I've been writing since 1999, if I did it for the cash, I would be homeless, but at least I would have a computer. Most people end up writing for a better reason than getting paid though, the ones that just the payment end up working themselves out.
Depending on the content of the article, it's a rather bad idea to write for the money. From experience I can tell you the expected amount of money you receive if spread out over the time you spent writing it, you probably would make more money working at Burger King.
Write for pleasure, for a message. The tixs become an extra bonus...
I would love to see some more constructed content, but I do not want to limit it to the PE's and such, I want to hear about PDC, Rainbow Stairwell, and other fun formats!
In an article? I know you have semi-regular series on leagues, drafts, Sealed PEs, and pauper. You've also had card reviews out the wazoo. I know that you have little content on constructed. So constructed articles are most welcome, then? Anything else you are looking for?
Good article, but watch out for the grammatical errors. I would like to write some stuff, and probably will at some point, when I have something to contribute. This article is pretty clear and to the point. Thanks!
Man, I was just going to ask you, Heath or Jan about this before you put up this article. Get out of my head. *L* Seriously though, excellent guidelines, you might want to put in what a writer can expect for a payout if one of his submissions is published though.
I realize the idea of a "20 terror" deck is outlandish, but it got the point across I thought. This is a basic to slightly advanced level of draft strategy I covered. I understand that drafting a deck with 8 creatures and 14 removal is playable, truthfully I'm never really happy with it unless the creatures are game winners or just work really well with removal, kinda like Orgg(normally not too playable, but it rocks with heavy removal base). As far as not covering that strategy, I felt that it would just bog down the article.
Although I agree with the general thrust of yoru article, I do have a couple of nitpicks.
Firstly, comparing Terror with Incinerate. I think that Incinerate is a slightly stronger card in a vacuum, but you could defend taking Terror over Incinerate because red is wafer thin while black is choc full of removal, card agvantage, and even fatties. So for that example I would disagree wtih your evaluation.
Also, your argument about the 20 Terror deck is a little absurd. Who are you slanting this article at? The most clueless players need the simplest rules, so for that category of player, "take every removal spell in your colours unless there's a bomb" is much better advice. Once players get beyond that and know enough to actually know what bombs and removal cards etc etc are, then perhaps your argument will make more sense. But still it doesn't. The reason for that is that good removal is a scarce resource and try as you might you won't be able to draft 20 removal cards as good as Terror for your deck. And RB decks that run 18 land, 14 removal spells and 8 largeish creatures (no early manacurve) are surprisingly playable.
So I can't work out what level of player you think would find that advice helpful.
Anyway, please don't take this as a big slam on your article. I thought that most of it was very good.
I'm glad to see so much interest in this. I will indeed have to make a contiuation article because finding the signal and deciding when to force are very hard things to learn and even harder to master. Even then its not a guarantee. As in "forcing" a color its actually not a bad strategy, I actually do it all the time(often UW skys in TPF or UR in Tenth). It allows you to draft a certain color combination or archetype without making many mistakes in building and even playing as you learn from repetition. Knowing when to abandon that color is fairly hard. As far as going more in depth I hope not to take too long getting an article out :)
here is something I would like to know, (i loved the article by the way).. I believe I fall into the "average player, average drafter" camp.. while I know I make mistakes when drafting, I think the hardest picks to learn are the "not so obvious" ones that win matches..
I've tried to mimic draft strategies I've seen on the internet and its hard to incorporate into my drafts. I've tried taking "just the good cards of the color(s) I like" and I end up with the "20 terror" scenerio.. where my card quality is good by my deck is terrible. How do you "find" the signals in the picks. I know you can't really start picking up on signals until picks 4-8 those are the crucial picks that can make or break a draft. say you have a pack that could go "either way" and you end up signaling to the drafters next to you that you want a certain color and that color magically "dries up" in sequential packs. and how can you say "cut off" colors to the person next to you.. say in a real life draft where you know certain players tend to sway different ways (like my friends tend to leave blue alone.. but some get smart and deny me good blue cards)
and is "forcing" a good strategy? what I mean by that is say I love the color blue and I'm going to take all blue cards whether they are good for my deck or not? is there times when you should or should not force? and how do you deal with colors card quality drying up in the third pack?
sorry if thats a lot of questions, but it was a great article, love to see another.
Thankyou for the compliment and I aggree completely that this article was not nearly in depth enough on the topic of signaling. That topic will indeed need to be continued in a future article.
I like the idea of your writing. Drafting is my favorite format, but also my weakest, so advice in it is always welcome. I agree that knowing the set and the value of the cards is important, which is information that can be found and memorized. Learning to interpret and control signals is not so simple to learn. I'd like to read an article in the future that breaks down what to make of the signals you receive and what types of signals to send along to get the best selection of cards to fit your draft strategy. =)
I got so nauseated by the author's (warranted) critiques of grammar and orthography when his own was atrocious as well.
Some misspellings from the author: "strait-forward" (also, why the hyphen?), "templeting" (multiple instances of this error), "grammer" (multiple instances), "grammr", "dew rag" (to be fair: 1,200 hits on google but "do rag" would have garnered over 10,000), "it's flavor" (for Curse of the Depths), "to put it strait", "chose [instead of "choose"] a non-land...", "yet I though this was...", "far to cheap," "it can't be destroy", "it think it would be a cool"
Some grammar issues noted are: missing commas, missing apostrophes, missing spaces, missing capitalization, many missing question marks, periods ending parenthetical comments which aren't full sentences, extraneous hyphenation, and inccorect accusative formation of who [whom].
Use the 'Find' function to locate the errors. These occurred in just the first half of the article. Normally, I overlook these, but given how much the author was badgering the submissions, I couldn't pass over sentences like: "Also, proper spelling/grammer/templeting is very important."
I guess I'll go read the second half of the article now.
the jhoria deck can be found on the mtg website in the building on a budget articles it was actully a two part article if i rember corectly. his version is tsp block legal and has card breakdowns match breakdowns and renovations. i made a deck framed around his design worth taking a look at if your interested in playing the deck.
"Firstly, it always damages you, functionally giving you a disadvantage by playing this since either player can use it. Why can either player use the ability?"
i messed up the wording a little. it was supposed to deal damage to the enchanted creature's controller. oh well. i'll have to pay closer attention next time.
Definitley enjoyed the article. Very nice to see in depth analysis on our own work. Makes us feel...important :)
Quick note about a couple of my cards: Soul's Polarity was meant to have that sort of "opposite" effect as noted by the flavor text. Just did it for originality purposes.
I do believe "When a library is shuffled" would be the wording WotC would use if they ever printed such an effect as you noted in the 101 section.
So glad that someone bothered to research the name on Narcocatharsis. I do try to put every bit of creativity into a card and it usually starts with the title.
Great work again. I feel the future CCC's will have a lot more (and better) competition after prior competetors and newcomers alike read this.
I've been writing since 1999, if I did it for the cash, I would be homeless, but at least I would have a computer. Most people end up writing for a better reason than getting paid though, the ones that just the payment end up working themselves out.
Depending on the content of the article, it's a rather bad idea to write for the money. From experience I can tell you the expected amount of money you receive if spread out over the time you spent writing it, you probably would make more money working at Burger King.
Write for pleasure, for a message. The tixs become an extra bonus...
nice to see some articles about drafting in general as opposed to drafting XXX or TPF.
I cant wait to read the next article in the series.
I figured I would leave that up to Heath, as the editor I can not really promise someone a payout, and than have the owner pay something different. :)
I would love to see some more constructed content, but I do not want to limit it to the PE's and such, I want to hear about PDC, Rainbow Stairwell, and other fun formats!
In an article? I know you have semi-regular series on leagues, drafts, Sealed PEs, and pauper. You've also had card reviews out the wazoo. I know that you have little content on constructed. So constructed articles are most welcome, then? Anything else you are looking for?
Good article, but watch out for the grammatical errors. I would like to write some stuff, and probably will at some point, when I have something to contribute. This article is pretty clear and to the point. Thanks!
we only 'accept'
Most writers get 10-15 but authors that are very well known can get up to 50-75 if they have a lot of experience and a very good reputation.
Man, I was just going to ask you, Heath or Jan about this before you put up this article. Get out of my head. *L* Seriously though, excellent guidelines, you might want to put in what a writer can expect for a payout if one of his submissions is published though.
I realize the idea of a "20 terror" deck is outlandish, but it got the point across I thought. This is a basic to slightly advanced level of draft strategy I covered. I understand that drafting a deck with 8 creatures and 14 removal is playable, truthfully I'm never really happy with it unless the creatures are game winners or just work really well with removal, kinda like Orgg(normally not too playable, but it rocks with heavy removal base). As far as not covering that strategy, I felt that it would just bog down the article.
Although I agree with the general thrust of yoru article, I do have a couple of nitpicks.
Firstly, comparing Terror with Incinerate. I think that Incinerate is a slightly stronger card in a vacuum, but you could defend taking Terror over Incinerate because red is wafer thin while black is choc full of removal, card agvantage, and even fatties. So for that example I would disagree wtih your evaluation.
Also, your argument about the 20 Terror deck is a little absurd. Who are you slanting this article at? The most clueless players need the simplest rules, so for that category of player, "take every removal spell in your colours unless there's a bomb" is much better advice. Once players get beyond that and know enough to actually know what bombs and removal cards etc etc are, then perhaps your argument will make more sense. But still it doesn't. The reason for that is that good removal is a scarce resource and try as you might you won't be able to draft 20 removal cards as good as Terror for your deck. And RB decks that run 18 land, 14 removal spells and 8 largeish creatures (no early manacurve) are surprisingly playable.
So I can't work out what level of player you think would find that advice helpful.
Anyway, please don't take this as a big slam on your article. I thought that most of it was very good.
I'm glad to see so much interest in this. I will indeed have to make a contiuation article because finding the signal and deciding when to force are very hard things to learn and even harder to master. Even then its not a guarantee. As in "forcing" a color its actually not a bad strategy, I actually do it all the time(often UW skys in TPF or UR in Tenth). It allows you to draft a certain color combination or archetype without making many mistakes in building and even playing as you learn from repetition. Knowing when to abandon that color is fairly hard. As far as going more in depth I hope not to take too long getting an article out :)
here is something I would like to know, (i loved the article by the way).. I believe I fall into the "average player, average drafter" camp.. while I know I make mistakes when drafting, I think the hardest picks to learn are the "not so obvious" ones that win matches..
I've tried to mimic draft strategies I've seen on the internet and its hard to incorporate into my drafts. I've tried taking "just the good cards of the color(s) I like" and I end up with the "20 terror" scenerio.. where my card quality is good by my deck is terrible. How do you "find" the signals in the picks. I know you can't really start picking up on signals until picks 4-8 those are the crucial picks that can make or break a draft. say you have a pack that could go "either way" and you end up signaling to the drafters next to you that you want a certain color and that color magically "dries up" in sequential packs. and how can you say "cut off" colors to the person next to you.. say in a real life draft where you know certain players tend to sway different ways (like my friends tend to leave blue alone.. but some get smart and deny me good blue cards)
and is "forcing" a good strategy? what I mean by that is say I love the color blue and I'm going to take all blue cards whether they are good for my deck or not? is there times when you should or should not force? and how do you deal with colors card quality drying up in the third pack?
sorry if thats a lot of questions, but it was a great article, love to see another.
Thankyou for the compliment and I aggree completely that this article was not nearly in depth enough on the topic of signaling. That topic will indeed need to be continued in a future article.
I like the idea of your writing. Drafting is my favorite format, but also my weakest, so advice in it is always welcome. I agree that knowing the set and the value of the cards is important, which is information that can be found and memorized. Learning to interpret and control signals is not so simple to learn. I'd like to read an article in the future that breaks down what to make of the signals you receive and what types of signals to send along to get the best selection of cards to fit your draft strategy. =)
I got so nauseated by the author's (warranted) critiques of grammar and orthography when his own was atrocious as well.
Some misspellings from the author: "strait-forward" (also, why the hyphen?), "templeting" (multiple instances of this error), "grammer" (multiple instances), "grammr", "dew rag" (to be fair: 1,200 hits on google but "do rag" would have garnered over 10,000), "it's flavor" (for Curse of the Depths), "to put it strait", "chose [instead of "choose"] a non-land...", "yet I though this was...", "far to cheap," "it can't be destroy", "it think it would be a cool"
Some grammar issues noted are: missing commas, missing apostrophes, missing spaces, missing capitalization, many missing question marks, periods ending parenthetical comments which aren't full sentences, extraneous hyphenation, and inccorect accusative formation of who [whom].
Use the 'Find' function to locate the errors. These occurred in just the first half of the article. Normally, I overlook these, but given how much the author was badgering the submissions, I couldn't pass over sentences like: "Also, proper spelling/grammer/templeting is very important."
I guess I'll go read the second half of the article now.
the jhoria deck can be found on the mtg website in the building on a budget articles it was actully a two part article if i rember corectly. his version is tsp block legal and has card breakdowns match breakdowns and renovations. i made a deck framed around his design worth taking a look at if your interested in playing the deck.
hmmm strange but the only article i see here is a state of the program article. I was looking forward to the classic article too.
"Firstly, it always damages you, functionally giving you a disadvantage by playing this since either player can use it. Why can either player use the ability?"
i messed up the wording a little. it was supposed to deal damage to the enchanted creature's controller. oh well. i'll have to pay closer attention next time.
Definitley enjoyed the article. Very nice to see in depth analysis on our own work. Makes us feel...important :)
Quick note about a couple of my cards:
Soul's Polarity was meant to have that sort of "opposite" effect as noted by the flavor text. Just did it for originality purposes.
I do believe "When a library is shuffled" would be the wording WotC would use if they ever printed such an effect as you noted in the 101 section.
So glad that someone bothered to research the name on Narcocatharsis. I do try to put every bit of creativity into a card and it usually starts with the title.
Great work again. I feel the future CCC's will have a lot more (and better) competition after prior competetors and newcomers alike read this.
cant figure how to erase this... :S
we agree then that they arent too similar... :)
"'This card is very similar to Second Wind.'
Actually this card is far better, you can untap it on your turn and on your opponent turn. :) "
Yeah too bad it can't shut down an enemy creature... Which is what Second Wind does 90% of the time (in limited).
Guess I really wanted this question answered. Sorry about the quadruple post.