I don't say, we shall implement SB. But, my proposition for it, would be like; all SB cards have to be the creatures from your main tribe, without any off-tribe creature or non-creature cards.
This is probably going to sound snarky, but I don't really mean it in any harsh way. I find this ironic. You defended the constructed continuous dailies as the return of leagues while I lamented that the lack of sealed leagues meant leagues weren't really back. Now, you want the sealed leagues and are in a place I've been for a while.
MtgO is being phased out, very slowly, in favour of MtgD(-igital).
MtgD means we have to buy Black Lotus, FoW and all the limited sets all over again. And we have to discuss when leagues come to MtgD all over again, and we have the same recurring discussions about redemption and market economy, and bots.
MtgO will never cease to exist, but it will become a ghostship, with no new sets, no fixing, just the collections that arent redeemable and certainly not transferable to MtgD.
Because we have to buy it twice, the dual lands, the Snapcasters, and the Jace, etc, etc.
This is TWO times as much money for wotc, remember, wotc is in it for money.
I said two times, of course in 2030 this whole cycle will start all over again, the 3d time...
All very good points and I was realizing that as well. I will be doing more of that in the weeks to come. And good call with Sundering Growth. I think I totally forget about that card sometimes.
It's not INSTEAD of Facebook. I was responding to the need of "some kind of resource available that we can direct new people who are interested in the format". That's a step AFTER Facebook or whatever else made people interested. They ask "got it, where can I play?", you give them the link.
As always, you are most welcome. If there is anything that you need to borrow for Modern to speed things along, let me know and I might be able to help.
Now for some constructive criticism! You stated your reason for starting over "Hero" style for your articles, but I think they are missing somethings:
Use of Budget: The main struggle of a usual "MTG Hero Challenge" is that they are extremely limited on budget. Every purchase, trade, store credit and prize really matters. I know you already stated your budget (~$25 a week), but it would be nice to see how and where you are using it. How much are you focusing on Standard? On Modern? Any card prices climb to a point that you couldn't pass up selling to acquire more cards? Watching the collection grow and the decks become optimal is part of the charm. Also, how are you entering events? Used some of your budget for tickets? Already living off of Play Points alone? Give us some details.
Measurable Goals: I know you want to rebuild your collection, but what else are you trying to accomplish exactly? 70% win rate in 2-Mans? Enough Play Points to enter infinite Leagues? I know you want to compete, but at what actual level? Is the goal to win packs, or just keep doing well? There are a lot of different ways to succeed, so what goals are you trying to accomplish? Right now, it's a vague, broad, "Just work right up to Dailies", but those steps in between are what demonstrate progress. One does not simply walk into Mordor, you know? ;) Setting some goals/checkpoints could provide focus for your articles and even build in a bit of suspense? Can you get out of the 2-Mans before spending $25 dollars on fees? Can the deck chain 3 Leagues together? Start out small and work your way up, but make it clear what success/failure means so that we the readers can follow along.
Game Descriptions: Right now you're on a journey, but you never tell us about anything that happens on that journey. Don't be afraid to talk about some actual matches. Or maybe a time where a sub-optimal card helped you? Part of the adventure is the growing pains of a mish-mash deck trying to work. The story isn't as interesting if the characters are already "level 10" before you even get out of the small town; why would we want to wait until you've mostly optimized the deck to hear about it? The underdog WW deck versus the evil hoards of Tier 1 Modern is something we don't hear about everyday either, so regale us a little.
That's plenty to think about, but I hope you explore some options to flesh out the series a bit.
PARTING SHOT: In WW, you should be using Sundering Growth instead of Disenchant since you might Populate a token from Precinct Captain every so often.
as someone who once played a Vintage deck titled Esper Dragons, I can appreciate a good Standard port! Taking that spirit a step further, I would probably splash for Painful Truths and Kolaghan's Command before DT and Thief. Thief just doesn't fit the play pattern of these decks, in my experience. They rarely want to hold up four mana, especially nowadays with Jace. Demonic is never bad, but DT->Ancestral is just a Painful Truths that can be Misstepped and Pyroblasted. Painful Truths' resolvability is really big game in the pseudo-mirrors.
These are all excellent counter-arguments to the unbelievably fallacious official line of logic Wizards would have us follow. I'd add only this: Wizards and some other players telling Standard Pauper players to just play regular Standard and Pauper instead just don't get it. Lots of people play this format because the price of competitive Magic has become prohibitive to working class people and families. Some of us can afford no more than a few bucks each new set release. For some of us a fifteen dollar draft breaks the bank. For some of us, hundred-dollar mana bases full of fetch lands and ten-dollar chase commons aren't as important as food, shelter, medicine, and bills. Wizards is proving once again that like all capitalist institutions they don't care one lick about their customers; they care about their profits and the parent corporation's shareholders. It's incredibly and disgustingly classist of Wizards and other players to insist we just play formats that are flat-out unaffordable.
That said, I'll note for the record that Standard Pauper has been being played on Magic Online for going on nine years. We only had a filter for the past three and that's as much official support as we ever got or really asked for. If the format got off the ground and eventually began to thrive without a filter, using only resources such as chat rooms (#StandardPauper everybody, join it!) and the PDCMagic or PureMTGO websites, then we can continue to keep this format running thanks to things like the Standard Pauper Players Clan and their blog and the blogs of the MPDC and SPDC host and the regular content produced by MagicGatheringStrat. We started off this format as rebels who decided to play our format regardless of Wizards' support or even the lack of acknowledgment that we even existed. We can continue to do so even if they don't change their mind on this bone-headed, selfish, discriminatory decision they are on track to make.
The strange thing is and many companies feel scared of this
Telling the truth (or true reason) is in many cases much easier accepted by customers (even thought they don't agree) then gving a reasoning that is simply incorrect.
In this case if they said:
We are abandoning these formats because we don't make enough profit of these.
A great shame. Pauper and prismatic and 2HG are all favourites of mine. The appeal of MTGO is finding a community to play niche formats with. If I want the supported formats I can get that here at home.
I suppose if wotc aim to grow mtgo from a product with a few thousand customers into one with millions of customers then they're going to have to make radical changes. Makes me feel my loyalty to wotc was wasted effort.
My thoughts on all the "casual" formats is this: WotC thinks that they have to program a separate filter for each format; all they need to do is allow multiple format formatting (legality checking). You want standard pauper? Tick the check boxes for standard, as well as for pauper.
Frankly, the deck builder in V3 was much better then V4 IMO, you could do a format analysis and see instantly what formats your deck was legal in and what cards were illegal for every other format. The problem in V3 with joining matches was that they jumped rapidly (as games filled/started) and sometimes ended on a match you did not want. (Again a simple fix of adding check box filters) There are times when I don't care if I am playing my standard legal deck against a modern deck.
I am of the opinion that the "auto-matching" feature is more of a PITA than the old system, since bugged/buddy-only games still try to get paired with the play button, and you are forced to manually join a different game or host a new one (and let someone else deal with the joining).
I realize this isn't isn't in line with what the author is trying to accomplish, but I just wanted to share that selling your MTGO collection to MTGOTraders is quick and easy and would greatly recommend them to anyone based on my recent experience. I don't think MTGO is going to die any time soon, but it's clear that in the immediate future they will not be supporting the things I love(d) to do with their program. I've fought to convince myself that many of the changes in the past several years were growing pains, but I can't justify that argument any longer. I will still follow the game and the articles on this site, but until WotC makes a real effort to revive kitchen table MTGO I will not be a financial supporter.
As always awesome job writing George.
I pretty much said this in my emails to wotc last week.
Not as flavorful as you but they knew where i was coming from. Please email wotc if you want to see these formats remain.
Tribal and Standard Pauper.
Joe
There are two ways to look at casual formats. They either distract and remove users from spending more money and time on participating in sanctioned tournaments or they promote interest in the game itself and drive interest in cards that might not otherwise be desirable.
I used to play a lot SPDC back in the day, but let's be honest, pauper is an already limiting format, do we really need a subset of it? So let's get over it, if you dislike standard, focus on modern preferably, or even legacy if that's your thing. Do like twoo did, get your favorite pauper deck and migrate it to other format. (ref to ninja bear). Brew, test, try new ideas. Magic is only growing more and more, specially on eternal formats, corners can be found in such a huge card pool. Let's evolve and move on.
I don't say, we shall implement SB. But, my proposition for it, would be like; all SB cards have to be the creatures from your main tribe, without any off-tribe creature or non-creature cards.
Have we considered permitting sideboards? Sometimes we feel compelled to maindeck redhate because SBs aren't allowed.
Or is that problematic because players will just drop under 20 tribe post-sideboard?
Think you combined Patrick O'Brian with his main character, Jack Aubrey :)
Great article as usual
It's very tin foil hat with no evidence presented. Just raging.
He's literally been copy-pasting that message all over the (then-)WotC forums and various PureMTGO threads
How come ?
None of this makes sense
This is probably going to sound snarky, but I don't really mean it in any harsh way. I find this ironic. You defended the constructed continuous dailies as the return of leagues while I lamented that the lack of sealed leagues meant leagues weren't really back. Now, you want the sealed leagues and are in a place I've been for a while.
That said, no new info on sealed leagues is sad.
Also, why not have duel commander leagues?
MtgO is being phased out, very slowly, in favour of MtgD(-igital).
MtgD means we have to buy Black Lotus, FoW and all the limited sets all over again. And we have to discuss when leagues come to MtgD all over again, and we have the same recurring discussions about redemption and market economy, and bots.
MtgO will never cease to exist, but it will become a ghostship, with no new sets, no fixing, just the collections that arent redeemable and certainly not transferable to MtgD.
Because we have to buy it twice, the dual lands, the Snapcasters, and the Jace, etc, etc.
This is TWO times as much money for wotc, remember, wotc is in it for money.
I said two times, of course in 2030 this whole cycle will start all over again, the 3d time...
All very good points and I was realizing that as well. I will be doing more of that in the weeks to come. And good call with Sundering Growth. I think I totally forget about that card sometimes.
It's not INSTEAD of Facebook. I was responding to the need of "some kind of resource available that we can direct new people who are interested in the format". That's a step AFTER Facebook or whatever else made people interested. They ask "got it, where can I play?", you give them the link.
As always, you are most welcome. If there is anything that you need to borrow for Modern to speed things along, let me know and I might be able to help.
Now for some constructive criticism! You stated your reason for starting over "Hero" style for your articles, but I think they are missing somethings:
Use of Budget: The main struggle of a usual "MTG Hero Challenge" is that they are extremely limited on budget. Every purchase, trade, store credit and prize really matters. I know you already stated your budget (~$25 a week), but it would be nice to see how and where you are using it. How much are you focusing on Standard? On Modern? Any card prices climb to a point that you couldn't pass up selling to acquire more cards? Watching the collection grow and the decks become optimal is part of the charm. Also, how are you entering events? Used some of your budget for tickets? Already living off of Play Points alone? Give us some details.
Measurable Goals: I know you want to rebuild your collection, but what else are you trying to accomplish exactly? 70% win rate in 2-Mans? Enough Play Points to enter infinite Leagues? I know you want to compete, but at what actual level? Is the goal to win packs, or just keep doing well? There are a lot of different ways to succeed, so what goals are you trying to accomplish? Right now, it's a vague, broad, "Just work right up to Dailies", but those steps in between are what demonstrate progress. One does not simply walk into Mordor, you know? ;) Setting some goals/checkpoints could provide focus for your articles and even build in a bit of suspense? Can you get out of the 2-Mans before spending $25 dollars on fees? Can the deck chain 3 Leagues together? Start out small and work your way up, but make it clear what success/failure means so that we the readers can follow along.
Game Descriptions: Right now you're on a journey, but you never tell us about anything that happens on that journey. Don't be afraid to talk about some actual matches. Or maybe a time where a sub-optimal card helped you? Part of the adventure is the growing pains of a mish-mash deck trying to work. The story isn't as interesting if the characters are already "level 10" before you even get out of the small town; why would we want to wait until you've mostly optimized the deck to hear about it? The underdog WW deck versus the evil hoards of Tier 1 Modern is something we don't hear about everyday either, so regale us a little.
That's plenty to think about, but I hope you explore some options to flesh out the series a bit.
PARTING SHOT: In WW, you should be using Sundering Growth instead of Disenchant since you might Populate a token from Precinct Captain every so often.
- Gio
as someone who once played a Vintage deck titled Esper Dragons, I can appreciate a good Standard port! Taking that spirit a step further, I would probably splash for Painful Truths and Kolaghan's Command before DT and Thief. Thief just doesn't fit the play pattern of these decks, in my experience. They rarely want to hold up four mana, especially nowadays with Jace. Demonic is never bad, but DT->Ancestral is just a Painful Truths that can be Misstepped and Pyroblasted. Painful Truths' resolvability is really big game in the pseudo-mirrors.
Hope my article helped ya a little. Happy Birthday in advance!
I'm glad to hear that you're ok. Sorry about your laptop and wallet, people are real scum sometimes.
These are all excellent counter-arguments to the unbelievably fallacious official line of logic Wizards would have us follow. I'd add only this: Wizards and some other players telling Standard Pauper players to just play regular Standard and Pauper instead just don't get it. Lots of people play this format because the price of competitive Magic has become prohibitive to working class people and families. Some of us can afford no more than a few bucks each new set release. For some of us a fifteen dollar draft breaks the bank. For some of us, hundred-dollar mana bases full of fetch lands and ten-dollar chase commons aren't as important as food, shelter, medicine, and bills. Wizards is proving once again that like all capitalist institutions they don't care one lick about their customers; they care about their profits and the parent corporation's shareholders. It's incredibly and disgustingly classist of Wizards and other players to insist we just play formats that are flat-out unaffordable.
That said, I'll note for the record that Standard Pauper has been being played on Magic Online for going on nine years. We only had a filter for the past three and that's as much official support as we ever got or really asked for. If the format got off the ground and eventually began to thrive without a filter, using only resources such as chat rooms (#StandardPauper everybody, join it!) and the PDCMagic or PureMTGO websites, then we can continue to keep this format running thanks to things like the Standard Pauper Players Clan and their blog and the blogs of the MPDC and SPDC host and the regular content produced by MagicGatheringStrat. We started off this format as rebels who decided to play our format regardless of Wizards' support or even the lack of acknowledgment that we even existed. We can continue to do so even if they don't change their mind on this bone-headed, selfish, discriminatory decision they are on track to make.
#StandardPauper
The strange thing is and many companies feel scared of this
Telling the truth (or true reason) is in many cases much easier accepted by customers (even thought they don't agree) then gving a reasoning that is simply incorrect.
In this case if they said:
We are abandoning these formats because we don't make enough profit of these.
A great shame. Pauper and prismatic and 2HG are all favourites of mine. The appeal of MTGO is finding a community to play niche formats with. If I want the supported formats I can get that here at home.
I suppose if wotc aim to grow mtgo from a product with a few thousand customers into one with millions of customers then they're going to have to make radical changes. Makes me feel my loyalty to wotc was wasted effort.
My thoughts on all the "casual" formats is this: WotC thinks that they have to program a separate filter for each format; all they need to do is allow multiple format formatting (legality checking). You want standard pauper? Tick the check boxes for standard, as well as for pauper.
Frankly, the deck builder in V3 was much better then V4 IMO, you could do a format analysis and see instantly what formats your deck was legal in and what cards were illegal for every other format. The problem in V3 with joining matches was that they jumped rapidly (as games filled/started) and sometimes ended on a match you did not want. (Again a simple fix of adding check box filters) There are times when I don't care if I am playing my standard legal deck against a modern deck.
I am of the opinion that the "auto-matching" feature is more of a PITA than the old system, since bugged/buddy-only games still try to get paired with the play button, and you are forced to manually join a different game or host a new one (and let someone else deal with the joining).
I realize this isn't isn't in line with what the author is trying to accomplish, but I just wanted to share that selling your MTGO collection to MTGOTraders is quick and easy and would greatly recommend them to anyone based on my recent experience. I don't think MTGO is going to die any time soon, but it's clear that in the immediate future they will not be supporting the things I love(d) to do with their program. I've fought to convince myself that many of the changes in the past several years were growing pains, but I can't justify that argument any longer. I will still follow the game and the articles on this site, but until WotC makes a real effort to revive kitchen table MTGO I will not be a financial supporter.
"Development can't afford to take the time to playtest and develop cards for these formats."
I find this excuse especially insulting, given that they've stated in the past that the *only* formats they playtest for are Standard and Limited.
As always awesome job writing George.
I pretty much said this in my emails to wotc last week.
Not as flavorful as you but they knew where i was coming from. Please email wotc if you want to see these formats remain.
Tribal and Standard Pauper.
Joe
There are two ways to look at casual formats. They either distract and remove users from spending more money and time on participating in sanctioned tournaments or they promote interest in the game itself and drive interest in cards that might not otherwise be desirable.
It's obvious which view WotC takes on the issue.
Well said. All the best in this fight, but given the lack of engagement from WotC with the communities around these formats, we're in for a grim time.
I used to play a lot SPDC back in the day, but let's be honest, pauper is an already limiting format, do we really need a subset of it? So let's get over it, if you dislike standard, focus on modern preferably, or even legacy if that's your thing. Do like twoo did, get your favorite pauper deck and migrate it to other format. (ref to ninja bear). Brew, test, try new ideas. Magic is only growing more and more, specially on eternal formats, corners can be found in such a huge card pool. Let's evolve and move on.