One thing to note about the MED2 duals and their prices at the end of the events...
As of 10/02 Underground Sea was 35.64, on 10/09 it was 21.78, on 10/15 it was up 42.
What happened was that the bot horde started to mass purchase the duals on the secondary market towards the end of the events when they saw how low the prices were. This caused a huge spike in prices as anyone who actually wanted one was fighting against dozens of speculators with bots running 24x7.
Prices have since fallen as those speculators are realizing that there's just not that much demand for those cards, and there never will be enough to justify charging 40+ for an Underground Sea.
Moral of the story... play the events, get the duals, buy the ones you want as they go lower, if you get extra's sell them to speculators it they show up again. :)
Speks, the problem with the Mocs was that some people submitted their decks but still got auto-generated decks for game 1. This was obviously unfair and they had to cancel the event.
Although I believe teachings is probably the strongest deck out there, I also believe it takes too long to win. When you're looking at a PE with it or a 4+ round tournament, it wears on you. I like your build of teachings because it does give you more options against red, but I feel your build goes far and beyond punishing a red deck and gives you a weaker matchup against a more "traditional" teachings deck.
Kyle Sanchez actually called his deck Puca's Plans and he wrote several extensive articles on the deck on the big paper magic website. His later versions cut Puca's Mischief completely and he called the updated deck Puca-Free Plans. Colfenor's Mischief is a close guess tho!
As for the QP grind, I definitely feel your pain, it is indeed a grind! I literally played every format for a month grinding out QP's in standard, extended, classic, pauper, 100 card singleton, every draft and sealed format, daily events, premier events, weekend challenges and just barely managed to grind out 15 QP by the end of the final week. And then switching around all my weekend plans to free up the entire sunday, waking up 6:30am yesterday to play the championships, and the freakin' championships gets canceled after round 2 because the event is "compromised beyond repair", whatever the hell that means.
As for constructed I think I have played in about 2 or 3 constructed events in my life, as opposed to 2 or 3 thousand limited events, so I can't help you there at all, but best of luck. :) The problem with constructed to me is the lack of variance. Every limited deck is different, every game is different because you have all those 1-ofs, every deck you FACE is different. All this variance and unexpected stuff is what attracts me. Also, in limited you can use a LOT more cards than in constructed. THe bar for constructed-worthy is set too high, and all kinds of interesting and quirky cards are left aside. But that's just me. :)
Hi there. It's a shame you didnt get to qualify, but then again, the attempted mocs on sunday was a mess. My personal goal for magic is not to gain a profit, become famous, or compete in high-profile events. It is to win enough to always be able to play (the "go infinite" thing). For that purpose I liked the M10 swisses, as the ones I played seemed to have easier players than usual, and even when I lost, I lost very little (of course, if I won i didnt win much either, but thats low risk-low reward for ya).
I enjoy sealed play a lot, but i do NOT recommend m10 sealed. It is by far the most luck-based format I have ever encountered. The card depth is very shallow, the bombs are utterlly amazing, there is almost no card synergy to be found, and the room for being smart is narrow.
In short, the only deciding factor is having a good pool and good draws. You could open a baneslayer angel, but your white has 3x angel's mercy and no removal. And then you draw baneslayer every game and win. Or you could open an overrun, garruk and ant queen, but you face a blue black deck with evasion that kills garruk, and counterspell on overrun. It's all a big game of rock paper scissors.
In draft you can actually engineer your deck a little, and therefore these problems are minimized somewhat, though the signaling problem you encountered is pretty serious. As colors have no depth, fighting with your neighbors means you'll end up with 3 colors (BAD) or having to use stuff like renegerate or zephyr sprite to make enough playables.
Everyth I said mostly applies to M10. MED III is completely insane, I haven't a clue how its limited environment will be, but it will be interesting to check it out. I am eagerly anticipating zendikar, as that will herald at last the return of a complex and interesting block environment, properly designed for limited unlike the mess of MED III, in which learning and skills will again apply as usual.
do you expect a deck to dominate the meta ? (maybe not totaly dominating like necrospike, but very efficient in average as merfolk or zoo recently).
I'm feeling dredge awefuly fast with all the new materials (BoB is crazy good & fast), and probably Tezz/tinker shell pretty efficient. I expect these 2 decks to be the 2 decks to beat. Considering that dredge has many efficient hate cards to deal with (tormod, relic, LofV, jailer, morning tide ...), Tezz/tinker would be even maybe a better choice. What is you opinion ?
I'm hoping the promo Vampiric Tutor comes online soon its one of the three cards I would like to use in Classic that escapes my price range that, Force of Will, and Underground Sea. I'm avoiding playing decks that contain Blue at present.
I am pretty excited about Planechase. It hadn't even occured to me to play with them in limited, it might be cool to draft the planes cards after you've finished your drafts? For instance, if you'd picked up a few soldiers in m10 drafts, then you'd pick velis-vel highly. Could be good fun.
I really hope this comes to MTGO reasonably sharpish, as I very rarely get to play paper nowadays.
The Void Stompy deck would certainly be my style of deck... if I actually played Classic. I still don't have the power cards to compete in that format, but I like the look of that deck.
I would say that depends. Of course, if you're together since 21 years thatn your SO knows exactly what you do when playing MTGO, how important it is for you, how much time it takes, that you can't 'pause' to do something else, etc..
On the other hand, I have found that the SO (or any other important other people in your life, such as parents) can at least sometimes be a bit of a problem if she/he does not quite understand the nature of Magic. At the beginning, for instance, I would say to my GF that I am going to play a draft, truthfully announcing that it may take anywhere between 45 minutes and 3 hours. Some 30 minutes later I have finished building my deck and go over to her to talk to her before matches start. Afterwards, 15 minutes into my first match, I am already calming down a somewhat upset GF who thinks that I clearly started yet another game (since I was obviously finished with the last one). Of course at some point she understood how the whole show works (and that playing a tournament both in RL and MTGO takes an awful lot of time, most of which is spent waiting :) ), and after that it becomes easier to coordinate with her (but MTGO is still not exactly popular with my GF).
the void stompy deck looks fun. i have a similar deck already but obviously without the strip mine and nether voids. i'll definately have to add those to my deck when they are available.
That Worldgorger Dragon deck looks very resilient, and very annoying to play. It seems like a lot of clicking for MTGO to have to click your lands each time they come back into play. But if it's powerful, then clock be damned!
Your Mana Drain shell looks positively Vintage. Basically, if those Chrome Moxen where real moxen, bingo. The current Classic decks are like Elves, Fish, Ad Nauseam, Zoo, Pox, *still, Painter, whatever. (Goblins?) But they're all 4-ofs because Classic has a small restricted list. So Classic decks now look and play more like Legacy decks with cooler cards. But I think that's about to change.
We're about to hit a "Time Spiral" of deck building. In paper Legacy, Goblin Recruiter, Worldgorger Dragon, Land Tax, and Earthcraft are all banned. But they were never all in play at the same time. First one deck dominated, got hammered, then another deck dominated, and so on. (Goblin Recruiter most recently, I think.) So we might soon be seeing DangerLinto's Dragon deck versus elf combo with 4 Clamps and 4 Earthcrafts. And the winner of that match might play against the winner of Goblins with 4 Black Vise versus Bazaar-powered Dredge with 4 Entombs. When in Magic's history was that possible?
to the bad ole days of no rarity indication in the symbols. :p back in the day we had to guess :p or wait for someone to put out a verified spoiler. steve d'angelo I think did most of the early spoilers upto Ice Age.
Oops, wrong. I forgot that blinking something involves a zone change. And in that case, the object just stays in its previous zone. So my Lightning Bolt stayed exiled.
Ghostfire - cannot play as a land.
Tower Above - always turned into a Forest. (expected)
Summoner's Pact - also a Forest. (expected)
So everything works correctly. Aw, where's the fun in that? But it's interesting to note that Dakkon likes to pick basic lands that aren't released yet, and that he uses the premium quality of the card that you play as a land. I got lands from Urza's Saga, PRM, and a foil land from the yet unreleased theme decks.
To add to what David said, playing bad cards isn't fun either. With the Orcish avatar plus the Blinkmoth Urn you've come up with a genius way to get tons of mana. But then you spend it on... Aladdin's Ring? With nine mana I'd be happy with a Banefire, a Martial Coup, a fat Apocalypse or Protean Hydra, or something like that. And if you want to use the Rings then try Grandeur, planeswalkers, and Wurmcalling and Helix Pinnacle. (Helix Pinnacle has shroud, but if you set X = 10 and you have the Rings, then you can put 20 counters on it for 12 mana.) If the Rings are important, then why only one copy?
But you get a cookie for using Tawnos's Coffin in a deck.
So what happens when Dakkon puts a Lightning Bolt into play as a Mountain and you blink it? I know what should happen - the bolt is sent to the graveyard with no effect. But I'm curious if MTGO handles this correctly. And Ghostfire. I'll give it a shot now.
"Amongst our tournament Vintage archetypes are such diverse things as Dark Ritual, Force of Will, Bazaar of Baghdad, Mishra's Workshop and nice red uniforms. Oh, B*****"."
Thanks for all your respectful comments. As a frequent observer of the site I respect the comments of many of you including flipper.
I wasn't really offended but more upset as the previous post said.
There is some truth to the fact that faeries will be bad for extended as well as any format they are legal in. However, standard thrived with huge interest and a smaller card pool. I don't want people to be turned away from an awesome and already struggling format.
I certainly hold nothing against any of you and I hope I did not convey that. The content of the post merely pointed out some realities that saddened me.
"The four tournament Vintage archetypes that we have identified revolve around four cards: Dark Ritual, Force of Will, Bazaar of Baghdad, and Mishra's Workshop."
Easy. Backslide and Break Open both on Isochron scepters. Donate using the permanent exchange card of your choice a Liege of the Pit. Break it open in your end step, backslide it after their upkeep. Fill out the deck with cards like Wall of Frost or Wall of Denial.
Very, Very good article Whiffy!
One thing to note about the MED2 duals and their prices at the end of the events...
As of 10/02 Underground Sea was 35.64, on 10/09 it was 21.78, on 10/15 it was up 42.
What happened was that the bot horde started to mass purchase the duals on the secondary market towards the end of the events when they saw how low the prices were. This caused a huge spike in prices as anyone who actually wanted one was fighting against dozens of speculators with bots running 24x7.
Prices have since fallen as those speculators are realizing that there's just not that much demand for those cards, and there never will be enough to justify charging 40+ for an Underground Sea.
Moral of the story... play the events, get the duals, buy the ones you want as they go lower, if you get extra's sell them to speculators it they show up again. :)
Speks, the problem with the Mocs was that some people submitted their decks but still got auto-generated decks for game 1. This was obviously unfair and they had to cancel the event.
Although I believe teachings is probably the strongest deck out there, I also believe it takes too long to win. When you're looking at a PE with it or a 4+ round tournament, it wears on you. I like your build of teachings because it does give you more options against red, but I feel your build goes far and beyond punishing a red deck and gives you a weaker matchup against a more "traditional" teachings deck.
Kyle Sanchez actually called his deck Puca's Plans and he wrote several extensive articles on the deck on the big paper magic website. His later versions cut Puca's Mischief completely and he called the updated deck Puca-Free Plans. Colfenor's Mischief is a close guess tho!
As for the QP grind, I definitely feel your pain, it is indeed a grind! I literally played every format for a month grinding out QP's in standard, extended, classic, pauper, 100 card singleton, every draft and sealed format, daily events, premier events, weekend challenges and just barely managed to grind out 15 QP by the end of the final week. And then switching around all my weekend plans to free up the entire sunday, waking up 6:30am yesterday to play the championships, and the freakin' championships gets canceled after round 2 because the event is "compromised beyond repair", whatever the hell that means.
As for constructed I think I have played in about 2 or 3 constructed events in my life, as opposed to 2 or 3 thousand limited events, so I can't help you there at all, but best of luck. :) The problem with constructed to me is the lack of variance. Every limited deck is different, every game is different because you have all those 1-ofs, every deck you FACE is different. All this variance and unexpected stuff is what attracts me. Also, in limited you can use a LOT more cards than in constructed. THe bar for constructed-worthy is set too high, and all kinds of interesting and quirky cards are left aside. But that's just me. :)
Hi there. It's a shame you didnt get to qualify, but then again, the attempted mocs on sunday was a mess. My personal goal for magic is not to gain a profit, become famous, or compete in high-profile events. It is to win enough to always be able to play (the "go infinite" thing). For that purpose I liked the M10 swisses, as the ones I played seemed to have easier players than usual, and even when I lost, I lost very little (of course, if I won i didnt win much either, but thats low risk-low reward for ya).
I enjoy sealed play a lot, but i do NOT recommend m10 sealed. It is by far the most luck-based format I have ever encountered. The card depth is very shallow, the bombs are utterlly amazing, there is almost no card synergy to be found, and the room for being smart is narrow.
In short, the only deciding factor is having a good pool and good draws. You could open a baneslayer angel, but your white has 3x angel's mercy and no removal. And then you draw baneslayer every game and win. Or you could open an overrun, garruk and ant queen, but you face a blue black deck with evasion that kills garruk, and counterspell on overrun. It's all a big game of rock paper scissors.
In draft you can actually engineer your deck a little, and therefore these problems are minimized somewhat, though the signaling problem you encountered is pretty serious. As colors have no depth, fighting with your neighbors means you'll end up with 3 colors (BAD) or having to use stuff like renegerate or zephyr sprite to make enough playables.
Everyth I said mostly applies to M10. MED III is completely insane, I haven't a clue how its limited environment will be, but it will be interesting to check it out. I am eagerly anticipating zendikar, as that will herald at last the return of a complex and interesting block environment, properly designed for limited unlike the mess of MED III, in which learning and skills will again apply as usual.
nice article whiffy, a lot of work
do you expect a deck to dominate the meta ? (maybe not totaly dominating like necrospike, but very efficient in average as merfolk or zoo recently).
I'm feeling dredge awefuly fast with all the new materials (BoB is crazy good & fast), and probably Tezz/tinker shell pretty efficient. I expect these 2 decks to be the 2 decks to beat. Considering that dredge has many efficient hate cards to deal with (tormod, relic, LofV, jailer, morning tide ...), Tezz/tinker would be even maybe a better choice. What is you opinion ?
I'm hoping the promo Vampiric Tutor comes online soon its one of the three cards I would like to use in Classic that escapes my price range that, Force of Will, and Underground Sea. I'm avoiding playing decks that contain Blue at present.
I am pretty excited about Planechase. It hadn't even occured to me to play with them in limited, it might be cool to draft the planes cards after you've finished your drafts? For instance, if you'd picked up a few soldiers in m10 drafts, then you'd pick velis-vel highly. Could be good fun.
I really hope this comes to MTGO reasonably sharpish, as I very rarely get to play paper nowadays.
That void stompy list barring the bayous, every card in the list is at or under 5 bucks.
i expect nether void to come in 5-10 and the strip to be worth about 7, this is a most afordable deck if it happens to work well , then there ya go.
whoops i forgot the 32 tik tag on vamp, so its almost all cheaper classic cards.
The Void Stompy deck would certainly be my style of deck... if I actually played Classic. I still don't have the power cards to compete in that format, but I like the look of that deck.
I would say that depends. Of course, if you're together since 21 years thatn your SO knows exactly what you do when playing MTGO, how important it is for you, how much time it takes, that you can't 'pause' to do something else, etc..
On the other hand, I have found that the SO (or any other important other people in your life, such as parents) can at least sometimes be a bit of a problem if she/he does not quite understand the nature of Magic. At the beginning, for instance, I would say to my GF that I am going to play a draft, truthfully announcing that it may take anywhere between 45 minutes and 3 hours. Some 30 minutes later I have finished building my deck and go over to her to talk to her before matches start. Afterwards, 15 minutes into my first match, I am already calming down a somewhat upset GF who thinks that I clearly started yet another game (since I was obviously finished with the last one). Of course at some point she understood how the whole show works (and that playing a tournament both in RL and MTGO takes an awful lot of time, most of which is spent waiting :) ), and after that it becomes easier to coordinate with her (but MTGO is still not exactly popular with my GF).
this has never happened and on top of these wildly powerful decks going head to head were doing it all without any jewlery.
the void stompy deck looks fun. i have a similar deck already but obviously without the strip mine and nether voids. i'll definately have to add those to my deck when they are available.
That Worldgorger Dragon deck looks very resilient, and very annoying to play. It seems like a lot of clicking for MTGO to have to click your lands each time they come back into play. But if it's powerful, then clock be damned!
Your Mana Drain shell looks positively Vintage. Basically, if those Chrome Moxen where real moxen, bingo. The current Classic decks are like Elves, Fish, Ad Nauseam, Zoo, Pox, *still, Painter, whatever. (Goblins?) But they're all 4-ofs because Classic has a small restricted list. So Classic decks now look and play more like Legacy decks with cooler cards. But I think that's about to change.
We're about to hit a "Time Spiral" of deck building. In paper Legacy, Goblin Recruiter, Worldgorger Dragon, Land Tax, and Earthcraft are all banned. But they were never all in play at the same time. First one deck dominated, got hammered, then another deck dominated, and so on. (Goblin Recruiter most recently, I think.) So we might soon be seeing DangerLinto's Dragon deck versus elf combo with 4 Clamps and 4 Earthcrafts. And the winner of that match might play against the winner of Goblins with 4 Black Vise versus Bazaar-powered Dredge with 4 Entombs. When in Magic's history was that possible?
to the bad ole days of no rarity indication in the symbols. :p back in the day we had to guess :p or wait for someone to put out a verified spoiler. steve d'angelo I think did most of the early spoilers upto Ice Age.
Oops, wrong. I forgot that blinking something involves a zone change. And in that case, the object just stays in its previous zone. So my Lightning Bolt stayed exiled.
Ghostfire - cannot play as a land.
Tower Above - always turned into a Forest. (expected)
Summoner's Pact - also a Forest. (expected)
So everything works correctly. Aw, where's the fun in that? But it's interesting to note that Dakkon likes to pick basic lands that aren't released yet, and that he uses the premium quality of the card that you play as a land. I got lands from Urza's Saga, PRM, and a foil land from the yet unreleased theme decks.
Now, Cardinal -- the rack!
To add to what David said, playing bad cards isn't fun either. With the Orcish avatar plus the Blinkmoth Urn you've come up with a genius way to get tons of mana. But then you spend it on... Aladdin's Ring? With nine mana I'd be happy with a Banefire, a Martial Coup, a fat Apocalypse or Protean Hydra, or something like that. And if you want to use the Rings then try Grandeur, planeswalkers, and Wurmcalling and Helix Pinnacle. (Helix Pinnacle has shroud, but if you set X = 10 and you have the Rings, then you can put 20 counters on it for 12 mana.) If the Rings are important, then why only one copy?
But you get a cookie for using Tawnos's Coffin in a deck.
So what happens when Dakkon puts a Lightning Bolt into play as a Mountain and you blink it? I know what should happen - the bolt is sent to the graveyard with no effect. But I'm curious if MTGO handles this correctly. And Ghostfire. I'll give it a shot now.
Ah, my mistake, fooled by the little black symbol on the card.
"Amongst our tournament Vintage archetypes are such diverse things as Dark Ritual, Force of Will, Bazaar of Baghdad, Mishra's Workshop and nice red uniforms. Oh, B*****"."
Thanks for all your respectful comments. As a frequent observer of the site I respect the comments of many of you including flipper.
I wasn't really offended but more upset as the previous post said.
There is some truth to the fact that faeries will be bad for extended as well as any format they are legal in. However, standard thrived with huge interest and a smaller card pool. I don't want people to be turned away from an awesome and already struggling format.
I certainly hold nothing against any of you and I hope I did not convey that. The content of the post merely pointed out some realities that saddened me.
Woah!! New pic! No hat?
"The four tournament Vintage archetypes that we have identified revolve around four cards: Dark Ritual, Force of Will, Bazaar of Baghdad, and Mishra's Workshop."
http://www.wizards.com/Magic/Magazine/Article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/ld/44
Easy. Backslide and Break Open both on Isochron scepters. Donate using the permanent exchange card of your choice a Liege of the Pit. Break it open in your end step, backslide it after their upkeep. Fill out the deck with cards like Wall of Frost or Wall of Denial.