Hello again Hamtastic. I guess I'll be following you around for all the latest *useful* information about what is going on with MTGO. I could spend a week sifting through all the stuff on the gleemox board, and not even come close to having all the info you've got here. I dunno if you remember me, but I wrote something about the "functionality of V.3" on your April 18th post. I guess I am writing because I've just about had it with V.3. I spent about 20+ hours a week playing magic 2.5 for 5+ years, and now it is so frustrating playing ONE game with this new version. To boot, whenever I try and load up one of my decks from the previous version, the game freezes. I opened up the task manager, and I saw that while the game was frozen, it was using 258,000 K of my system memory. Windows itself, and all of the background apps don't even come close to that. This is a virtual representation of a card game. Why in the hell does this new version even remotely need that much of my system resources? I then tried to make a deck from scratch, spent an hour making it, then when I was adding basic land, I clicked on the "#" to sort it by the number of cards, and I got an "Unrecoverable Error" with an unintelligible statement as to why that was, then I was asked to "write what I was doing when this occurred" in a text box. I then logged back into magic, and the deck I spent an hour on was *poof* gone. This is beyond frustration. I feel like hitting something. I can say I will not be logging into magic until this is fixed. Any information on when SP1 with an improvement for "...machines closer to the minimum requirements..." as you put it is coming out would be of the utmost importance to anyone with similar problems with the new client as myself. 5 years of acquiring magic cards... and now I can't even play the game anymore. Any info you can get on this would be very much appreciated. The state of the game right now is beyond unacceptable. Thank you for your time...
I would have gone elves, but I can understand your reasoning. Think you ended up with the better deck for your choices anyway. I just don't value Nova Chaser as highly as you do, and I really like the Huntsmaster.
I think you would have been a little too creature light with the elf build. I would definately have gone Mulldrifter off the splash if I was 2 fertile grounds (like I would if I was in green).
I think you value lifegain too highly, as well as one-drops. The two one-drops above should never be played in a limited deck, as if you care about your one-spot you are probably aggro. Neither Apothecary Initiate nor Goldenglow Moth are aggressive in any sense of the word. I think this goes hand-in-hand with overvaluing lifegain. I know you gave most of these cards bad scores, but none of them should have been above 1.
Other than that, good review. White seems pretty underpowered, as outside of a couple splashy rares all you really get is one good piece of removal and one decent one. For me it's going to be open Wrath, a giant flyer, or order of whiteclay (which I think is better than you suspect) or get the Hell away from white. Of course, the hybrid white cards could (and probably will) change everything.
One last thing: I don't expect the new pacifism to see play in Block. Lorwyn/Shadowmoor block is shaping up to be full of extremely powerful, fast creatures and even better removal. When you said it would be played alongside Oblivion Ring you pretty much made my case: Oblivion Ring is better, and it's going to take the spot.
Looking forward to the rest of your series, thanks for writing!
Good points, I'll add that in. I forget the exacts as well, but I'll probably add it in under the first day (wed) since that was easily the worst day for most of this stuff.
I didn't see any mention of the day when trading didn't work at all (you couldn't view anyones collection, they eventually turned on No Pay mode too), or the day before when it took 20+ minutes to confirm a trade. I think these events happened on the 20th and 21st.
pack 3 pick 32 is definintely the battle-axe-- you unknowingly took a inner flame acolyte pick 3. the bonfire tabled so it wasn't that big of a hit. going turn 2 smokebraider- turn 3 battle-axe and setting up one of your 2 inner-flames for the fourth turn with mana back is insane. packs disdain is definitely not one of my favorite removal spells and it is very close to shard volley in strength but you're draft turned out good congrats!
Classifieds can indeed be closed, however, once you start a trade you get the 'trading' chat that doesn't correlate to a tab on the bottom of the screen (at least, I've not found a way to close that specific chat)
i'd just like to add that extirpate though a decent sideboard against ark decks is less well rounded than say counterspells if you have access to them via the colors you're playing. i know this from experience. see the reason why the faerie decks are such bad match ups for lark decks is that the fae can selectively pick off the ark decks threats via permissions. it's one thing to go extirpate but it's a whole new ballgame to go say turn 2 bitterblossom, counter a threat via spellstutter sprite and sit on your mana to counter whatever the ark deck does while beating down with a hoard of 1/1 flyers. of course if you don't have access to blue but are dipping into green then primal command would be a great way to nullify the lark's recursion strategy. although it's true that u/r ark could win without anything in the yard this is a rarity that may happen in less than 4 out of 10 games, ie provided your facing very capable opposition. i think extirpate should be included as a last resort or as a silver bullet since it really does nothing to improve board conditions and is very situational (unless you are playing teachings control in w/c case you manipulate the situation). just my two cents! thanks
I think that hosers and strategy defense should both be part of one category. "Hosers" by my definition isn't limited to color; it's anything that hoses any specific strategy, i. e. Leyline of the Void is a graveyard hoser.
Wow.. I must have been reallllyyy lucky den.. I sure benefitted from the unfixed maindeck system.. =)
I'm from Singapore.. I went to Thailand with a small group of friends, never expecting it to occur during the prerelease weekend until about 2 weeks before the trip. I tried to get info from the organizing judge but was out of luck as I got the reply on the day I left (the delay was cos of Songkran, the Thai New Year to those reading) so I was left to try my luck. I would have prefered to go on Saturday for the first event but my group planned to go to the Chatuchuk weekend market on sat.
A big thanx to the pple of Thailand for making my experience memorable. =)
First off thank you very much for the compliment. We're growing every day, and hopefully the quality of the content will stay high.
AS for the hotlinks we normally have those programmed soon after the set is introduced onto MTGO. I have no hand in that, but I think it involves the .csv files and our programmer working on it.
Hello again Hamtastic. I guess I'll be following you around for all the latest *useful* information about what is going on with MTGO. I could spend a week sifting through all the stuff on the gleemox board, and not even come close to having all the info you've got here. I dunno if you remember me, but I wrote something about the "functionality of V.3" on your April 18th post. I guess I am writing because I've just about had it with V.3. I spent about 20+ hours a week playing magic 2.5 for 5+ years, and now it is so frustrating playing ONE game with this new version. To boot, whenever I try and load up one of my decks from the previous version, the game freezes. I opened up the task manager, and I saw that while the game was frozen, it was using 258,000 K of my system memory. Windows itself, and all of the background apps don't even come close to that. This is a virtual representation of a card game. Why in the hell does this new version even remotely need that much of my system resources? I then tried to make a deck from scratch, spent an hour making it, then when I was adding basic land, I clicked on the "#" to sort it by the number of cards, and I got an "Unrecoverable Error" with an unintelligible statement as to why that was, then I was asked to "write what I was doing when this occurred" in a text box. I then logged back into magic, and the deck I spent an hour on was *poof* gone. This is beyond frustration. I feel like hitting something. I can say I will not be logging into magic until this is fixed. Any information on when SP1 with an improvement for "...machines closer to the minimum requirements..." as you put it is coming out would be of the utmost importance to anyone with similar problems with the new client as myself. 5 years of acquiring magic cards... and now I can't even play the game anymore. Any info you can get on this would be very much appreciated. The state of the game right now is beyond unacceptable. Thank you for your time...
-Bill
I would have gone elves, but I can understand your reasoning. Think you ended up with the better deck for your choices anyway. I just don't value Nova Chaser as highly as you do, and I really like the Huntsmaster.
I think you would have been a little too creature light with the elf build. I would definately have gone Mulldrifter off the splash if I was 2 fertile grounds (like I would if I was in green).
I think you value lifegain too highly, as well as one-drops. The two one-drops above should never be played in a limited deck, as if you care about your one-spot you are probably aggro. Neither Apothecary Initiate nor Goldenglow Moth are aggressive in any sense of the word. I think this goes hand-in-hand with overvaluing lifegain. I know you gave most of these cards bad scores, but none of them should have been above 1.
Other than that, good review. White seems pretty underpowered, as outside of a couple splashy rares all you really get is one good piece of removal and one decent one. For me it's going to be open Wrath, a giant flyer, or order of whiteclay (which I think is better than you suspect) or get the Hell away from white. Of course, the hybrid white cards could (and probably will) change everything.
One last thing: I don't expect the new pacifism to see play in Block. Lorwyn/Shadowmoor block is shaping up to be full of extremely powerful, fast creatures and even better removal. When you said it would be played alongside Oblivion Ring you pretty much made my case: Oblivion Ring is better, and it's going to take the spot.
Looking forward to the rest of your series, thanks for writing!
Good points, I'll add that in. I forget the exacts as well, but I'll probably add it in under the first day (wed) since that was easily the worst day for most of this stuff.
I'll have to check this out, hopefully it works! Thanks!
I didn't see any mention of the day when trading didn't work at all (you couldn't view anyones collection, they eventually turned on No Pay mode too), or the day before when it took 20+ minutes to confirm a trade. I think these events happened on the 20th and 21st.
pack 3 pick 32 is definintely the battle-axe-- you unknowingly took a inner flame acolyte pick 3. the bonfire tabled so it wasn't that big of a hit. going turn 2 smokebraider- turn 3 battle-axe and setting up one of your 2 inner-flames for the fourth turn with mana back is insane. packs disdain is definitely not one of my favorite removal spells and it is very close to shard volley in strength but you're draft turned out good congrats!
Great article. Very informative.
I have heard if you move from the trading room to like another room (Say, Tournament practice) that will close it.
Good article!
I had actually forgotten about a few of these cards! :)
I love hate decks
Classifieds can indeed be closed, however, once you start a trade you get the 'trading' chat that doesn't correlate to a tab on the bottom of the screen
(at least, I've not found a way to close that specific chat)
Don't forget the Psychic Purge (in Med) and all the "Tims" in Classic. A mono Blue Burn deck is completely possible. :)
To leave the admittadly horrible Classifieds section, move to a different section, and right click on the Classifieds tab, it'll close.
I am all over 6 mana Flame Javelin : )
Mono Blue Burn Deck here I come
Psi Blast
Flame Javelin
Twincast
ummm .... Aladin's Ring??? : )
i'd just like to add that extirpate though a decent sideboard against ark decks is less well rounded than say counterspells if you have access to them via the colors you're playing. i know this from experience. see the reason why the faerie decks are such bad match ups for lark decks is that the fae can selectively pick off the ark decks threats via permissions. it's one thing to go extirpate but it's a whole new ballgame to go say turn 2 bitterblossom, counter a threat via spellstutter sprite and sit on your mana to counter whatever the ark deck does while beating down with a hoard of 1/1 flyers. of course if you don't have access to blue but are dipping into green then primal command would be a great way to nullify the lark's recursion strategy. although it's true that u/r ark could win without anything in the yard this is a rarity that may happen in less than 4 out of 10 games, ie provided your facing very capable opposition. i think extirpate should be included as a last resort or as a silver bullet since it really does nothing to improve board conditions and is very situational (unless you are playing teachings control in w/c case you manipulate the situation). just my two cents! thanks
Finally my whining helped ty for the platinum list! :D
One of the best Magic-related articles I've read, very interesting.
Hello Hamtasti,
One hot topic I can't find so far is "How to convert old decks [from 2.5] to MTGO 3?"
If anyone knows, pliz!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I think that hosers and strategy defense should both be part of one category. "Hosers" by my definition isn't limited to color; it's anything that hoses any specific strategy, i. e. Leyline of the Void is a graveyard hoser.
The article was pretty cool!
Just remember lark decks don't need things in the graveyard to win.
actually a sulfurous blast can kill all your opponent's elves even if they have 2 imperious perfects in play.
Wow.. I must have been reallllyyy lucky den.. I sure benefitted from the unfixed maindeck system.. =)
I'm from Singapore.. I went to Thailand with a small group of friends, never expecting it to occur during the prerelease weekend until about 2 weeks before the trip. I tried to get info from the organizing judge but was out of luck as I got the reply on the day I left (the delay was cos of Songkran, the Thai New Year to those reading) so I was left to try my luck. I would have prefered to go on Saturday for the first event but my group planned to go to the Chatuchuk weekend market on sat.
A big thanx to the pple of Thailand for making my experience memorable. =)
First off thank you very much for the compliment. We're growing every day, and hopefully the quality of the content will stay high.
AS for the hotlinks we normally have those programmed soon after the set is introduced onto MTGO. I have no hand in that, but I think it involves the .csv files and our programmer working on it.
Great article, this site is really improving and it was fun to read the non-magical part of your pre-release as well as the magical part.
Could we get hotlinks on the card names? That would be the bees knees!!! JXC, I'm lookin your way!
I think I might have fixed some of the issues with the new update.