Hammie’s The State of the Program for July 19th

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

In the News this Week:

MTGO Wide Beta News: Chris Kiritz wrote Chris Kiritz wrote an article on the status of MTGO and the new client. He recapped the history of Shiny and the Wide Beta Spotlight. He said players were pleased with the appearance of cards and the duel screen (not surprising, given that is the one area of the program that actually works, and works better than the current client.) He then said that feedback on the collection, trade and Play Lobby areas were “more varied.” Not surprising, since these areas have some major holes and bugs.

The bugs may be fixed, but Chris has reiterated the mantra that Wizards is working on “Stability and Performance,” and that “the feature set is locked” until after v3 goes away. This means, in effect, that if the features are not already in Shiny, they won’t be there for a long time. This would definitely include things like being able to expand the graveyard, a binder view for the collection, etc. – they will NOT be in Shiny this year. Other features are more questionable. Chris mentioned that a lot of features players are requesting actually exist, but players cannot find them. Wizards will make some tutorial videos to help players navigate the client.

Finally, Wizards has created a form of free trial in Shiny. This is not the gold bordered “Planeswalker” format we have on v3. Instead, players will be able to play with one of a dozen preconstructed decks. These are not the precons sold in the store – they have some good planewalkers, based on the screen shots I have seen. However, you cannot modify the decks. Still, some form of free trial is better than nothing,

M14 Prerelease and Release Event Details Announced: The M14 digital release date will be July 29th. The Prerelease will begin July 26th and run through July 29th at 10am PDT. Wizards will hold the same events – 6 pack sealed events for 25 TIX and Swiss Draft at 15 TIX. Players get a Megantic Sliver. Regular booster drafts will being Monday at 10am, along with 6 pack sealed for 24 TIX. Details The M14 digital release date will be July 29. The Prerelease will begin July 26and run through July 29at 10am PDT. Wizards will hold the same events – 6 pack sealed events for 25 TIX and Swiss Draft at 15 TIX. Players get a Megantic Sliver. Regular booster drafts will being Monday at 10am, along with 6 pack sealed for 24 TIX. Details here

Rise of the Eldrazi Drafts Return: If you missed the chance to cast Eldrazi battlecruisers via spawn tokens, you have another shot. Rise of the Eldrazi drafts will be back until next Wednesday. Rise drafts will be offered in 4-3-2-2 only. Details If you missed the chance to cast Eldrazi battlecruisers via spawn tokens, you have another shot. Rise of the Eldrazi drafts will be back until next Wednesday.Rise drafts will be offered in 4-3-2-2 only. Details here

Classic Invitational This Weekend: After four rounds of qualifiers, the field for the Classic Invitational has been chosen. The Invitational will be held on Saturday, July 20 at noon EDT. The event will be streamed live at this After four rounds of qualifiers, the field for the Classic Invitational has been chosen. The Invitational will be held on Saturday, July 20 at noon EDT. The event will be streamed live at this link

On Again, Off Again Wide Beta Spotlight will be On, Sometime: Wizards will be holding another Wide Beta Spotlight. Sometime. Chris Kiritz said so in his : Wizards will be holding another Wide Beta Spotlight. Sometime. Chris Kiritz said so in his article . I’m speculating, but I think they were aiming for one before the M14 prerelease. We could see a sudden announcement next week, but I think they missed it. Look for one a few weeks later, hopefully with some sort of discount, like 1 TIX plus product drafts.

MTGO Bug – Double Varolz Regeneration Shield Can Hang Game: If you have several triggers waiting to go on the stack, and sac two creatures to set up regen shields on Varolz, it can hang the program. This happened to Todd Anderson in the PTQ Top 8, and he had quite a fit on social media about it, but Mike Turian of Wizards provided some (undisclosed) fix/compensation which Todd is okay with. So, if you play Varolz, be careful to let any triggers you can resolve before adding more to the stack.

MOCS and a couple PTQs upcoming: The MOCS Season 7 Championship is this weekend. Wizards will host a PTQ for Silver Pro Tour Players only and one for Gold Pro Tour Players only, both on Saturday evening, plus a PTQ for the rest of us on Sunday.

Long Downtime Next Week: Downtime will start early next week, and run long. Wizards will be loading the M14 cards, the rule changes, and some fixes.

Password Reset Issue: (From Wizards) For users who need to reset their password, please be aware that For users who need to reset their password, please be aware that this form is not working as intended. If you need to reset your password and encounter an issue, please use the Forgotten Magic Online password form on our Knowledge Base (after logging in) to get Game Support help in resetting your password.

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 over 6,000 TIX! Don’t stop now! Hammiebot still has 26,383 cards to sell, including a bunch of foils and a number of slivers. If you are considering Slivers in Modern once M14 arrives, check it out. If you prefer pimp-out modern or Legacy decks, check out the shiny Harmonic Sliver.

M14 Analysis: Is There a Tome Scour Deck? (a/k/a How Fast is the Format)

M14 isn’t on MTGO, yet, but we can play with the paper cards. So I did. Ingrid and I opened some packs, and I tracked (okay, photoed) their contents. That let me recreate some sealed decks. My goal was to get a feel for how fast the sealed format was, then use that data to see whether a mill deck was possible.

Test Build One:

Green Blue Red Land & Artifacts Elvish Mystic 2 Kalonian Tusker Predatory Sliver Brindle Boar Phantom Warrior 2 Trained Condor Scroll Thief Nephalia Seakite Messenger Drake 8 Forest 7 Island 2 Mountain 2 Lay of the Land Hunt the Weak Garruk Howl of the Night Pack Disperse Time Ebb Frost Breath Domestication 2 Shock Sliver Construct

I played ten goldfish games – games where the hypothetical opponent did nothing but play lands. That means cards like Time Ebb, Disperse and Hunt the Weak are all dead, but having no blockers balances that out. The deck seemed very good – I’d be happy to open it in a prerelease or release event. It also seemed pretty quick and efficient. Despite on test game with a mulligan and flood that went to turn nine, and a double mulligan mess that couldn’t finish off a defenseless opponent until turn ten, the deck killed on turn 7.1 on average.

Test Build Two:

White Black Land & Artifacts Capashen Knight Imposing Soveriegn Steelform Sliver 3 Master of Diversion Charging Griffin 2 Pillarfield Ox Dawnstrike Paladin Siege Mastadon Child of Night 2 Undead Minotaur 2 Deathgaze Cockatrice Sengir Vampire Vampire Warloard Nightmare 10 Swamp 7 Plains Show of Valor Quag Sickness Corrupt Haunted Plate Mail

This deck plays some really bad cards, like the oxen, but it does so to stay consistent. I could have splashed other colors, but with cards with both double white and double black casting costs, that would have cost games through color screw. The deck, as built, was extremely consistent. Looking at my notes, I found one deck where I was not attacking for a three drop on turn four, and curving out from there. While I would have been really happy with a couple more 2/2s for 2 mana, but this worked. The deck killed on turn seven very consistently.

Test Build Three:

Green White Red Land & Artifacts 2 Advent of the Beast Elvish Mystic 2 Deadly Recluse 2 Brindle Boar Briarpack Alpha Predatory Sliver Manaweft Sliver Witchstalker 2 Serra Angel Stonecutter Chanter Academy Raider Goblin Shortcutter 7 Forest 6 Island 4 Mountain 2 Hunt the Weak Giant Growth Howl of the Night Pack Pascifism Show of Valor Flames of the Blood Hand Sliver Construct

Mana was more of an issue with this deck, since it lacked the pair of Lay of the Land that really helped the first three color build. However, the Serra Angels were quite powerful – and Hunt the Weak combos with Serra Angels quite well. This deck also showed a fairly consistent turn seven kill – although I had one game where I drew a ton of lands and no forests – and finally played Howl of the Night Pack for a single wolf on turn ten. The Academy Raider was also quite useful.

Consensus: based on tests of three sealed pools, I expect that most decks in the format can kill on turn seven. Draft decks should be more focused, and should be faster. This means that, to kill with a mill deck, you either need to be able to kill by turn six, or protect yourself while killing.

By turn seven, a deck will have drawn six cards on the play. That leaves 27 cards in the library – meaning it will take at least five Tome Scours and a bit more to deck the opponent. To consistently draw five Tome Scours in your first six turns would require having 15-16 Tome Scours in your deck, which is impossible. The only other mill in the set is Millstone, at uncommon, plus Jace’s MIndseeker at rare, and Jace at Mythic. In addition, you can use card draw to dig for mill card, and Archeomancer to replay those cards. It seems like a stretch, but I decided to give it a try.

Best Mill Deck I Could “Assemble”:

Blue White Land & Artifacts Wall of Frost Armored Cancrix Archeomancer Seacoast Drake Jace’s Mindseeker 2 Siege Mastadon Pillarfield Ox Dawnstrike Paladin Angelic Wall 10 Island 7 Plains 6 Tome Scour Time Ebb Sensory Depredation Divination Opportunity Pascifism 2 Millstone

I did not have a mill deck in any of the sealed decks we built, but some of the packs had some interesting packs. I reassembled the packs, to the best of our memories, and pulled together the five best packs we had, then added an additional pack which, we pretended, had a foil and regular Tome Scour and a Millstone. From that I built the mill deck shown above. It has mill, card draw, a fair amount of card drawn and defense, and is pretty close to as good a mill deck as I could imagine seeing.

It wasn’t good enough.

I banged it up against the sealed decks listed above. The mill deck managed a 1-4 record against the first deck, a 2-3 record against the BW deck (and only because it got really lucky) and a 0-5 record against the third deck.

My recommendation: unless you open a Jace, avoid the mill strategy. It’s a trap. If you do open a Jace, build a deck conventionally, and just mill if you land Jace and can protect it.

Cutting Edge Tech:

Nothing this week. In the paper world, we had prereleases. Online, we had nothing but pre M14 events. Next week, we should have something a lot more interesting.

Card Prices:

MTGOTraders Bots, so check out mtgotradersbot, mtgotradersbot2,mtgotradersbot3, mtgotradersbot4, mtgotradersbot5, CardCaddy and CardWareHouse. These Bots often have the cards in stock even when the online store shows as out. Now, on to prices. Notes: All my prices come from MTGOTraders.com . For cards that are available in multiple sets, I am quoting the most recent set’s price. Thus, the price I’m quoting for Garruk Relentless is from M13. These cards are also available from theso check out mtgotradersbot, mtgotradersbot2,mtgotradersbot3, mtgotradersbot4, mtgotradersbot5, CardCaddy and CardWareHouse. These Bots often have the cards in stock even when the online store shows as out. Now, on to prices.

Standard prices generally down, but not a lot. It’s just the usual mid-summer blahs..

Modern prices are climbing, now that Modern Masters is gone and no longer adding cards to the pool. Several of the chase cards are rebounding. Actually, almost everything is rebounding as we head for a Modern PTQ season.

Legacy and Classic are pretty stable. Really stable. If you ignore Flusterstorm, nothing happened. .

Pauper prices are jumping around again this this week. As always.

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. This week, the dual lands were the big gainers, while the chase cards that were in Modern Masters started climbing back.

Card Rarity Set Price Lion's Eye Diamond R MI $ 129.75 Force of Will R MED $ 93.62 Rishadan Port R MM $ 77.66 Show and Tell R UZ $ 66.37 Wasteland U TE $ 65.62 Tarmogoyf M MMA $ 65.00 Tarmogoyf R FUT $ 61.71 Misdirection R MM $ 57.48 Jace, the Mind Sculptor M WWK $ 53.08 Gaea's Cradle R UZ $ 49.74 Liliana of the Veil M ISD $ 44.97 Tangle Wire R NE $ 44.64 Voice of Resurgence M DGM $ 43.30 Underground Sea R ME4 $ 42.23 Underground Sea R ME2 $ 40.49 Mox Opal M SOM $ 39.30 City of Traitors R EX $ 35.89 Thoughtseize R LRW $ 34.84 Vampiric Tutor R VI $ 33.35 Vindicate R AP $ 31.99 Sphinx's Revelation M RTR $ 31.35 Geist of Saint Traft M ISD $ 29.65 Karn Liberated M NPH $ 29.49 Vendilion Clique M MMA $ 28.92 Vendilion Clique R MOR $ 28.52 Batterskull M NPH $ 28.00 Tropical Island R ME4 $ 27.17 Natural Order R VI $ 26.47 Bonfire of the Damned M AVR $ 26.00 Underground Sea R PRM $ 26.00 Bayou R ME4 $ 25.99 Tropical Island R ME3 $ 25.92 Bayou R ME3 $ 25.91 Tundra R ME2 $ 25.47

The big number is the retail price of a playset (4 copies) of every non-foil 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 $23,076 That’s up about $250 since last week. Prices are recovering from Modern Masters (since I total the lowest priced version of each card, the introduction of Modern Masters reduced the big number quite a bit.)

Weekly Highlights:

Too much other stuff: although I ran a couple prereleases, I have not played any Magic in over a week. It hasn’t been all work, though: I ran a couple really fun RPGs – but that’s not worth discussing here.

PRJ

“one million words” on MTGO.