This is something I think we saw coming about three weeks ago with the pauper queues having consumed a lot of tickets and then the announcement of the ticket only queues as well as increased constructed queue (which eats 6 tickets per player).
I think we've seen a lot more tickets being eaten than being purchased for about a month or so which and that is now catching up with the ticket prices.
It's getting to the point where one almost could buy them from the store and not feel bad about it.
Like I said before I think the idea of banning a combo but not the individual cards is bordering on genious. If a card is way to powerful in it's own right (Skullclamp perhaps) then it gets banned but like you say, taking a card out of play because of it's interaction with a single other card means it can't be used in any other way. Like most great ideas it's so simple I can't believe that it's not been implemented before.
I suspect the only problem might be in deck validation. Would the rule be to not allow the two cards of the combo in the same deck or would they be ok as long as they didn't interact during the game?
While technically Champs did come back, it wasn't organized by WotC, but (iirc) by Glen Goddard, a PTO. Which means unless he decides to pick it up again next year, we may not have Champs again. I think it was successful as far as he and the other PTOs were concerned, so we should see it run by someone, but I don't think WotC has actually said "Our bad, Champs is back to stay"
As some mentioned, the artifact creature isn't legal in the format and you have 5 Agony Warps shown in the deck but they aren't big issues for me. But I would replace those Punish Ignorances with Trial/Error as the format is WAY too fast for a 4 mana counterspell. Trial/Error is the one and only good counterspell there is at the moment.
Also I wouldn't play most of the creatures you have in deck. Simic Sky Swallower is all you need to win and instead you need more removal. Like Lightning Helix for example. That's a lifesaver against aggro decks.
And 4x Arbiter is totally okay as you will need him out as soon as possible (a little help from Supply/Demand wouldn't hurt).
As for the second deck, I think that you have to decide between really fast aggro beatdown and midgame aggro. I personally wouldn't play Figure of Destiny and Teneb in the same deck. Figure of Destiny is better with Woolly Thoctar and Tattermunge Maniac. Just add Lightning Helix, Assault Battery and Double Cleave and you'll do fine.
With Teneb I would play Doran, Vhati il-Dal (exellent with Doran) and Sapling of Colfenor and a lots of removal.
arch - The reasoning behind more non-basics is probably so that you allow yourself to be hit by both attacks on islands and nonbasics without getting totally wrecked by either. Blue can come back from many odd situations but it needs some mana at least before it is able to do so.
About the viability of decks, I believe that all sorts of decks are viable in the format as long as they have a sound plan and a coherent construct. However, the results are trying to prove me otherwise. =(
Intuition and GU are significantly powerful cards but are by no means "too game altering". People are just uncomfortable with how powerful they are (of which intuition is the weaker card) and I think singleton 100 should be a "high power level" format, like most other formats (which they want to use singleton as a platform to hop into).
anony - I hope they pick up the idea as the bannings have quite significant cross-fire casulties.
Their current way of banning works like this:
"lion's eye diamond and auriok salvagers look too easy to assemble. Let's ban LED cos maybe some people want to use auriok salvagers as a card advantage engine. LED? It's causing trouble. Axe it!"
=> which results in LED being unavailable for people to play with. It is indeed strong but it doesn't really work on its own and is by no means (as said before) too powerful.
It's also available at http://puremtgo.com/podcast.xml if you go to the Advanced->Subscribe.. menu item. It should also be searchable on iTunes in the podcast directory by searching 'PureMTGO'
The list shows the promo cards, of which, evidently the promo plains had a bad week. :(
I'm thinking this has to do with more promo cards being available to add that 'special' feeling to a deck and now the promo lands aren't as in demand as they once were.
Or people just don't like the promo plains for some reason.
Good ideas for the PotY races, I'll see what I can do for those. (Why oh why did they name it that...)
V3 was not really able to handle 1000 players trying to join a 256 player event at the same time. Also, some players were able to join multiple events while others never got into one.
To 'help' with this WotC_MattT tried something different. The first 256 players in the Room to type 'CAW' at the specified time would be entered manually. The theory was they could keep people from crashing their clients and also double check the people entering to keep them from playing in the even if they already were in the previous ones.
The problem arose that the room wasn't muted before the specified time so it was a flood of:
CAW
CAW
CAW
CAW
CAW
CAW
CAW
CAW
until he muted the room and explained it wasn't time yet. He unmuted the room and caw flood ensued.
Then he just gave up and set up the last two like normal.
These events were not able to be joined by everyone that wanted to join, and therefore, have left some of those who didn't get in very upset (some are slightly upset, some aren't upset... it varies).
Is the last card in dropping prices an late 4/1 joke? Or am I missing something?
For the Player of the Year / Season Champs section, it would be great to see how many people have qualified for each season champs, and the top ten players in the PotY race. Getting that data might be tough, unless Wizards can release it. Maybe MatT will share...
Fun read. At first I was going to comment about putting Petra Sphinx and Fire Dragon in the same deck, lol, but glad I read on. I qualified, wish I could have played with you guys.
I'd like to remind everyone (again) that there is a cool PRE this weekend. Hamtastic mentioned this in last week's SotP but I think it is worth repeating.
It has rather decent prize support and is free to enter. In principle everyone that shows up will be able to join, so if you didn't get to play constructed in the CAW events, maybe you will like to try this!
Although, both WotC and the Players were guilty of attempted Gibberish with the CAW events. The players were not the only ones responsible for the insanity that occurred. Which is why I used the "gibberish" for both WotC and the Players.
It was not a good situation for either side of the CAW.
I will certainly try to do this when I can. Some things are just as bizarre to me as they are to you all. Like Primalcrux. My guess is that it's some tech from an extended deck that's doing well but I'm just guessing on that. :)
I'll work on adding more details about the card price movements. Thanks for the suggestion!
wasteland is not at an unreasonable level yet. Take for example that it is a 10-15 dollar card in paper which some people seem to think should be roughly the equivlent of modo prices.
On top of this wasteland is by far the best card in tempest unc or no.
Not as much drafting as could be hoped for leads this tourny staple to probably be the most expensive card in modo.( its an imprint unc for a "niche" format and it is currently selling at a higer price then almost every std staple rare.)
look at witness for a real world example. it was a power uncm and even through out its life in print it fluxuated between 5-7 tix which is ussaly the price of a rare not a power uncom.
other recent power uncs include
finks
firespout
procession
and so on and so forth non of which hit the 5 tix mark. so just learn to live with it because this card will most likly stabilise around 10 tix
sure it was nice in theory to give back for all the lag and jank wotc mtgo had for us in march, but to give us a CAW event with just as many issues, whats that say, thanks for giving us money, heres a ulcer in responce?
it could be a good idea to integrate a kinda "Card of the week" in your article : highlight on a specific card for any reason you could choose (hype, price evolution ....) :)
Thank you all very much for the feedback! It's always nice to see one's work appreciated.
Is there anything that you would like to see added/removed/changed from the articles? I will try to do pretty much anything that's suggested if it's within my power to do so. :)
I think that it was just a bad idea all around, which they appear to have realized now. I can understand what they were trying for but it was really not going to work no matter how they tried to set it up within the current client. :(
I can only hope that they get better structures in place to make things like this possible in the future.
about the CAW invasion : for sure, many players abused of it, but honestly the concept was not so easy to understand if you were not a natural english speaker ...
... where are all the tickets....
This is something I think we saw coming about three weeks ago with the pauper queues having consumed a lot of tickets and then the announcement of the ticket only queues as well as increased constructed queue (which eats 6 tickets per player).
I think we've seen a lot more tickets being eaten than being purchased for about a month or so which and that is now catching up with the ticket prices.
It's getting to the point where one almost could buy them from the store and not feel bad about it.
Which is crazy.
Like I said before I think the idea of banning a combo but not the individual cards is bordering on genious. If a card is way to powerful in it's own right (Skullclamp perhaps) then it gets banned but like you say, taking a card out of play because of it's interaction with a single other card means it can't be used in any other way. Like most great ideas it's so simple I can't believe that it's not been implemented before.
I suspect the only problem might be in deck validation. Would the rule be to not allow the two cards of the combo in the same deck or would they be ok as long as they didn't interact during the game?
While technically Champs did come back, it wasn't organized by WotC, but (iirc) by Glen Goddard, a PTO. Which means unless he decides to pick it up again next year, we may not have Champs again. I think it was successful as far as he and the other PTOs were concerned, so we should see it run by someone, but I don't think WotC has actually said "Our bad, Champs is back to stay"
A few comments about the decks shown:
As some mentioned, the artifact creature isn't legal in the format and you have 5 Agony Warps shown in the deck but they aren't big issues for me. But I would replace those Punish Ignorances with Trial/Error as the format is WAY too fast for a 4 mana counterspell. Trial/Error is the one and only good counterspell there is at the moment.
Also I wouldn't play most of the creatures you have in deck. Simic Sky Swallower is all you need to win and instead you need more removal. Like Lightning Helix for example. That's a lifesaver against aggro decks.
And 4x Arbiter is totally okay as you will need him out as soon as possible (a little help from Supply/Demand wouldn't hurt).
As for the second deck, I think that you have to decide between really fast aggro beatdown and midgame aggro. I personally wouldn't play Figure of Destiny and Teneb in the same deck. Figure of Destiny is better with Woolly Thoctar and Tattermunge Maniac. Just add Lightning Helix, Assault Battery and Double Cleave and you'll do fine.
With Teneb I would play Doran, Vhati il-Dal (exellent with Doran) and Sapling of Colfenor and a lots of removal.
Just my thoughts.
LE
arch - The reasoning behind more non-basics is probably so that you allow yourself to be hit by both attacks on islands and nonbasics without getting totally wrecked by either. Blue can come back from many odd situations but it needs some mana at least before it is able to do so.
About the viability of decks, I believe that all sorts of decks are viable in the format as long as they have a sound plan and a coherent construct. However, the results are trying to prove me otherwise. =(
Intuition and GU are significantly powerful cards but are by no means "too game altering". People are just uncomfortable with how powerful they are (of which intuition is the weaker card) and I think singleton 100 should be a "high power level" format, like most other formats (which they want to use singleton as a platform to hop into).
anony - I hope they pick up the idea as the bannings have quite significant cross-fire casulties.
Their current way of banning works like this:
"lion's eye diamond and auriok salvagers look too easy to assemble. Let's ban LED cos maybe some people want to use auriok salvagers as a card advantage engine. LED? It's causing trouble. Axe it!"
=> which results in LED being unavailable for people to play with. It is indeed strong but it doesn't really work on its own and is by no means (as said before) too powerful.
=)
Agreed - Writing about a format you don't even understand the rules of seems subpar.
Adjudicator is not multicolored.
The list shows the promo cards, of which, evidently the promo plains had a bad week. :(
I'm thinking this has to do with more promo cards being available to add that 'special' feeling to a deck and now the promo lands aren't as in demand as they once were.
Or people just don't like the promo plains for some reason.
Good ideas for the PotY races, I'll see what I can do for those. (Why oh why did they name it that...)
Essentially what was happening was this:
V3 was not really able to handle 1000 players trying to join a 256 player event at the same time. Also, some players were able to join multiple events while others never got into one.
To 'help' with this WotC_MattT tried something different. The first 256 players in the Room to type 'CAW' at the specified time would be entered manually. The theory was they could keep people from crashing their clients and also double check the people entering to keep them from playing in the even if they already were in the previous ones.
The problem arose that the room wasn't muted before the specified time so it was a flood of:
CAW
CAW
CAW
CAW
CAW
CAW
CAW
CAW
until he muted the room and explained it wasn't time yet. He unmuted the room and caw flood ensued.
Then he just gave up and set up the last two like normal.
These events were not able to be joined by everyone that wanted to join, and therefore, have left some of those who didn't get in very upset (some are slightly upset, some aren't upset... it varies).
Is the last card in dropping prices an late 4/1 joke? Or am I missing something?
For the Player of the Year / Season Champs section, it would be great to see how many people have qualified for each season champs, and the top ten players in the PotY race. Getting that data might be tough, unless Wizards can release it. Maybe MatT will share...
Good article, as always.
I missed a lot of CAW. Can someone explain to me what happened exactly that was so messed up?
Fun read. At first I was going to comment about putting Petra Sphinx and Fire Dragon in the same deck, lol, but glad I read on. I qualified, wish I could have played with you guys.
i didnt learn so much in this article and speaking again about Kaleiodoscope format before Reborn release is def too early
I'd like to remind everyone (again) that there is a cool PRE this weekend. Hamtastic mentioned this in last week's SotP but I think it is worth repeating.
It has rather decent prize support and is free to enter. In principle everyone that shows up will be able to join, so if you didn't get to play constructed in the CAW events, maybe you will like to try this!
http://forums.gleemax.com/showthread.php?p=18246409#post18246409
Ivo.
Although, both WotC and the Players were guilty of attempted Gibberish with the CAW events. The players were not the only ones responsible for the insanity that occurred. Which is why I used the "gibberish" for both WotC and the Players.
It was not a good situation for either side of the CAW.
Erik, thanks for another excellent article. You make Fridays my favorite day around the site.
I will certainly try to do this when I can. Some things are just as bizarre to me as they are to you all. Like Primalcrux. My guess is that it's some tech from an extended deck that's doing well but I'm just guessing on that. :)
I'll work on adding more details about the card price movements. Thanks for the suggestion!
Apparently the people babbling about CAW were confined to the home row.
wasteland is not at an unreasonable level yet. Take for example that it is a 10-15 dollar card in paper which some people seem to think should be roughly the equivlent of modo prices.
On top of this wasteland is by far the best card in tempest unc or no.
Not as much drafting as could be hoped for leads this tourny staple to probably be the most expensive card in modo.( its an imprint unc for a "niche" format and it is currently selling at a higer price then almost every std staple rare.)
look at witness for a real world example. it was a power uncm and even through out its life in print it fluxuated between 5-7 tix which is ussaly the price of a rare not a power uncom.
other recent power uncs include
finks
firespout
procession
and so on and so forth non of which hit the 5 tix mark. so just learn to live with it because this card will most likly stabilise around 10 tix
sure it was nice in theory to give back for all the lag and jank wotc mtgo had for us in march, but to give us a CAW event with just as many issues, whats that say, thanks for giving us money, heres a ulcer in responce?
i like your article thou
yes i do !
it could be a good idea to integrate a kinda "Card of the week" in your article : highlight on a specific card for any reason you could choose (hype, price evolution ....) :)
Thank you all very much for the feedback! It's always nice to see one's work appreciated.
Is there anything that you would like to see added/removed/changed from the articles? I will try to do pretty much anything that's suggested if it's within my power to do so. :)
I think that it was just a bad idea all around, which they appear to have realized now. I can understand what they were trying for but it was really not going to work no matter how they tried to set it up within the current client. :(
I can only hope that they get better structures in place to make things like this possible in the future.
a so useful article, as usual
about the CAW invasion : for sure, many players abused of it, but honestly the concept was not so easy to understand if you were not a natural english speaker ...