Magic: The Gathering C/D

i think phantom drafts are not somewhere they're willing to go, since cube already draws a huge amount of people away from regular drafts and fucks with the card economy every time it goes up.

if people could draft infinitely for like $30 a month it would probably ruin some peoples lives

people always suggest the monthly draft subscription without actually thinking what the results of it would be

they put up free drafts once for an afternoon, earlier this year i think, and the result was that a good chunk of people would join, draft a deck, and then immediately go join another rather than play their matches unless their deck was perfect, meaning the drafts ended up being just a series of byes with few actual matches of magic being played. just like in poker, there needs to be a decently valuable incentive or the game breaks down

or rather, there needs to be an actual cost to entering a draft, or else the drafts won't be playable, as demonstrated in an actual event that happened

I think you could create some point system or make mtgo ratings public again

like let's say you get paired w/ people of similar ranking so if you just lose and drop all the time you don't even get to play in serious drafts

i dont think ratings are enough to disincentivize people from joining a million drafts and only playing the good ones - would at the very least have to be some points system where you can only join X drafts per day by default and can win more entries, plus a ladder/ranking system

even if there's a way to make it work i suspect the subscription model violates all their business strategies and is completely off the table

yeah that last part is true for sure, but I think a ladder/ranking system is totally viable in theory. you can disincentivize losing in lots of different ways (you can't play as often, you can't play good players)

I also think such a system would make a lot of casual players into really, really strong limited players

yeah i will agree with that

i think they've said a new ranking/player stats system is on the table for the future but this server stability crap is presumably pushing everything back several months

They never did anything like a tournament that you have to be at a high enough rating to enter, right? That's one way to make rating more of an incentive. But also agree there's almost no way they're switching to a subscription model at this point

Oh I don't think they should be free, I just think it would be cool if you could play 'em for $1.50 or whatever the phantom points average out to after prizes. That said if you could win packs and actually have a way to use them (say the next time the set comes around on phantom Wednesday) then that would be nice as well.

the result was that a good chunk of people would join, draft a deck, and then immediately go join another rather than play their matches unless their deck was perfect, meaning the drafts ended up being just a series of byes with few actual matches of magic being played

yep this describes why playing on MTGO >>> playing on Netdraft (which may not exist anymore)

xp not that i know of, pretty much all invite-only tournaments use QPs as the basis. i think they don't really want to use the Elo ratings anymore, they're just in there as a leftover from a previous time when they were used in paper magic too. QPs are more analogous to planeswalker points so I suspect they'll continue to be what they use going forward unless they develop a more nuanced OP system for MTGO.

Oh right, QPs. Yeah that's basically the equivalent of inviting based on rating. So I guess rating/QPs is still not enough of an incentive for many to finish the draft if drafting is free. Maybe MTGO should have a draft w/o playing option, like what ccgdecks does. That's always been the most fun part for me anyway. Everyone can just vote on whose deck is best!

haha yeah I would play drafting: the gathering

so flashback drafts are 3tix + packs, or 15tix if you don't have them, with no uptick in prizes. that's kinda shitty.

the old flashback drafts pre-cube-era were 15 tix too, this isn't some new thing, though it does seem to have offended a lot of people this time around

still, their inability to come up with events appealing enough to appease angry modo players rather than generate more invective is pretty uncanny

I thought the old flashbacks were nix tix??

old ones were either nix tix or nix pax - the nix tix ones you needed to have the packs which were often hard to find during the week they were up and would end up costing you at least 2 extra tickets anyway to buy. nix pax ones were 15 tix to enter.

either way kind of a raw deal considering that there's only a small handful of cards worth anything in sets that aren't in Standard. like I can see doing it just for kicks but IMO the Cube is a lot more fun and is cheaper, too. these really should be just the cost of the packs, or at least the same as normal drafts, adding that 3rd ticket in a time where everyone's pissed at MTGO is really off putting

those awesome sealed queues are still up though. I really don't know how they determine the structure of anything anymore.

well there goes my infinite, 1-14 in my last 15 matches. I can't think of any more ways I can lose.

DE/PEs coming back up in a couple weeks barring any unexpected server crashes before then

powered cube is back again too for the holidaze

Had an absolutely ridiculous sealed pool today that included Nighthowler, Disciple of Phenax, Gray Merchant, Insatiable Harpy, Keepsake Gorgon, Hythonia, Abhorrent Overlord, and Ashen Rider. It was very unfair.

http://i.imgur.com/nvlHG5W.jpg

just won back-to-back standard 8-man queues with this, it's pretty decent if you're looking for something playable that isn't mono-blue or mono-black.

hoping that the next set will shake up standard significantly because i am super bummed that really strong multicolor cards like fleecemane lion and ghor-clan rampager are essentially unplayable. this is probably my least favorite standard season since i started playing competitively.

BRAGGIN': went 8-1 during day one of gp toronto, p psyched for tomorrow, have a legit shot at top 8 maybe possibly if i play well &c &c

cool, good luck

nice one lamp, let us know how you get on

Awesome, good luck!

Way to go Lamp!

i went 11-4, 3-3 on day two. i 0-3'd my first draft pod going 1-2, 1-2, 1-2 with a really, really good deck in big part thanks to variance. got a game loss for dropping a card in-between matches and presenting a 39 card deck which was sort of a dagger. but i still probably couldve played tighter and pulled at least one of those matches out. i then proceeded to savagely money draft (got passed two planeswalkers!) and somehow went 3-0, 6-0. really disappointed in my result because i think i drafted exceptionally well and put myself in a position to top 8 and kinda just threw the chance away. anyway it certainly more fun/exciting than top 8ing a mtgo ptq which was my previous best result at a magic event.

That's still quite a good result - did you finish in the money?

no my breakers were pretty bad - my only loss day one was to someone that didnt even make day two. i actually scooped to my opponent round 15 after i beat him because he had a decent chance at top 64 whereas i had none. finished 90th. tbh everyone was kinda sour since this was the last gp under the old payout structure - the same result at a similar sized gp this coming wknd would've netted me $250 :(

also sorry for blogging :(

No need for sorries, I love reading tournament reports! The same thing happened to me at GP Charlotte, where I started out awesome day 1, but lost my first four rounds day 2. I dropped because I couldn't finish in the money anymore, but under the new payout, I think I would have had a shot at money still.

mogis has been kind to me lately, won back-to-back drafts with these eerily similar decks

http://i.imgur.com/xUCLd2a.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/ruUFY19.jpg

those both look insane, though I'd cut a land and the Stoneshock for the Akroan Crusader and the Baleful Eidolon on that first one

i hate crusader without a bunch more ordeals etc than i have there

i think it's fine with 2 dragons mantle

those decks are p nuts but can i say i like the idea of calling color pairs by their respective deities quite a bit

yeah for some reason using the rav guilds and alara shards as names for decks that aren't built with/around cards from those sets has always bothered me

Haha, I thought you meant Fanatic of Mogis. Didn't realize that people referred to decks using deity names at all

Not even sure I know what all the deity names are!

they've all been mentioned on cards already

WU = Ephara
WG = Karametra
WB = Athreos
WR = Iroas
UB = Phenax
UR = Keranos
UG = Kruphix
BR = Mogis
BG = Pharika
GR = spoilers

Did not know that. I suppose just analyzing cards in Theros you could figure it out

when you said Mogis I thought you meant a deck with 2-3 Fanatics as main kill mechanism

that said I find B/R in Theros very intriguing. it seems like one of the few decks that can stay ahead of a good U/W heroic build

you can even figure out most of their subtitles from flavor text & context & the temple names, like karametra = harvest, keranos = mischief, iroas = war, ephara = wisdom, etc.

current rumor based on anonymous sources who have supposedly seen cards from the next set is that U/W, G/W, and B/R temples are in it and then the B/G and U/R are being slowrolled until the 3rd set which i'm not a fan of but at least i'll get my GW temple.

Yeah I guess I knew the names except Keranos but had no idea what colors went with who. I'm sure the names will get used more when we get the actual god cards for them.

I'm bummed that the B/G temple isn't coming in the next set, that was the one I was really anticipating.