as someone who plays faerie fish, seeing my opponent play a bounce land early game is scary stuff... unless i have a pestermite or 2. then it's normally hard to lose
I love it when people reference my articles... Thank you.
Have you thought about some kind of Esper Momentary Blink/Mystical Teaching type of deck? There is a lot of depth to the cards that work with both of those cards. Sunbeam Spellbomb and a deck filled with basic lands will probably give you some chance against red decks that focus too much on burn and killing nonbasic lands.
Leagues allow players to spend a lot of time on Magic Online without spending a lot of money.
The problem is that if there are too many people playing "cheaply" the costs to run Magic Online go up compared to the profit they are making off of it.
If we suddenly got an influx of 5000 players who did nothing but play casual games, Magic Online would slow to a crawl, Wizards would have to add infrastructure to support the added player load, and they wouldn't be making much money off of the added players. While Leagues aren't that bad, they have the potential for a scenario where Wizards would have to add a lot of hardware for not a lot of gain.
I doubt that argument is going to kill leagues, but I'm fairly confident that it is the reason Leagues are not a very high priority to Wizards.
Could the argument be made that leagues aren't AS profitable because with the lack of leagues more people are playing or forced to play other events instead?
If you have option A and B, and neither are very profitable, if you cut A everyone goes to B and now B is very profitable. Maybe you can't say A was totally unprofitable, but by cutting A you certainly made B much more profitable, especially if B was already making you slightly more money than A to begin with.
RagMan
Bah sidetracked by a phone call while writing and my point was already made by Godot, thanks =)
I approve of the idea behind this and might have a stab at it myself :). You might want to add veldaken aethermage as a way to fetch up trinket mage (and hence find the spellbomb).
Hooray for LSV. I am not sure if it is inspiring that anyone could do so well on the back of being a good player with little preparation or depressing that extensive knowledge of the format paid such low returns.
BDirg was saying it is less profitable relative to other limited formats--he probably shouldn't have used the term "unprofitable," but the point about relative profitability may still be valid.
After all, one of the main reasons I recommended leagues to anyone with any interest in playing limited was that the bang-for-buck factor was so high. For about 35 tickets, you could have all-you-can-eat limited play for a month, with a shot at prizes.
Without leagues, I have turned to drafting, which I probably do 6-8 times a month at this point. That's 18-24 packs and 12-16 tickets into the system that before was a flat 8 packs and 2 tickets. The question is, am I typical, or is StealthBadger more typical, i.e., someone who is simply not going to play limited at all except in leagues? What about those who played in a league *and* drafted regularly?
I'm not sure, but even if you could prove without a doubt that leagues cannibalized some more-profitable business from limited players, I don't think Wizards is out there feeding us lines about enabling leagues at some point with no real intention of ever doing it.
Leagues will be back. When? I don't know, but the continually-sliding ETAs from Wizards aren't a devious ruse designed to hide the fact that they never intend to bring them back, it's simply unrealistic scheduling leading to unreliable information being shared with players.
I started the thread on the WOTC board about why doesn't WOTC always mention how MTGO is affected by each Magic announcement. I really appreciate your chiming in on that thread and supporting the intent of the thread. I should never have titled it as i did though, so I'll take some blame for it getting sidetracked.
Leagues are profitable. However, they may canibalize some current drafting profits. Example, I play 1 month long league, buying 7 packs + 2 tix, or I draft 3 times, 6 tix, plus 12 packs. (I can't remember the league pack/tix requirements, and I don't draft often, but you get the drift) Leagues are much larger player wise and maybe they bring in more revenue, but only WOTC knows for sure.
If you factor in labuour and equipment and staffing, WOTC simply may not be in a rush to put in leagues because they are meeting their profit targets. That is what most corporate decisions are based on sadly, corporate profit targets.
Aaah thresshold, the deck that made me fell in love with Legacy. At that time i was compeltely committed to Magic Online and didn't want to invest in paper, so I tried to remake it ( badly ) on mtgo with no duals, no fow. Time to revisit this deck :)
My list was pretty close to this one ( offcourse werebears back in the day instead of tarmo.) I played mental note instead of ponder and played echoing truths. Think those work well in the current meta too.
I don't see why leagues wouldn't be profitable. I very rarely have enough spare time of an evening to play consecutive rounds of drafts or sealed. Leagues are the only limited I've ever played online, and I'm pretty sure there must be enough others like me for it to be profitable. The leagues always seemed to be pretty busy to me..
Leagues aren't coming back. 2011 means "never." Just a couple months ago leagues were in the 2010 plan. You better believe they'll be pushed back again. It has been proven that MTGO can survive just fine without leagues and seeing how unprofitable leagues are compared to the other formats - they won't be making a return.
Getting back to the topic of the article; I'm not sure what you mean about Magosi with; "If you play this card early in the game and tap to add an eon counter and use it later it could be very devastating."
Taking an extra turn later would presumably be effectively "earlier" in the game, because of the turn you've previously missed?
Personally, I can only see this being used as part of some combo deck. I guess that when playing against counterpsells it might potentially be beneficial to give them two consecutive turns early on, and take two in a row later (so you might overwhelm their counters). Currently it's v. cheap though, so i guess it might be worth picking up in case it turns out to be some amazing combo..
Agreed. It threw me off when I looked at the "percentage change" and it was a decimal. I wondered why he bothered listing cards that had their prices change only a fraction of a percentage point until I realized it was relative change.
I commend you for sticking to your principals and not buying the hype until its in your hands. Its the same thing I advise during each and every new sets rumor season for exactly the reasons you mention.
Luckily, we have an easy to judge metric for this. The prototype is said to be displayed this month. If it works, well, great. If not, well, we know what will happen then. Yelling. Screaming. Threats. Etc.
Regarding overcomplication... Completely possible of course. Whether or not WPF/Silverlight is just a flash in the pan techno-hype is still to be determined. I'm not going to decry them for using a technology that forces abstraction... To the contrary! I find it a good idea that they are forcing themselves to keep the layers sepaperate. There's still plenty of room to screw things up of course, but the tech they're using reduces a lot of the typical blunders I've seen developers walk into. Again, time will tell. But thankfully we have a timeframe to expect these things, which is not something we're used to seeing.
And I'd like to comment about your word doc example...
We have a digital document storage solution here at work. It imports tiffs. End users were getting emailed tiffs, printing them, scanning them, to get them into the DB. That was the only way to get data in, they assumed. Inefficient processes are almost always preceded by ignorance of some minor detail.
And lastly, avoiding the kool-aid is noble, just be careful to not die from dehydration along the way. ;)
500 miles is a serious achievement man, good for you. I'm trying to figure out how in my life I can find time to do the entire trail when I can barely find time to get out there for a few days...
In tables, you should change "percentage change" to "relative change" or make it a percentage. Also, cutting to 2 significant figures would make the table nicer.
as someone who plays faerie fish, seeing my opponent play a bounce land early game is scary stuff... unless i have a pestermite or 2. then it's normally hard to lose
Skullclamp is banned strangely enough.
I love it when people reference my articles... Thank you.
Have you thought about some kind of Esper Momentary Blink/Mystical Teaching type of deck? There is a lot of depth to the cards that work with both of those cards. Sunbeam Spellbomb and a deck filled with basic lands will probably give you some chance against red decks that focus too much on burn and killing nonbasic lands.
Leagues allow players to spend a lot of time on Magic Online without spending a lot of money.
The problem is that if there are too many people playing "cheaply" the costs to run Magic Online go up compared to the profit they are making off of it.
If we suddenly got an influx of 5000 players who did nothing but play casual games, Magic Online would slow to a crawl, Wizards would have to add infrastructure to support the added player load, and they wouldn't be making much money off of the added players. While Leagues aren't that bad, they have the potential for a scenario where Wizards would have to add a lot of hardware for not a lot of gain.
I doubt that argument is going to kill leagues, but I'm fairly confident that it is the reason Leagues are not a very high priority to Wizards.
I hope I can play this Saturday because I'm trying to arrange my 100CS tournament matches too (they might be at the same time).
But if I play then... surprise surprise... It won't be Spirits. I have another much more trickier deck .
LE
Could the argument be made that leagues aren't AS profitable because with the lack of leagues more people are playing or forced to play other events instead?
If you have option A and B, and neither are very profitable, if you cut A everyone goes to B and now B is very profitable. Maybe you can't say A was totally unprofitable, but by cutting A you certainly made B much more profitable, especially if B was already making you slightly more money than A to begin with.
RagMan
Bah sidetracked by a phone call while writing and my point was already made by Godot, thanks =)
oh no i know and im honestly waiting to see wha color of spirit deck you bust out tomorrow
I approve of the idea behind this and might have a stab at it myself :). You might want to add veldaken aethermage as a way to fetch up trinket mage (and hence find the spellbomb).
I would expect Land Grant to show up in a From the Vault: Land Fetchers or EDH deck. That's how Yavimaya Elders appeared.
Hooray for LSV. I am not sure if it is inspiring that anyone could do so well on the back of being a good player with little preparation or depressing that extensive knowledge of the format paid such low returns.
A great read nonetheless.
BDirg was saying it is less profitable relative to other limited formats--he probably shouldn't have used the term "unprofitable," but the point about relative profitability may still be valid.
After all, one of the main reasons I recommended leagues to anyone with any interest in playing limited was that the bang-for-buck factor was so high. For about 35 tickets, you could have all-you-can-eat limited play for a month, with a shot at prizes.
Without leagues, I have turned to drafting, which I probably do 6-8 times a month at this point. That's 18-24 packs and 12-16 tickets into the system that before was a flat 8 packs and 2 tickets. The question is, am I typical, or is StealthBadger more typical, i.e., someone who is simply not going to play limited at all except in leagues? What about those who played in a league *and* drafted regularly?
I'm not sure, but even if you could prove without a doubt that leagues cannibalized some more-profitable business from limited players, I don't think Wizards is out there feeding us lines about enabling leagues at some point with no real intention of ever doing it.
Leagues will be back. When? I don't know, but the continually-sliding ETAs from Wizards aren't a devious ruse designed to hide the fact that they never intend to bring them back, it's simply unrealistic scheduling leading to unreliable information being shared with players.
I started the thread on the WOTC board about why doesn't WOTC always mention how MTGO is affected by each Magic announcement. I really appreciate your chiming in on that thread and supporting the intent of the thread. I should never have titled it as i did though, so I'll take some blame for it getting sidetracked.
Leagues are profitable. However, they may canibalize some current drafting profits. Example, I play 1 month long league, buying 7 packs + 2 tix, or I draft 3 times, 6 tix, plus 12 packs. (I can't remember the league pack/tix requirements, and I don't draft often, but you get the drift) Leagues are much larger player wise and maybe they bring in more revenue, but only WOTC knows for sure.
If you factor in labuour and equipment and staffing, WOTC simply may not be in a rush to put in leagues because they are meeting their profit targets. That is what most corporate decisions are based on sadly, corporate profit targets.
Aaah thresshold, the deck that made me fell in love with Legacy. At that time i was compeltely committed to Magic Online and didn't want to invest in paper, so I tried to remake it ( badly ) on mtgo with no duals, no fow. Time to revisit this deck :)
My list was pretty close to this one ( offcourse werebears back in the day instead of tarmo.) I played mental note instead of ponder and played echoing truths. Think those work well in the current meta too.
The correct wording of Bill Clinton's quote is, "It depends upon what the meaning of the word 'is' is."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j4XT-l-_3y0
but you should include Hatred !
Well written and insightful
But please, for the Wrath of God (see what i did there?) get "their" and "there" straight.
I don't see why leagues wouldn't be profitable. I very rarely have enough spare time of an evening to play consecutive rounds of drafts or sealed. Leagues are the only limited I've ever played online, and I'm pretty sure there must be enough others like me for it to be profitable. The leagues always seemed to be pretty busy to me..
Leagues weren't profitable? Could you share the math that led you to that conclusion?
Leagues aren't coming back. 2011 means "never." Just a couple months ago leagues were in the 2010 plan. You better believe they'll be pushed back again. It has been proven that MTGO can survive just fine without leagues and seeing how unprofitable leagues are compared to the other formats - they won't be making a return.
Getting back to the topic of the article; I'm not sure what you mean about Magosi with; "If you play this card early in the game and tap to add an eon counter and use it later it could be very devastating."
Taking an extra turn later would presumably be effectively "earlier" in the game, because of the turn you've previously missed?
Personally, I can only see this being used as part of some combo deck. I guess that when playing against counterpsells it might potentially be beneficial to give them two consecutive turns early on, and take two in a row later (so you might overwhelm their counters). Currently it's v. cheap though, so i guess it might be worth picking up in case it turns out to be some amazing combo..
Agreed. It threw me off when I looked at the "percentage change" and it was a decimal. I wondered why he bothered listing cards that had their prices change only a fraction of a percentage point until I realized it was relative change.
I commend you for sticking to your principals and not buying the hype until its in your hands. Its the same thing I advise during each and every new sets rumor season for exactly the reasons you mention.
Luckily, we have an easy to judge metric for this. The prototype is said to be displayed this month. If it works, well, great. If not, well, we know what will happen then. Yelling. Screaming. Threats. Etc.
Regarding overcomplication... Completely possible of course. Whether or not WPF/Silverlight is just a flash in the pan techno-hype is still to be determined. I'm not going to decry them for using a technology that forces abstraction... To the contrary! I find it a good idea that they are forcing themselves to keep the layers sepaperate. There's still plenty of room to screw things up of course, but the tech they're using reduces a lot of the typical blunders I've seen developers walk into. Again, time will tell. But thankfully we have a timeframe to expect these things, which is not something we're used to seeing.
And I'd like to comment about your word doc example...
We have a digital document storage solution here at work. It imports tiffs. End users were getting emailed tiffs, printing them, scanning them, to get them into the DB. That was the only way to get data in, they assumed. Inefficient processes are almost always preceded by ignorance of some minor detail.
And lastly, avoiding the kool-aid is noble, just be careful to not die from dehydration along the way. ;)
2011 !!!!
im a even going to be around for that? why or why!!!
any new news on lifetime rewards yet?
500 miles is a serious achievement man, good for you. I'm trying to figure out how in my life I can find time to do the entire trail when I can barely find time to get out there for a few days...
In tables, you should change "percentage change" to "relative change" or make it a percentage. Also, cutting to 2 significant figures would make the table nicer.