As I warned in the begining , some of the lose its are if you are planning to excise yourself from the other formats - hence, RAV duals should be out of your collection come MED II if you are trying to do that.
Good call on Scroll - I'd forgotten it was 8th only.
And Tolaria went does cost 1UU to Tutor Academy, but then, you are playing Academy. You're probably tutoring for it damn quick since you are playing lot's of artifact acceleration.
And yes, Squee is one of the the best repeating combo enablers of all time. However, I probably should have labelled it a sleeper, as it isn't making anything tier 1 - yet.
"he can be cast fairly easy, and cas for 6 tokens. not too bad."
Actually, since Spire Golem's not blue you can't sacrifice him to the CSB. Spire was what I first thought about when I saw CSB in MED, only to be disappointed when I read the cards again. :(
My apologies Judah, I didn't mean to imply that none of the cards were unquestioned by anyone. But the fact is that each card is questioned by at least a couple of people and according to the results break down of recent events, none of the cards were warping the format. One wasn't even in a Top 8 deck yet. I've not seen any post or statement anywhere where someone was in agreement with all three singleton bans. There may be someone out there, but I've not seen them say it yet.
To me, that's a sign that something may have gotten miscommunicated along the way.
I know i was loving the increase in the Canadian dollar. For the first time ever i was actually paying less then US prices for MTGO! It was great and i bought more then normal!
I think that the STD price rises may be related to pre-Worlds practicing and excitement about Worlds by non-pros. The big tourneys always increase some card prices, and Worlds is the biggest. Just my thought though.
"These banned cards have been questioned by the Singleton community, as according to them, none of them were warping the format."
The entire online Singleton Community does not consist of IceAge4Life and ArterialDeath. Every other poster in the threads liked 1-3 of the bannings, and could see the others. It varied by poster, which tells me the bannings were warranted. Oddly, those in the Singleton Community were more surprised by the Flash banning than the two others.
Worlds will definitely shake everything up, and the Spinerock Knoll Mono Red Storm is getting a lot of publicity now. I'm tracking meta for next week and it has made some showings already. Glad you like the article!
Great article. What deck do you think is the best so far or the most consistant as it looks like most of the decks are close in placings. Mono Red Storm has been getting alot of hype from worlds so maybe that deck will appear alot in the meta. Just have to wait till next week!
I'll admit that I'm definitely curious about the geographical make up of the MTGO player base. The weakening dollar could also be a very large impact on tickets if there are enough non-US players taking advantage of that. Both the Canadian Dollar and the Euro are very strong against us right now.
I guess the biggest test will be if the ticket price starts to stabilize above .90 for bulk purchases. That would be a big indicator of the cost of 1.00 US being worth less than 1.00 elsewhere.
The ticket economy is such an interesting beast....
Another excellent article! Look forward to these each week.
The rare price legend seems to be off, I'm certain that the purple line is the Lor prices, and the yellow one is the TSP prices - at least that is if last week's article is to be believed.
Quite honestly,here is what I think happened in November.
Your Canadian friends up north started buying things for you. Don't forget that the price of a ticket is also inescapably tied to the price of the US Dollar. Hence if the dollar goes down, the price of ticket should (paradoxically) go up, since there are so many people in the MTGO marketplace who are not American. When the Canadian Dollar hit $1.10 recently, it meant that Canadians were buying packs about about $3.70 US. My guess is enough people took avantage of the tax-free, VAT-free cheap Canadian purchasing power for a lot of packs, especially Lorywn boosters/starters, but NOT tix. Hence the increase in the price of tix, as the packs sucked up a lot f the availbilty.
It is hilarious to think about the tix economy...if enough people learned not to buy their tix from the store, they'd eventually drive the price up to $1/tix anyway.
Firstly as someone looking to play Classic Long-term I found this article to be a brilliant read. Packed with information. I wont take most of the "lose it" advice as I want to play the other formats, BUT I will certainly check I have all the "Staples" and take a gander at the proposed Sleeper Rares.
Just a few comments really. Are the Ravnica Duals really a "lose it" - I cant see them dropping further in value due to Extended playability. Surely they will see play even with the Med Duals in two colour decks?? even as 2-3-offs. I dont know but I can see these being playable beyond dual land release.
Is Squee really that good? it is a card I have never considered from Classic.
I still cant bring myself to pick up 4 LED's although I know that I should. Do you think there is potential for this to be restricted in classic?
Im not sure the tolaria transmute will be fast enough for classic and the CIP will hurt but they are cheap enough and worth getting.
Id perhaps suggest merchant scroll as a sleeper from 8th???
The classic quarter have some hidden writing talent appears! I love this artice and the odd ball series by iceage4life also excels. Keep up the good work. Is there a plan to write an article on the tempest block cards that could impact classic??
Nice article. I too don't see a need to ban the cards in singleton barring flash. I have a very strong build that can protect and get the combo pieces very easily. With the whole deck revolving around 2 cards, it's very tough to lose. Especially if u see how easy it is to set up. As for why it doesn't perform, I have no idea but one fact is that it is quite easy to play around it. However, u can burn the combo pieces or remove hulk from the yard. Both are rather integral in any singleton deck. The only thing u can't hope to do is to counter flash. The biggest problem is that by the time u identify the deck as flash, u'll probably have lost the game 1 already.
As for upheaval and jitte, I have absolutely no idea why they did what they did. Upheaval is no doubt good but is definitely not at a level where u have to ban it. It's like saying ban obliterate cos once u obliterate ub will just die. If ur opponent is playing ub and has a ton of mana, u're most likely to lose whichever win condition he chooses. The deck that most benefits from an upheaval is ug and it doesn't just win all the time.
Jitte is good but we have all learnt to play with it in play with technology like greater gargadon or plain artifact removal. Decks can kill the creatures or bounce stuff. Yes it is powerful. Sick to an extend. Yet we adapted to its presence and it's no longer that big a problem. Seriously, Jitte takes time to do what it does.
Skullclamp ruled games. These have yet to warp the whole format. (Though flash has the highest tendency to) I do hope wizards will give singleton the prestege of having all cards (minus clamp and the banned mox) legal unlike other formats.
I disagreed with the best faerie common as well, Dreamspoilers are it. As for Goblins, you say Adder Staff Boggart is better than Nath's Buffon? Originally when I looked at the set I agreed with you, but these days the Buffon is actually a decent card. Protection from Elves is a HOT ability, think, it makes him immune to Eyeblight's Ending and to Nameless Inversion, he can block any of an opponents elves sure, but far more importantly, he can block any changelings, or critters equipped with a Stalactite.
The biggest lesson for drafting though (yes even bigger than learning signals) is to be flexible. I know that a lot of the people we watch drafting tend to have colour or archtype preferences, but they will also tell you that pretty much any time in the first pack you should be willing to abandon your original plan if you get signalled somewhere else. I'm not sure, from the first pack alone (as I won't look beyond one pack and the first pick of pack two and three if you are revising picks) if I would go RBw, or GBr. It's true that Faeries and Merfolk have the potential to be the most dominating archtypes in the triple lorwyn draft, but that is a double edged sword, everyone knows they are powerful and blue is naturally powerful, so people try to fight for it, so they each get lesser decks, and you can get a free pass on a slightly weaker archtype but a far better deck.
Anon - Fixed. That's one of those spellchecker-can't-do-everything things. :(
Wu-Lan - Thanks for the comments! As you suspected, the Kithkin are there because they're not bad as far as bodies go, and can go on the offensive if my opponent gets stuck on lands or otherwise has a bad draw. Harbinger fetches my Nameless Inversion, and Springjack Knight can get me some clash action if need be. Because I'd rather be consistently mediocre than randomly fabulous, I'm willing to take a bit of a "do nothing" tribe as my complement to the merfolk, especially when white gives me the Judge, O-Ring, and a second lord (3/6 Turtle is pretty nice).
Footbottom Feast is very good and I found myself occasionally wishing it was somewhere in the deck, but I only sided it in for Peppersmoke in one match against treefolk when peppersmoke wasn't going to do anything.
As for other colors, the only legitimate contender (in my opinion) was red. Black and green were both seriously lacking in curve/tribes/good cards. The next article is about re-examination of the whole pool on booster day, so you'll get a peek at the whole pool in all its glory.
Again, thanks for the comments and please don't hesitate to keep making them. You may be a rookie but you clearly know your Lorwyn :)
If you are already in Faeries, or prepared to force them no matter what, then you take Dreamspoiler over Pestermite. However, P1P1 the better choice is Pestermite, becase it is still fantastic in Faeries, but will be more serviceable in non-Faerie decks than Dreamspoiler.
That being said, without looking ahead I actually had Giant Harbinger for P1P1, and Stinkdrinker actually wheeled P1P9. Beyond that (actually beyond P1P8) you can't compare, and from the looks of it I don't think enough of the key Giants appeared later in the draft to make it great, but that's the path I would have tried.
Hiya, The article is a very nice introduction and insight into playing lorwyn leagues, but it does leave me with some questions.
Is there any particular reason to have added the kithkin? The balloonist is the only seriously interesting kithkin in there; It looks as though the rest have been added because of the Cenn. My guess is most will have been standing around on the playing field as sacrificial fodder while the merfolk run the board, especially after the Cenn is removed.
Have you considered putting another color in and splashing white? (namely the Oblivion Ring, Judge Of Currents and Kithkin Balloonist) You haven't shown a lot of the cards you're not using so I couldn't say wether the other colors have a lot of potential but it seems as though your merfolk could use solid blockers for a stable board or some heavy early offense to have a do-or-die secondary winning method.
Since your current winning strategy is some specific merfolk you could consider adding footbottom feast to give them a second chance and it is a pretty effective cantrip in the rare cases that you have no use for it.
As I'm a rookie in the game I'm not sure wether my suggestions have any merit, if so I'm interested why the suggestions are not as good as I think them to be.
As I warned in the begining , some of the lose its are if you are planning to excise yourself from the other formats - hence, RAV duals should be out of your collection come MED II if you are trying to do that.
Good call on Scroll - I'd forgotten it was 8th only.
And Tolaria went does cost 1UU to Tutor Academy, but then, you are playing Academy. You're probably tutoring for it damn quick since you are playing lot's of artifact acceleration.
And yes, Squee is one of the the best repeating combo enablers of all time. However, I probably should have labelled it a sleeper, as it isn't making anything tier 1 - yet.
Isn't there a blue creature that makes other creatures blue? Metathran Transport, or better yet, Neurok Transmuter.
"he can be cast fairly easy, and cas for 6 tokens. not too bad."
Actually, since Spire Golem's not blue you can't sacrifice him to the CSB. Spire was what I first thought about when I saw CSB in MED, only to be disappointed when I read the cards again. :(
My apologies Judah, I didn't mean to imply that none of the cards were unquestioned by anyone. But the fact is that each card is questioned by at least a couple of people and according to the results break down of recent events, none of the cards were warping the format. One wasn't even in a Top 8 deck yet. I've not seen any post or statement anywhere where someone was in agreement with all three singleton bans. There may be someone out there, but I've not seen them say it yet.
To me, that's a sign that something may have gotten miscommunicated along the way.
Thank you for the feedback!
i would suggest taking out deep sea kraken and replacing with spire golem. he can be cast fairly easy, and cas for 6 tokens. not too bad.
I know i was loving the increase in the Canadian dollar. For the first time ever i was actually paying less then US prices for MTGO! It was great and i bought more then normal!
It does indeed kill your makeshifted men, but if you are blinking them you are doing it wrong!
Doesn't blink kill your own mannequined guys?
I think that the STD price rises may be related to pre-Worlds practicing and excitement about Worlds by non-pros. The big tourneys always increase some card prices, and Worlds is the biggest. Just my thought though.
"These banned cards have been questioned by the Singleton community, as according to them, none of them were warping the format."
The entire online Singleton Community does not consist of IceAge4Life and ArterialDeath. Every other poster in the threads liked 1-3 of the bannings, and could see the others. It varied by poster, which tells me the bannings were warranted. Oddly, those in the Singleton Community were more surprised by the Flash banning than the two others.
I really enjoyed reading this. Great work!
Worlds will definitely shake everything up, and the Spinerock Knoll Mono Red Storm is getting a lot of publicity now. I'm tracking meta for next week and it has made some showings already. Glad you like the article!
Great article. What deck do you think is the best so far or the most consistant as it looks like most of the decks are close in placings. Mono Red Storm has been getting alot of hype from worlds so maybe that deck will appear alot in the meta. Just have to wait till next week!
Nice job. Do you know anyone who does this for extended?
I'll admit that I'm definitely curious about the geographical make up of the MTGO player base. The weakening dollar could also be a very large impact on tickets if there are enough non-US players taking advantage of that. Both the Canadian Dollar and the Euro are very strong against us right now.
I guess the biggest test will be if the ticket price starts to stabilize above .90 for bulk purchases. That would be a big indicator of the cost of 1.00 US being worth less than 1.00 elsewhere.
The ticket economy is such an interesting beast....
You're right! I've updated the article and made a note that I changed the graph. Thanks jamuraa!
~Erik
Another excellent article! Look forward to these each week.
The rare price legend seems to be off, I'm certain that the purple line is the Lor prices, and the yellow one is the TSP prices - at least that is if last week's article is to be believed.
Quite honestly,here is what I think happened in November.
Your Canadian friends up north started buying things for you. Don't forget that the price of a ticket is also inescapably tied to the price of the US Dollar. Hence if the dollar goes down, the price of ticket should (paradoxically) go up, since there are so many people in the MTGO marketplace who are not American. When the Canadian Dollar hit $1.10 recently, it meant that Canadians were buying packs about about $3.70 US. My guess is enough people took avantage of the tax-free, VAT-free cheap Canadian purchasing power for a lot of packs, especially Lorywn boosters/starters, but NOT tix. Hence the increase in the price of tix, as the packs sucked up a lot f the availbilty.
It is hilarious to think about the tix economy...if enough people learned not to buy their tix from the store, they'd eventually drive the price up to $1/tix anyway.
Firstly as someone looking to play Classic Long-term I found this article to be a brilliant read. Packed with information. I wont take most of the "lose it" advice as I want to play the other formats, BUT I will certainly check I have all the "Staples" and take a gander at the proposed Sleeper Rares.
Just a few comments really. Are the Ravnica Duals really a "lose it" - I cant see them dropping further in value due to Extended playability. Surely they will see play even with the Med Duals in two colour decks?? even as 2-3-offs. I dont know but I can see these being playable beyond dual land release.
Is Squee really that good? it is a card I have never considered from Classic.
I still cant bring myself to pick up 4 LED's although I know that I should. Do you think there is potential for this to be restricted in classic?
Im not sure the tolaria transmute will be fast enough for classic and the CIP will hurt but they are cheap enough and worth getting.
Id perhaps suggest merchant scroll as a sleeper from 8th???
The classic quarter have some hidden writing talent appears! I love this artice and the odd ball series by iceage4life also excels. Keep up the good work. Is there a plan to write an article on the tempest block cards that could impact classic??
Nice article. I too don't see a need to ban the cards in singleton barring flash. I have a very strong build that can protect and get the combo pieces very easily. With the whole deck revolving around 2 cards, it's very tough to lose. Especially if u see how easy it is to set up. As for why it doesn't perform, I have no idea but one fact is that it is quite easy to play around it. However, u can burn the combo pieces or remove hulk from the yard. Both are rather integral in any singleton deck. The only thing u can't hope to do is to counter flash. The biggest problem is that by the time u identify the deck as flash, u'll probably have lost the game 1 already.
As for upheaval and jitte, I have absolutely no idea why they did what they did. Upheaval is no doubt good but is definitely not at a level where u have to ban it. It's like saying ban obliterate cos once u obliterate ub will just die. If ur opponent is playing ub and has a ton of mana, u're most likely to lose whichever win condition he chooses. The deck that most benefits from an upheaval is ug and it doesn't just win all the time.
Jitte is good but we have all learnt to play with it in play with technology like greater gargadon or plain artifact removal. Decks can kill the creatures or bounce stuff. Yes it is powerful. Sick to an extend. Yet we adapted to its presence and it's no longer that big a problem. Seriously, Jitte takes time to do what it does.
Skullclamp ruled games. These have yet to warp the whole format. (Though flash has the highest tendency to) I do hope wizards will give singleton the prestege of having all cards (minus clamp and the banned mox) legal unlike other formats.
I disagreed with the best faerie common as well, Dreamspoilers are it. As for Goblins, you say Adder Staff Boggart is better than Nath's Buffon? Originally when I looked at the set I agreed with you, but these days the Buffon is actually a decent card. Protection from Elves is a HOT ability, think, it makes him immune to Eyeblight's Ending and to Nameless Inversion, he can block any of an opponents elves sure, but far more importantly, he can block any changelings, or critters equipped with a Stalactite.
The biggest lesson for drafting though (yes even bigger than learning signals) is to be flexible. I know that a lot of the people we watch drafting tend to have colour or archtype preferences, but they will also tell you that pretty much any time in the first pack you should be willing to abandon your original plan if you get signalled somewhere else. I'm not sure, from the first pack alone (as I won't look beyond one pack and the first pick of pack two and three if you are revising picks) if I would go RBw, or GBr. It's true that Faeries and Merfolk have the potential to be the most dominating archtypes in the triple lorwyn draft, but that is a double edged sword, everyone knows they are powerful and blue is naturally powerful, so people try to fight for it, so they each get lesser decks, and you can get a free pass on a slightly weaker archtype but a far better deck.
Anon - Fixed. That's one of those spellchecker-can't-do-everything things. :(
Wu-Lan - Thanks for the comments! As you suspected, the Kithkin are there because they're not bad as far as bodies go, and can go on the offensive if my opponent gets stuck on lands or otherwise has a bad draw. Harbinger fetches my Nameless Inversion, and Springjack Knight can get me some clash action if need be. Because I'd rather be consistently mediocre than randomly fabulous, I'm willing to take a bit of a "do nothing" tribe as my complement to the merfolk, especially when white gives me the Judge, O-Ring, and a second lord (3/6 Turtle is pretty nice).
Footbottom Feast is very good and I found myself occasionally wishing it was somewhere in the deck, but I only sided it in for Peppersmoke in one match against treefolk when peppersmoke wasn't going to do anything.
As for other colors, the only legitimate contender (in my opinion) was red. Black and green were both seriously lacking in curve/tribes/good cards. The next article is about re-examination of the whole pool on booster day, so you'll get a peek at the whole pool in all its glory.
Again, thanks for the comments and please don't hesitate to keep making them. You may be a rookie but you clearly know your Lorwyn :)
If you are already in Faeries, or prepared to force them no matter what, then you take Dreamspoiler over Pestermite. However, P1P1 the better choice is Pestermite, becase it is still fantastic in Faeries, but will be more serviceable in non-Faerie decks than Dreamspoiler.
That being said, without looking ahead I actually had Giant Harbinger for P1P1, and Stinkdrinker actually wheeled P1P9. Beyond that (actually beyond P1P8) you can't compare, and from the looks of it I don't think enough of the key Giants appeared later in the draft to make it great, but that's the path I would have tried.
You get 1 point for a match loss in league play, not 0.
Hiya, The article is a very nice introduction and insight into playing lorwyn leagues, but it does leave me with some questions.
Is there any particular reason to have added the kithkin? The balloonist is the only seriously interesting kithkin in there; It looks as though the rest have been added because of the Cenn. My guess is most will have been standing around on the playing field as sacrificial fodder while the merfolk run the board, especially after the Cenn is removed.
Have you considered putting another color in and splashing white? (namely the Oblivion Ring, Judge Of Currents and Kithkin Balloonist) You haven't shown a lot of the cards you're not using so I couldn't say wether the other colors have a lot of potential but it seems as though your merfolk could use solid blockers for a stable board or some heavy early offense to have a do-or-die secondary winning method.
Since your current winning strategy is some specific merfolk you could consider adding footbottom feast to give them a second chance and it is a pretty effective cantrip in the rare cases that you have no use for it.
As I'm a rookie in the game I'm not sure wether my suggestions have any merit, if so I'm interested why the suggestions are not as good as I think them to be.
Hope you enjoy the rest of the league,
Wu-Lan