Looking at sideboarded finishers, wouldn't Pyromatics serve to replace Banefire as a low-budget uncounterable, also overcoming forge-tenders, circles of protections and such damage prevention effects due to the arbitrary number of damage sources generated with replicate?
Nice job on going from competitive to Budget. The Witch/Channeler deck looks like a fun build. It's even better if we already own Summoner's Pact and Chord of Calling.
I play magic from the Ice age (Icy Manipulator) and want to have more novice players getting interested in magic. To make way for them I wrote this article.
So I had an epiphany as to why the pre-release events are 30 and not 26 like we all expect them to be. Here it is: if it were 26 dealers could basically 'buy' packs just by entering pre-release events. Sure they'd get a bunch of semi-useless ALA cards, but they'd also get cash ARB cards. Pricing it at 30 discourages this sort of thing very well.
Still, if they were going to price it high they should have at least made the payout a little better, that way people who win (a.k.a. me) could at least get ahead a little.
I've been following the rule of play your bombs no matter what. Only time it got me into trouble was when I thought a card was a bomb and it wasn't (Predatory Advantage). So I bungled a round 1 and went 3-1 instead of 4-0.
I find that mana isn't much of a problem in AAARRR sealed with all the borderposts and double landcycling creatures (of which the GW and RG ones are really good).
But you really do need to play bombs if you want to 4-0 a swiss event.
I've sold several commons for 1 or near 1. Bloodbraid Elf, Borderposts, something else I forget... Oh, Terminate. Not all the commons go for 1 but you can find people to buy them at more than they'll be worth in a few days :P
[edit: oops bloodbraid is uncommon...]
Of the uncommons you mentioned, Renegades is good, Intimidation bolt isn't good enough for constructed (edit: yet, anyway), and I don't know about slave of bolas but I'm not betting on it.
On another note, Spellbound Dragon is a ridiculous bomb. I crushed a guy from 20 in 2 turns with a little help from some guys on the ground. Too bad I bungled the other games in that match (aka built my deck wrong, too many good cards in that pool).
Random other thought on a bomb:
You should only consider Predatory Advantage a bomb if you really don't have other bombs to put in your deck. Otherwise it's just too slow (even if it will eventually dominate).
I have no objection to the entry fee. $24 for boosters and $6 for entry seems acceptable to me(and no, I'm not from US by the way).
However as someone who has all the cards from Shards of Alara, $30 to me means 3 rares and 9 uncommons only. And that makes absolutely no sense. I can buy those rares for $1 each in 10 days.
@guetzilla: I hardly doubt that the commons go for 1 tix. Just a couple of minutes ago for 7 tix I already bought my playsets of almost all commons + some good uncommons as well from bots (like intimidation bolt and vithian renegades and slave of bolas). I'm still missing the chase Uncommons + all the rares but for those I can wait like 10 days.
Well yes you are correct in that in so much as packs cost but I don't see the cost for entry being 6 tix. A similar event like Shards of Alara / Conflux Sealed Deck Swiss Queue Entry Fee: 3 Shards of Alara booster packs, 3 Conflux booster packs, costs 2 Event Tickets. It's the same so 26 tix for a pre-release would be considered fair and affordable onto the community. 30 tix is a lot of money when ones dollar is less than the US dollar. I for one have to pay anywhere from 17 to 18 % more in Canadian Funds leaving Canadians paying about $35.33 to join the pre-release events today. But I'm just saying too that WOTC should consider these things for all players around the world, leaving the cost say at 26 tix I would instead be paying, $30.62 for my tix. We can't control the currency but we can argue our point for affordable pre-release admission costs.
Oh, and they upped the payout to 10-4-1-0 instead of the previous junk. I managed to do a flawless event and I'm 20+ tix richer after resale :). Commons are going for 1 tix.
at 5 or so mythics per box, thats one of each per two boxes. 62 times 4 is 248 of any one mythic. that makes the # of boxes required 596; or 21456 packs.
i may be missing something, but i think that the math towards the beginning is waay off. in a 36 pack box, one could expect to find 4-5 mythics, and 31-32 rares. This comes out to a little over 1 of each rare per box. 4 times 437 is 1748; making the amount of boxes that yield that many of each rare is about 1700. or 61200 packs..
good article overall though:)
i think the rm5k tournament was won by vincent gan instead of Chew Fon Leang. (just so the spikes dun end up netdecking the wrong deck.)
his deck ran sprouting thrinax(+bitublast and singletons), dropping blightning and hell's thunder. Which in some ways could be more explosive than the one Chew and others ran.
I just counted 62 individual 16 player queues for the Alara Reborn pre-release. Break that down in numbers that mean something: 16 x 30 tix = 480 tix x 62 = 29760. The firt firing was at 8:54pm local time and it just starting round 4. ORC's present mentioned a delay with the Online Store handing out packs to those who bought tixs for the event, due to increase volume or something. Local time here now is 11:31 pm. Three hours into the event and 62 queues have fired. That's about $10,000.00 an hour.
Personally I can't afford it, yeah yeah whatever. Other than that players are experiencing some problems with game play...some refund requests may be filled in, not to keen on the true stories, just watching in the swiss queues chat. Good turnout.
Pre-release will end tomorrow night, 9pm EST.
Final note: WOTC should make these more affordable.
i'm at work and i have a date later (it's just approaching noon where i live)... so if anyone doesn't mind, how's the client holding up with the pre-release and all? as ^ noted, 50 have gone off in the first 1 1/2 hours.
Great article, i'm glad you're back. Standard and Block are finally going to be interesting with the adition of Reborn to the card pool.
And while I don't agree with some of your picks, the draft was def better than most posted lately aroud here so... keep'em coming!
Gret article again Eric.
I'm curious about how the New set prices are set on the opening. Probably for this one its already too late but for the next set could u do a foresight of the most wanted cards prices?
BTW, and 30 tix for a 6 booster pack result for a pre-release is too much. I don't mind paying 30 bucks at a brick and mortar store but seriously, either I'm dirt poor or the online community has money to spare like their related to Richie Rich.
another powerful insight.
Congrats on the PTQ win man!!
Nice article. I think cascade is going to have a tremendous influence on extended. Why do you think Nix is the new Leyline of the Void?
Why does it wants credit card code for the email activation ?????? can't i play for free ????
Looking at sideboarded finishers, wouldn't Pyromatics serve to replace Banefire as a low-budget uncounterable, also overcoming forge-tenders, circles of protections and such damage prevention effects due to the arbitrary number of damage sources generated with replicate?
Nice job on going from competitive to Budget. The Witch/Channeler deck looks like a fun build. It's even better if we already own Summoner's Pact and Chord of Calling.
I play magic from the Ice age (Icy Manipulator) and want to have more novice players getting interested in magic. To make way for them I wrote this article.
Ron
So I had an epiphany as to why the pre-release events are 30 and not 26 like we all expect them to be. Here it is: if it were 26 dealers could basically 'buy' packs just by entering pre-release events. Sure they'd get a bunch of semi-useless ALA cards, but they'd also get cash ARB cards. Pricing it at 30 discourages this sort of thing very well.
Still, if they were going to price it high they should have at least made the payout a little better, that way people who win (a.k.a. me) could at least get ahead a little.
I've been following the rule of play your bombs no matter what. Only time it got me into trouble was when I thought a card was a bomb and it wasn't (Predatory Advantage). So I bungled a round 1 and went 3-1 instead of 4-0.
I find that mana isn't much of a problem in AAARRR sealed with all the borderposts and double landcycling creatures (of which the GW and RG ones are really good).
But you really do need to play bombs if you want to 4-0 a swiss event.
I've sold several commons for 1 or near 1. Bloodbraid Elf, Borderposts, something else I forget... Oh, Terminate. Not all the commons go for 1 but you can find people to buy them at more than they'll be worth in a few days :P
[edit: oops bloodbraid is uncommon...]
Of the uncommons you mentioned, Renegades is good, Intimidation bolt isn't good enough for constructed (edit: yet, anyway), and I don't know about slave of bolas but I'm not betting on it.
On another note, Spellbound Dragon is a ridiculous bomb. I crushed a guy from 20 in 2 turns with a little help from some guys on the ground. Too bad I bungled the other games in that match (aka built my deck wrong, too many good cards in that pool).
Random other thought on a bomb:
You should only consider Predatory Advantage a bomb if you really don't have other bombs to put in your deck. Otherwise it's just too slow (even if it will eventually dominate).
I have no objection to the entry fee. $24 for boosters and $6 for entry seems acceptable to me(and no, I'm not from US by the way).
However as someone who has all the cards from Shards of Alara, $30 to me means 3 rares and 9 uncommons only. And that makes absolutely no sense. I can buy those rares for $1 each in 10 days.
@guetzilla: I hardly doubt that the commons go for 1 tix. Just a couple of minutes ago for 7 tix I already bought my playsets of almost all commons + some good uncommons as well from bots (like intimidation bolt and vithian renegades and slave of bolas). I'm still missing the chase Uncommons + all the rares but for those I can wait like 10 days.
LE
Well yes you are correct in that in so much as packs cost but I don't see the cost for entry being 6 tix. A similar event like Shards of Alara / Conflux Sealed Deck Swiss Queue Entry Fee: 3 Shards of Alara booster packs, 3 Conflux booster packs, costs 2 Event Tickets. It's the same so 26 tix for a pre-release would be considered fair and affordable onto the community. 30 tix is a lot of money when ones dollar is less than the US dollar. I for one have to pay anywhere from 17 to 18 % more in Canadian Funds leaving Canadians paying about $35.33 to join the pre-release events today. But I'm just saying too that WOTC should consider these things for all players around the world, leaving the cost say at 26 tix I would instead be paying, $30.62 for my tix. We can't control the currency but we can argue our point for affordable pre-release admission costs.
To those that are saying that $30 is too expensive for the event: it seems no different than any other sealed PE.
6 packs x3.99= $23.94
6 tix for entry =$6.00
$29.94
Just saying.....
Oh, and they upped the payout to 10-4-1-0 instead of the previous junk. I managed to do a flawless event and I'm 20+ tix richer after resale :). Commons are going for 1 tix.
Up to 126 now, I'm guessing there will be upwards of 350 by the time the pre-release is done.
at 5 or so mythics per box, thats one of each per two boxes. 62 times 4 is 248 of any one mythic. that makes the # of boxes required 596; or 21456 packs.
i may be missing something, but i think that the math towards the beginning is waay off. in a 36 pack box, one could expect to find 4-5 mythics, and 31-32 rares. This comes out to a little over 1 of each rare per box. 4 times 437 is 1748; making the amount of boxes that yield that many of each rare is about 1700. or 61200 packs..
good article overall though:)
i think the rm5k tournament was won by vincent gan instead of Chew Fon Leang. (just so the spikes dun end up netdecking the wrong deck.)
his deck ran sprouting thrinax(+bitublast and singletons), dropping blightning and hell's thunder. Which in some ways could be more explosive than the one Chew and others ran.
just so u know.
I just counted 62 individual 16 player queues for the Alara Reborn pre-release. Break that down in numbers that mean something: 16 x 30 tix = 480 tix x 62 = 29760. The firt firing was at 8:54pm local time and it just starting round 4. ORC's present mentioned a delay with the Online Store handing out packs to those who bought tixs for the event, due to increase volume or something. Local time here now is 11:31 pm. Three hours into the event and 62 queues have fired. That's about $10,000.00 an hour.
Personally I can't afford it, yeah yeah whatever. Other than that players are experiencing some problems with game play...some refund requests may be filled in, not to keen on the true stories, just watching in the swiss queues chat. Good turnout.
Pre-release will end tomorrow night, 9pm EST.
Final note: WOTC should make these more affordable.
i'm at work and i have a date later (it's just approaching noon where i live)... so if anyone doesn't mind, how's the client holding up with the pre-release and all? as ^ noted, 50 have gone off in the first 1 1/2 hours.
50 of these have gone off in the first hour and a half.
I really liked the article. Look forward to some more of them.
Great Article.
Luck is a bitch.Did u consider a 4th Primal?
Great article, i'm glad you're back. Standard and Block are finally going to be interesting with the adition of Reborn to the card pool.
And while I don't agree with some of your picks, the draft was def better than most posted lately aroud here so... keep'em coming!
Gret article again Eric.
I'm curious about how the New set prices are set on the opening. Probably for this one its already too late but for the next set could u do a foresight of the most wanted cards prices?
BTW, and 30 tix for a 6 booster pack result for a pre-release is too much. I don't mind paying 30 bucks at a brick and mortar store but seriously, either I'm dirt poor or the online community has money to spare like their related to Richie Rich.