Magic: The Gathering C/D

the downside is mostly that wizards has a fairly positive company image among players and 'we're actually a big corporation' moves like this puts a tiny dent in it.

esp given the context, where the product that this was a substitute for is clearly very flawed

yeah the last time they did something like this was probably when they went after rancored_elf (the spoiler guy), but even then they basically just set "spoilers have a measurable effect on card sales and prerelease attendance so we have to shut this down". Here - maybe you're right about the future iatee but I don't see it effecting sales any more than online poker effected attendance in card rooms. Like you're probably right that people who rely on Cockatrice are the type who really just buy off the secondary market, which maybe WoTC isn't making much profit from, but it'll certainly effect tournament attendance in a small way and I can't see it driving people to MTGO - MTGO and Cockatrice are really very different things

i don't think it will affect tournament attendance at all, and i don't think they care if it drives the current userbase to MTGO or not, they just don't want a competing product out there that can suck away potential new players

I assume that shutting down Cockatrice will not also result in a "proxy" option in MTGO. That would be nice, but I can't imagine it ever happening.

they will probably create more phantom-like-things in the future, sorta a system of tiered pricing, but a real proxy 'you can play w/ whatever you want' is def not gonna happen

Mtgo allows for all sorts of really cool things to happen (Cube and Momir Basic are two great examples) but they seem to be really squirrley in what they'll actually do. Ultimately it feels like theyre more concerned with stopping people from getting around the profanity filter than they are making a useable product. The fact that they require a 9 hour downtime for weekly updates in 2013 is a good sign as to how behind the times they really are.

it's kinda amazing really

especially if you read the weekly "update reports" and find out how many things were broken - for example Domri Rade giving your opponent's creatures hexproof, Bane Alley Broker being able to return Ciphered cards to your hand via it's second ability, Dinrova Horror having the rules text of an enchant land in the name field in the "card" view, or Cipher sometimes not working at all (which caused me to lose a game). as a software dude myself I really don't envy what those programmers have to all account for, especially since the base rules code seems shaky and incomplete to begin with. but I have to wonder how small their staff really is!

did you complain when that happened? it seems like they give refunds pretty freely

no because i won the match. what happened was the ciphered card (it was Shadow Slice) just appeared in "newgamezone" by my hand, but clicking it did nothing, nor did clicking it then the player, or moving things around, nothing. could only hit "cancel"

just in the past month or so there's been more bugs than i remember there being all of last year. pillar of flame currently doesn't exile as of this week's patch, which is kind of funny but also annoying as it's a staple card in standard

my favorite bug was during innistrad limited where blazing torch couldn't target foil creatures. it took them a while to fix it too, since it's not a situation that came up a ton due to involving foils

Nah it makes sense. The light of the torch bounces off of the foils, blinding the wielder.

that is quite amusing since it implies that foil cards somehow work differently in mtgo

the pillar of flame thing is especially crazy since there's a standard MOCS this weekend and people could try to game it by playing strangleroot geist or geralf's messenger decks and hoping their opponents aren't aware of the bug

also if anyone's looking for a cheap standard deck, apparently pump spells on Wandering Wolf is good enough to cash standard dailies right now...
http://mtgstats.com/Deck.aspx?DeckID=576165

I saw this one and was intrigued, but I think Wandering Wolf and Dryad Militant are odd choices here. I'd much rather run Gyre Sage and Experiment One.

thats an ilxor ain't it

moodles nothing in the deck evolves those guys more than once. evolve is more of a midrange strategy, this deck wants to get in damage fast with pump spells so you don't want to wait around for your creatures to evolve. wandering wolf's ability is actually pretty nice at getting around boros reckoners when you slap a rancor on it.

do you guys think it's a good idea to stock up on Deathrite Shamans? it's $15 on SCG now, about $10 where I live, maybe $5 online - I think in 5 years it may be one of those Modern staples that's $35+...thoughts?

it's one of the best creatures ever printed for competitive eternal formats. past comparables include Noble Hierarch (now $30), Dark Confidant (now $50), Snapcaster Mage (still $20ish). Hierarch was in a set with a much shorter print run than RTR so i'm not sure the Shaman will reach $30 anytime soon but its a good bet to be $15-20 long-term

Yeah the print run was what really worries me about it. Then again SCG is still selling the shocklands for $12-15 and I'd thought they'd be really devalued by now.

snaps seem to have settled @ $25. i doubt deathrites will ever go above that considering the amount of rtr thats been printed and general playability of the the two. i've been trading for shamans for the last month or so - they were down to $12 for a bit - but i wouldnt got out of my way to buy them either unless i didnt have a playset. i have picked up a second playset of rtr shocks tho considering how cheap they got

fwiw last night on mtgo the blink trigger on resotration angel wasnt working either which was p lol

if you've got any interest in playing eternal format magic somewhere down the line, or just being a collector, the 3 cards in standard right now that i'd pick up and hold long-term are snapcaster, deathrite, and thalia. thalia in particular is an important card from a short-run set and yet doesn't get the hype that the other two do.

there's also a few other cards to take a good look at right after they
rotate and tank in price like restoration angel and huntmaster and garruk relentless. there's also liliana and geist of saint traft which will likely both be good for a long time but i'm not sure how much they'll dip after rotation if any.

no chance Resto holds any value?
Huntsmaster and Garruk seem like they would not be very good in Modern
Liliana and Geist probably will get played all around though

i think huntmaster will tank hard at rotation then build value back up as a casual favorite/fringe modern card. same deal with garruk possibly.

resto will hold value for modern but not all of it so i'd get them after rotation if you're not playing standard

didn't mention cavern of souls yet, that's in the same boat as resto

i think if you want to bet on the popularity of magic increasing over the next few years shocklands are still the best 'investment'. considering how low the innistrad duals fell last summer and the # of shocks printed in the three sets i bet you'll be able to get them for very little. the summer before rotation prices seem to tank as people start dumping standard cards - i got karns for less $10 each last summer and even stuff like geist, lilianna, snaps were all well below what they are now.

dragonsmaze is gonna be a flood tho

nah there's gonna be like 1/4th as many proportionally in DGM as there is in the current sets, is what they said i think

o inneresting

They said they'd get printed in the normal ratio of rarities, which I would think means out of 88 packs, you'll see 80 guildgates, 7 shocks, 1 as-yet-unknown mythic rare land. That's gonna add a fair number more shocklands to the world, it's a little less than the number of shocks you'd get in an RTR or GTC box.

yeah that is a little worrisome if you're speculating on them - they may go the way of Birds of Paradise

I was so excited to complete my playset of Birds of Paradise as a kid, took me ages. Now you can probably pull them out of the packs that drafters leave on the table at a game store.

that was my "you know you're been playing for a long fucking time when..." moment, I STILL have a playset of 4e Birds (took me forever to acquire as well) and my opponent in an FNM saw one and said, "wow, never saw the old art on those before..."

6 grisly spectacle
2 balustrade spy
3 basilica screecher
2 deathcult rogue
deaths approach
hands of binding
undercity informer
devour flesh
dusk mantle guildmage
keyrune
cloud fin raptor
shadow slice
consuming abberation
wight
guildgate + watery grave

STILL lost a game against a good Boros deck cause I got unlucky but the other two matches were lol

there were at least two other grislies at the table too

i had a deep simic deck tonight, dont feel like typing it out but highlights were zegana and the evolve guy that steals creatures. also had 3 cloudfin raptors and an experiment one and 2 simic fluxmage and 2 crocanura and such, just lots of the good evolve guys. had 8-10 cards in my sideboard that would have made most simic decks i've drafted

you can definitely lose if you don't get to 4 mana! but wow

i went gruul for the first time yesterday and went 3-0; none of the best uncommons (like the Rampager, Guildmage, or Ground Assault), but I got Clan Defiance and Rubblebelt. Strangely neither of them really showed up for me; Molten Primordial won a lot of my games. The +3/0 and first strike to a blocker instant is a lot like Smite.

now i'm about to pilot this awful Boros deck - went Boros Reckoner, Boros Elite, Syndic, Wojek Halbraders as my first four picks, and those are now four of the five best cards in my deck! (the other is Assemble the Legion)

went all in on the MOCS, playing delver, fuck it, winning

how'd it go? i didn't make it past the prelims last week

just won an 8-man and some 2-mans with this
http://i.imgur.com/FWfizyz.jpg

rest in peace should be purify the grave, i forgot to change them over after i put in the unburial engine

cider, i assume you have considered turning that into a reanimator deck?

i'm thinking of a build in those colors that also utilizes seance (my fav pet card). but not explicitly a seance deck.

problem with it is that seance & spark trooper go very nicely together, but both fatten up the 4 spot.

2 cathedral sanctifier
1 cartel aristocrat
3 fiend hunter
3 boros reckoner
4 falkenrath aristocrat
2 spark trooper
2 aurelia, the warleader
1 angel of glory's rise
1 griselbrand

3 seance

2 fling
1 pit fight

4 blood crypt
4 clifftop retreat
4 dragonskull summit
4 godless shrine
4 isolated chapel
1 mountain
4 sacred foundry

4 faithless looting
2 rakdos's return
2 unburial rites

i don't know what turning it into a reanimator deck even means - if you're willing to go all in on the graveyard then you should just play the combo kill reanimator deck. this deck is a midrange deck that uses faithless looting to help you draw the right cards for the matchup/situation, then has lingering souls and unburial rites to recoup some of the lost card advantage.

also i top 8ed the premier event with it today, and the other guy who was working on it top 4ed the MOCS with it, so i think there's something here

it needs a couple more removal spells though

a buddy of mine just did fairly well at a 1K with an Unexpected Results deck. I feel like aggro would tear it apart but apparently he did quite well. Any deck that includes Enter the Infinite cannot be all bad!!

anyway, at the risk of massively derailing this thread, this here is a lot of fun:
http://www.toothycat.net/wiki/bnf.pl?page=AlexChurchill/MagicCardGenerator

its an auto-card generator, complete with flavor text. i haven't seen a single card yet that R&D would actually print but the results are really entertaining:

Instant (green)
Choose one: untap target permanent; or each player gains 3 life; or draw four cards
--Nature is mightier than the pear
Because a single beetle hunts more swiftly than the greatest colour could
– Thiwi Hardfoot

Converted mana cost: 5

here's another good one

Omelellasu Requen
Planeswalker - Omelellasu (blue, Loyalty 4)
+3: target opponent puts a 1/1 blue Wizard creature token onto the battlefield
-4: You and target opponent each untap and gain control of target creature with shroud the other controls until end of turn. They gain haste until end of turn.
-8: gain control of target legendary Bird until end of turn
--Her suit made of soap is greater than the mightiest ball
– Skefiach, King of the Throne

Converted mana cost: 2

lol