Zero or Won (Since you're covering Digital Formats winners, badumbum-ching!)
"The O stands for Awesome" - Just something that made me laugh when I thought of it. Referring to the 'O' in MTGO, and the silliness that springs from playing online.
My issue with the memory leak deal on my computer is that it continues to suck your resources even after you have closed the program. I double checked in my running apps list after I had shut down MTGO, and sure enough it is still running an app in the background that drains resources. Now I've gotten to the point that after I finish playing and go offline, I CTRL-ALT-DEL to bring up my Windows Task Manager, and I End Process Magic.EXE, and my system recovers nicely.
this is basicaly what "online tech" should have been.. this coupled with the "oddball roundout" = best anaylsis on the online game.. love the "hide" lists.. makes my bot venturing much better and auction room bearable.. thanks.
funnny.. i always play 61.. just because i think its funny and with MTGO sometimes an extra card is all that matters. .
I just can't see the difference 1 card could possibly make... even if it did, it would be so minimal that it is close to impossible to know how it effects your games .. and i won my first tournament with a 61 card deck after losing time and time again with 60 card decks.
name idea.. hmm.. try something thats a little more magic related like "Final Fortunes".. since the article is about T8 decks and event tech... or like "Final Reveals" I don't know..
We all have separate accounts but we do share a lot of cards. Yes, that's why our sideboards were so similar. Sorry for the confusion there.
My apologies about the high price tags for these deck lists. I've had several requests for some more "budget" deck lists and I've been meaning to add that element to my article. In the next article there will be at least one low-cost deck list.
Congregation at Dawn is a pretty good idea. Chord of Calling is a bit different in that it puts the creature directly into play. This works really well if it has a small but difficult casting cost or if you are looking to surprise your opponent. But I think you're right, it would do a similar job and cost far less.
Just to note, Scalpelexis would be a 5/5 flying uber-millstone with Doran in play.
RE: Dragon The Dragon decks was Dragon not Dragons, that's next week. Hopefully can get that up soon to get back on track.
RE: The Long Tail, a little too obscure I think but good idea.
RE: Link to last article. You can click my name at top for list of all of them not sure if link is needed in addition to that. I am planning on doing a breakdown of what was played over a 4-5 week period every 4-5 weeks. Basically a composite list of all t8s for each format. Not sure if I'll do that based around months (ie first article of each month) or just do it every4 or 5 articles. We'll see.
Feel free to post any aditional comments or find me in game. #3 should be done soon, moved this week so very busy (well busy for me).
i liked the decks.. but man.. how do all four of you afford decks? (or do you share accounts.. i was kind of confused by that aspect of it) .. I only mention that because the last three decks had similar "tool box" sideboard types with the same wishes.. but anyways.. it was a good read.. although the price tag of those may put them out of reach for me for a while.. anyways do another.
Thanks for another great article. Lately I find myself looking forward to the goodies delivered to me by PureMTGO's RSS feed.
How's this for a possible article name: The Long Tail of MTGO (or something similar involving the Long Tail). Long Tail http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Long_Tail is used to describe distributing things that are definitely not mainstream to the people who are in to those often obscure things. For example, there are podcasts about virtually everything nowadays and because of the Internet and distribution sources like iTunes people can get to that obscure content more easily and thus the Long Tail content thrives. People playing "oddball" formats on MTGO are definitely not the mainstream Standard/Extended/Limited players but having a site dedicated to all formats on MTGO, popular or not, is a great distribution point for long tail content such as singleton, tribal wars, etc.
Thanks again for what promises to be a great article series,
Personally I didn't find this article very good. You state at the start that you want to show how intresting PDC matches/decks can be and then the most complicated plays were baiting counterspells (so you could resolve a Duress?) and hoping to topdeck your burn.
Both players made mistakes and honestly the only real desision you made was to ping with Shadow Guildmage. Even that isn't as shocking as you make it out to be as your deck has burn and you had more life than him.
I think walkthroughs are best for #1 complicated decks, usually combo or #2 common and important matchups between two common decks in a format. Helps if the matchup is ~50/50 and the better player usually comes out on top.
A for effort C for content C- for changing views on PDC.
You're playing right into the Bennie Rule. The combo walkthoughs, as I have understood them, are designed to show you the right play for a given situation, as combo more often has to craft wins. This article was deisgned to show the decision making process that occurs in a game of Classic PDC and try to show that the format has some depth. Perhaps putting myself next to Menedian is the wrong move, but I do feel that this article style has merit for more than just combo decks.
thats the kind of t8 i'm talking about.. I will now eat my crow.. I would like to see more aggressive restrictions just to shake up the classic format (similar to what happened years ago in vintage, things got shifted around.. just to "stimulate" the metagame)..but anyways, thats definately the kind of "metagame" that i could find myself enjoying to play against..
I really do enjoy these formats.. its just too bad I can't play in the PEs every week.. I wish they had some of these events on Weeknights.. usually these are on like alternating weekends.. and the classic is on sunday if I remember right..
anyways.. good article.. too bad the other events didn't fire.
the point i was trying to make was that sometimes cards are junk until something comes along (which if I recall Academy Rector was a pretty broken card in a lot of decks, anyways).. still rector was printed 2 and a half years after flash.. I got another example.. Food Chain.. pretty crappy card.. then later when good goblins were printed and then it became a really good deck.. I'm not so sure its great now, but for a while it was a pretty good deck. all i was trying to say was, sometimes a "junk rare" now.. turns into the best card of the format later.
Thorough game walkthroughs predate menendian- Oscar Tan set the precedent. But, his were filled with off color anecdotes and were almost always his deck vs. (other).
Zero or Won (Since you're covering Digital Formats winners, badumbum-ching!)
"The O stands for Awesome" - Just something that made me laugh when I thought of it. Referring to the 'O' in MTGO, and the silliness that springs from playing online.
Umm..
That's all I have for now. Maybe more later.
My issue with the memory leak deal on my computer is that it continues to suck your resources even after you have closed the program. I double checked in my running apps list after I had shut down MTGO, and sure enough it is still running an app in the background that drains resources. Now I've gotten to the point that after I finish playing and go offline, I CTRL-ALT-DEL to bring up my Windows Task Manager, and I End Process Magic.EXE, and my system recovers nicely.
this is basicaly what "online tech" should have been.. this coupled with the "oddball roundout" = best anaylsis on the online game.. love the "hide" lists.. makes my bot venturing much better and auction room bearable.. thanks.
Yeah realised my mistake on Scalpelexis, but no edit feature so I could not hastily hide my stupidity DUH
best weekly article
funnny.. i always play 61.. just because i think its funny and with MTGO sometimes an extra card is all that matters. .
I just can't see the difference 1 card could possibly make... even if it did, it would be so minimal that it is close to impossible to know how it effects your games .. and i won my first tournament with a 61 card deck after losing time and time again with 60 card decks.
anyways... love the deck.. love the additions..
name idea.. hmm.. try something thats a little more magic related like "Final Fortunes".. since the article is about T8 decks and event tech... or like "Final Reveals" I don't know..
We all have separate accounts but we do share a lot of cards. Yes, that's why our sideboards were so similar. Sorry for the confusion there.
My apologies about the high price tags for these deck lists. I've had several requests for some more "budget" deck lists and I've been meaning to add that element to my article. In the next article there will be at least one low-cost deck list.
Congregation at Dawn is a pretty good idea. Chord of Calling is a bit different in that it puts the creature directly into play. This works really well if it has a small but difficult casting cost or if you are looking to surprise your opponent. But I think you're right, it would do a similar job and cost far less.
Just to note, Scalpelexis would be a 5/5 flying uber-millstone with Doran in play.
Thanks for the advice and comments.
RE: Dragon The Dragon decks was Dragon not Dragons, that's next week. Hopefully can get that up soon to get back on track.
RE: The Long Tail, a little too obscure I think but good idea.
RE: Link to last article. You can click my name at top for list of all of them not sure if link is needed in addition to that. I am planning on doing a breakdown of what was played over a 4-5 week period every 4-5 weeks. Basically a composite list of all t8s for each format. Not sure if I'll do that based around months (ie first article of each month) or just do it every4 or 5 articles. We'll see.
Feel free to post any aditional comments or find me in game. #3 should be done soon, moved this week so very busy (well busy for me).
Loved it!
Good content and coverage. Keep on keepin' on!
Would Congregation At Dawn not do a similar juob, and cost far less to cast ???
Also, I run Scalpelexis in my build, a 5/1 Flying millstone is just far too good not to use.
Enjoyed the article btw, as I really like Doran, just a cool fun card to play with and around.
i liked the decks.. but man.. how do all four of you afford decks? (or do you share accounts.. i was kind of confused by that aspect of it) .. I only mention that because the last three decks had similar "tool box" sideboard types with the same wishes.. but anyways.. it was a good read.. although the price tag of those may put them out of reach for me for a while.. anyways do another.
Thanks for another great article. Lately I find myself looking forward to the goodies delivered to me by PureMTGO's RSS feed.
How's this for a possible article name: The Long Tail of MTGO (or something similar involving the Long Tail). Long Tail http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Long_Tail is used to describe distributing things that are definitely not mainstream to the people who are in to those often obscure things. For example, there are podcasts about virtually everything nowadays and because of the Internet and distribution sources like iTunes people can get to that obscure content more easily and thus the Long Tail content thrives. People playing "oddball" formats on MTGO are definitely not the mainstream Standard/Extended/Limited players but having a site dedicated to all formats on MTGO, popular or not, is a great distribution point for long tail content such as singleton, tribal wars, etc.
Thanks again for what promises to be a great article series,
-Paul
Thanks for the great article. I wish I'd have read something like this 3-4 years ago ... I'd probably be several hundred dollars richer!
I think it would be helpful to have a link to previous article at the very beginning of each one.
Personally I didn't find this article very good. You state at the start that you want to show how intresting PDC matches/decks can be and then the most complicated plays were baiting counterspells (so you could resolve a Duress?) and hoping to topdeck your burn.
Both players made mistakes and honestly the only real desision you made was to ping with Shadow Guildmage. Even that isn't as shocking as you make it out to be as your deck has burn and you had more life than him.
I think walkthroughs are best for #1 complicated decks, usually combo or #2 common and important matchups between two common decks in a format. Helps if the matchup is ~50/50 and the better player usually comes out on top.
A for effort C for content C- for changing views on PDC.
Benny rule? Can I get a definition on that ;).
the dragon deck in the t8 was not infact dragon combo but dragon aggro
You're playing right into the Bennie Rule. The combo walkthoughs, as I have understood them, are designed to show you the right play for a given situation, as combo more often has to craft wins. This article was deisgned to show the decision making process that occurs in a game of Classic PDC and try to show that the format has some depth. Perhaps putting myself next to Menedian is the wrong move, but I do feel that this article style has merit for more than just combo decks.
-Alex
thats the kind of t8 i'm talking about.. I will now eat my crow.. I would like to see more aggressive restrictions just to shake up the classic format (similar to what happened years ago in vintage, things got shifted around.. just to "stimulate" the metagame)..but anyways, thats definately the kind of "metagame" that i could find myself enjoying to play against..
I really do enjoy these formats.. its just too bad I can't play in the PEs every week.. I wish they had some of these events on Weeknights.. usually these are on like alternating weekends.. and the classic is on sunday if I remember right..
anyways.. good article.. too bad the other events didn't fire.
the point i was trying to make was that sometimes cards are junk until something comes along (which if I recall Academy Rector was a pretty broken card in a lot of decks, anyways).. still rector was printed 2 and a half years after flash.. I got another example.. Food Chain.. pretty crappy card.. then later when good goblins were printed and then it became a really good deck.. I'm not so sure its great now, but for a while it was a pretty good deck. all i was trying to say was, sometimes a "junk rare" now.. turns into the best card of the format later.
Sorry if I goofed with Utopia Sprawl. I'm not that familiar with Standard and the card search engine I used said it was legal.
Thorough game walkthroughs predate menendian- Oscar Tan set the precedent. But, his were filled with off color anecdotes and were almost always his deck vs. (other).
The stephen-esqe matchups are a little dull/obvious when not talking about complex combo.