i tried to do that polymorph trick in draft with owl and darksteel, thought it would be good, never worked :(
\
thinks its good, maybe ill casual deck it, 40 is less than 60 (dar) though
Firstly, thanks for the shoutout. This is an excellent and thought provoking article, and I feel honoured to be associated with it. I'm probably a red green blue gold Johnny diamond club heart spade Rick, with a hint of Timmy Aaron Spike. It might be worth pointing out that the benefits of each seperate system are their simplicity: Each a distinct concept. The more additional modifiers and qualifiers, the more that apply to each person. The question is, will that increase in information lead to a decrease in understanding?
One of the big things I havent seen mentioned is who the hell is coming up with our players rewards programs? Seriously this month must be cards that became beyond bad thanks to the M10 rules changes. Baloth and wish are so bad.
well im glad to see mtgo popularity skyrocket, now maybe its time to balance out the cost of a digital pack? how about "box" discounts, how about anything? the resale is in the toliet, help a brother out wotc! and what about lifetime rewards, anything new about that. is anyone buying ftv:e online? i h8 the fact the paper is now 150+ sheesh. thanks again. i had a chanch to drive over an hour away to get one, but no dice.
sorry to see my extensive collection worth jack online. on well, my EV was not taking in account when logging in. any way of rebounding? crazy redemption maybe?
i wont even comment on ZEN as to keep the comments spoiler free, ill keep that for next week.
I really enjoyed a lot the first part of your article about profile. It is always very complicate to know in which profile is the closest to own, or to your opponent. Even if in tournament, it is often a pretty handy. It also depends a lot of my mood. The only thing i am pretty sure, is that i really like to play underplayed cards & decks, i like also to win. Something like Rogue/Spike player could maybe reflect me...
I thought about a little psychological exercice which could be interesting :if you can select only one of each, what are your favorite card in each color, land & artifact ?
My favorite cards
> Blue : Ancestral recall
> Red : Wheel of fortune
> Green : Berserk
> White : Balance
> Black : Nether Void
> Land : Maze of Ith
> Artifact : Time Vault
Maybe you could deduce something from that. And what would be your answers ?
I don't think the returns are worth the effort for the MTGO team.
Instead, I would expect to see MED 4 marketed as "The set to enable Vintage online", and to include the Power as Mythics.
Hopefully, we will then get a reasonably priced, online only "From the Vaults: Chaff" giving us access to most of the other cards that have not yet made it online.
Because, frankly, if I don't get the Portal 2 Talas card for my pirate deck, there will be hell to pay. You hear me Worth?
A long, long time ago I had a Sakashima deck (in this case while TSP-RAV was std). The most impressive card you are missing is:
Virulent Sliver - in spirit of Matron: 3 attacking slivers is 9 counters, 4 is 16... >)
If you want to do something funny grap Misha's Factory (since they are a lot cheaper than Mutavault) and add those. That way you can animate the Factory and either copy something else (so it won't turn back) OR let each other creature copy the Factory (which will make them unanimated so they do not die to sweepers).
Btw. a token creature is usually named after the type (if nothing says anything else). So a Saproling token is named Saproling...
Powerful arguments. I have rarely played vintage and never played Legacy so I can't really comment on the formats except that they seem incredibly broken to me. Adding the rest of the staple vintage cards to the online pool will definitely change the dynamics of the formats. I wonder if the presence of vintage level decks would help or hinder the game economy. Or would the majority of online players ignore the more expensive formats in favor of those with smaller less broken pools. I haven't the foggiest either way and your comments lean me towards thinking this won't happen. Apparently there are enough people willing to pay for classic cards now to support it as an official format. The drop in prices of FOW and the allied duals probably are only a dip until the supplies get thin again and they will rise once again out of reach.
Lots to think about. Thanks for the food for thought.
the only reason why M10 has outsold 10th edition is because M10 was a actual format that pros "had" to pay attention to....pros didnt have to pay attention to 10th edition becuase there were no Grand Prix's for it...and i think playability 10th edition was a better, more skill intensive format then M10....
Interesting article, would definitely like to read more. Good choice of card too, I hadn't really ever looked at it, but may well get myself a playset now. For some reason I'm tickled by the idea of a 'miniscule-but-strange-synergy'.
Heh yeah its tough defining what makes Magic players tick because we cross the entire cultural spectrum of the modern world. But I think it does help to make the categories if only to climb out of the boxes when done with them. Without your comment I would guess from what Ive seen that you are a clear Johnny Heart Dave Spike of the golden variety but I would not have guessed the rest. But I doubt you are schizo...Do you hear voices? do you talk back to them? If so..well ok maybe. :P
I think also we go through various stages. And this is something I forgot to add to the article. When I first started I was much more Timmy than Johnny or Spike but that quickly wore off (in a week or two at most.) Then I was very spike (or wanted to be but didn't really know how at first.) As I matured I learned about deck building strategies and the numbers game. (The Sligh curve for example.) I have always been a heart but I think I grew more so as I matured too. Spading is something I've slowly become more interested in as time has gone by but I am still not good enough to really work out the most rules breaking engines without someone pointing to the basics first. Given a little prod I can go quite far but I need the prod first. So as we age we gain insight into our game and we also change. AJ and I discussed this a bit and I think I had him convinced but then sadly I left it out. Boo me.
Yosei, Morning Star...I will have to look that card up and see if it is worth getting a hold of a copy. (If it is too expensive I will forgo it.) Thanks for the tip :D And thank you for the compliment.
Nice article. I definitely agree that the lines between the player archtypes are totally blurred. Every time I read anything on archetypes, I feel that every possible one applies to me at various times (A Johnny Heart Spade Dave Spike, with Timmy Clubs Kurt Rick Diamonds overtones). I make hundreds of decks of every possible style, try them all out and move on. Second thoughts, maybe I'm just schizophrenic.
And you featured two of my favourite cards in Royal Assassin and Guile. Yosei, the Morning Star from COK is quite nice in a B/W Assassin deck, and is cheap right now.
Funny I didn't even think about that corner the market mentality that will cause Mana Drains to be exceedingly hard to get. I agree if that happens it will hurt the classic tourneys short term. And of course ME3 is really not a good limited set so they don't expect people to care and thus have no prize support (my view). I imagine they figure the people drafting it and playing sealed will be in it for the power 10 (whatever the top 10 cards are). Which is sort of what you expect with the thought of possible Mana Drain hording. I concur which is why I am sad that it is not a good limited set, because I'd be tempted to play for packs if it was.
There are lots of cards which gain you life. I only mentioned the ones I considered really playable, and even so still produced a slightly overly long article (in my opinion). Having said that, Tainted Sigil isn't bad. I don't like Angel's Mercy though, for the same reasons as I dropped the Nip and the Child. They're okay with Bond out, but there will be lots of games where you don't draw it. Your cards need to be good enough on their own, which I don't feel Mercy is. Thanks for the comment though, made me rethink my choices.
I am glad I held on to my KotRs. Someone wanted them for a bunch of jank commons and 2 Tolsimirs. I was like..."er no." And he wanted 3x not just 1. I expect Landfall will be a huge mechanic based on just the one card I saw.
I was really excited to read about ME3 a few weeks ago when everyone started writing those articles but my excitement has dimmed since I've thought more about the set. The thing that kicks me is that it isn't draftable like a normal set. Its like if you took out your old box of legends, antiquities and dark and what not and mixed them with some other interesting cards but None of those sets were designed with drafting in mind. There does not seem to be any balance that I can see. Please correct me if I am wrong. For those who specialize in drafting write ups...I'd love to see someone tackle this issue before the set goes on sale (Monday?).
FTV:E is another non-excitement. (But wow did Berserk take a hit?)
Did you notice that the Commander decks which are out now have generated no pricings from the major sites (including this one)? Man O War for example is entirely unlisted. I have a few wants from those decks (Yavimaya Elders, Man O War) but not enough tix to buy one flat out. (By the way in terms of playability I've played against the Rubineya deck more than once in 100s and it is not bad for a canned deck.
Anyway good article as per usual. I think the table of contents style of menu is best in terms of article readability. Yes the menu bar is fancier and seems more "magical" but as was pointed it is not great UI. (By the way, a very small css tip: Use "cursor: pointer;" for javascript link tag container styles so that it shows a hand when you hover over the tag. This way it's clear where the link is for the less visually enabled.)
The deck looks really nice, I'll give it a try here soon. I picked up Cream a few weeks ago when someone wrote about using it in a Lurking deck which made it alot of fun.
My latest deck with Cream is a skill borrower bant deck featuring Giltspire Avenger and a few other creatures that work well with skill borrower and Cream (Skyward Eye Prophets). It is a very casual deck but still fun to play. I even found room for the completely forgotten in my book Clarion Ultimatum. Tons of fun to double your army and keeping them all untapped with a Murkfiend Liege and your opponent tapped down with Stoic Angel. I do wish Rafiq was cheaper, he'd fit well and I could move the deck to a more Exalted based Bant deck.
I love the new format: simple (read: clean and easy to use) and effective. I'm still a reader who reads the whole thing from top to bottom so look elsewhere for more critical feedback. It's almost sad...you've been doing this for so long now that I almost take all the work you put into this for granted. I really appreciate it and it's completely worth waiting until 3am to read it all :-p
It's hard to believe that M10 has already outsold 10th edition! How is that even possible? Best core set ever? Do you think there's any chance that future expansion sets will be as popular, or just core sets?
Sorry, but like the anonymous poster before me I read the article straight through so I can't really comment on the format. I do like it more than last week, though.
So, with all of the M10 being opened how long am I going to have to wait for Baneslayer to drop in price? I was one of the bums that sold the ones I had too early.
- WORSE prize support than even previous "prerelease" events despite the set being non-redeemable.
- No promo card for your 30 tix.
- Four events at specific times. No more "run events whenever they fire".
To top it off, they have ruined Classic for the holiday weekend with this garbage. Some dude is going to buy up four Mana Drains (out of the 10 that get opened this weekend) and roll everyone else. Not a fair format.
Thanks Wizards for encouraging me to get out this weekend and do something other than MTGO.
i tried to do that polymorph trick in draft with owl and darksteel, thought it would be good, never worked :(
\
thinks its good, maybe ill casual deck it, 40 is less than 60 (dar) though
Firstly, thanks for the shoutout. This is an excellent and thought provoking article, and I feel honoured to be associated with it. I'm probably a red green blue gold Johnny diamond club heart spade Rick, with a hint of Timmy Aaron Spike. It might be worth pointing out that the benefits of each seperate system are their simplicity: Each a distinct concept. The more additional modifiers and qualifiers, the more that apply to each person. The question is, will that increase in information lead to a decrease in understanding?
Not sure if it was a deliberate typo but I love the idea of the elemental going by the name of 'Brian Horn'.
baloth is meh now but wishes are still highly played
One of the big things I havent seen mentioned is who the hell is coming up with our players rewards programs? Seriously this month must be cards that became beyond bad thanks to the M10 rules changes. Baloth and wish are so bad.
well im glad to see mtgo popularity skyrocket, now maybe its time to balance out the cost of a digital pack? how about "box" discounts, how about anything? the resale is in the toliet, help a brother out wotc! and what about lifetime rewards, anything new about that. is anyone buying ftv:e online? i h8 the fact the paper is now 150+ sheesh. thanks again. i had a chanch to drive over an hour away to get one, but no dice.
sorry to see my extensive collection worth jack online. on well, my EV was not taking in account when logging in. any way of rebounding? crazy redemption maybe?
i wont even comment on ZEN as to keep the comments spoiler free, ill keep that for next week.
love the friday article btw ham
I really enjoyed a lot the first part of your article about profile. It is always very complicate to know in which profile is the closest to own, or to your opponent. Even if in tournament, it is often a pretty handy. It also depends a lot of my mood. The only thing i am pretty sure, is that i really like to play underplayed cards & decks, i like also to win. Something like Rogue/Spike player could maybe reflect me...
I thought about a little psychological exercice which could be interesting :if you can select only one of each, what are your favorite card in each color, land & artifact ?
My favorite cards
> Blue : Ancestral recall
> Red : Wheel of fortune
> Green : Berserk
> White : Balance
> Black : Nether Void
> Land : Maze of Ith
> Artifact : Time Vault
Maybe you could deduce something from that. And what would be your answers ?
Really good article, as often. I also bet on a split just after Exodus. Let's see.
I don't think the returns are worth the effort for the MTGO team.
Instead, I would expect to see MED 4 marketed as "The set to enable Vintage online", and to include the Power as Mythics.
Hopefully, we will then get a reasonably priced, online only "From the Vaults: Chaff" giving us access to most of the other cards that have not yet made it online.
Because, frankly, if I don't get the Portal 2 Talas card for my pirate deck, there will be hell to pay. You hear me Worth?
A long, long time ago I had a Sakashima deck (in this case while TSP-RAV was std). The most impressive card you are missing is:
Virulent Sliver - in spirit of Matron: 3 attacking slivers is 9 counters, 4 is 16... >)
If you want to do something funny grap Misha's Factory (since they are a lot cheaper than Mutavault) and add those. That way you can animate the Factory and either copy something else (so it won't turn back) OR let each other creature copy the Factory (which will make them unanimated so they do not die to sweepers).
Btw. a token creature is usually named after the type (if nothing says anything else). So a Saproling token is named Saproling...
Powerful arguments. I have rarely played vintage and never played Legacy so I can't really comment on the formats except that they seem incredibly broken to me. Adding the rest of the staple vintage cards to the online pool will definitely change the dynamics of the formats. I wonder if the presence of vintage level decks would help or hinder the game economy. Or would the majority of online players ignore the more expensive formats in favor of those with smaller less broken pools. I haven't the foggiest either way and your comments lean me towards thinking this won't happen. Apparently there are enough people willing to pay for classic cards now to support it as an official format. The drop in prices of FOW and the allied duals probably are only a dip until the supplies get thin again and they will rise once again out of reach.
Lots to think about. Thanks for the food for thought.
the only reason why M10 has outsold 10th edition is because M10 was a actual format that pros "had" to pay attention to....pros didnt have to pay attention to 10th edition becuase there were no Grand Prix's for it...and i think playability 10th edition was a better, more skill intensive format then M10....
Interesting article, would definitely like to read more. Good choice of card too, I hadn't really ever looked at it, but may well get myself a playset now. For some reason I'm tickled by the idea of a 'miniscule-but-strange-synergy'.
Heh yeah its tough defining what makes Magic players tick because we cross the entire cultural spectrum of the modern world. But I think it does help to make the categories if only to climb out of the boxes when done with them. Without your comment I would guess from what Ive seen that you are a clear Johnny Heart Dave Spike of the golden variety but I would not have guessed the rest. But I doubt you are schizo...Do you hear voices? do you talk back to them? If so..well ok maybe. :P
I think also we go through various stages. And this is something I forgot to add to the article. When I first started I was much more Timmy than Johnny or Spike but that quickly wore off (in a week or two at most.) Then I was very spike (or wanted to be but didn't really know how at first.) As I matured I learned about deck building strategies and the numbers game. (The Sligh curve for example.) I have always been a heart but I think I grew more so as I matured too. Spading is something I've slowly become more interested in as time has gone by but I am still not good enough to really work out the most rules breaking engines without someone pointing to the basics first. Given a little prod I can go quite far but I need the prod first. So as we age we gain insight into our game and we also change. AJ and I discussed this a bit and I think I had him convinced but then sadly I left it out. Boo me.
Yosei, Morning Star...I will have to look that card up and see if it is worth getting a hold of a copy. (If it is too expensive I will forgo it.) Thanks for the tip :D And thank you for the compliment.
Nice article. I definitely agree that the lines between the player archtypes are totally blurred. Every time I read anything on archetypes, I feel that every possible one applies to me at various times (A Johnny Heart Spade Dave Spike, with Timmy Clubs Kurt Rick Diamonds overtones). I make hundreds of decks of every possible style, try them all out and move on. Second thoughts, maybe I'm just schizophrenic.
And you featured two of my favourite cards in Royal Assassin and Guile. Yosei, the Morning Star from COK is quite nice in a B/W Assassin deck, and is cheap right now.
Doh... problem is it was enaging and interesting. Had no interest in returning to the top to find other options...
Great as always. Thank-god I already got all my fetches...
Funny I didn't even think about that corner the market mentality that will cause Mana Drains to be exceedingly hard to get. I agree if that happens it will hurt the classic tourneys short term. And of course ME3 is really not a good limited set so they don't expect people to care and thus have no prize support (my view). I imagine they figure the people drafting it and playing sealed will be in it for the power 10 (whatever the top 10 cards are). Which is sort of what you expect with the thought of possible Mana Drain hording. I concur which is why I am sad that it is not a good limited set, because I'd be tempted to play for packs if it was.
There are lots of cards which gain you life. I only mentioned the ones I considered really playable, and even so still produced a slightly overly long article (in my opinion). Having said that, Tainted Sigil isn't bad. I don't like Angel's Mercy though, for the same reasons as I dropped the Nip and the Child. They're okay with Bond out, but there will be lots of games where you don't draw it. Your cards need to be good enough on their own, which I don't feel Mercy is. Thanks for the comment though, made me rethink my choices.
I am glad I held on to my KotRs. Someone wanted them for a bunch of jank commons and 2 Tolsimirs. I was like..."er no." And he wanted 3x not just 1. I expect Landfall will be a huge mechanic based on just the one card I saw.
I was really excited to read about ME3 a few weeks ago when everyone started writing those articles but my excitement has dimmed since I've thought more about the set. The thing that kicks me is that it isn't draftable like a normal set. Its like if you took out your old box of legends, antiquities and dark and what not and mixed them with some other interesting cards but None of those sets were designed with drafting in mind. There does not seem to be any balance that I can see. Please correct me if I am wrong. For those who specialize in drafting write ups...I'd love to see someone tackle this issue before the set goes on sale (Monday?).
FTV:E is another non-excitement. (But wow did Berserk take a hit?)
Did you notice that the Commander decks which are out now have generated no pricings from the major sites (including this one)? Man O War for example is entirely unlisted. I have a few wants from those decks (Yavimaya Elders, Man O War) but not enough tix to buy one flat out. (By the way in terms of playability I've played against the Rubineya deck more than once in 100s and it is not bad for a canned deck.
Anyway good article as per usual. I think the table of contents style of menu is best in terms of article readability. Yes the menu bar is fancier and seems more "magical" but as was pointed it is not great UI. (By the way, a very small css tip: Use "cursor: pointer;" for javascript link tag container styles so that it shows a hand when you hover over the tag. This way it's clear where the link is for the less visually enabled.)
The deck looks really nice, I'll give it a try here soon. I picked up Cream a few weeks ago when someone wrote about using it in a Lurking deck which made it alot of fun.
My latest deck with Cream is a skill borrower bant deck featuring Giltspire Avenger and a few other creatures that work well with skill borrower and Cream (Skyward Eye Prophets). It is a very casual deck but still fun to play. I even found room for the completely forgotten in my book Clarion Ultimatum. Tons of fun to double your army and keeping them all untapped with a Murkfiend Liege and your opponent tapped down with Stoic Angel. I do wish Rafiq was cheaper, he'd fit well and I could move the deck to a more Exalted based Bant deck.
RagMan
I love the new format: simple (read: clean and easy to use) and effective. I'm still a reader who reads the whole thing from top to bottom so look elsewhere for more critical feedback. It's almost sad...you've been doing this for so long now that I almost take all the work you put into this for granted. I really appreciate it and it's completely worth waiting until 3am to read it all :-p
It's hard to believe that M10 has already outsold 10th edition! How is that even possible? Best core set ever? Do you think there's any chance that future expansion sets will be as popular, or just core sets?
Sorry, but like the anonymous poster before me I read the article straight through so I can't really comment on the format. I do like it more than last week, though.
So, with all of the M10 being opened how long am I going to have to wait for Baneslayer to drop in price? I was one of the bums that sold the ones I had too early.
The MED3 "prerelease" is a complete joke.
- WORSE prize support than even previous "prerelease" events despite the set being non-redeemable.
- No promo card for your 30 tix.
- Four events at specific times. No more "run events whenever they fire".
To top it off, they have ruined Classic for the holiday weekend with this garbage. Some dude is going to buy up four Mana Drains (out of the 10 that get opened this weekend) and roll everyone else. Not a fair format.
Thanks Wizards for encouraging me to get out this weekend and do something other than MTGO.
i love this format...i think the back to top part is amazing..that said i read the whole thing so i might not count much opinion wise.
I meant to say "Get "any token" into play, play Polymorph...