The State of the Program for November 1st 2013

This series is an ongoing tribute to Erik “Hamtastic” Friborg.

In the News this Week:

Hero’s Path Standard Events Introduced: Wizards has added Hero’s Path Standard Daily events to the calendar. The Hero’s Path events use Standard decks, but add two Hero’s Path avatars. These avatars were available during the prerelease and release events, and in the Face the Hydra preliminaries. Details on the format, such as they are, are Wizards has added Hero’s Path Standard Daily events to the calendar. The Hero’s Path events use Standard decks, but add two Hero’s Path avatars. These avatars were available during the prerelease and release events, and in the Face the Hydra preliminaries. Details on the format, such as they are, are here . I feature a couple successful Hero’s Path decks in the Cutting Edge Tech section, below, if you are curious about the format.

Classic Events Cut: To make room for the Hero’s Path events, eleven of the twelve of the Classic Daily events were removed from the calendar. One slot – Saturday evening – was left as Classic. Three were converted, at least for now, to Modern, and the other eight are now Hero’s Path.

Two Ticket Tuesdays: Wizards will be offering discounted Phantom M14 sealed events on Tuesdays in November. The events will fire every two hours, and will cost either 2 TIX or 4 Phantom TIX. They will be 5 rounds, and apparently have exactly 32 players. Winner gets 6 packs of M14, second place gets 4, third and fourth get 2, and fifth through eighth get a booster. Details here . Wizards will be offering discounted Phantom M14 sealed events on Tuesdays in November. The events will fire every two hours, and will cost either 2 TIX or 4 Phantom TIX. They will be 5 rounds, and apparently have exactly 32 players. Winner gets 6 packs of M14, second place gets 4, third and fourth get 2, and fifth through eighth get a booster.

MTGO Developer’s Article: Jon Loucks has written another article about the work being done on the MTGO interface. This time he talks about context menus – the pop ups that describe what a card does, etc. It’s good to see the level of thought going into the interface. It is also nice to see that Wizards is following through on their promise to have at least an article a week appear on Jon Loucks has written another article about the work being done on the MTGO interface. This time he talks about context menus – the pop ups that describe what a card does, etc. It’s good to see the level of thought going into the interface. It is also nice to see that Wizards is following through on their promise to have at least an article a week appear on MTGOnline.com

Theros Land Grant: Early in Theros play, almost all boosters gave out just one art for each basic lands in Theros. This caused problems for players wanting to complete collections for redemption. To fix this problem, any player who was logged in to MTGO from October 4th to October 23rd will be given be given 20 regular and 20 foil copies of each Theros land.

Redemption Deadline Here: Redemption for Scars of Mirrodin, Mirrodin Besieged,

New Phyrexia and Magic 2012 will end on Monday. If you want to redeem any of these sets, do it this weekend.

R&D Hydra Challenges Have Begun: The The Face the Hydra Challenge Preliminaries are over. The four challengers are The_Great_Dustini, Parasprite, zepyon2 and CLYDE THE GLIDE DREXELER. (There should be a fifth, but not posted yet.) The winners will play against members of Wizards R&D piloting “the Hydra. “ The R&D team will include Ryan Spain. Jon Loucks, Dave Guskin, Sam Stoddard, and Dave Humpherys. Time is yet to be determined. If three or more of the champions are victorious in their trials against the Hydra, all players who have logged in between October 4 and November 6 will receive a Hydra Avatar. If R&D wins, no avatars.

Player Rewards for November: The store activity promo is an alternative art The store activity promo is an alternative art Duplicant . The event activity promo is Desertion . Nice!

Commander 2013 Arriving in December: (from last week) In another demonstration that supporting two clients at once is tough, the (from last week) In another demonstration that supporting two clients at once is tough, the Commander 2013 set will not appear online until about 6 weeks after it is released in paper. Jace v. Vraska , the next duel deck, will arrive in paper in March, but not appear online until May.

HammyBot Update: It’s still around, and still a great way to get cards and support the family of the late Erik Friborg. So far, Hammybot has raised almost 6,200 TIX! Keep it going! Hammybot still has about 25.5k cards to sell, including a number of foil Mythics. It also has some sweet old cards that you might suddenly find you need. If you want some classic (or Vintage) cards, you can buy them at market prices and help out Hammy’s family through HammyBot. It’s a win-win.

Opinion Section: The Disappearance of Classic

Classic is now down to just one scheduled Daily per week. I cannot say I am surprised. The Classic community struggled to fire events. In the past year, their efforts were concentrated on the one remaining time slot: Saturday evening. Even so, that event only fired a couple times a month.

There is something fundamentally wrong with a format that cannot garner 16 players at a time, when drawing from a worldwide pool of players.

Actually, there are several. The first is obvious: cost. Like it’s real-world counterpart, Vintage, Classic costs a ton. To make it worse, several very expensive cards, like Mishra’s Workshop, are only legal in the format. Other very, very expensive cards are only legal in Classic and Legacy. This means the cost of getting into Classic is high, and that cost does not buy you much else. By comparison, if you buy into block constructed, many of your cards are also useful in Standard, and possibly even Modern.

This isn’t helped by the fact that the prize payout for all constructed Dailies is the same, regardless of whether this is Classic or Pauper or Standard. I can understand why Wizards does this – once they start modifying prize payouts based on cost of decks, or complexity of format, or phases of the moon or whatever, they will need to be rebalancing prize payouts constantly. There is just one obviously fair prize payout – everyone gets the same. Everything else would produce constant griping and endless work. That said, having universal prize payouts does mean that Classic is not where you want to be if you see MTGO in terms of profit and loss. Even if you see it as a hobby, Classic has a pretty high bucks per game ratio.

The other problem with Classic is that the format is dominated by some of the most unfun archetypes in Magic. Long ago, Wizards learned that players did not like certain strategies: strategies that prevented players from being able to play their spells. The biggest offenders were mana denial and pure counter decks. Wizards stopped printing cheap Land Destruction, like Stone Rain, in Kamigawa block, and the last true Draw-Go deck was probably Psychatog, back in Odyssey. Next most hated, after draw-go and mana denial, are non-interactive combo decks.

A big problem with Classic is that the format is dominated by these sorts of decks. Players like to play spells, summon creatures and battle. The biggest deck in the format, Shops, locks up your mana and makes it impossible to play spells. Oath decks punish you for playing creatures. And the remaining decks generally kill you with a nasty combo, or with Jace the Mind Sculptor, which is also not universally loved.

I’m not just dissing Classic here. I like Classic, and I have probably played more Sanctioned Classic than Modern, and for a while, probably more Classic than Standard. (Truth be told, I so rarely get a chance to play a Daily event that I rarely play sanctioned constructed.) I’m just pointing out that the format has some problems attracting players, and that has meant Classic events don’t fire. I’m not at all surprised that Wizards cut the events. Hero’s Path has already fired more events this month than Classic, and it will soon fire more than Classic has this year.

Once Vintage rolls around, I expect to see it get a spot in the lineup, replacing the weakest format at that time. Until then, we will have to be content with Saturday Night Classic.

Cutting Edge Tech:

Standard: The biggest Standard tournament last week was the SCG Invitational, along with the Standard and Legacy Opens, all in Indianapolis. The Invitational was won by future (probably) Hall of Famer Brad Nelson, beating current Hall of Famer William “Huey” Jensen in the finals.

Hero’s Path Standard: This is a new format created as part of the prerelease and release events. Wizards has added eight Hero’s Path Daily events to the calendar. The format is basically Standard, but with two Hero’s Path avatars as the 61st and 62nd cards. The new client includes a filter for the format. I have not yet tried the format; I’m hoping to remedy that this weekend. So far, Wizards has posted decklists from two Hero’s Path events. Here are the winning decklists. From what I have seen, the Avatar that lets you loot – the Harvester – is ubiquitous, with the ones giving haste common in creature decks, and the Slayer, which gives 7 more life, being played mainly in control decks.

Modern: We had a We had a Modern GP , so we get a chance to see what the pros play. That’s interesting, and not necessarily representative of the MTGO metagame for three reasons. First, the event was in Europe, which tends to have a slightly different metagame from the states when it comes to Eternal formats. Second, pros can generally beg or borrow a deck – especially those sponsored by stores – to a greater extent than MTGO grinders do for Dailies. Third, pros tend to keep their best brews for upcoming events, so we have the potential for some sweet new tech. This time around, not so much. We had a Tron, an Infect, two Living End decks, a Jund, two Splinter Twin and an Affinity deck in the Top 8. As for Theros cards, one Living End deck sideboarded Anger of the Gods , but that was it.

Pauper: Two weeks or so ago I took Chain Lightning off the list of pauper cards because it wasn’t being played, and its price was well under a dollar. Its price is still low, but two 4-0 decks had Chain Lightning in the most recent Pauper Daily. Here’s the highest ranking deck.

Theros Block Constructed: The metagame is forming. The winning deck in the most recent : The metagame is forming. The winning deck in the most recent TBC Premier event was RG, as were the majority of the rest of the Top 8. We also saw a mono-black, a UG build and one RB deck. GR, though, is the 800 lb. gorilla this week.

RG Beats

Drevopolom, Winner, THS Block Constructed Premier #6162848 on 10/28/2013

10 Forest

6 Mountain

1 Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx

4 Temple of Abandon

3 Temple of Mystery

4 Temple of Triumph

4 Arbor Colossus

2 Boon Satyr

4 Ember Swallower

2 Polis Crusher

2 Polukranos, World Eater

4 Stormbreath Dragon

4 Sylvan Caryatid

4 Lightning Strike

2 Xenagos, the Reveler

3 Fade into Antiquity

2 Hunt the Hunter

1 Mistcutter Hydra

4 Peak Eruption

2 Spark Jolt

2 Time to Feed

1 Xenagos, the Reveler

Legacy: Reid Duke missed the Top8 in the SCG Invitational this week, which meant he could play in the Legacy Open on Sunday. He won it. The Top 16 is : Reid Duke missed the Top8 in the SCG Invitational this week, which meant he could play in the Legacy Open on Sunday. He won it. The Top 16 is here , but the most interesting deck is probably Reid’s. After Reid’s Bant deck, I next clicked on the two Elves decks. I wondered if they have some new Theros tech, but they are just traditional Elves with the Natural Order package. As for the Invitational itself, both Brad and Huey played Sneak and Show in the finals.

Card Prices:

MTGOTraders Bots, so check out mtgotradersbot, mtgotradersbot2, mtgotradersbot3, mtgotradersbot4, mtgotradersbot5, CardCaddy and CardWareHouse, as well as from Notes: All my prices come from MTGOTraders.com . For cards that are available in multiple sets, I am quoting the lower price. Thus, the price I’m quoting for Thoughtseize is generally the Theros price. In certain other cases (e.g Brainstorm) I will note which version I track. All these cards are generally available from theso check out mtgotradersbot, mtgotradersbot2, mtgotradersbot3, mtgotradersbot4, mtgotradersbot5, CardCaddy and CardWareHouse, as well as from the website directly. Now, on to prices.

Standard prices are jumping around a bit. The big losers are Theros rares, which are finally appearing in large enough numbers to push their prices down.

Modern prices slowly recovering from their recent drop. Those players who sold out to afford Theros now have Theros, so the supply of Modern cards entering the market has shrunk.

Pauper bounced around a bit this week. A few adjustments, but nothing major. At least, not major for Pauper. It is a volatile format.

Legacy and Classic were down slightly this week, but not universally.

The Good Stuff:

The Good Stuff starts with a list of the non-foil, non-premium cards on MTGO that cost more than $25 each. Force of Will is holding at a touch over $100 – the promo version is nominally cheaper, but there are still none in stock.

Card Rarity Set Price Lion's Eye Diamond R MI $ 157.72 Force of Will R MED $ 99.76 Rishadan Port R MM $ 97.63 Force of Will R PRM $ 93.12 Show and Tell R UZ $ 88.82 Misdirection R MM $ 79.52 Wasteland U TE $ 79.39 Tarmogoyf M MMA $ 78.56 Tarmogoyf R FUT $ 75.31 Gaea's Cradle R UZ $ 60.34 City of Traitors R EX $ 56.64 Liliana of the Veil M ISD $ 47.00 Underground Sea R ME2 $ 43.83 Mox Opal M SOM $ 41.33 Sphinx's Revelation M RTR $ 37.72 Vampiric Tutor R VI $ 36.41 Jace, the Mind Sculptor M WWK $ 34.24 Underground Sea R ME4 $ 33.20 Natural Order R VI $ 32.72 Tropical Island R ME4 $ 32.28 Tropical Island R ME3 $ 31.55 Tangle Wire R NE $ 31.46 Bayou R ME4 $ 30.65 Karn Liberated M NPH $ 30.63 Jace, Architect of Thought M RTR $ 30.05 Sneak Attack R UZ $ 29.37 Tundra R ME4 $ 29.28 Bayou R ME3 $ 29.26 Voice of Resurgence M DGM $ 29.12 Vendilion Clique M MMA $ 28.97 Tundra R ME2 $ 28.95 Vindicate R AP $ 28.94 Volcanic Island R ME4 $ 28.47 Mishra's Workshop R ME4 $ 28.28 Vendilion Clique R MOR $ 27.63 Flusterstorm R CMD $ 27.06 Dark Confidant M MMA $ 26.88 Mana Drain R ME3 $ 26.69 Volcanic Island R ME3 $ 26.60

The big number is the retail price of a playset (4 copies) of every card available on MTGO. Assuming you bought the least expensive version available, the cost of owning a playset of every card on MTGO you can own is $24,420. That’s the same as last week. Looks like the price drops have slowed, at least for now.

Weekly Highlights:

I worked the SCG Invitational last weekend. It was a ton of fun, but a couple 12 hour days, bracketed by work and 7 hour drives to and from, meant I played very little MTGO. This weekend I will be at TeslaCon , which will be awesome, but thereafter I may actually get to sling some digital cards. At least, I hope so.

PRJ

“one million words” on MTGO.