Like Jyalt, I don't think the price increase is due to returning players. Extended legal cards have gone up across the board (not just Glimpse and such; Chalices, Jitte, Exposives, all those strong extended cards went up) and there's probably some increase dueto Champs.
Furthermore I think there was a bit of a blunder of people pricing the playable Mythic rares (mostly the Planeswalkers) way to low, even during release week. I hear Tezz and Elspeth used to sell for 3 until they gone up (temporarily?) to 10 or so. Tezz naturally got a boost from PT Berlin and people were mis-evaluating Elspeth, but anyway.
The recent spike in standard was from people testing for state championships. Now that states is over, expect prices to fall once more.
Oh, and while I was an active player, I hoarded about 200 Trinisphere at 0.33 each. Probably a small drop in the bucket compared to actual quantity, but still... good to see that investment may be paying off when I come back in Q2 2009.
I've already seen a version of this on magic online using Nettle Sentinel, Intruder Alarm, Sprout Swarm. It's not a total Elf Ball more of a variant, but just as annoying.
Another solid installment - you definitely deserve that self-at-on-the-back. Can you fix the numbers on the bar graph chart so that they are legible? And what is the y-axis in that chart - dollars? dollars of a 1x set per format? of a 4x set per format? in sell prices? in buy prices?
FYI: you can't tap the Symbiote with Heritage Druid (in your turn two scenario). It's not an Elf.
That's another interesting bit of tech for this deck, though. A Mirror Entity activation for 1 gives your creatures all creature types. This turns your Symbiotes and Insects (from Hivemaster) into Elves, so you can tap them for mana, and you can get infinite use out of a Symbiote's "once per turn" bounce ability to draw your entire deck with Glimpse of Nature.
I hadn't been following the Pro Tour so this came as a surprise to me. The analogy to High Tide sounds right. I haven't played this deck but that's what it looks like.
I think this deck will appear all over Magic Online. It's mostly commons and uncommons (which have gone way up in price), it's elves, and it just won a major event. Since someone has made a pauper version of TEPS I'd be less surprised to see a pauper version of this too. Since it'll be played so much it was definitely worth breaking down the synergy card by card.
i love magic and when i read about the guy seggesting to have magic:the gathering for ds,it jsut blew my mind!!! im a crazed fan with magic and every fnm tournament there is near me i go to it!!!
True. Having WotC provide what we want is better than figuring out some strange workarounds.
Notice how I'm not holding my breath while waiting for WotC to do something. It seems pretty clear to me that they're not going to get around to fixing this soon, if ever.
As such I like to take things into my own hands if I can. This is one such instance. While the proposed solution isn't as good as the best solution, it's a solution that *we* can do on our own.
with singleton sidelined on mtgo, I've been playing much more 100c singleton than singleton so you can be sure that I'll be writing more on the format. =)
"to anonymous 0, I originally intended to cover a Singleton 100 deck this week but the PT somehow changed my mind because it was too interesting not to try and I could not make the deck in Singleton100. =x"
Fair enough. It was more a long term request than a reaction to this specific article. Sadly, the fact that you could not make the deck work in Singleton100 speaks volumes about the gulf between the two formats! Anyway, keep up the good work in either of the two formats. :)
Nice recap. Since most of the decks have a solid Lorwyn block base, it should still be fairly representative of what we'll see now. One thing I have heard is complaints from Demigod Red players regarding the lack of a suitable replacement for Blood Knight. Seems like there isn't a good replacement for the 2-drop at the moment.
to anonymous 0, I originally intended to cover a Singleton 100 deck this week but the PT somehow changed my mind because it was too interesting not to try and I could not make the deck in Singleton100. =x
to under_the_hammer, I'd agree with you but for some reason or another, singleton100 4 mans are the only things around =(
To isotope, I would think that caller of the claw would belong to the sideboard for the plan you mentioned. The main idea is to have low casting cost elves to chain into when glimpse is played which is the reason why the deck looks like that. I have given some thoughts about various cards like some of the cards you mentioned but dismissed them after I decided to keep the focus of the deck to allow it to play like the extended deck.
to anonymous 1, the duel decks will be in the online store soon, just like how the gobs vs elves were so don't worry
to anonymous 2, the portion of the duel decks is just an update to let pple (esp singleton players since we play with the classic pool) know that it's something they should be looking forward to getting. it's not the focus of the article at all.
to anonymous 3, thank you. I'd love to see more love for Singleton but the way things look, singleton100 4 mans are the only events running. I will be testing more in that format unless I think of something interesting i want to make like the above deck
I really dont understand why there is not the option to join either singleton100 or singleton75 in the 4man queues! Let the player decide which event fires. I would play singleton75 4mans in a heartbeat!
Whilst I actually think that Singleton is a much much better format than Singleton 100 (*) it's a sad fact of WotC Life that the 4-man queue onine supports Singleton 100. I wish it was the other way around but for us online players it's the only game in town.
Would it be possible to have a litte more Singleton 100 focus in some of your articles?
(*) Clarification:
I'm sure that Singleton 100, when used to support EDH multiplayer games, is fine and I'm not meaning to be disrespectful to all who play and enjoy that format. I'm just saying that for a competative queue of single player duels I think normal Singleton is better.
I dont see the relevance of the duel decks in this article. You should have left this to be discussed by others. The whole decklist bears very little on singleton and nothing to do with elves in singleton. Stick to topic and let others cover this material in a more relevant article!
Very good example for the Singleton format and a good description of your building process. This original Singleton format needs more love, Singleton100 (with no SB especially) is for multiplayer, anyway!
These artificial characters seem a bit too forced imho. For this to have any real impact you'd have to spread the word really wide and really hard. But why chose such a complicated to type characters then, surely there must be easier ones (yes, I know it is not really hard but ppl will feel that way about it).
Then again, doing a simple [/n] to seperate your BUYING from your SELLING is usually good enough for the eye. The usual card search won't return more than one screen of adds anyway.
Like Jyalt, I don't think the price increase is due to returning players. Extended legal cards have gone up across the board (not just Glimpse and such; Chalices, Jitte, Exposives, all those strong extended cards went up) and there's probably some increase dueto Champs.
Furthermore I think there was a bit of a blunder of people pricing the playable Mythic rares (mostly the Planeswalkers) way to low, even during release week. I hear Tezz and Elspeth used to sell for 3 until they gone up (temporarily?) to 10 or so. Tezz naturally got a boost from PT Berlin and people were mis-evaluating Elspeth, but anyway.
The numbers are price in tix of 1x card in the format. I agree on the bars - these graphs could be made a bit more legible :)
The recent spike in standard was from people testing for state championships. Now that states is over, expect prices to fall once more.
Oh, and while I was an active player, I hoarded about 200 Trinisphere at 0.33 each. Probably a small drop in the bucket compared to actual quantity, but still... good to see that investment may be paying off when I come back in Q2 2009.
If anyone is wondering, here's a deck that uses the strategy mentioned...
4 Breeding Pool
10 Forest
2 Island
1 Pendelhaven
4 Yavimaya Coast
4 Birds of Paradise
4 Coiling Oracle
4 Essence Warden
4 Imperious Perfect
4 Llanowar Elves
4 Wren's Run Vanquisher
4 Intruder Alarm
4 Remand
4 Sprout Swarm
3 Umezawa's Jitte
I've already seen a version of this on magic online using Nettle Sentinel, Intruder Alarm, Sprout Swarm. It's not a total Elf Ball more of a variant, but just as annoying.
Glad I could help - thanks for the feedback man.
I was wondering how this deck was working. It helped me a lot. Thanks.
Another solid installment - you definitely deserve that self-at-on-the-back. Can you fix the numbers on the bar graph chart so that they are legible? And what is the y-axis in that chart - dollars? dollars of a 1x set per format? of a 4x set per format? in sell prices? in buy prices?
Yep you're right, my bad on the Symbiote. I'll make sure to add a corrected version of the combo in my next article.
It was already online in stupid numbers...
FYI: you can't tap the Symbiote with Heritage Druid (in your turn two scenario). It's not an Elf.
That's another interesting bit of tech for this deck, though. A Mirror Entity activation for 1 gives your creatures all creature types. This turns your Symbiotes and Insects (from Hivemaster) into Elves, so you can tap them for mana, and you can get infinite use out of a Symbiote's "once per turn" bounce ability to draw your entire deck with Glimpse of Nature.
I hadn't been following the Pro Tour so this came as a surprise to me. The analogy to High Tide sounds right. I haven't played this deck but that's what it looks like.
I think this deck will appear all over Magic Online. It's mostly commons and uncommons (which have gone way up in price), it's elves, and it just won a major event. Since someone has made a pauper version of TEPS I'd be less surprised to see a pauper version of this too. Since it'll be played so much it was definitely worth breaking down the synergy card by card.
i love magic and when i read about the guy seggesting to have magic:the gathering for ds,it jsut blew my mind!!! im a crazed fan with magic and every fnm tournament there is near me i go to it!!!
True. Having WotC provide what we want is better than figuring out some strange workarounds.
Notice how I'm not holding my breath while waiting for WotC to do something. It seems pretty clear to me that they're not going to get around to fixing this soon, if ever.
As such I like to take things into my own hands if I can. This is one such instance. While the proposed solution isn't as good as the best solution, it's a solution that *we* can do on our own.
with singleton sidelined on mtgo, I've been playing much more 100c singleton than singleton so you can be sure that I'll be writing more on the format. =)
"to anonymous 0, I originally intended to cover a Singleton 100 deck this week but the PT somehow changed my mind because it was too interesting not to try and I could not make the deck in Singleton100. =x"
Fair enough. It was more a long term request than a reaction to this specific article. Sadly, the fact that you could not make the deck work in Singleton100 speaks volumes about the gulf between the two formats! Anyway, keep up the good work in either of the two formats. :)
It seems like the best way for buying selling to be seperated would to have wizards make the 2 rooms like they did in v2.5
Nice recap. Since most of the decks have a solid Lorwyn block base, it should still be fairly representative of what we'll see now. One thing I have heard is complaints from Demigod Red players regarding the lack of a suitable replacement for Blood Knight. Seems like there isn't a good replacement for the 2-drop at the moment.
to anonymous 0, I originally intended to cover a Singleton 100 deck this week but the PT somehow changed my mind because it was too interesting not to try and I could not make the deck in Singleton100. =x
to under_the_hammer, I'd agree with you but for some reason or another, singleton100 4 mans are the only things around =(
To isotope, I would think that caller of the claw would belong to the sideboard for the plan you mentioned. The main idea is to have low casting cost elves to chain into when glimpse is played which is the reason why the deck looks like that. I have given some thoughts about various cards like some of the cards you mentioned but dismissed them after I decided to keep the focus of the deck to allow it to play like the extended deck.
to anonymous 1, the duel decks will be in the online store soon, just like how the gobs vs elves were so don't worry
to anonymous 2, the portion of the duel decks is just an update to let pple (esp singleton players since we play with the classic pool) know that it's something they should be looking forward to getting. it's not the focus of the article at all.
to anonymous 3, thank you. I'd love to see more love for Singleton but the way things look, singleton100 4 mans are the only events running. I will be testing more in that format unless I think of something interesting i want to make like the above deck
I really dont understand why there is not the option to join either singleton100 or singleton75 in the 4man queues! Let the player decide which event fires. I would play singleton75 4mans in a heartbeat!
Whilst I actually think that Singleton is a much much better format than Singleton 100 (*) it's a sad fact of WotC Life that the 4-man queue onine supports Singleton 100. I wish it was the other way around but for us online players it's the only game in town.
Would it be possible to have a litte more Singleton 100 focus in some of your articles?
(*) Clarification:
I'm sure that Singleton 100, when used to support EDH multiplayer games, is fine and I'm not meaning to be disrespectful to all who play and enjoy that format. I'm just saying that for a competative queue of single player duels I think normal Singleton is better.
Caller of the Claw - with Wirewood Herald in play, you can float 3 mana in response to mass removal and tutor up Caller to seal the deal.
Coat of Arms/Overrun/Gempalm Strider/Tribal Forcemage/Immaculate Magistrate/Timberwatch Elf/Voice of the Woods - Alternate win conditions
Elvish Guidance - another way to generate big mana, once you have a few elves in play.
Elvish Harbinger - another tutor.
Wellwisher - Another way to stave off aggro
Will these duel decks also become available on MTG online? Or just in stores?
I dont see the relevance of the duel decks in this article. You should have left this to be discussed by others. The whole decklist bears very little on singleton and nothing to do with elves in singleton. Stick to topic and let others cover this material in a more relevant article!
Very good example for the Singleton format and a good description of your building process. This original Singleton format needs more love, Singleton100 (with no SB especially) is for multiplayer, anyway!
These artificial characters seem a bit too forced imho. For this to have any real impact you'd have to spread the word really wide and really hard. But why chose such a complicated to type characters then, surely there must be easier ones (yes, I know it is not really hard but ppl will feel that way about it).
Then again, doing a simple [/n] to seperate your BUYING from your SELLING is usually good enough for the eye. The usual card search won't return more than one screen of adds anyway.