I feel like scrapping DEs for any format is a bad thing. I can tell you that they need to work A LOT HARDER at trying to find events worth playing in. Leagues have really bad prizes.
I've lost a lot of my interest in the tournaments online since the new changes went into effect.
I haven't done a prerelease or draft since Khans of Tarkir. I have limited time and money, so I switched to just playing constructed and eternal formats. This way my cards would hold some value if I wanted to trade into a new deck, and I wouldn't be burning value on losing drafts. Standard and Limited are fine formats, but I made the personal choice to just play DE's which at 6$ were a good value.
The weekends around 9:30pm are just about the only time I ever could play. I didn't mind paying the cost for those tournaments. Frankly I don't want to pay more than that, so I've just been not playing. I won't ever play in a league either, because they look like a total waste of time to me. The league prizes are just not enough to make me care to play. The whole idea of making things cost more and have smaller prizes isn't appealing.
Also, an acquaintance of mine is very good at Vintage and has over 1,000 play points he can't spend sitting in his account. Should he just spend hours rare drafting to burn those off for pennies on the dollar? Sounds awesome.
I like the new structure,and i like the way the QP can now be saved.
I dont like that the promo as to be the same for the whole year, they could change the promos every month.(or at lest every 4 months)
What i really dont like and i think is unfair is to give Platinum/gold/hf have special invites.
Im not a mtgo grinder,but if i was i would be pissed with this decision,the best mtgo players dont have the same beneficts if they want to go to a paper event,the best players on mtgo dont have byes or platinum/gold/silver,because of their achievements on mtgo.
Other problem is that they say the MOCS Leaderboard reward those who performed well across several events and the best players in the MOCS Leaderboard have invites to other events,well this mean the players with invites have more chances to earn those points and be on the top places of the MOCS Leaderboard.
I can be wrong (and i hope i am), but the MOCS Leaderboard,the Quartherly playofs or even the Magic Online Championship,will be a lot of those pros that have invites and silver pros that have 15 QP every month.
And the sad part, is that many of those players probably only will only use magic online to play those events.
Guild Wars 2 eh? I'm still on Guild Wars 1 myself. I've had it for years but I've never beat any of the actual expansions. Maybe one of these days I will.
Your matching algorithm is such a bizarre idea. Make sure you get a balanced matchup ratio. that would give the tinfoil hat shuffler brigade an absolute fit :P
I looked at that list was thought to myself, he didn't put in the comments what it's a placeholder for. Seems exploitable. Didn't realize he was actually running Citadel!
Personally, I look at when the league closes before joining it and would not join a league in the final week. So if I join a league in the penultimate week then that gives me two weeks to complete five matches. People play four round daily events every day. Some others play PTQs every weekend. My work schedule isn't as time intensive as yours but I'm sure you can find the time for five matches in two weeks. Right now the featured league on the home page is Standard and it says the end date. I don't remember whether it was Modern last week or you overlooked the end date on the home page every time you logged in.
You're right that WotC should have sent in an game message or turned the font red on League End date in the final week.
You're also right that this is your fault.
Also, Containment Priest 25 tickets. It'll be lucky to be in double digits during the next SotP.
I seriously don't know how anyone thinks the MOCS changes were good. There is one good change: QPs not expiring. Everything else is horrible, unless you are a Platinum pro. If you are, congratz, you have a very good event to play and you'll probably skip even a GP to play it.
For everyone else, we lose the promos (sometimes they were BoPs, other times they were Wastelands) for every 15 QPs. Now we get a Lightning Bolt for 35 QPs.
All MOCS were only Standard and Modern. People complainned and now there are some limited events as well but apparently in MTGO, something being too popular is a problem so they capped monthly MOCS at 1024 players.
If you are good/lucky enough top top8 this monthly MOCS, you'll play in an event with many Platinum pros.
There's still no support for Legacy or Vintage. They're not even taking advantage of the fact that there isn't a reserve list online!
As for the Pauper announcement it's also very disturbing to hear that they are planning on reducing DEs for other formats. I don't want to play Leagues, 4-1 and win one pack. Leagues are EV- (currently DEs are EV- as well but they are still a bit better) and they aren't for me. Why does it have to be Leagues OR DEs? Why can't it be both? DEs are in limited number and they make you play for 3 to 4 hours in a row. They should be much better than they do now. Leagues are for people who can't play DEs but if someone can play both, the rewards of playing a DE have to be good enough to make that person choose the DE.
Are you going to do a review about Legendary Cube prize pool? It seems there are lots of good cards there for the tribal format. And they can improve many different deck types.
The fun part at my game against Socanelas' Scouts was to see the actual Darksteel Citadel in play, which I was using it as a placeholder for Cinder Glade.
Nissa, Vastwood Seer would be also a great addition to scouts deck, if she could search for any forest card. Maybe a few copies can worth the risk.
Are we talking about bringing back Top and Hypergenesis and Beck and Call, etc. too?
Absolutely not. We'll just fix the part of the ban list we previously didn't have control on. Nothing changed, just some (hopefully) irrelevant cards are being taken off the list, to make it cleaner. At least for now, the Moat/Abyss argument remains open for the future.
Better safe than sorry: Altar is not useful if not in a combo deck, and I don't want to encourage people in finding a new combo deck for it. We've already been there.
While I'll be writing about the deck in near future, I believe Ingest may skew the very popular Delve mechanic. Currently in Standard Pauper, sacrificing one's own creatures to damage/kill/remove another threat is quite common. Oddly, casting a spell AND losing a creature to target a threat seems like terrible card advantage; you spend two cards to get rid of one. However, that dead sacrificed creature becomes fodder for delve spells, reducing cmc of bigger spells, often negating the card disadvantage. Cards in exile don't fuel delve. Sure, killing a threat is handy, but ingest never wants to KILL anything but our opponent, thereby bypassing the graveyard. Tightening Coils deftly shuts down most Husks or Landfall-triggering creatures, while keeping them OUT of the graveyard. Sure, they can block, but they can't block FLYERS. Therefore, no serious ingest deck would be without Mist Intruder and Benthic Infiltrator. Please consider those options, even if playing outside of the Standard Pauper format, Simon. Love the discussion on it!!
Bile blight plus Urborg plus Kormus Bell is even better than that: Since it runs off names rather than subtypes, you could, for example, wipe out every creature named forest even though they're only creatures because of the bell and the tomb.
Any thought to making sideboards ONLY cards that "deck check" your opponent? Acquire, Bribery, Earwig Squad, Hide/Seek, Thada Adel.
The 1/3 tribe requirement would still be required after sideboard.
I feel like scrapping DEs for any format is a bad thing. I can tell you that they need to work A LOT HARDER at trying to find events worth playing in. Leagues have really bad prizes.
I've lost a lot of my interest in the tournaments online since the new changes went into effect.
I haven't done a prerelease or draft since Khans of Tarkir. I have limited time and money, so I switched to just playing constructed and eternal formats. This way my cards would hold some value if I wanted to trade into a new deck, and I wouldn't be burning value on losing drafts. Standard and Limited are fine formats, but I made the personal choice to just play DE's which at 6$ were a good value.
The weekends around 9:30pm are just about the only time I ever could play. I didn't mind paying the cost for those tournaments. Frankly I don't want to pay more than that, so I've just been not playing. I won't ever play in a league either, because they look like a total waste of time to me. The league prizes are just not enough to make me care to play. The whole idea of making things cost more and have smaller prizes isn't appealing.
Also, an acquaintance of mine is very good at Vintage and has over 1,000 play points he can't spend sitting in his account. Should he just spend hours rare drafting to burn those off for pennies on the dollar? Sounds awesome.
Keep going strong, I'm sure MTGO will catch up someday and be properly managed and funded. Eh, probably not.
I like the new structure,and i like the way the QP can now be saved.
I dont like that the promo as to be the same for the whole year, they could change the promos every month.(or at lest every 4 months)
What i really dont like and i think is unfair is to give Platinum/gold/hf have special invites.
Im not a mtgo grinder,but if i was i would be pissed with this decision,the best mtgo players dont have the same beneficts if they want to go to a paper event,the best players on mtgo dont have byes or platinum/gold/silver,because of their achievements on mtgo.
Other problem is that they say the MOCS Leaderboard reward those who performed well across several events and the best players in the MOCS Leaderboard have invites to other events,well this mean the players with invites have more chances to earn those points and be on the top places of the MOCS Leaderboard.
I can be wrong (and i hope i am), but the MOCS Leaderboard,the Quartherly playofs or even the Magic Online Championship,will be a lot of those pros that have invites and silver pros that have 15 QP every month.
And the sad part, is that many of those players probably only will only use magic online to play those events.
MMos aren't my cup of tea but I hear you, Pete. May things look up from here!
Guild Wars 2 eh? I'm still on Guild Wars 1 myself. I've had it for years but I've never beat any of the actual expansions. Maybe one of these days I will.
Your matching algorithm is such a bizarre idea. Make sure you get a balanced matchup ratio. that would give the tinfoil hat shuffler brigade an absolute fit :P
I looked at that list was thought to myself, he didn't put in the comments what it's a placeholder for. Seems exploitable. Didn't realize he was actually running Citadel!
I was wondering why the darksteel citadels were in the deck.
Personally, I look at when the league closes before joining it and would not join a league in the final week. So if I join a league in the penultimate week then that gives me two weeks to complete five matches. People play four round daily events every day. Some others play PTQs every weekend. My work schedule isn't as time intensive as yours but I'm sure you can find the time for five matches in two weeks. Right now the featured league on the home page is Standard and it says the end date. I don't remember whether it was Modern last week or you overlooked the end date on the home page every time you logged in.
You're right that WotC should have sent in an game message or turned the font red on League End date in the final week.
You're also right that this is your fault.
Also, Containment Priest 25 tickets. It'll be lucky to be in double digits during the next SotP.
They actually updated the changes to the 2016 MOCS: http://wizardsmtgo.tumblr.com/post/133543744989/2016-mocs-updates
I seriously don't know how anyone thinks the MOCS changes were good. There is one good change: QPs not expiring. Everything else is horrible, unless you are a Platinum pro. If you are, congratz, you have a very good event to play and you'll probably skip even a GP to play it.
For everyone else, we lose the promos (sometimes they were BoPs, other times they were Wastelands) for every 15 QPs. Now we get a Lightning Bolt for 35 QPs.
All MOCS were only Standard and Modern. People complainned and now there are some limited events as well but apparently in MTGO, something being too popular is a problem so they capped monthly MOCS at 1024 players.
If you are good/lucky enough top top8 this monthly MOCS, you'll play in an event with many Platinum pros.
There's still no support for Legacy or Vintage. They're not even taking advantage of the fact that there isn't a reserve list online!
As for the Pauper announcement it's also very disturbing to hear that they are planning on reducing DEs for other formats. I don't want to play Leagues, 4-1 and win one pack. Leagues are EV- (currently DEs are EV- as well but they are still a bit better) and they aren't for me. Why does it have to be Leagues OR DEs? Why can't it be both? DEs are in limited number and they make you play for 3 to 4 hours in a row. They should be much better than they do now. Leagues are for people who can't play DEs but if someone can play both, the rewards of playing a DE have to be good enough to make that person choose the DE.
Next time, use Sorrow's Path as the placeholder. ;)
Are you going to do a review about Legendary Cube prize pool? It seems there are lots of good cards there for the tribal format. And they can improve many different deck types.
The fun part at my game against Socanelas' Scouts was to see the actual Darksteel Citadel in play, which I was using it as a placeholder for Cinder Glade.
Nissa, Vastwood Seer would be also a great addition to scouts deck, if she could search for any forest card. Maybe a few copies can worth the risk.
Are we talking about bringing back Top and Hypergenesis and Beck and Call, etc. too?
Absolutely not. We'll just fix the part of the ban list we previously didn't have control on. Nothing changed, just some (hopefully) irrelevant cards are being taken off the list, to make it cleaner. At least for now, the Moat/Abyss argument remains open for the future.
Better safe than sorry: Altar is not useful if not in a combo deck, and I don't want to encourage people in finding a new combo deck for it. We've already been there.
Great minds think alike, Simon! I tested the Dimir Devoid/Ingest strategy at this week's PDC, even naming it "Nom Nom Nom," too: http://pdcmagic.com/gatherling/eventreport.php?event=MPDC+31.04
While I'll be writing about the deck in near future, I believe Ingest may skew the very popular Delve mechanic. Currently in Standard Pauper, sacrificing one's own creatures to damage/kill/remove another threat is quite common. Oddly, casting a spell AND losing a creature to target a threat seems like terrible card advantage; you spend two cards to get rid of one. However, that dead sacrificed creature becomes fodder for delve spells, reducing cmc of bigger spells, often negating the card disadvantage. Cards in exile don't fuel delve. Sure, killing a threat is handy, but ingest never wants to KILL anything but our opponent, thereby bypassing the graveyard. Tightening Coils deftly shuts down most Husks or Landfall-triggering creatures, while keeping them OUT of the graveyard. Sure, they can block, but they can't block FLYERS. Therefore, no serious ingest deck would be without Mist Intruder and Benthic Infiltrator. Please consider those options, even if playing outside of the Standard Pauper format, Simon. Love the discussion on it!!
I did a similar combo in R/G and it's Modern legal: Gaea's Anthem, Natural Affinity, and Pyroclasm. My 3/3 lands survive and your lands all die.
Yeah that is very true, the strange thing is from all the games I've played with this deck I've yet to draw Bile Blight to actually try it out!
Bile blight plus Urborg plus Kormus Bell is even better than that: Since it runs off names rather than subtypes, you could, for example, wipe out every creature named forest even though they're only creatures because of the bell and the tomb.
The videos are just an extra. The main part of the article is written down.
I must say that without spoken commentary and cause of replay usage, these videos come out as an extremely low effort.
Thanks! Deck is a lot of fun and I can't wait to play it again with Steven Schlepphorst's advice and recommendations.
No problem man, looking forward to your next piece!
Nice work! That deck seems pretty cool.