Maybe you should have made it to the second paragraph than sweetheart? Would it have been too hard to do that? Maybe before you open your mouth you should actually read the article, than comment. I think that would have been a lot better than you know, just opening your mouth in the first place.
No, I didn't read it, I read the first paragraph and skimmed the rest. That's because he lost me as soon as he said Palinchron should have been in Master's, as I thought, ok here's another idiot who didn't read the information about Master's.
"Let me preface my list with the fact that by design Palinchron, Goblin Lackey and Crystalline Sliver could not be included. This is due to the fact that they are post-Alliances. That being said - when exactly will they be put online if not during the Master's Edition? The implication seems to be that Mirage, Tempest, Urza, and Masques blocks will all be retrosetted (well in the case of Mirage finished) so they won't be included in Masters. This also seems to imply that all the pre-Alliances sets will not be retrosetted."
I wrote each section at different times in different moods. I definitely character wrote them and tried to make it obvious. Hence why everything is exaggeratted and even fonts/colors vary from part to part. I probably made Timmy a tad too juvenille and may have gone a little too egotistical on Spike, but it was purposeful to drive home the point - as good comedy often does.
I did however model the characters after the most striking of people I found to be certain types. The Vorthos came from two people who contirbuted to a top 10 list I was making a year ago. I asked for one thing they gave me the opposite. Gave me cards that weren't even in the set and although the topic was "sheer power" submitted some of the worst cards in their top 10, because of flavor. I chose cards that were online purposefully as it was part of the overtop nature of my Vorthos take on artwork over function.
Spike in many essences came from the ridiculous player interviews I've read from pro-players. I recently read one where it seemed like every player would answer things like "What is the best deck?" with "Mine of course." or "Obviously, mine." Hence the verbose abuse of the word "obviously." Which was probably more mentioned by the same players I mean to caricture.
Timmy comes from every B-Net or goofy online player I've ever met. Yes I've been macroed with crap even in Magic Online. He was definitely borderline offensive and as you put it - I did almost choose a an ante card. In the end, I went with the Naf's Asp rim-shot ending. Had to be done. I sadly laughed a lot while writing him and coming up with goofy things to put in there.
Johnny, I felt probably got the least over-the top treatment although hopefully the haughty attitude I wrote it with came thru somewhat.
I'm not entirely comfortable with the stereotypes. just shy of half the 'Vorthos' cards are already online, and I half expected 'Timmy' to choose an ante card to go with the dexterity and subgame cards. I strongly dislike the vulgar and cartoonish caricatures to which Timmy and Spike were distorted, but I recognise the writing for both to be internally consistent.
I have ran Bonesplitter before, but often...potential loss from using it>potential gain. While you may get to swing for 4 on turn 2 (Auriok Glaivemaster) there will be many times when you are in the lategame and need more fuel for the fire, or something to hold off one last attack and you draw...Bonesplitter.
In regards to Bonesplitter: sometimes there are too many cards for the slots in your deck. This is one such card that is always on the short list, but almost always gets cut.
Vulshok Sorcerer: Okay, if it is a 1/1 unblockable with haste, guess what, it still costs three mana, which is far too much for a 1/1 body. But wait, Merchant of Secrets draws you a card and it's a 1/1 blocker (oh yeah, he costs three mana too). I like my three drops to do something besides ping... sorry if this annoys you.
Nice article. My favorite deck is the RG madness aggro, I've been playing it for a while and it can potentially win against pretty much any deck in the format besides MBC. MBC is a really tough match up :(
Btw, suggesting Vulshok Sorcerer is simply a "fine pinger" that is really just a 1/1 with haste at 3cc is a gross oversight, imo. It's an unblockable 1/1 with haste!
Interesting article. I like how you compare the differences in game plan for the 3 red decks.
I notice a distinct lack of bonesplitters, though. They seem dead hard for an aggro deck that wants to win on creatures, and make it easier to avoid overcommitting against an opponent with a wrath effect. Plus they give you a chance to get your ogres back. Why no love?
Good job on the questions Erik, and much thanks to Worth for taking the time to be as dedicated to the community as several of the beebers are! Like Erik, I was planning on leaving a while back, but his hard work kept me in the game and keeps me looking on until I can get back in later!
While I'm sure you can't have an articles with an WoTC employee evry day or week or even month, this is exactly the type of thing I'd love to see more of on PureMTGO.
Hammy - nicely done/
On Worth: I dunno - maybe Justin Ziran knew he was leaving long in advance of when he actually left? Worth is so supportive - and I don't think it's costing WoTC one cent more. He makes it look so easy, and iprobably some of it is. I wonder if he sits there thinkin how easy it's been for him to gain favour. I've certainly never seen anything like it in the world of online gaming, the turnaround he's gotten out of the community.
I'd like to thank Hamatasic, Worth, and PureMTGO for this interview. Be nice to see more of these in the future.
P.S. For the love of god at some point can we get P9? I mean if we're getting Urza Block and Legacy restricted cards Classic will need a split at some point anyways.
Seriously, I can't say this enough... Worth is doing amazing things for MTGO right now. His attitude and dedication is amazing. To be blunt, his interaction with the community singlehandedly kept me from leaving MTGO a couple of months ago. So, keep up the good work Worth. We're listening!
A very positive article and good job asking good questions Hammy. I really like how he is wanting to reach out to the community instead of ignoring like WOTC has done in the past. Great job A+++
Funny, I just finished a draft where I took mystic enforcer first pick. You're a clinic on how to play it, I showed exactly how not to play it. What you don't do is make white your splash color and go green/black/w-splash based on what you find in pack 6-9. I actually built a decent deck (had 2x hedge troll with, relic, lens, terramorphic, and greenseeker), but I ran up against REALLY GOOD and fast white/red in the first round. And I imagine that he got a lot of his really good white red out of things I passed. He definitely got the Voidstone Gargoyle I had to pass. He definitely got Knight of Sursi I passed and probably a Shade of Trokair and a whitemain..... iow, when you take a first pick mystic, your committing to white and green. If my opponent is like r/b or g/r, I'd probably have stomped their heads in, but there's always gonna be a good w/r or w/b, if you wanna win pods like I do, then you have to game the whole pod) Don't outsmart yourself. I think he might have even got a duskrider which i passed to take the mystic...
1. Don't overrate it 2. If you do take it, don't get cute.
I don't think you have to apologize for taking the canopy. It was even in your colors and does sac for a card. although in an 8/4 i think you pick the land grabber especially with your soot
I'd have even take the garrison... You never know it might be that card that completes your set if your a redeemer like me. and the red fear guys not exactly going to beat you
Baloth is probly slightly better than the ivory giant imo, especially pick 2
the lion is better than the sliver imo
I've ALWAYS regretted it when I passed a riftsweeper... So many of the good cards are suspend in TPF so i think you made the right call ... if you are holding it in your hand, then you've got a baloth / peregrine / knight suspended .. not to bad a situation to be in
You're almost always gonna be the agressor, so who cares if you pass the weak angels grace for a long term value gamstone mine
Just keep trucking man. You gotta start somewhere and sites like this are a good place to start and learn the ropes. Bad feedback is better than no feedback at all right? I look forward to your next article and i'm sure you will learn a lot from this one.
-gnawph- I know what you mean but so far it has stopped all of the scripts that were hitting is up. If they get around it again i'll make it an image.
I'm not sure whether I should I apologize or what. I came up with the article idea when approached to write for the site. I had absolutley no idea that Karsten wrote a similar article not to long ago. As far as the research, it consisted of checking out standard top 8s and quite a few 8 mans. What I saw was not alot variation, just Angelfire or URW(considering some version's dont even run Firemane Angel) and Grull. My purpose was to do something that I thought was a new idea and not just another draft article. The cards I listed were cards I believe to powerful and I saw very little of. It's not to say they were unused, just not as used as they should be. For a good example, I knew of the UR Storm decks with repeal but that use felt very, for a lack of a better word, silly. In the time I was working on this article I may have had these spells cast, at most, once or twice against me. In hindsight I wish I spent more time on the article, as it I believe the idea is a good one. I suppose to good to take on as ones first article. I very much appreciate everyones feedback, even if the majority was negative. I hope that what I write in the future will be much better. I had hoped to bring coverage of the OTJ Qualifiers starting all this week. Until then...have fun and good luck out there.
I promised I wouldn't comment anymore unless I was either nice or constructive. We'll here the best constructive critisim I can do. Hope its not too desctructive to your ego. ;)
When I look at "card evaluations" the first thing I notice right away is whether or not somebody is convinving me that they know the difference between "good cards" and "current good cards". I barely play Magic right now but I'm 100% sure I could of written the same card evaluation article after looking at a couple of premier events.
What I couldn't write is an article explaining how these cards could be the gaps in the current metagames armor. Thats what makes a card evaluation article great.
Besides the spelling mistake in the first paragraph there are a couple of points where you really make me doubt your magic knowledge.
1. I was into reading about Legacy before Flash and I never remember seeing Blasoderm in any top tier decks.
2. I have never seen Marty played in anything outside of PDC because its effect is so clunky. You have to have red cards in your hand to make it work. Sometimes you can't guarentee that. I'm pretty sure PDC players have a 12-16 red cards rule of thumb for running Marty, anything less and it just becomes worse than Pyroclasm.
---
To Heath: A security code or "captcha" on a website only works because its hard for spam bots and spiders to read images and decifer the text. By putting your code in the actual HTML your doing nothing to prevent spam.
Maybe you should have made it to the second paragraph than sweetheart? Would it have been too hard to do that? Maybe before you open your mouth you should actually read the article, than comment. I think that would have been a lot better than you know, just opening your mouth in the first place.
Feroz's Ban is online, in 7th edition.
No, I didn't read it, I read the first paragraph and skimmed the rest. That's because he lost me as soon as he said Palinchron should have been in Master's, as I thought, ok here's another idiot who didn't read the information about Master's.
Did you read this? I mean like actually sit down and see the part where the author wrote that he knew Master's Edition was pre Mirage?
Of course maybe it would have been better to off to rename it something like what MTGO is missing, instead of Masters.
Personally I think the article is fantastic.
"Let me preface my list with the fact that by design Palinchron, Goblin Lackey and Crystalline Sliver could not be included. This is due to the fact that they are post-Alliances. That being said - when exactly will they be put online if not during the Master's Edition? The implication seems to be that Mirage, Tempest, Urza, and Masques blocks will all be retrosetted (well in the case of Mirage finished) so they won't be included in Masters. This also seems to imply that all the pre-Alliances sets will not be retrosetted."
Forgotten or purposefully ignored. A fine line.
Why does everyone who posts something on what should've been in MED forget that MED is only pre-Mirage cards?!
I wrote each section at different times in different moods. I definitely character wrote them and tried to make it obvious. Hence why everything is exaggeratted and even fonts/colors vary from part to part. I probably made Timmy a tad too juvenille and may have gone a little too egotistical on Spike, but it was purposeful to drive home the point - as good comedy often does.
I did however model the characters after the most striking of people I found to be certain types. The Vorthos came from two people who contirbuted to a top 10 list I was making a year ago. I asked for one thing they gave me the opposite. Gave me cards that weren't even in the set and although the topic was "sheer power" submitted some of the worst cards in their top 10, because of flavor. I chose cards that were online purposefully as it was part of the overtop nature of my Vorthos take on artwork over function.
Spike in many essences came from the ridiculous player interviews I've read from pro-players. I recently read one where it seemed like every player would answer things like "What is the best deck?" with "Mine of course." or "Obviously, mine." Hence the verbose abuse of the word "obviously." Which was probably more mentioned by the same players I mean to caricture.
Timmy comes from every B-Net or goofy online player I've ever met. Yes I've been macroed with crap even in Magic Online. He was definitely borderline offensive and as you put it - I did almost choose a an ante card. In the end, I went with the Naf's Asp rim-shot ending. Had to be done. I sadly laughed a lot while writing him and coming up with goofy things to put in there.
Johnny, I felt probably got the least over-the top treatment although hopefully the haughty attitude I wrote it with came thru somewhat.
I'm not entirely comfortable with the stereotypes. just shy of half the 'Vorthos' cards are already online, and I half expected 'Timmy' to choose an ante card to go with the dexterity and subgame cards. I strongly dislike the vulgar and cartoonish caricatures to which Timmy and Spike were distorted, but I recognise the writing for both to be internally consistent.
Great job Hammy. Thanks to worth and Hammy for this . Good stuff all around. - Joe
I have ran Bonesplitter before, but often...potential loss from using it>potential gain. While you may get to swing for 4 on turn 2 (Auriok Glaivemaster) there will be many times when you are in the lategame and need more fuel for the fire, or something to hold off one last attack and you draw...Bonesplitter.
In regards to Bonesplitter: sometimes there are too many cards for the slots in your deck. This is one such card that is always on the short list, but almost always gets cut.
Vulshok Sorcerer: Okay, if it is a 1/1 unblockable with haste, guess what, it still costs three mana, which is far too much for a 1/1 body. But wait, Merchant of Secrets draws you a card and it's a 1/1 blocker (oh yeah, he costs three mana too). I like my three drops to do something besides ping... sorry if this annoys you.
-Alex
Nice article. My favorite deck is the RG madness aggro, I've been playing it for a while and it can potentially win against pretty much any deck in the format besides MBC. MBC is a really tough match up :(
Btw, suggesting Vulshok Sorcerer is simply a "fine pinger" that is really just a 1/1 with haste at 3cc is a gross oversight, imo. It's an unblockable 1/1 with haste!
Interesting article. I like how you compare the differences in game plan for the 3 red decks.
I notice a distinct lack of bonesplitters, though. They seem dead hard for an aggro deck that wants to win on creatures, and make it easier to avoid overcommitting against an opponent with a wrath effect. Plus they give you a chance to get your ogres back. Why no love?
This is absolutely fantastic!
Good job on the questions Erik, and much thanks to Worth for taking the time to be as dedicated to the community as several of the beebers are! Like Erik, I was planning on leaving a while back, but his hard work kept me in the game and keeps me looking on until I can get back in later!
Thanks again Erik and Worth!
/me applauds for Erik
/me applauds for Worth
Fantastic article. We're got a really good brand manager in Worth.
While I'm sure you can't have an articles with an WoTC employee evry day or week or even month, this is exactly the type of thing I'd love to see more of on PureMTGO.
Hammy - nicely done/
On Worth: I dunno - maybe Justin Ziran knew he was leaving long in advance of when he actually left? Worth is so supportive - and I don't think it's costing WoTC one cent more. He makes it look so easy, and iprobably some of it is. I wonder if he sits there thinkin how easy it's been for him to gain favour. I've certainly never seen anything like it in the world of online gaming, the turnaround he's gotten out of the community.
I'd like to thank Hamatasic, Worth, and PureMTGO for this interview. Be nice to see more of these in the future.
P.S. For the love of god at some point can we get P9? I mean if we're getting Urza Block and Legacy restricted cards Classic will need a split at some point anyways.
Seriously, I can't say this enough... Worth is doing amazing things for MTGO right now. His attitude and dedication is amazing. To be blunt, his interaction with the community singlehandedly kept me from leaving MTGO a couple of months ago.
So, keep up the good work Worth. We're listening!
A very positive article and good job asking good questions Hammy. I really like how he is wanting to reach out to the community instead of ignoring like WOTC has done in the past. Great job A+++
Funny, I just finished a draft where I took mystic enforcer first pick. You're a clinic on how to play it, I showed exactly how not to play it. What you don't do is make white your splash color and go green/black/w-splash based on what you find in pack 6-9. I actually built a decent deck (had 2x hedge troll with, relic, lens, terramorphic, and greenseeker), but I ran up against REALLY GOOD and fast white/red in the first round. And I imagine that he got a lot of his really good white red out of things I passed. He definitely got the Voidstone Gargoyle I had to pass. He definitely got Knight of Sursi I passed and probably a Shade of Trokair and a whitemain..... iow, when you take a first pick mystic, your committing to white and green. If my opponent is like r/b or g/r, I'd probably have stomped their heads in, but there's always gonna be a good w/r or w/b, if you wanna win pods like I do, then you have to game the whole pod) Don't outsmart yourself. I think he might have even got a duskrider which i passed to take the mystic...
1. Don't overrate it 2. If you do take it, don't get cute.
I don't think you have to apologize for taking the canopy. It was even in your colors and does sac for a card. although in an 8/4 i think you pick the land grabber especially with your soot
I'd have even take the garrison... You never know it might be that card that completes your set if your a redeemer like me. and the red fear guys not exactly going to beat you
Baloth is probly slightly better than the ivory giant imo, especially pick 2
the lion is better than the sliver imo
I've ALWAYS regretted it when I passed a riftsweeper... So many of the good cards are suspend in TPF so i think you made the right call ... if you are holding it in your hand, then you've got a baloth / peregrine / knight suspended .. not to bad a situation to be in
You're almost always gonna be the agressor, so who cares if you pass the weak angels grace for a long term value gamstone mine
Great draft
Just keep trucking man. You gotta start somewhere and sites like this are a good place to start and learn the ropes. Bad feedback is better than no feedback at all right? I look forward to your next article and i'm sure you will learn a lot from this one.
-gnawph- I know what you mean but so far it has stopped all of the scripts that were hitting is up. If they get around it again i'll make it an image.
I mean, I really wanted to. It just seems sooooo greedy.
I'm not sure whether I should I apologize or what. I came up with the article idea when approached to write for the site. I had absolutley no idea that Karsten wrote a similar article not to long ago. As far as the research, it consisted of checking out standard top 8s and quite a few 8 mans. What I saw was not alot variation, just Angelfire or URW(considering some version's dont even run Firemane Angel) and Grull. My purpose was to do something that I thought was a new idea and not just another draft article. The cards I listed were cards I believe to powerful and I saw very little of. It's not to say they were unused, just not as used as they should be. For a good example, I knew of the UR Storm decks with repeal but that use felt very, for a lack of a better word, silly. In the time I was working on this article I may have had these spells cast, at most, once or twice against me. In hindsight I wish I spent more time on the article, as it I believe the idea is a good one. I suppose to good to take on as ones first article. I very much appreciate everyones feedback, even if the majority was negative. I hope that what I write in the future will be much better. I had hoped to bring coverage of the OTJ Qualifiers starting all this week. Until then...have fun and good luck out there.
I promised I wouldn't comment anymore unless I was either nice or constructive. We'll here the best constructive critisim I can do. Hope its not too desctructive to your ego. ;)
When I look at "card evaluations" the first thing I notice right away is whether or not somebody is convinving me that they know the difference between "good cards" and "current good cards". I barely play Magic right now but I'm 100% sure I could of written the same card evaluation article after looking at a couple of premier events.
What I couldn't write is an article explaining how these cards could be the gaps in the current metagames armor. Thats what makes a card evaluation article great.
Besides the spelling mistake in the first paragraph there are a couple of points where you really make me doubt your magic knowledge.
1. I was into reading about Legacy before Flash and I never remember seeing Blasoderm in any top tier decks.
2. I have never seen Marty played in anything outside of PDC because its effect is so clunky. You have to have red cards in your hand to make it work. Sometimes you can't guarentee that. I'm pretty sure PDC players have a 12-16 red cards rule of thumb for running Marty, anything less and it just becomes worse than Pyroclasm.
---
To Heath: A security code or "captcha" on a website only works because its hard for spam bots and spiders to read images and decifer the text. By putting your code in the actual HTML your doing nothing to prevent spam.