Seconded on Adam. He has been absolutely invaluable for FFtR and would make an excellent addition to our record of Community Cup attendees and invitees.
@Felorin, I truly think this is a blind spot. Like not being able to see behind one. It is as if the WOTC employees who were involved in the design and testing of the current client never experienced a problem with chat because of how they use it. (2 screens, using the Twitter-verse as opposed to in game to chat, etc.) As to why it hasn't changed even after people have been very vocal about the need, well I dunno. Incompetence is tempting. We have joked a bit about that on Freed from the Real and in the forums. "Not their wheelhouse...", etc but lets face it. At some point incompetence does not cover the refusal to even acknowledge the complaints. That strikes me as willful denial.
And I agree with you about the intent of the average WOTC employee. They are almost uniformly nice people. There have been a few notable exceptions but they are thankfully very rare. The reason v3 became more acceptable is because they hired an outsider to come in and do some redesign and smoothing and that helped tremendously. Sadly then they had to reinvent the wheel using a t-square, rather than a protractor.
I appreciate making it onto your "PureMTGO Nominee list". :) Not gonna' lie, the idea of being on the Community Team always floated in the back of my mind. I saw several other writers from this site go and have an awesome time, so it seemed like something that could possibly happen someday if I kept writing. Since I didn't get to maintain a steady stream of articles, I felt those odds slip away, but hey, nobody seems to know what gets a person chosen now, so I can continue to daydream. :)
If I had to choose from the current site, I'd go with Adam, for his enthusiasm, exceptional article presentation, banner creation for other writers and helping re-invigorate FFTR. A close runner up; my second pick would be Joe, who has really made some solid stuff now that he has found his format niche.
The people who didn't get their posts deleted praised wizards endlessly and agreed with company policy. I couldn't do that when I believed the program sucked. When I kept crashing out during early v3, I posted. They were deleted. I posted the bug that made me crash. It was moved to another forum, and then, later deleted by a different mod.
In fact, I had several threads that actually were intelligent discourse about the issues I raised, going about 15 posts. What happened to them? My posts were deleted by the next-mod-on-shift, AND the posts of the mod responding to me that quoted my posts were also deleted!
If you tried to talk about improving the program of MTGO on the boards of Wotc, your voice would be silenced.
Heh in defense of lotus + moxen I was looking for a way to make the deck a little faster and figured that would be fine. Yeah its not really a budget include (though moxen are getting there) but it is easily replaced by lands (Ancient Tomb, Temple of the False Gods, etc).
As to the might as well cast wrath I think I will disagree on this point. I was going for the "I am harmless, and helping you" strategy that suddenly becomes lethal with Teferi or Curse and Knowledge Pool. Oh suddenly all that draw becomes you drawing out your deck helplessly.
Anyway I agree with Giraffe's being best and it is nearly what I would have gone with had I gotten there first.
I have had situations where I would have wanted Beast Within, but most of them occurred before I had the card in my sideboard.
To properly test it, I should play a bunch of test games and put it in the main deck in multiples so I draw it more, and can evaluate it further. As it is, it's hard to get a read on it.
I will tell you this: the deck has a hard time killing Jace the Mind Sculptor, Notion Thief, Leyline of Sanctity (although nature's claim can), Leyline of the Void (although you won't see that much), Orbs of Warding, Witchbane orb, and so on. Abrupt decay is so awesome, but some of the less-common cases can still just get you.
I have had situations where I was going to put it to good use, but I ended up not needing to, so I'm open to the idea of dropping it. Really I think that the mirror is where it might shine, but it's hard to say for sure. I like that it can have utility against anyone who plays permanents.
Tezzeret won me a few games so far. I've been much more aggressive with the Time Vault plan post sideboard, and that's been working out for me.
Honestly, it's the kind of deck that gets there sometimes, but it can have clunky games where you're just crying out to draw something relevant and you brick again and again.
It's odd that I managed to kill a dredge deck in game one twice with this build. You need time vault for that to happen, Dredge can put enough zombies on board to race you. Much like a mentor deck can as well, it isn't easy, but I've been killed by a chump-attacking Monastery Mentor before.
Beast Within: I never did try this one specifically, but I did play Swan Song for a while and found it lackluster. In theory it helps trigger Oath, but in practice the token often did more harm than good and I was better off with an analogous effect like Spell Pierce or Flusterstorm. My intuition tells me Beast Within would run into the same problem, so I never did try it. I'm curious to know how it's been working in practice though since, long story short, I got drunk and sold off the expensive parts of Oath for Modern Jund and can't test it myself anymore.
Illness is something that been in and (mostly) out of certain sideboards for me. With Shops and Dredge demanding 12-14 slots in most decks, those last few slots are a precious resource and this is jut too narrow, especially now with Delver/Mentor on the decline. If we had 20 card sideboards I'd be all for it, but as it stands it just misses the cut for me.
Why exactly? HEX was blatantly using Magic-esque game mechanics. You can create a card game which is a succesful one and much much more far away from MtG (Hearthstone for example) - they were just piggybacking.
Maybe I am just missing something but where do you see that the prize split rules only permit single elimination events?
“In the final round of an event, two players matched against each other may negotiate their match result to split whatever prizes are at stake between them, including (but not limited to) Qualifier Points and invitations. If an event cuts to a Top 8 playoff, the final round is defined as the last round of that playoff. Offering prizes outside those Magic Online would award based on the outcome of that match to the participants is still considered bribery, as is offering a prize split prior to the final round of an event.
All prize splits are done at the players' own risk, and Magic Online will not enforce any agreed-upon splits in any situation."
I don't see the phrase "single elimination" anywhere in that. It simply says "In the final round of an event."
I think many professional game developers and game companies fail to understand how important chat is for an online game. In The Sims Online, a title that had great potential but just wasn't built right & failed instead... They built a chat function while in development, but they disabled it before launch because "it covered up some of the gameplay & graphics". Bless his heart, online community pioneer Randy Farmer, when he was hired as producer to try and save the doomed product, said in his job interview "Well either you're turning that chat feature back on, or don't even bother hiring me."
Anyway as for why chat is so abysmally bad in MTGO V4, I would say never attribute to malice that which can be explained by simple incompetence.
I am sure the vast majority of people who have ever worked at Wizards of the Coast have meant well, and tried to deliver quality games, websites, etc. They just aren't always equal to the task. I'm glad they're doing a great job with the paper product, in any case. That's mostly how I play Magic these days, though I hope to see MTGO 4 get as good as (and better than) 3.0 / 3.5 were at their peak. Some year.
Just check to see if I'm online when you login my playing times/days are very erratic due to work and I'm in the BST (British Summer Time) time zone as well.
I wish I could say I miss the forums enough to be sad they're getting shut down. But I quit using them the last time they did a major re-do of the entire user interface that would make me have to re-learn where everything was and what to click on to get there. It wasn't the first one I'd been through, and I decided enough was enough.
Having seen the same with the website, MTGO art, color schemes and user interface, etc. I went back to the forums one last time to post "On Tearing Down Castles", which is, I feel, why the forums died. Here's a link to where it got reposted as a PureMTGO article.
Just for the record, my win condition is not attacking with the tokens but drawing cards and then kill with Spiraling Embers. So I dont want to pump the tokens. It probably only works in theory :)
Most out of court settlements are much more satisfactory to one party than to the other. Though I suppose there's occasional exceptions.
It does seem pretty unlikely that the makers of Hex would be the side that got a "good deal" on the undisclosed terms. If they weren't paying a fairly significant licensing fee, Hasbro wouldn't have much incentive to agree to the deal.
How much the alleged trolling isnt meant as trolling, but is trolling in (some) other peoples' eyes ?
How much of the forum communication receives criticism because of how different a 17 year old can see things versus how a 32 year old sees things ?
How much of the mtg rules and documents are prone for more than one interpretation in said situation(s) and thus create a stir among customers/players ? (read: jackie lee's articles/Sperling/PVDDR/bribery and collusion stuff/scouting/more...)
Three to choose from! A new record for my articles!
This was certainly tough. I like Cauchy's approach as you will certainly be drawing a lot of cards. But if the win condition is attacking with tokens, wouldn't you rather just pump them up, not sacrifice them?
Paul's deck takes an unexpected approach, going strictly defensive, which I also like. But it seems like you would be helping your opponent a bit too much. Instead of casting Shifting Sky (OR Painter's Servant) into a Martyr's Cry, it would probably be better just to cast a Wrath! (And Black Lotus, Paul, please.)
Giraffe uses both halves of the cards to good effect, and cleverly protects himself with Rule of Law as well. Prize goes to Giraffe! Email me at cottonrhetoric at gmail dotcom to arrange a good time for the trade. I'm free on most weekdays in the 4:30 to 9:30pm EST range.
Seconded on Adam. He has been absolutely invaluable for FFtR and would make an excellent addition to our record of Community Cup attendees and invitees.
Lord of Atlantis is hiding in the Legacy section. I may move him to Modern. He sees play on both formats, and even Vintage, though.
Dunno, man. I railed at wizzo's constantly, and was downright rude about it, and never had a post deleted...
http://community.wizards.com/content/forum-topic/3556031
I left because of WotC, not trolls. I believe that WotC coders can't program their way out of a paper bag,
Thanks all for your comments.
@Felorin, I truly think this is a blind spot. Like not being able to see behind one. It is as if the WOTC employees who were involved in the design and testing of the current client never experienced a problem with chat because of how they use it. (2 screens, using the Twitter-verse as opposed to in game to chat, etc.) As to why it hasn't changed even after people have been very vocal about the need, well I dunno. Incompetence is tempting. We have joked a bit about that on Freed from the Real and in the forums. "Not their wheelhouse...", etc but lets face it. At some point incompetence does not cover the refusal to even acknowledge the complaints. That strikes me as willful denial.
And I agree with you about the intent of the average WOTC employee. They are almost uniformly nice people. There have been a few notable exceptions but they are thankfully very rare. The reason v3 became more acceptable is because they hired an outsider to come in and do some redesign and smoothing and that helped tremendously. Sadly then they had to reinvent the wheel using a t-square, rather than a protractor.
I appreciate making it onto your "PureMTGO Nominee list". :) Not gonna' lie, the idea of being on the Community Team always floated in the back of my mind. I saw several other writers from this site go and have an awesome time, so it seemed like something that could possibly happen someday if I kept writing. Since I didn't get to maintain a steady stream of articles, I felt those odds slip away, but hey, nobody seems to know what gets a person chosen now, so I can continue to daydream. :)
If I had to choose from the current site, I'd go with Adam, for his enthusiasm, exceptional article presentation, banner creation for other writers and helping re-invigorate FFTR. A close runner up; my second pick would be Joe, who has really made some solid stuff now that he has found his format niche.
That was definitely not my experience at all.
That is where must agree to disagree.
The people who didn't get their posts deleted praised wizards endlessly and agreed with company policy. I couldn't do that when I believed the program sucked. When I kept crashing out during early v3, I posted. They were deleted. I posted the bug that made me crash. It was moved to another forum, and then, later deleted by a different mod.
In fact, I had several threads that actually were intelligent discourse about the issues I raised, going about 15 posts. What happened to them? My posts were deleted by the next-mod-on-shift, AND the posts of the mod responding to me that quoted my posts were also deleted!
If you tried to talk about improving the program of MTGO on the boards of Wotc, your voice would be silenced.
yeah I'm Flippers_Giraffe
Heh in defense of lotus + moxen I was looking for a way to make the deck a little faster and figured that would be fine. Yeah its not really a budget include (though moxen are getting there) but it is easily replaced by lands (Ancient Tomb, Temple of the False Gods, etc).
As to the might as well cast wrath I think I will disagree on this point. I was going for the "I am harmless, and helping you" strategy that suddenly becomes lethal with Teferi or Curse and Knowledge Pool. Oh suddenly all that draw becomes you drawing out your deck helplessly.
Anyway I agree with Giraffe's being best and it is nearly what I would have gone with had I gotten there first.
Right!
I am dumb.
Tune in next week for another contest opportunity, the submissions for which I will read more carefully.
OK, is your screenname the same as on this site? (Mine is not.)
Illness is fine I suppose, but you're going to need a creature eventually unless you're playing Storm or a Time Vault combo deck like Thieves.
In a grixis therapy/pyromancer deck I would not recommend it.
There's one card I'm afraid of, but I'm keeping it to myself lest I run into one some day :P
I have had situations where I would have wanted Beast Within, but most of them occurred before I had the card in my sideboard.
To properly test it, I should play a bunch of test games and put it in the main deck in multiples so I draw it more, and can evaluate it further. As it is, it's hard to get a read on it.
I will tell you this: the deck has a hard time killing Jace the Mind Sculptor, Notion Thief, Leyline of Sanctity (although nature's claim can), Leyline of the Void (although you won't see that much), Orbs of Warding, Witchbane orb, and so on. Abrupt decay is so awesome, but some of the less-common cases can still just get you.
I have had situations where I was going to put it to good use, but I ended up not needing to, so I'm open to the idea of dropping it. Really I think that the mirror is where it might shine, but it's hard to say for sure. I like that it can have utility against anyone who plays permanents.
Tezzeret won me a few games so far. I've been much more aggressive with the Time Vault plan post sideboard, and that's been working out for me.
Honestly, it's the kind of deck that gets there sometimes, but it can have clunky games where you're just crying out to draw something relevant and you brick again and again.
It's odd that I managed to kill a dredge deck in game one twice with this build. You need time vault for that to happen, Dredge can put enough zombies on board to race you. Much like a mentor deck can as well, it isn't easy, but I've been killed by a chump-attacking Monastery Mentor before.
Any chance of adding Lord of Atlantis to the Modern cards that are tracked week to week?
Thanks for the awesome article series as usual!
Beast Within: I never did try this one specifically, but I did play Swan Song for a while and found it lackluster. In theory it helps trigger Oath, but in practice the token often did more harm than good and I was better off with an analogous effect like Spell Pierce or Flusterstorm. My intuition tells me Beast Within would run into the same problem, so I never did try it. I'm curious to know how it's been working in practice though since, long story short, I got drunk and sold off the expensive parts of Oath for Modern Jund and can't test it myself anymore.
Illness is something that been in and (mostly) out of certain sideboards for me. With Shops and Dredge demanding 12-14 slots in most decks, those last few slots are a precious resource and this is jut too narrow, especially now with Delver/Mentor on the decline. If we had 20 card sideboards I'd be all for it, but as it stands it just misses the cut for me.
Two comments regarding oath.
1) Beast Within: You can target something of your own if you desperately need a blocker.
2)What is your thoughts on Illness in the ranks regarding a sideboard card against Oath?
Why exactly? HEX was blatantly using Magic-esque game mechanics. You can create a card game which is a succesful one and much much more far away from MtG (Hearthstone for example) - they were just piggybacking.
Maybe I am just missing something but where do you see that the prize split rules only permit single elimination events?
“In the final round of an event, two players matched against each other may negotiate their match result to split whatever prizes are at stake between them, including (but not limited to) Qualifier Points and invitations. If an event cuts to a Top 8 playoff, the final round is defined as the last round of that playoff. Offering prizes outside those Magic Online would award based on the outcome of that match to the participants is still considered bribery, as is offering a prize split prior to the final round of an event.
All prize splits are done at the players' own risk, and Magic Online will not enforce any agreed-upon splits in any situation."
I don't see the phrase "single elimination" anywhere in that. It simply says "In the final round of an event."
I think many professional game developers and game companies fail to understand how important chat is for an online game. In The Sims Online, a title that had great potential but just wasn't built right & failed instead... They built a chat function while in development, but they disabled it before launch because "it covered up some of the gameplay & graphics". Bless his heart, online community pioneer Randy Farmer, when he was hired as producer to try and save the doomed product, said in his job interview "Well either you're turning that chat feature back on, or don't even bother hiring me."
Anyway as for why chat is so abysmally bad in MTGO V4, I would say never attribute to malice that which can be explained by simple incompetence.
I am sure the vast majority of people who have ever worked at Wizards of the Coast have meant well, and tried to deliver quality games, websites, etc. They just aren't always equal to the task. I'm glad they're doing a great job with the paper product, in any case. That's mostly how I play Magic these days, though I hope to see MTGO 4 get as good as (and better than) 3.0 / 3.5 were at their peak. Some year.
Thanks for picking my deck :)
I hardly ever win anything lol
Just check to see if I'm online when you login my playing times/days are very erratic due to work and I'm in the BST (British Summer Time) time zone as well.
I wish I could say I miss the forums enough to be sad they're getting shut down. But I quit using them the last time they did a major re-do of the entire user interface that would make me have to re-learn where everything was and what to click on to get there. It wasn't the first one I'd been through, and I decided enough was enough.
Having seen the same with the website, MTGO art, color schemes and user interface, etc. I went back to the forums one last time to post "On Tearing Down Castles", which is, I feel, why the forums died. Here's a link to where it got reposted as a PureMTGO article.
http://puremtgo.com/articles/open-letter-wizards-tearing-down-castles
Congratulations to Giraffe!
Just for the record, my win condition is not attacking with the tokens but drawing cards and then kill with Spiraling Embers. So I dont want to pump the tokens. It probably only works in theory :)
Most out of court settlements are much more satisfactory to one party than to the other. Though I suppose there's occasional exceptions.
It does seem pretty unlikely that the makers of Hex would be the side that got a "good deal" on the undisclosed terms. If they weren't paying a fairly significant licensing fee, Hasbro wouldn't have much incentive to agree to the deal.
How much the alleged trolling isnt meant as trolling, but is trolling in (some) other peoples' eyes ?
How much of the forum communication receives criticism because of how different a 17 year old can see things versus how a 32 year old sees things ?
How much of the mtg rules and documents are prone for more than one interpretation in said situation(s) and thus create a stir among customers/players ? (read: jackie lee's articles/Sperling/PVDDR/bribery and collusion stuff/scouting/more...)
Three to choose from! A new record for my articles!
This was certainly tough. I like Cauchy's approach as you will certainly be drawing a lot of cards. But if the win condition is attacking with tokens, wouldn't you rather just pump them up, not sacrifice them?
Paul's deck takes an unexpected approach, going strictly defensive, which I also like. But it seems like you would be helping your opponent a bit too much. Instead of casting Shifting Sky (OR Painter's Servant) into a Martyr's Cry, it would probably be better just to cast a Wrath! (And Black Lotus, Paul, please.)
Giraffe uses both halves of the cards to good effect, and cleverly protects himself with Rule of Law as well. Prize goes to Giraffe! Email me at cottonrhetoric at gmail dotcom to arrange a good time for the trade. I'm free on most weekdays in the 4:30 to 9:30pm EST range.