Magic: The Gathering C/D

i played against a pretty bad opponent at FNM who untapped w/ primeval bounty in games 2 and 3. i alpha striked both times; felt gooooood

is it worth it to buy a bunch of FTV:20 sets on MTGO? how long do they sell them for? Jace is around 33 now for this very reason, but once they stop selling these, does it stand to reason that Jace will climb way back up again?

obviously not to its original value, but maybe like 50-60ish?

jace has very little utility on mtgo compared to paper. if you think online vintage will actually get popular when they release the power 9 (happening within the next year) then it's a good spec, but based on the failure of online legacy it doesn't seem too promising.

Sincere question - why isn't legacy a thing on mtgo? Is it as simple as no-one being willing to fork out $400 for non-"real" copies of FoW?

that's like 90% of it yes. there aren't enough copies of the older staples, and it's a vicious cycle of people won't buy in for that much $ because no one plays it, which means no one plays it. also modern caught on a lot harder on MTGO than irl initially, which peels interest away from legacy.

do people think that it's just a matter of time before it catches on? I mean even in spite of all this, Jace was quite valuable before FTV:20...

also i think MTGO players tend to skew towards new-schoolers like me who never liked it when blue cards were blatantly overpowered, and legacy is sort of a time-capsule-suspended version of that type of magic

As someone who has only played Legacy casually with friends' decks, part of the fun for me is that I'm killing my opponent with hundred dollar bills. I still get excited casting JTMS while cubing irl; that excitement doesn't translate to MTGO. Maybe I'm alone in that, but I imagine that's some of the appeal for the hardcore Legacy players, that they get to play with physical, super expensive cards that they may have owned since they began playing. MTGO Legacy has none of that history baked in.

i honestly don't see legacy growing much past its current level of 'a daily event fires on most days'. i think the format is deeply flawed and inaccessible beyond just the card prices and has been propped up by the SCG open series for the past few years without which it would crash pretty hard.

i do wonder how much of it is also legacy players not embracing mtgo? there's a pretty decent legacy scene in southern ontario and from casually talking to people that play there's little interest in mtgo. i do like the idea of vintage becoming an interesting mtgo format, since it sort of makes more sense as a digital format than a paper one

also i bought a playset of nimbus maze today, just on the offchance

yeah i think nimbus maze or daybreak coronet is most likely for the future sight plant but who knows

here's what i'm currently up to in standard
http://i.imgur.com/2MUXcEJ.jpg

don't laugh, it works

i played against so many of those decks last weekend, they seem good

its really good! i thought it was garbage when i played it earlier in the year but voice and paladins put it over the top finally. just 4-0ed a daily without much trouble.

http://puremtgo.com/articles/ars-arcanum-m14-draft-overview

agree w/ the dude for the first time, tho none of the insights really required 'big data'

archetype win rate also kinda a tricky thing because G/W slivers is maybe the best deck if it's open but G/W not slivers is pretty terrible. for a lot of decks it's less about color archetype than 'did you pull off gimmick x'

on tuesday I had a super solid u/w flyers deck and lost to my friend who played t2 mana sliver t3 doublestrike sliver t4 megantic sliver. with enlarge in hand.

we've got more legit-sounding text for the monster mechanic in theros now, it looks like:

activation cost: Monstrosity N (if this is not monstrous, put N +1/+1 counters on it and it becomes monstrous)

and then the duel deck hydra preview thing also has an ability that triggers when it becomes monstrous

curious if they're going to use this mostly on splashy higher rarity cards with bonus triggers or if there will be random commons too like the standard 1G 2/2 that can become a 4/4 for six extra mana or whatever

so it's kind of another take on level up?

yeah i guess, but instant speed and there's only 2 tiers?

seems kinda lame tbh

i think it's neat if they use the triggers liberally, otherwise its just a watered down level-up, which is something that should play well but isn't too exciting

http://www.wizards.com/Magic/Magazine/Article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/other/08142013c

prob just quitting mtgo

am i misunderstanding, or is that saying phantom events will cost 8 tix to enter and will give no prize packs, just credit towards future phantom events?

so what is this now, you can't actually win packs from phantom events? why are we paying the 2 tickets then? (I realize Cube does this, but at least Cube is a super fun, once-in-a-while format)

why is it every time MTGO has something popular that they feel the need to mess it up? it's already a terrible deal for the players.

nope you're not misunderstanding rs

the business types in charge of mtgo are idiots

the only rationale is that they want to try to keep pack prices high, though the drop in pack prices seemed to be directly related to adding an extra $20 to redemption - AVR sat above 3.80 for a long time despite all the phantom sealed queues firing, maybe because they're still only giving out 6 packs for 32 tix total.

having said that, it wouldn't surprise me at all to find that they just have no concept on how the MTGO economy works. mtgo players aren't stupid, nobody's going to play these. even the people who want to won't play them because the queues will never fire.

it seems totally reasonable to believe that they have no concept of how the mtgo economy works or a business plan that goes beyond 'if we charge more money for things, we will make more money'

lol worth

i didn't realize the phantom sealeds were so popular. i only played them if i needed sealed practice for some event because the payouts were so meager.

they do listen to feedback though (see: the ridiculous price point on modern masters events which got lowered to more reasonable numbers after lots of people complained) so if this is a dealbreaker for a lot of people i'd expect to see a change down the line

i dont think these phantom points will last a month. nobody's going to play these. i think they were nice for someone who just wanted to play limited and didn't mind taking an EV hit to do so. the whole "at worst, I'm losing 4 tickets" is pretty appealing.

Something I don't entirely get is that a lot of changes that Wizards makes just get put out there with seemingly no warning, get complaints, and then they fix it. I wonder if they do any kind of polling before making these things public? Maybe they've found that it's easier to make changes and then fix them based on complaints? With certain things like competitive REL rules changes, I can see why players may not have a good understanding of whether they would like the change until they try it out; with other changes like the initial Planeswalker Points system, the negative feedback is immediate and warranted. The way Microsoft is handling complaints on XBox One seems similar.

i know i am an outlier but way back when in the halcyon days of the rtr and gtc sets, i could put in $16 at the start of the week and reasonably expect to play 9 phantom sealeds off that, which was a lot of fun and great for someone like me who was/is learning the basics. at my level it would be a banner week if i got to play 2 drafts out of $16.

pulling the voice of resurgence is awesome though

i think more likely the phantom points will last but the entry fee will get dropped back down to 4 or 5 tickets (or 2 tickets plus a few points). if they get the numbers right, not getting pack payouts isn't even a big deal since you were just going to recycle those into credit towards your next sealed anyway. i think at least half of the idea behind this change is to eliminate a potential source of pack devaluation since that's been hurting them ever since the redemption fees went up, but you can still do that without the 8 ticket moneygrab.

the 8 tix entry is the most alarming part yeah. i liked winning a phantom event and throwing those packs into a draft, it is basically the only way i ever opened any cards, but there is some kind of logic to the prize part of the change i suppose.

i would guess the margins on the phantom events are comparatively too low plus the events themselves were becoming too popular. even recently, rtr block phantom sealed still seem to have been maybe the most frequently firing events.

despite the low value payout

you wonder if their data tracking is sophisticated enough to notice that some people aren't gonna substitute $4 games w/ $12 games, they're just gonna play less / not at all

just getting rid of the 2 tix entry fee would help a lot. you shouldn't be able to win one of these events and not be able to enter another event with the prizes. if they were really worried about pack prices they could just make *that* the entry fee (take in 8 packs, give back 6, simple). or stop gouging people on redemptions. I have a hard time believing that they weren't making a healthy profit on redemptions anyway, unless they've really sank that much into the beta. I dunno, I'm just really hoping Hex or SolForge can at least drive enough MTGO players away to convince them to try maybe giving players what they want, for a change

I already wasn't playing a lot of mtgo but this is probably going to end it for me altogether

yeah i'm kind of hoping that one of these slick new online CCGs that are coming out catches on enough that WotC is forced to get their ass in gear with MTGO. it's a pretty absurd blind spot for a company that's otherwise the best at what they do.

though having 3 different ones all pop up around the same time (solforge, hex, hearthstone) might cause none of them to build a big enough playerbase to challenge magic, i dunno.

I am skeptical since the only people who seem to be interested in those games are the real hardcore Magic players who probably won't quit MTGO 100% anyway. But a digital CCG that's well-designed, cheap, and has a good interface really could have a lot going for it, especially if it takes full advantage of not having a paper equivalent.

some theros cards from the duel deck:

http://media.wizards.com/images/magic/daily/features/feat261_pwe_en_e2e8lkg145.jpg
http://media.wizards.com/images/magic/daily/features/feat261_aac_en_x9nkybjgmj.jpg

http://media.wizards.com/images/magic/daily/features/feat261a_cp_en_q7uyjjsteu.jpg
http://media.wizards.com/images/magic/daily/features/feat261a_oop_en_7vcz9xnf1s.jpg
http://media.wizards.com/images/magic/daily/features/feat261a_sh_en_5zcb5doli4.jpg
http://media.wizards.com/images/magic/daily/features/feat261a_dr_en_njemx72mgh.jpg

i like these, am pretty optimistic about this set

Polukarnos seems crazy good. Then again I was pretty excited about Deadbridge Goliath and nobody played it.

Not really crazy about the Heroic ability, seems kinda narrow, but it may get Fight effects played in standard. Either way the 3-spot for Boros seems to be spoken for. I guess we'll have to see what this combos with.

Ordeal of Purphorous seems like a really neat design, hope that it's a cycle.

i think the ordeal is probably part of a cycle yeah. also note that the spell effect is curiously detached from the other trigger, so if there are cards that let you sac enchantments, you can bypass the ordeal and just get the 3 damage right away

hadn't noticed that. definitely seems interesting.
the art in this set looks awesome. I'm usually quite cynical about M:TG's art lately but so far this looks incredible.

Hmm, not feeling much flavor through the mechanics of these cards yet. Maybe the ordeal one. The satyr - am I missing something about why he would sac for mana? Even the flavor text didn't help. Of course, this is just six cards, and I might be the only one who cares about this stuff.

you put a little fire under him and he parties so crazy that you get RRR worth of partying

yeah i doubt these cards are too representational of anything, they're just the ones that fit in the duel decks