I'll definitely get this added, either into this article or next week's.
That retether bug is huge pain though... it'll work for a while then do nothing. At least with fully bugged cards you know not to use them. Retether implosions are really frustrating... *grumble*
Wish I had kept Troop Reserves at a 1/3 as I originally designed it. I let a friend of mine convince me I could give it 1 more power, and I felt that was a mistake. Still, I think Troop Reserves was well designed had I put the power right. It's intent was to trigger abilities of other cards, but at a greater cost, the extra 1W. Also, any card that gives an opponent a creature, such as the various Hunted cards or Varchild's War-Riders, will aslo return this card to your hand.
Orc Sparker was an idea straight from Stalking Yeti. I just tried to created a common version of it, in the flavor of Brothers of Fire. Unfortunately, looking back, I realize it could be abused easily with a Soul Warden.
On Wandering Dryad, I really didn't know how to cost it correctly. In the end, I went the Knight route, and costed in GG, but in retrospect, should have costed it higher, say 2GG. Hindsight is always 20/20.
Still, overall, I am pretty pleased with the scoring, Pyrosin has the right idea to grade a curve. I did the same thing in the past contest, though my curve was a bit more along the lines of non-linear
Can you add the Retether bug to this as well? For those who don't know, Retether has about a 50% chance of not working at all; the auras come into play, then leave play before you can attach them to anything.
Um.. To be honest, I have minimal cards from the tribal categories. For example the rebel chain just gets you a handful of rebels. The reason, like you stated, is that the rebels are pretty weak. However, just by being able to chain out the simple few is more than sufficient which is why you shouldn't stuff your deck with the "useless" few.
The tribal concept I'm talking about is not about getting a few tribes to work. I seriously don't think it would. It's more of some little things like to wizardcycle into some relevant wizard or use wirewood herald to get eyeblight's ending. The main idea of doing such things is to compact your deck so that certain cards are able to appear with double or triple the consistency.
I do agree about the "big power range" point but it just so happens that some commons just have more value in this format as compared to say their respective limited formats. If you look throughout the years, many commons are simply a different version of card A or say a card with a new annoying ability. When I say they do not vary much, I mean it in this way. For example: Train of Thought wasn't that great a card in RGD. It was almost "just another common card draw" together with compulsive research. However in this format, the value of train of thought rises exponentially because of the amount of mana acceleration played which allow it to be replicated many many more times.
Another example would be probe which is supposed to be similar to those draw x, discard x-1 spells but the kicker is really wrecking. In IPA, probe was not bad. In PPS, Probe is a kick in the groin.
The difference in value come from the characteristics of this format although relatively, they are designed to be similar and they worked similarly to their other counterparts in their time.
Hopefully cards would have a new way of doing things so that we will have more different effects to work with.
Re: Flickering Theurge - You guys are right, "relevant" was a bad choice of words on my part. The card has lots of uses, but my point was that it isn't a white card if it doesn't have flash.
Re: Flickering Theurge -- certainly the card has its uses; "relevant" may not have been the best choice of word. But Pyrosin makes a good point that, from a flavor perspective, White's flickering effects are usually instant-speed, so that they can save creatures from combat damage or removal spells.
Re: scoring -- another important point, and one that I meant to mention in the article. Pyrosin's scores are lower on average because he graded on a curve, but when you consider the scores in relative terms, i.e. how each judge would have ranked the entries from best to worst, the differences aren't so great (and the differences that still exist actually do signify a divergence of opinions). In fact, without the greater variance in Pyrosin's grading, it's likely we would have had even more tied scores than we did, so it's a good thing he graded on a curve, and I'm thinking about changing my own scoring methods accordingly next time I'm a judge.
When I scored the cards, I tried to use the entire range available to me. i.e. 1 - 50. I did not realize the other two judges would not be doing that. If you look at the average score and the standard deviation of those scores from each judge you will see:
Evu: 36 +/- 5
Pyrosin: 30 +/- 8
DiesIrae: 40 +/- 3
So that means for the vast majority of entries, my score is going to be the lowest of the three, but that goes the same for everyone. The score I gave for an average card looks a lot lower than the other two judge's scores, but it all averages out in the end.
[quote]The whole point of white's flicker ability is to save a creature from a spell or combat damage. This card needs flash to be relevant like Whitemane Lion.[/quote]
I actually thought of Whitemane Lion as I designed this card. It does not need flash to be relevant. As I pointed out in my post (and the other designers must have noted, by their scores) it has a surprising amount of utility as is:
-"Disenchanting" an enemy enchantment
-Unmorphing a large beater.
-Retriggering CITP abilities.
-At worst, "untapping" a creature you attacked with earlier in the turn.
While the card does not have flash, it is a prime target for combinations with cards that do grant flash (Teferi, Scout's Warning) and it makes a great target for bounce or reanimation. I had considered adding a way to return it to your hand or for it to flicker itself but deemed those unworthy abilities for a common. I was a little disappointed with your low scores Pyrosin (especially considering the other judges' scores). :(
First, I didn't intend to come across as offended, and I welcome new ideas. I do rather disagree with some of your assessments though. You say "commons don't vary that much in what they do ". On the contrary I think that there is a big range of power among commons. I also think that while having a rebel chain might be nice, and does help with card advantage, most of the rebels are underpowered in the format. Would you rather have Blade of the 6th Pride or Coalition Honor Guard for instance? My experience in PPS is that individual card power has a greater effect on the game than tribal synergy.
I'm not saying that successful tribal based PPS decks are impossible, but most successful PPS deck builders currently limit tribal aspects to small inclusions. I think this is based on experience that tribal is not good. To answer that question, yessterday I did throw together a deck based on tribal principles to see how it plays. All the tutors, slivers, rebels, soulshift, flashback, trinket mage, changelings etc., plus all the scrivener and similar cards, some equipment and then draw, removal and mana fixing spells. I only played one game so far, and was easily beaten. I'll play some more games to see if I can learn anything useful.
Right you are Evu, I did misread that card. My bad. I have no idea why I thought it was a card from hand, I must have been in a daze when I read it. Silly me.
I knew Regret was a Johnny card coming into this with no chance ... but it seemed fun to me. It might be better without the alt casting cost, looking back I am not sure why I picked discard a creature.
You are absolutely correct that it sounds better the way you templated it and I don't think I docked much for it. I also believe we will see a Comradery card in print before too long and Pyrosin can sue at that point I think. Finally, like I said I reread the Regret card 50 times if I read it once and I think in the end I probably tanked it more than I should have you have given some great reasons to put an opponents creature in play and probably the best one just came to me. Killing Legendary creatures. Still it is incredibly narrow.
Judges, thanks for all the work you put into running this contest and writing this article.
About my Stalking Rhino: Rasparthe is right that the "rather than pay" clause usually comes at the end. But I tried writing the sentence that way, and discovered that it was hard to understand, because of how long and complex the instructions are. With the way I rewrote it, the meaning is the same, and I think the gains in clarity justify the non-standard templating.
About shawnr's Natural Shift: MechtaK, I think you misread it -- it requires you to remove one of your creatures in play, not a creature card in your hand. There's no way it'll be played on turn 1. In fact, by the time you can afford to pay the alternate cost, it would probably be just as easy to pay the mana cost instead.
About Pyrosin's Comradery: A well-earned win. I agree with Rasparthe that the numbers would need to be adjusted a bit, but the effect is useful, and the idea of giving planeswalkers a kind of Grandeur-like effect is a good one. And "add loyalty counters to target planeswalker" is an effect we'll probably be seeing on real cards before too long.
About rushmore111's Regret: Not that I don't understand the judges' confusion about what it's good for, but this card makes my Johnny-senses tingle more than any other in the contest. It could make your Damnations that much more effective. It could power up any cards you have that care about the number/type/other statistics of your opponents' creatures. You could use it to get their Flametongue Kavu when you have no creatures in play, or to pre-empt any silver bullets they have in their deck by bringing them out before they're useful. And of course there's always my good friend Psychogenic Probe. I guess it's pretty metagame-dependent, but I think it's an exciting idea.
i just searched thru as many puremtgo articles as i could looking for this, and i just cant find it. recently there was an article that talked about a mtgo account (something like "PriceBot"), and you could message it the name of a card, and it would message you back back the average price it was being bought and sold for, and what some of the big bots were buying/selling it for at that moment.
can anyone PLEASE help me out and tell me what the name of the bot is? thanks :(
Of course I don't assume that people who play don't know. If you have been playing the PPS format, even if you didn't think about it, you would definitely pick it up soon after you see people play it.
What I want to do is introduce the format, not break the format with unknown tech, which is near impossible given the fact that commons don't vary that much in what they do and it is so very easy to replicate what you see. What I say is pretty much "duh" to anyone who has been playing the format for a decent amount of time.
I take it for granted that random readers do not have in-depth knowledge in this area and I try to show them as many little tips and tricks within the trade that I know off. I hope you are not offended by what I write.
I'll definitely get this added, either into this article or next week's.
That retether bug is huge pain though... it'll work for a while then do nothing. At least with fully bugged cards you know not to use them. Retether implosions are really frustrating... *grumble*
~Erik
Wish I had kept Troop Reserves at a 1/3 as I originally designed it. I let a friend of mine convince me I could give it 1 more power, and I felt that was a mistake. Still, I think Troop Reserves was well designed had I put the power right. It's intent was to trigger abilities of other cards, but at a greater cost, the extra 1W. Also, any card that gives an opponent a creature, such as the various Hunted cards or Varchild's War-Riders, will aslo return this card to your hand.
Orc Sparker was an idea straight from Stalking Yeti. I just tried to created a common version of it, in the flavor of Brothers of Fire. Unfortunately, looking back, I realize it could be abused easily with a Soul Warden.
On Wandering Dryad, I really didn't know how to cost it correctly. In the end, I went the Knight route, and costed in GG, but in retrospect, should have costed it higher, say 2GG. Hindsight is always 20/20.
Still, overall, I am pretty pleased with the scoring, Pyrosin has the right idea to grade a curve. I did the same thing in the past contest, though my curve was a bit more along the lines of non-linear
Can you add the Retether bug to this as well? For those who don't know, Retether has about a 50% chance of not working at all; the auras come into play, then leave play before you can attach them to anything.
Um.. To be honest, I have minimal cards from the tribal categories. For example the rebel chain just gets you a handful of rebels. The reason, like you stated, is that the rebels are pretty weak. However, just by being able to chain out the simple few is more than sufficient which is why you shouldn't stuff your deck with the "useless" few.
The tribal concept I'm talking about is not about getting a few tribes to work. I seriously don't think it would. It's more of some little things like to wizardcycle into some relevant wizard or use wirewood herald to get eyeblight's ending. The main idea of doing such things is to compact your deck so that certain cards are able to appear with double or triple the consistency.
I do agree about the "big power range" point but it just so happens that some commons just have more value in this format as compared to say their respective limited formats. If you look throughout the years, many commons are simply a different version of card A or say a card with a new annoying ability. When I say they do not vary much, I mean it in this way. For example: Train of Thought wasn't that great a card in RGD. It was almost "just another common card draw" together with compulsive research. However in this format, the value of train of thought rises exponentially because of the amount of mana acceleration played which allow it to be replicated many many more times.
Another example would be probe which is supposed to be similar to those draw x, discard x-1 spells but the kicker is really wrecking. In IPA, probe was not bad. In PPS, Probe is a kick in the groin.
The difference in value come from the characteristics of this format although relatively, they are designed to be similar and they worked similarly to their other counterparts in their time.
Hopefully cards would have a new way of doing things so that we will have more different effects to work with.
As always very insightful. The Ham jones avg is great will be a good indicator when new sets start to stabalize. Please keep it up
Re: Flickering Theurge - You guys are right, "relevant" was a bad choice of words on my part. The card has lots of uses, but my point was that it isn't a white card if it doesn't have flash.
Re: Flickering Theurge -- certainly the card has its uses; "relevant" may not have been the best choice of word. But Pyrosin makes a good point that, from a flavor perspective, White's flickering effects are usually instant-speed, so that they can save creatures from combat damage or removal spells.
Re: scoring -- another important point, and one that I meant to mention in the article. Pyrosin's scores are lower on average because he graded on a curve, but when you consider the scores in relative terms, i.e. how each judge would have ranked the entries from best to worst, the differences aren't so great (and the differences that still exist actually do signify a divergence of opinions). In fact, without the greater variance in Pyrosin's grading, it's likely we would have had even more tied scores than we did, so it's a good thing he graded on a curve, and I'm thinking about changing my own scoring methods accordingly next time I'm a judge.
what about a freeform mono black control deck
Hey,
I like the concept. The only issue I have is that I really don'y like messing with peoples many in extreme casual....
How about this(pulled out the Rain/Pooling Venom)-about 12 tix
x4 Sleeper Agent
x4 Blightspeaker
x4 Vampiric Link
x4 Contaminated Blood
x3 Phryxian Totem
X4 Dash Hopes
x4 Sudden Spoiling
x4 Diabloic Tutor
x3 Temporal Extortion
x1 Stronghold Discipline
x1 Profane Command(w/o this the whole deck clocks in at 8 tix)
x4 Spawning Pool
x20 Swamps
May give this a try. Thanks again for the article.
___helper_monkey on MTGO
i saw may decks like this, but i see in this build not present mirror entity. Why?
When I scored the cards, I tried to use the entire range available to me. i.e. 1 - 50. I did not realize the other two judges would not be doing that. If you look at the average score and the standard deviation of those scores from each judge you will see:
Evu: 36 +/- 5
Pyrosin: 30 +/- 8
DiesIrae: 40 +/- 3
So that means for the vast majority of entries, my score is going to be the lowest of the three, but that goes the same for everyone. The score I gave for an average card looks a lot lower than the other two judge's scores, but it all averages out in the end.
P.S. Evu, the article layout looks really good.
when is pokemon online coming out?
I am toying with this deck and one card that fits is Tendrils of Corruption. I am using them over the Rain of Tears.
[quote]The whole point of white's flicker ability is to save a creature from a spell or combat damage. This card needs flash to be relevant like Whitemane Lion.[/quote]
I actually thought of Whitemane Lion as I designed this card. It does not need flash to be relevant. As I pointed out in my post (and the other designers must have noted, by their scores) it has a surprising amount of utility as is:
-"Disenchanting" an enemy enchantment
-Unmorphing a large beater.
-Retriggering CITP abilities.
-At worst, "untapping" a creature you attacked with earlier in the turn.
While the card does not have flash, it is a prime target for combinations with cards that do grant flash (Teferi, Scout's Warning) and it makes a great target for bounce or reanimation. I had considered adding a way to return it to your hand or for it to flicker itself but deemed those unworthy abilities for a common. I was a little disappointed with your low scores Pyrosin (especially considering the other judges' scores). :(
First, I didn't intend to come across as offended, and I welcome new ideas. I do rather disagree with some of your assessments though. You say "commons don't vary that much in what they do ". On the contrary I think that there is a big range of power among commons. I also think that while having a rebel chain might be nice, and does help with card advantage, most of the rebels are underpowered in the format. Would you rather have Blade of the 6th Pride or Coalition Honor Guard for instance? My experience in PPS is that individual card power has a greater effect on the game than tribal synergy.
I'm not saying that successful tribal based PPS decks are impossible, but most successful PPS deck builders currently limit tribal aspects to small inclusions. I think this is based on experience that tribal is not good. To answer that question, yessterday I did throw together a deck based on tribal principles to see how it plays. All the tutors, slivers, rebels, soulshift, flashback, trinket mage, changelings etc., plus all the scrivener and similar cards, some equipment and then draw, removal and mana fixing spells. I only played one game so far, and was easily beaten. I'll play some more games to see if I can learn anything useful.
Right you are Evu, I did misread that card. My bad. I have no idea why I thought it was a card from hand, I must have been in a daze when I read it. Silly me.
I'm surprised that the decks you faced were so weak.
ohh ... don't forget about stealing effects like v. shackles too : )
I knew Regret was a Johnny card coming into this with no chance ... but it seemed fun to me. It might be better without the alt casting cost, looking back I am not sure why I picked discard a creature.
Don't forget putting Phage into play FTW !!!! heh
it is "infobot" but it is offline from about 20 days now.
You are absolutely correct that it sounds better the way you templated it and I don't think I docked much for it. I also believe we will see a Comradery card in print before too long and Pyrosin can sue at that point I think. Finally, like I said I reread the Regret card 50 times if I read it once and I think in the end I probably tanked it more than I should have you have given some great reasons to put an opponents creature in play and probably the best one just came to me. Killing Legendary creatures. Still it is incredibly narrow.
Thanks for your comments!
Judges, thanks for all the work you put into running this contest and writing this article.
About my Stalking Rhino: Rasparthe is right that the "rather than pay" clause usually comes at the end. But I tried writing the sentence that way, and discovered that it was hard to understand, because of how long and complex the instructions are. With the way I rewrote it, the meaning is the same, and I think the gains in clarity justify the non-standard templating.
About shawnr's Natural Shift: MechtaK, I think you misread it -- it requires you to remove one of your creatures in play, not a creature card in your hand. There's no way it'll be played on turn 1. In fact, by the time you can afford to pay the alternate cost, it would probably be just as easy to pay the mana cost instead.
About Pyrosin's Comradery: A well-earned win. I agree with Rasparthe that the numbers would need to be adjusted a bit, but the effect is useful, and the idea of giving planeswalkers a kind of Grandeur-like effect is a good one. And "add loyalty counters to target planeswalker" is an effect we'll probably be seeing on real cards before too long.
About rushmore111's Regret: Not that I don't understand the judges' confusion about what it's good for, but this card makes my Johnny-senses tingle more than any other in the contest. It could make your Damnations that much more effective. It could power up any cards you have that care about the number/type/other statistics of your opponents' creatures. You could use it to get their Flametongue Kavu when you have no creatures in play, or to pre-empt any silver bullets they have in their deck by bringing them out before they're useful. And of course there's always my good friend Psychogenic Probe. I guess it's pretty metagame-dependent, but I think it's an exciting idea.
Good article. I really prefer the game walkthroughs opposed to the number of X decks in X PE. Please do more in the future.
i just searched thru as many puremtgo articles as i could looking for this, and i just cant find it. recently there was an article that talked about a mtgo account (something like "PriceBot"), and you could message it the name of a card, and it would message you back back the average price it was being bought and sold for, and what some of the big bots were buying/selling it for at that moment.
can anyone PLEASE help me out and tell me what the name of the bot is? thanks :(
Of course I don't assume that people who play don't know. If you have been playing the PPS format, even if you didn't think about it, you would definitely pick it up soon after you see people play it.
What I want to do is introduce the format, not break the format with unknown tech, which is near impossible given the fact that commons don't vary that much in what they do and it is so very easy to replicate what you see. What I say is pretty much "duh" to anyone who has been playing the format for a decent amount of time.
I take it for granted that random readers do not have in-depth knowledge in this area and I try to show them as many little tips and tricks within the trade that I know off. I hope you are not offended by what I write.