State of the Program for May 13th 2016

In the News:

Magic Online Championship this Weekend: The MOCS Championship is this weekend, and should be starting when this article goes live! The action starts Friday, with three rounds of Legacy followed by four rounds of Standard. Action continues through Sunday on Twitch.tv/magic. Details The MOCS Championship is this weekend, and should be starting when this article goes live! The action starts Friday, with three rounds of Legacy followed by four rounds of Standard. Action continues through Sunday on Twitch.tv/magic. Details here

Modern Dailies and 8Mans to be replaced by Competitive Modern League: As they did with Standard, Wizards will replace the Modern Dailies and single elim 8 man queues with a new Competitive Modern league. Now Modern will, starting May 18th, have both friendly and competitive leagues. The friendly league will have lower prize payouts for top finishers, but pay out to lesser records. The competitive league will have larger prizes for top finishers.

More Vintage: Wizards is changing the times for Vintage Dailies; shifting them to the top of the hour. They are also adding more events. Now we will have Vintage events every day of the week, and three events every Friday and Sunday. This all begins with the May 18th downtime.

Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday Sunday Current

Times -- -- 6:30 p.m. 6:30 p.m. 11:30 a.m.

6:30 p.m. 11:30 a.m.

6:30 p.m. 11:30 a.m.

6:30 p.m. New

Times 5:00 p.m. 5:00 p.m. 6:00 p.m. 6:00 p.m. 7:00 a.m.

11:00 a.m.

7:00 p.m. 7:00 a.m.

11:00 a.m.

7:00 p.m. 7:00 a.m.

11:00 a.m.

7:00 p.m.

Shadows over Innistrad Standard Championship Begins: The Magic Online Shadows over Innistrad Championships will be here soon. The limited Champs is tomorrow, with the Standard Championship next Sunday.

Phantom SoI Sealed Events on Now: Wizards has rolled out Phantom Shadows sealed deck events. They are 6 TIX or 60 Play Points for three rounds of Swiss play. Going 3-0 gets you 90 Play Points, 2-1 breaks even, and 1-2 earns 20 Play Points.

Super Leagues Commence: Randy Buehler is now producing two Super Leagues. The Vintage Super League has begun its qualifying event on Tuesdays, while the Community Super League is playing a variety of formats on Thursdays. Details Randy Buehler is now producing two Super Leagues. The Vintage Super League has begun its qualifying event on Tuesdays, while the Community Super League is playing a variety of formats on Thursdays. Details here

Cool History Article: Over on the mothership, Brian David Marshall leads a Over on the mothership, Brian David Marshall leads a discussion of limited play back in the game’s infancy . You may not remember box drafts, or Rochester drafts, or having the only prerelease for a set happen at the Pro Tour itself, but it is interesting to read about those times. Reading about them is better that actually reliving them. Trust me on that.

More on the Changes to Prize Payouts and Platinum: Helene Bergeot, head of organized play, sat down with LSV and Mashi Scanlan on the ChannelFireball twitch broadcast to talk about the prize payouts for premier events, what platinum means, and how to promote Magic. Helene pointed out that Wizards spends over $4 million in prizes, but more than that on plane tickets to Pro Tours. It was an interesting discussion – watch it Helene Bergeot, head of organized play, sat down with LSV and Mashi Scanlan on the ChannelFireball twitch broadcast to talk about the prize payouts for premier events, what platinum means, and how to promote Magic. Helene pointed out that Wizards spends over $4 million in prizes, but more than that on plane tickets to Pro Tours. It was an interesting discussion – watch it here

The Timeline:

This is a list of things we have been promised, or we just want to see coming back. Another good source for dates and times is the MTGO calendar and the weekly blog, while the best source for known bugs is the Known Issues List . For quick reference, here are some major upcoming events. In addition, there are either one or two online PTQs each weekend, with qualifiers running the three days prior to the PTQ.

Item: date and notes

· Power Nine Challenge: Last Saturday of the month, at 11am Pacific. Next one May 28th.

· Legacy Challenge: Second Saturday of the month, at 11am Pacific. Next one May 14th.

· No Downtime on: June 8 and June 22

· League End Dates: all current leagues end July 27, 2016

· Eternal Masters: online release June 17, 2016. Details : online release June 17, 2016. Details here

· Eldritch Moon Prerelease: July 29-August 1. Details : July 29-August 1. Details here

· From the Vault Lore: releases online October 10, 2016.

Flashback Schedule:

Flashback drafts are 10Tix / 100 Play Points / 2 Tix plus product, not Phantom, single elim and pay out in play points: 200 for first, 100 for second, 50 for third and fourth.

· 2 Time Spiral and 1 Planar Chaos: May 11, 2016 to May 18, 2016

· Time Spiral, Planar Chaos, and Future Sight: May 18, 2016 to May 25, 2016

· Triple Tenth Edition: May 25, 2016 to June 1, 2016

· Triple Lorwyn: likely June 1 to June 8

· 2 Lorwyn, Morningtide: likely June 8 to June 15

· Triple Shadowmoor: likely June 15 to June 22

· 2 Shadowmoor, Eventide: likely June 22 to June 29

Flashback This Week: Flashback drafts are coming back next downtime. The format will soon be Time Spiral / Planar Chaos / Future Sight. Enjoy the format. The only money cards in TS are Ancestral Visions in the rares, and Pendelhaven, Lord of Atlantis and The Rack among the “Time Shifted” cards. In Planar Chaos, the only money card is Flashback drafts are coming back next downtime. The format will soon be Time Spiral / Planar Chaos / Future Sight. Enjoy the format. The only money cards in TS are Ancestral Visions in the rares, and Pendelhaven, Lord of Atlantis and The Rack among the “Time Shifted” cards. In Planar Chaos, the only money card is Damnation . In Future Sight, we have Tarmogoyf, plus Horizon Canopy, Grove of the Burnwillows, Magus of the Moon, Glittering Wish, Venser and Pact of Negation.

Opinion Section: Bulk Commons

Last week, @TolarianAcademy tweeted a request for ideas for SMALL changes that could make MTGO better. The answers were a wide mix of practical, the impractical, the not small (e.g. rebuild MTGO completely) and the ridiculous (make MTGO free to play.) What I found most interesting was that the first couple responses all asked for a method for eliminating spare cards. People talked about a shredder, Wizards auto-bots that would buy for nothing, etc. The first few posts were all about disposing of unwanted commons. (and I’m using commons as a shorthand for commons, bulk uncommons and rares, basic lands and all other unwanted cards.)

In the paper world, commons wind up, basically, in four places. First, a very, very small percentage of the commons end up as playable in Eternal formats, so they live on in trade binders and dealer stock. The number of Brainstorms and Dazes is super low, however, compared to the number of essentially valueless Dehydrations and Lumengrid Wardens. The vast, vast majority of commons are bulk, especially online.

In the paper world, a lot of those types of cards get played on kitchen tables, or in stores by casual players building decks from whatever they own. Casual players buy a lot of less desirable commons either directly, or as a part of “collection builder” boxes. A very large percentage of commons find a home with these casual players. MTGO, however, is not very casual-friendly, so the number of casual players is not large enough to consume a significant portion of the commons available online.

In the paper world, a significant number of bulk commons are held by collectors. My wife and I are collectors, and we fill binders with one copy of every card from every set (where possible – I will admit our collection is short some mythics and old rares.) The point is, however, that collectors buy at least one of each of the bulk commons, and collecting created enough demand to provide at least a little value for the cards. (For example, a bad Alpha common, like Craw Wurm, retails for $7.) Once upon a time, collecting was a thing online. With V4, however, Wizards combined the collection and deckbuilding screen, so you cannot easily look at your collection. That has also helped trash the value of bulk cards.

The fourth place that commons go to, in the paper world, is the trash can. At the end of every limited event or draft, a fair number of bad bulk cards get pitched. Some get used as proxies first, or as bookmarks, or to fold up under wobbly table legs – you get the idea. Online, that does not happen. There is no online trash can. You cannot dump junk cards. They just build up in accounts – and they make deckbuilding slow and difficult. I wrote about that a while back – when I created a separate account just for constructed deckbuilding.

How much of a problem was my large collection? I own almost 250 copies of Pacifism. I own over 5,000 copies of each basic land. I had also spent real money on some full art Unhinged Forests I wanted to use in my constructed decks, but finding them with the deck editor was a real pain. My collection totals well over 100,000 cards. Finding anything in that heap was very, very slow on even my gaming machine. What was worse was that no one was buying those old commons. I would let the buybots lose on the collection, and they would pull out the best 0.01% and ignore the rest. Now I have four accounts – one used for constructed deckbuilding, one for limited and two just stuffed full of bulk cards. And once a month or so I spend a couple hours moving bulk and chaff from the limited account into the storage accounts, and the handful of decent cards I draft over to the constructed account. Yes, this is a total waste of time and effort. I do it because the bulk cards have basically no value at all.

That’s not surprising. There are simply way, way more bulk cards online than players could possibly need.

How many? Well, I asked Heath Newton, owner of this site and of the MTGOTraders.com store and bot chain roughly how many copies of Pacifism he owned. And how many Plains.

Want to guess?

MTGOTraders buys collections. That means they buy everything in the collection. If they buy my collection, they would get my 250 Pacifisms, along with things they actually want.

MTGOTrader.com owns over 55,000 copies of Pacifism. Just Pacifisms. Pacifism has been reprinted a few times, but still – over fifty thousand copies!

MTGOTraders.com owns somewhere around THREE MILLION basic lands.

Is it at all surprising that the vast, vast majority of cards sell for $0.01? They cost that little simply because selling them for even less is not worth running the bot. The Buybots buy chaff for less than that, if they buy it at all.

Right now, Wizards has given us one way – and only one way – of getting rid of this stuff: we can spend $10 for a new account, then move the chaff into that account 400 cards at a time.

There has got to be a better way.

Next week I’ll talk about some better ways, and the pros and cons of all of them.

Judge Question of the Week

I have been training new judges for many years, and part of that training involves setting out scenarios and problems that teach various parts of the rules. They start simple – i.e. a creature with trample is blocked by a creature with protection – and more up. The goal is to determine what areas of the rules I need to teach, and what my candidate already knows. Lagrange asked me to share some, so I will keep throwing them out until people beg for mercy.

I control a Krallenhorde Killer. Last turn my opponent cast two spells, so, at the beginning of my upkeep, the Killer’s transform ability goes on the stack. In response, I activate the Killer’s +4/+4 ability. After it transforms into Wolfbitten Captive, I activate its ability to give it +2/+2 and declare it as an attacker. I then cast Moonmist, transforming Wolfbitten Captive back into Krallenhorde Killer. Can I then activate the ability on Krallenhorde Killer to give it an additional +4/+4?

As always, there are no relevant cards not mentioned. As always, there are no relevant cards not mentioned. Conspiracy , which makes all my creatures into Banana Slugs instead of humans, is not in play.

Cutting Edge Tech:

Standard: We had two Standard GPs last weekend – one in New York and a massive one in Japan. GP Tokyo was over 3,300 players – that’s close to GP Vegas size! (Okay, not that close, but still huge.) The GP NY Coverage is here. The GP Tokyo Coverage is : We had two Standard GPs last weekend – one in New York and a massive one in Japan. GP Tokyo was over 3,300 players – that’s close to GP Vegas size! (Okay, not that close, but still huge.) The GP NY Coverage is here. The GP Tokyo Coverage is here

Modern: Modern may no longer be a Pro Tour format, but it is still being played. I have a couple favorite (paper) decks still built, including a few that are more fun than competitive. One of those is my UB mill deck. I didn’t think that was tournament ready, but it might be getting better. Check this out.

Vintage: The VSL qualifying event is ongoing, and the Bazaar of Moxen – the world’s largest Vintage event – was last weekend. I don’t have access to the BoM decklists, yet, but I do know that the winning deck was similar to the deck Caleb Durward was playing in the VSL Qualifier. Both decks feature Scab-Clan Berserker. The VSL decklists are : The VSL qualifying event is ongoing, and the Bazaar of Moxen – the world’s largest Vintage event – was last weekend. I don’t have access to the BoM decklists, yet, but I do know that the winning deck was similar to the deck Caleb Durward was playing in the VSL Qualifier. Both decks feature Scab-Clan Berserker. The VSL decklists are here

Card Prices:

Note: all my prices come from the fine folks at MTGOTraders.com . These are retail prices, and generally the price of the lowest priced, actively traded version. (Prices for some rare promo versions are not updated when not in stock, so I skip those.) You can get these cards at MTGOTraders.com web store, or from their bots: MTGOTradersBot(#) (they have bots 1-10), CardCaddy and CardWareHouse, or sell cards to MTGOTradersBuyBot(#) (they have buybots 1-4). I have bought cards from MTGOTraders for over a decade now, and have never been overcharged or disappointed.

Standard staples: A bit of play here, in response to recent metagame shifts. Jace is the big loser, again. Collected Company, OTOH, is still climbing. Can CoCo pass Jace?

Modern staples: Modern is a bit more reasonable this week. A couple solid cards that took hits are coming back. Not really sure why Horizon Canopy bumped up so far – next week we will be opening it in flashback drafts.

Legacy and Vintage: Legacy and Vintage are down slightly this week – and Misdirection dropped. That could be an expectation of Eternal Masters – or it could be a nod to the fact that it is not appearing in Vintage Super League play.

Set Redemption: You can redeem complete sets on MTGO. You need to purchase a redemption voucher from the store for $25. During the next downtime, Wizards removes a complete set from your account and sends you the same set in paper.

Complete Set Price Last Week Change % Change Battle for Zendikar $72.78 $72.51 $0.27 0% Dragons of Tarkir $141.10 $139.60 $1.50 1% Magic Origins $122.17 $138.23 ($16.06) -12% Oath of the Gatewatch $114.42 $119.15 ($4.73) -4% Shadows over Innistrad $96.85 $102.92 ($6.07) -6%

The Good Stuff:

The following is a list of all the non-promo, non-foil cards on MTGO that retail for more than $25 per card. These are the big ticket items in the world of MTGO. Worth promised to use the promo program to up the supply of some needed cards. These may qualify. (Gaea’s Cradle made it!) The list is down below 50 cards this week. I’m guessing people are selling now, expecting to rebuy at lower prices when Eternal Masters gets here.

Name Set Rarity Price Rishadan Port MM Rare $ 162.88 Black Lotus VMA Bonus $ 131.75 Misdirection MM Rare $ 94.86 Liliana of the Veil ISD Mythic Rare $ 91.24 Mox Sapphire VMA Bonus $ 60.10 Tangle Wire NE Rare $ 55.51 Wasteland TE Uncommon $ 53.26 Tarmogoyf MMA Mythic Rare $ 50.73 Wasteland TPR Rare $ 50.67 Tarmogoyf MM2 Mythic Rare $ 50.59 Tarmogoyf FUT Rare $ 49.10 Ancestral Recall VMA Bonus $ 48.97 City of Traitors EX Rare $ 45.33 Mox Jet VMA Bonus $ 41.27 Gaea's Cradle UZ Rare $ 40.18 Jace, Vryn's Prodigy ORI Mythic Rare $ 36.94 Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet OGW Mythic Rare $ 36.44 Time Walk VMA Bonus $ 35.65 Underground Sea ME2 Rare $ 35.52 Horizon Canopy FUT Rare $ 35.35 Ensnaring Bridge ST Rare $ 35.30 Exploration UZ Rare $ 35.19 Voice of Resurgence DGM Mythic Rare $ 34.84 Grove of the Burnwillows FUT Rare $ 34.65 Food Chain MM Rare $ 34.36 Mox Ruby VMA Bonus $ 34.05 City of Traitors TPR Rare $ 33.94 Mox Emerald VMA Bonus $ 33.58 Scapeshift MOR Rare $ 33.23 Lion's Eye Diamond MI Rare $ 32.85 Infernal Tutor DIS Rare $ 32.71 Batterskull NPH Mythic Rare $ 31.98 Show and Tell UZ Rare $ 31.88 Collected Company DTK Rare $ 31.65 Mox Pearl VMA Bonus $ 31.62 Celestial Colonnade WWK Rare $ 30.91 Scalding Tarn ZEN Rare $ 30.07 Griselbrand AVR Mythic Rare $ 29.79 Mox Opal MM2 Mythic Rare $ 29.67 Ensnaring Bridge 7E Rare $ 28.37 Ensnaring Bridge 8ED Rare $ 28.11 Containment Priest PZ1 Rare $ 27.91 Cavern of Souls AVR Rare $ 27.80 Mox Opal SOM Mythic Rare $ 27.69 Containment Priest C14 Rare $ 27.64 Verdant Catacombs ZEN Rare $ 27.09 Underground Sea ME4 Rare $ 26.59 Crucible of Worlds 10E Rare $ 25.75 Unmask MM Rare $ 25.18

The big number is the retail price of a playset (4 copies) of every card available on MTGO. Assuming you bought the least expensive versions available, the cost of owning a playset of every card on MTGO is $ 26,240. That’s up about $225 from last week’s number.

Weekly Highlights:

A lot happening this week, but none of it involves Magic, so never mind.

Okay, I did play some add a pack sealed league. I saw more bombs and Mythics than I have in a long time. I had a Sorin, which did win me some games. The one I remember, though, involved +1ing Sorin eight times, and hitting eight lands. Opponent was at one at the time. I lost.

On the other hand, I have a Sorin.

PRJ

“One Million Words” and “3MWords” on MTGO

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

HammyBot Super Sale: HammyBot was set up to sell off Erik Friborg’s collection, with all proceeds going to his wife and son. So far, HammyBot has raised over $8,000, but there are a lot of cards left in the collection. Those cards are being sold at MTGOTrader’s Buy Price.

Judge Question of the Week Answer:

I control a Krallenhorde Killer. Last turn my opponent cast two spells, so, at the beginning of my upkeep, the Killer’s transform ability goes on the stack. In response, I activate the Killer’s +4/+4 ability. After it transforms into Wolfbitten Captive, I activate its ability to give it +2/+2 and declare it as an attacker. I then cast Moonmist, transforming Wolfbitten Captive back into Krallenhorde Killer. Can I then activate the ability on Krallenhorde Killer to give it an additional +4/+4?

No. The abilities on each face of the card are distinct, which allows me to activate each ability during the same turn. However, when a card transforms, it is still the same permanent. The +4/+4 ability it is the same ability used during my upkeep, so it cannot be activated again. I just have to hope that an 8/8 is good enough to get the job done.