interest this time then next time the prize amount may go up.
Thanks to all those who have shown an interest so far. The Group at present contains 43 members which I'm hoping at least 75% of these will participate. These are still early days and I'm pro actively looking for players each day. I would like to kick this league off with as many players as possible.
Ouch missed a typo with Sensei's Divining Top and parentheses around Dark Confidant. :/
right now I am 2-4 in the 2 man queues. beating jund by attacking 1 color with spreading seas and ruinblaster while going to 7 with cruel. and burn with removal and hitting my cruel to end the game.
I lost to UW control opponent was down to 7, I had 3 all he had in play was a sphynx of lost truths and tapped out. I was sitting on 6 lands and a cruel ultimatum in hand but i drew into a blightning. RG eldrazi won because they dropped a manabard and eldrazi. and lost to 2 jund decks, it just felt like i couldn't hit my 7th land drop when i needed it the most resulting in loses 3 out of the 4 times.
I need to change my SB again after doing this article i dropped the 3 hexmages and added in (Suffer the Past) works beautifully against Vengevine, Hellspark, Hell's Thunder, and plus gaining x life while doing x damage is just beautiful seals the deal or buys you more time to dig for anwsers. but im thinking about cutting the hexmages and going 3 pithing needle, 3 negate, 3 ruinblaster, suffer the past, 3 consuming vapors. vapors should help against the more aggro decks since your killing and gaining life at the same time.
Ah ok thats what I thought from watching the videos.
Hey Welcome back! It's been far too long since your last article. Gargoyle Castle works nicely with Knight of the White Orchid if you draw the knight late game. You can make the token at the end of their turn then play knight to fetch a land on your own. (I've noticed KotWO garners a similar response to Tithe and or Land Tax. Opponents tend to try and play around it, holding back land in case of Armageddon etc and to keep parity.) On the other hand a 3/4 flier for 6 mana (5 + the castle) isn't awesome even if it is uncounterable. I'd say it's more of a combat trick than a great creature. However, it does survive wrath of god if you wait so there is that.
I can't say I am a huge fan of sigil. It is annoying to face with enchantress.dec but otherwise you are dependent on draw to make it work.
at some level you have to just give people benefit of the doubt and hope people will be honest, the lowest level of everything in life there is a sense of trust where you have to give the benefit of the doubt
Currently where the Vanquishers are, though I may pull the Sentinels instead.
Im actually very conservative about splashing in Limited. I could have probably splashed it but I didn't think I'd really need it especially because I liked my deck and swamping it for 2 or 3 seemed a bit of a strech. I wouldn't criticize anyone who'd actually splash it but I didn't felt the need for it. I actually sideboarded it in game 3 of round 1 as an alternative Magmaw kill.
ok so where do the ESG's fit in the list?
If the situation comes up where people are having problems finding other players to complete their five games what I used to do in the leagues I ran before was on the last day of each week I offered those players a chance to play anyone else and I would only record their scores but the games would have to be watched to make sure no one dropped their games without playing.
1. I think all PRE events are for fun and should never be about the prizes if thats what people look for they should stick to sealed events or drafts.
2. This is a possability but would people really keep busting packs until they get a good one, it would cost them a fortune and what would they gain from it $10 max minus the packs that were opened.
3. It would be very hard to photoshop the New cards screen as its not presented very well in the first place in the client. If you look at the example in the article you can see where the mana cost is much larger than normal overwriting part of the card and they are not easy to read.
They are all good points but I'm hoping no one would go that low, it would be hard for them as per my comments above.
I have thought a lot about how to stop cheaters and believe how its being done as per the article is the best way forward.
My first cart was 'Zelda: the adventures of Link' which blew my mind when I saw it and prompted me to get an NES. First "rpg/adventure" I'd seen with such cool graphics and problem solving. That was around '89. A little korean boy was playing it in the local music shop around the corner and spent like 30mins explaining the whole saga to me. I have to say, it was a real eye-opener. Before that I was exclusively into arcade video games.
Shadowgate was a disappointment. Got it brought it home and immediately finished it. Favorite cart was Romance of the 3 Kingdoms and the Ancient Bandit Kings of China came in as close 2nd. Destiny of an Emperor was also great.
I remember back in the day when we did paper Leagues. I miss the leagues.
I have a few concerns though.
1. The payout versus the prize. If your playing this event then I would say you are strictly doing it for the fun and not the prize. Even if you purchased all your packs from 9th edition at $1.75 you would be spending $14 and 31.92 for any of the packs at 3.99.
2. And even if we are doing this for the fun, it's not going to stop anyone from say, taking multiple screenshots of opened packs, and hand picking the packs with the best card pool.
3. Lets say that you don't have the money to buy a bunch of packs. You could pick cards from a certain set and Photoshop the perfect pack.
/me is sad. I thought the booster builder would just randomly generate a list of the contents of five booster packs. I didnt know i had to own the cards. Ugh time to find a nother way to explore archetypes
I understand that there would be a higher likelihood of picking the best packs when you are screen capturing draft packs, however that is an advantage that all players could use. It's sort of like watching replays of your opponent's matches during a draft. It's something that is less than ideal in my mind, but it's a factor that is given to all players, so I consider it fair. However, I realize that it's early and you are waiting to see how things go before considering changes.
Right now, my concern would be that the participation level will make it difficult to find matches. The old leagues had 250+ players and players could play extra rounds for tie-breaker points. With only 40-50 players, no set times to get together, and each player being done after 5 matches each week, I'm thinking that it will be difficult for many players to get 5 matches played in a week unless you are online A LOT.
Congradulations on the new job, and I hope moving goes well for you and your family.
This has been a nice series of articles, and I always look forward to reading your articles.
Thanks LE that does look like a good tool, I'm going to have a play now.
I'll amend it to 30 mins as I think that is better I couldn't remember what leagues used to be.
This would be a whole lot easier to do if wizards would let us set up casual sealed queues like the casual draft queues.
Yeah apparently all three combined parts of sith code can get quite long...
Fear leads to anger.
Anger leads to hate.
Hatred leads to power.
Power leads to victory.
Let your anger flow through you.
Your hate will make you strong.
True power is only achieved through testing the limits of one's
anger, passing through unscathed.
Rage channeled through anger is unstoppable.
The dark side of the Force offers unimaginable power.
The dark side is stronger than the light.
The weak deserve their fate.
Peace is a lie
There is only passion
Through passion I gain strength
Through strength I gain power
Through power I gain victory
Through victory my chains are broken
The Force shall set me free
–tenets of Sith philosophy
From what I've seen from Zendikar, you can pretty easily go from online -> real life, but it's hard to go from rl -> online
Thanks guys for the comments. It makes me really happy to see that these articles were fun to read because they all were fun to write. I did put a lot of effort into each part, a lot more that you can imagine, and it is a great pleasure for me to see that the majority of my "dear readers" liked them at the end.
Shard, I may be wrong but the whole Sith code includes both the part I took and the part you just wrote. So it's something long. But as I said I may be wrong (which indicates that I'm an amnesiac and stupid Sith lord) but this is how I remember it was.
By the way, as I said in the article as well, the Blightning deck is all I play these days. It's an excellent deck and I just can't stop playing it. It's a lot of fun but it is also very powerful.
And welcome back Mr. Splendid. I'm sorry (I think) that your evil master plan to destroy the world has failed but I'm happy to see your colorful writing back.
LE
Awesome Decks LE. I really enjoyed this whole series, even if I cant afford most of the decks. (Curse you stupid higher education costs)
Though any true Sith Lord knows what you listed was not the Sith Code...this is:
Peace is a lie
There is only passion
Through passion I gain strength
Through strength I gain power
Through power I gain victory
Through victory my chains are broken
The Force shall set me free
I'm a dork, yet also a sith master with sources: http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Code_of_the_Sith
I'm supporting this idea since day one and I strongly believe that this will be a great experience for all of us who miss the leagues. Thank you Flippers for running this and thank you mtgotraders for sponsoring it.
Just one question Flippers: Why 90min games? Isn't this a bit too long? Shouldn't it be 30mins as usual?
Other than that I think that every point makes sense and well covered, even though I'm not very comfortable with sharing my card pool with the rest of the world. I know that this is the only way to prevent cheating but I'm just saying.
By the way a very useful tool: http://cid-78a98bfd685f66ed.skydrive.live.com/self.aspx/.Public/BoosterB...
This is a booster builder program written by a player (LordHastur on MTGO forums). It is a perfect tool to try the booster combination before you actually crack packs. You just select sets and enter how many boosters you'd like and the program gives you your card pool. The program saves your card pool as a deck which is located under decks on MTGO. After creating the pool just go to the deck builder screen, click "load", select the "Booster Builder Decks" folder and voila; your pool is there.
I created almost 50 card pools with this program and now I KNOW FOR SURE how many boosters of which sets I will crack.
LE
I'm going to leave Snow-Covered lands as unlimited (can be used as basic lands) for the first league and see how it plays out.
There is no meta yet and with so many possibilities I'm going to play it by ear.
5 packs of Eventide could be powerful like Coldsnap but there is also affinity to watch out for and a number of other possibilities in each set which makes them strong, Eldrazi could be a contender who knows.
@ ArchGenius I did think of doing it from taking screenshots of draft packs, infact it was my original idea but I felt this was more prone to people picking their choice of packs from drafts and so decided to do it by busting packs instead. There's not a great deal of people who would keep busting packs to get good cards for a $10 prize.
Also note if there is a lot of interest this time then next time the prize amount may go up.
Thanks to all those who have shown an interest so far. The Group at present contains 43 members which I'm hoping at least 75% of these will participate. These are still early days and I'm pro actively looking for players each day. I would like to kick this league off with as many players as possible.
Exactly. 5 packs of Eventide sounds purrrfect to me...
Elvish Spirit Guide. I somehow blanked when I was posting that decklist.