I am really lax on scoring for templatung, so look to AJ_Impy and Pyrosin for more accurate scores in that category.
Non-basic lands do not have to be strictly less powerful than basic lands. Pendlehaven is an example of a card that can replace a forest in a deck at any point.
Props to the other two judges. I think the commentary was very good and I think everyone did a good job explaining how they were going to score entries early in the contest.
The reading comprehensibility of the flavor text is where you lost it with me, principally the second sentence. I do not think it means what you think it means.
To put it bluntly, I didn't buy the flavor. Yes, the ground is cracked, the goblins die. But why were the Goblins there in the first place? Just because it's in the flavor text doesn't mean that flavor text is convincing or is successful at telling its story. I liked the card, but it didn't explain why it did what it did to my satisfaction, recognising that effort was made in that direction.
I joined up so it would launch, I knew i did not have the time to finish fig i would play two maybe three rounds. Then game one i won with nought, game two i go to flash i use summoner pact on turn two or three oops! I had been fooling around with deck list and forgot to add the hulks. I half thought about just conceding then figured what the heck lets see what i can muster. I pull anything that will be dead in the deck and go stifle nought with some added junk from flash. I ended up winning match one with out my win condition. I felt so dumb i had to drop.
I hadn't read much about Red Thresh before so I did some digging and found that it's a different beast altogether in Legacy and is used to do something a bit different than we need in Classic. A lot of the reason for the Blood Moon plan in Legacy is to premptively shut down Wasteland and Landstill sheninagans. Of course the synergy between Blood Moon and Fledgling is very sweet, but it just feels like it's a bit too much work to pull off in Classic (without the duals) for not a lot of gain right now.
For example, to hit bloodmoon mana and still be able to cast your non-dragon creatures/spells, you need to burn a two fetches to get your basic lands and a third to get your Red Mana since once you Moon the board you can't fetch out those cards and waiting to draw into them isn't really an option in Classic, what with the aggro of affinity and burn coming at you.
I think that getting some real duals will help a lot. So will having players relying on Wasteland, and watching them squirm once they get them turned into mountains. :)
Mostly because the deck LOOKS solid. It should have a decent matchup in the format, but due to a few issues (no duals, no wasteland) it seems hard to make it pan out.
Some days are just rough. I hate playing against non-metagame based decks whiffster. Nice article and thanks for the t8 breakdown. GOGO Magic Eternal :)
Pyrosin "Strictly better than a basic" means better in every way. That land was not non-basic, so it suffers from non-basic land hate, making it not strictly better. Almost strictly better less. Small nit-pick.
There's no templating errors on your card, but part of the scoring in that category is, "We should understand what the card is supposed to do with one reading." I found the upkeep cost and sacrifice ability disjoined and a little confusing. I was expecting them to tie together somehow, so that's why I gave it a 9 in templating, and a lower synergy score.
I would have given it a higher score if it was something like:
Cumulative Upkeep: U/R When JR is put into a graveyard from play, target player skips his next turn unless he pays 1 for each age counter on JR.
ibanez_bw seriously dude...that is like the must disgusting pic ever i dont know what it is maybe im seeing it wrong but the chick look like she has some weird flesh disease like the tumor people you see on ripley's just a bad pic im sick right now lol
On topic though i like the cards overall. Tarmatogs are amazing in my opinion and i just feel duallands arent really too original though i DO love the way they were done i like that better than the normal oh ill just tap for whatever the fact that these lands require planning make them nice. You could even make them uncommon by making the flipping automatic i think.
I keep trying to figure out what is causing the scrolling for so many of my readers. I've shrunk down my topic dividers and I've tried to shrink down my images and charts as well... I'll keep working on it, since I totally agree that scrolling articles is sucky for anyone who has to read it like that. :(
Hopefully I can get it to fit inside everyone's browser windows shortly! :)
While I think you do a good job on these articles, I'm only bothering to read the one at the end of every month, because thes scrolling is a such a pain to deal with. Consider fixing it?
You seem to have a misunderstanding in your beliefs. Specifically with classic-liberalism and Adam Smith. He was for state intervention in the economy and identified the ability for markets to fail. What you're in favour of is Neo-Liberalism, Hayek, Friedman and company and the Austrian School. What many call the "bastardization of Adam Smith". Moreover, the juxtaposistion of democratic social programs and Neo-Liberal Hayekian free-market ideals is an oxymoron. It's a fundemental misconception of what the two schools of thought believe and what they entail. I think what you mistake as "liberalism" is simply simple microeconomic beliefs which are universally accepted by everyone, including democrats who have adopted Keynesian economics for the justification for social programs and social democracy as a whole.
Overall, this is a very simple article which is patronising of everyone's understanding of supply and demand. It is verbose and superflous for such a simple topic with absolutely no practical examples in terms of actual cards and their fluctutations. My advice to you is to only write this article once you've actually finished learning Economics or have interesting data to share. Otherwise, Hamtastic's graphs can say one hundred times better what your long-winded paragraphs try to describe.
I dropped out of Magic Online about 18 months ago when my son was born (lack of time) and have therefore managed only a single casual game under v3. I keep up to date with your SotP posts.
That said - do you know why your posts are always so wide across the screen? it always wraps and I have to scroll left and right to read it all. Take pity a poor guy with a 14" screen? :-)
I've known you for over 10 years dude. It came as such a shock. Any time you were around you were just infectious, people just thrived of the laughter and joy you brought. You were truly the greatest player I have ever had the honor to play against.
To Shaun, I 'm so sorry man. I can't imagine what you are feeling, I will definately see you Sunday.
Fairly informative article. I have to disagree with your assessment of SSS being a 'pretty fast' format. I find the format to be one of the slower in recent memory. Draft is obv much faster than sealed but that holds true in every limited format ever. If the format weren't so slow, the development of a straight red Sligh-type archetype, using very, very weak (mostly 1/1 hastey) creatures backed by direct damage, would fail to thrive as it has/does. I feel if the Sligh archetype had to consistently face quality two-drops, thus eliminating the early 2-4 free damage points while the opponents waits to turn 3 or 4 for a quality blocker, it wouldn't have enough gas to be viable.
I don't agree with anything that Jon M. said, but jumping to that lame, overused O'Reilly blast is weak. Most people that do that never even sit down and listen to him. It's just something that the left is supposed to say.
O'Reilly is fair to both sides. He hates the far left, but he hates the far right just as much. He has stuck up for Obama the last 3 days on his radio show. In this age of media bias, why bash one of the guys that is just presenting the unbiased truth?
Politics probally is not the best way to intro a new Column though the writing was done well. Its just way too easy to insult and help people find some fault with your article. I would have like to see the article dig into some of the actual reasons and practices for pricing on MTGO. Maybe next time, was entertaining just would like to see content with hard data to back it up. I am sure if you ask Hammy he would be glad to give you some data so you can back up your theories.
Hold on, so rares are generally worth more than commons because, wait for it, they're more rare? Wow. You would have been better off just cutting and pasting dictionary definitions. Wait, you already did that.
The articles on this site that are readable are few and far between. State Of The Program, Standard Deviations, and the occasional Classic piece are pretty much all I can stomach. Please keep your politics out and more intelligent fare in.
Extremely important point about conspire. You wrote "you can then tap two creatures with the same colors". Actually, what you can tap is "two creatures that each share at least one color with the conspire spell". So for instance to conspire Barkshell Blessing (W/G) you can tap Somnomancer (W/U, shares W with Barkshell) and Mudbrawler Raiders (G/R, shares G with Barkshell) even though they share no colors. Also as an additional tip keep in mind your and your opponent's "untap" creatures when evaluating whether you or your opponent can conspire something. It's very easy to miss opportunities to conspire, so know the rules and keep your eyes open and you can really blow someone out with conspire spells.
Seriously, it doesn't say basic land: forest, or swamp
Three quick notes -
I am really lax on scoring for templatung, so look to AJ_Impy and Pyrosin for more accurate scores in that category.
Non-basic lands do not have to be strictly less powerful than basic lands. Pendlehaven is an example of a card that can replace a forest in a deck at any point.
Props to the other two judges. I think the commentary was very good and I think everyone did a good job explaining how they were going to score entries early in the contest.
Thanks for the kind words Hammy.
Great article Jack!
The reading comprehensibility of the flavor text is where you lost it with me, principally the second sentence. I do not think it means what you think it means.
To put it bluntly, I didn't buy the flavor. Yes, the ground is cracked, the goblins die. But why were the Goblins there in the first place? Just because it's in the flavor text doesn't mean that flavor text is convincing or is successful at telling its story. I liked the card, but it didn't explain why it did what it did to my satisfaction, recognising that effort was made in that direction.
I joined up so it would launch, I knew i did not have the time to finish fig i would play two maybe three rounds. Then game one i won with nought, game two i go to flash i use summoner pact on turn two or three oops! I had been fooling around with deck list and forgot to add the hulks. I half thought about just conceding then figured what the heck lets see what i can muster. I pull anything that will be dead in the deck and go stifle nought with some added junk from flash. I ended up winning match one with out my win condition. I felt so dumb i had to drop.
Ouch, rough tournament I guess. :(
I hadn't read much about Red Thresh before so I did some digging and found that it's a different beast altogether in Legacy and is used to do something a bit different than we need in Classic. A lot of the reason for the Blood Moon plan in Legacy is to premptively shut down Wasteland and Landstill sheninagans. Of course the synergy between Blood Moon and Fledgling is very sweet, but it just feels like it's a bit too much work to pull off in Classic (without the duals) for not a lot of gain right now.
For example, to hit bloodmoon mana and still be able to cast your non-dragon creatures/spells, you need to burn a two fetches to get your basic lands and a third to get your Red Mana since once you Moon the board you can't fetch out those cards and waiting to draw into them isn't really an option in Classic, what with the aggro of affinity and burn coming at you.
I think that getting some real duals will help a lot. So will having players relying on Wasteland, and watching them squirm once they get them turned into mountains. :)
Mostly because the deck LOOKS solid. It should have a decent matchup in the format, but due to a few issues (no duals, no wasteland) it seems hard to make it pan out.
Some days are just rough. I hate playing against non-metagame based decks whiffster. Nice article and thanks for the t8 breakdown. GOGO Magic Eternal :)
A very nice breakdown as always. Thank you for putting it all together like this. Very nice!
I was just wondering why everyone was questioning the link in flavor for the card "Cracked" ... I thought the flavor text made it very apparent.
All the goblins die when the earth underneath them is destroyed. I designed the card around the flavor. That is why I am questioning this.
Pyrosin
"Strictly better than a basic" means better in every way. That land was not non-basic, so it suffers from non-basic land hate, making it not strictly better. Almost strictly better less. Small nit-pick.
There's no templating errors on your card, but part of the scoring in that category is, "We should understand what the card is supposed to do with one reading." I found the upkeep cost and sacrifice ability disjoined and a little confusing. I was expecting them to tie together somehow, so that's why I gave it a 9 in templating, and a lower synergy score.
I would have given it a higher score if it was something like:
Cumulative Upkeep: U/R
When JR is put into a graveyard from play, target player skips his next turn unless he pays 1 for each age counter on JR.
That way the two abilities are linked.
ibanez_bw seriously dude...that is like the must disgusting pic ever i dont know what it is maybe im seeing it wrong but the chick look like she has some weird flesh disease like the tumor people you see on ripley's just a bad pic im sick right now lol
On topic though i like the cards overall. Tarmatogs are amazing in my opinion and i just feel duallands arent really too original though i DO love the way they were done i like that better than the normal oh ill just tap for whatever the fact that these lands require planning make them nice. You could even make them uncommon by making the flipping automatic i think.
Just curious, why didn't I get full marks for templating? I don't see any errors on my card.
Good job overall, congrats to the winners.
I keep trying to figure out what is causing the scrolling for so many of my readers. I've shrunk down my topic dividers and I've tried to shrink down my images and charts as well... I'll keep working on it, since I totally agree that scrolling articles is sucky for anyone who has to read it like that. :(
Hopefully I can get it to fit inside everyone's browser windows shortly! :)
While I think you do a good job on these articles, I'm only bothering to read the one at the end of every month, because thes scrolling is a such a pain to deal with. Consider fixing it?
You seem to have a misunderstanding in your beliefs. Specifically with classic-liberalism and Adam Smith. He was for state intervention in the economy and identified the ability for markets to fail. What you're in favour of is Neo-Liberalism, Hayek, Friedman and company and the Austrian School. What many call the "bastardization of Adam Smith". Moreover, the juxtaposistion of democratic social programs and Neo-Liberal Hayekian free-market ideals is an oxymoron. It's a fundemental misconception of what the two schools of thought believe and what they entail. I think what you mistake as "liberalism" is simply simple microeconomic beliefs which are universally accepted by everyone, including democrats who have adopted Keynesian economics for the justification for social programs and social democracy as a whole.
Overall, this is a very simple article which is patronising of everyone's understanding of supply and demand. It is verbose and superflous for such a simple topic with absolutely no practical examples in terms of actual cards and their fluctutations. My advice to you is to only write this article once you've actually finished learning Economics or have interesting data to share. Otherwise, Hamtastic's graphs can say one hundred times better what your long-winded paragraphs try to describe.
Thanks for the update hammy.
I dropped out of Magic Online about 18 months ago when my son was born (lack of time) and have therefore managed only a single casual game under v3. I keep up to date with your SotP posts.
That said - do you know why your posts are always so wide across the screen? it always wraps and I have to scroll left and right to read it all. Take pity a poor guy with a 14" screen? :-)
Keep up the good work!
I've known you for over 10 years dude. It came as such a shock. Any time you were around you were just infectious, people just thrived of the laughter and joy you brought. You were truly the greatest player I have ever had the honor to play against.
To Shaun, I 'm so sorry man. I can't imagine what you are feeling, I will definately see you Sunday.
Much Love
B. Smith
Fairly informative article. I have to disagree with your assessment of SSS being a 'pretty fast' format. I find the format to be one of the slower in recent memory. Draft is obv much faster than sealed but that holds true in every limited format ever. If the format weren't so slow, the development of a straight red Sligh-type archetype, using very, very weak (mostly 1/1 hastey) creatures backed by direct damage, would fail to thrive as it has/does. I feel if the Sligh archetype had to consistently face quality two-drops, thus eliminating the early 2-4 free damage points while the opponents waits to turn 3 or 4 for a quality blocker, it wouldn't have enough gas to be viable.
I don't agree with anything that Jon M. said, but jumping to that lame, overused O'Reilly blast is weak. Most people that do that never even sit down and listen to him. It's just something that the left is supposed to say.
O'Reilly is fair to both sides. He hates the far left, but he hates the far right just as much. He has stuck up for Obama the last 3 days on his radio show. In this age of media bias, why bash one of the guys that is just presenting the unbiased truth?
Politics probally is not the best way to intro a new Column though the writing was done well. Its just way too easy to insult and help people find some fault with your article. I would have like to see the article dig into some of the actual reasons and practices for pricing on MTGO. Maybe next time, was entertaining just would like to see content with hard data to back it up. I am sure if you ask Hammy he would be glad to give you some data so you can back up your theories.
Hold on, so rares are generally worth more than commons because, wait for it, they're more rare? Wow. You would have been better off just cutting and pasting dictionary definitions. Wait, you already did that.
The articles on this site that are readable are few and far between. State Of The Program, Standard Deviations, and the occasional Classic piece are pretty much all I can stomach. Please keep your politics out and more intelligent fare in.
Extremely important point about conspire. You wrote "you can then tap two creatures with the same colors". Actually, what you can tap is "two creatures that each share at least one color with the conspire spell". So for instance to conspire Barkshell Blessing (W/G) you can tap Somnomancer (W/U, shares W with Barkshell) and Mudbrawler Raiders (G/R, shares G with Barkshell) even though they share no colors. Also as an additional tip keep in mind your and your opponent's "untap" creatures when evaluating whether you or your opponent can conspire something. It's very easy to miss opportunities to conspire, so know the rules and keep your eyes open and you can really blow someone out with conspire spells.