Is there an article that compares of the ques pre- and post chance to be found somewhere, or is this just something you observed personally?
I doubt it as WoTC doesn't release this kind of information publicly. That said you can make a pretty fair assessment about the number of people playing Release Events based on the price of the released set's cards, in particular mythics and rares, while the Release Events are running. It's not full proof or as accurate as aggregated data from the queue rooms themselves would be but it's all we have.
Also, Sealed has tended to be the most popular and best way to get cards into the system on MTGO during past Release Events. It was easy to play at a net gain or near break even rate in Sealed Release Event queues. Given that it's the only way in which Release events have changed since M14 and now, any dip in the number of players joining Release Event queues can probably be attributed to the recent change in payout. I know it's not empirical but it's the best we can do with limited information.
I think a lot of people are upset about this change, not solely because it's a downgrade in payouts of a release event, but because it's the latest part of a trend we've been seeing in MTGO over the last year or so. Specifically the lowering of payouts and altering of entry costs. See Cube drafts, 4 Pack Sealed, Phantom Sealed and just now this.
A lot of questions end up getting asked when a company makes these sort of changes in relatively rapid succession and so far we've only gotten relatively vague answers if any at all. Here's the answer Worth posted on Reddit;
The short version is that we pay very close attention to who is playing what, how people who win (and dont win) prizes behave in the system, etc etc. The list of behaviors we track is very long. Sometimes we want to change things up (like in the case) by reducing the payouts on one type of tournament structure, flattening the payouts on another, and boosting yet another.
This is pretty vague but my take on it is that they have a vision for how they want the system of events to work on MTGO, who plays what and why etc.
Overall, I think this is a dangerous approach by WOTC. Targeting events at a certain demographic while intentionally making it unattractive to another leads to a divided player base. It also can have unforeseeable affects on the MTGO economy as well as in other areas that WOTC has realistically no control over.
This change isn't going to kill MTGO, I don't believe, WOTC has enough info that they know that. It is however disturbing to the player base who are quick to speculation and seemingly devoid of a clear, concise answer as to why these changes are being put into place and what their repercussions are meant to be.
Now a days Macs and PCs run on what is essentially the same hardware and that is usually the limiting factor of how well something runs. My guess is that your Mac runs things better than your PC because it has better hardware than your PC does. You say yourself your PC is old.
The problem with porting MTGO to Mac is a coding one as was mentioned earlier in the thread. Microsoft also owns a lot of the tech that games use. .Net is Microsoft owned as well as DirectX, meaning Apple would have to pay Microsoft to use them.
I think right now the initial investment vs return on creating a Mac based client for MTGO is not in Wizards favor. PCs are more common and generally cheaper and Wizards has their hands full just keeping the current client updated and running properly. Maybe when they get more adept and updates come smoother and feel less necessary we'll see a Mac version of MTGO.
Have to wonder how this will work. Will you lose the cards if you redeem paper for online? Having to mail your cards to Wizards and have them put them into your online collection would be an enormous hassle on both ends. Or will it be a double value thing for paper cards? You get the online versions through a redemption code and the booster/precon that you bought?
Either way, the fact that Wizard's sees competition on the horizon is probably good news for customers.
It's not so much that 6 and 7 drops are uncastable, you can certainly live to turn 6 or 7. It's that those 6 and 7 drops don't do enough to bring you back from being behind on their own. You need to already have a pretty stable board position or eaten up enough of your opponents removal with previous plays in order for those big drop monsters to have any effect on the board. Meaning you have to have a lot of low drops (the removal in this format is either very narrow or takes too much time to get off) in order to be in a position to drop a game ending bomb.
This results in a format where hands that can't do anything before turn four are garbage because if your opponent goes 2 drop 3 drop 4 drop and you only have a 4 drop you're going to be in a bad place. Yes, if you know your opponent is playing a slow deck you have some room to breath but you won't know that until after game 1 and you certainly won't know that during draft or deck construction so you have to build your deck to be able to handle your opponent going 2 drop 3 drop 4 drop or something along those lines. It really narrows down what's playable and what's not, couple that with the fact that you're forced into a set number of archetypes in GTC because the most powerful cards are multicolor and you've got a format that has no depth and can lead to just absolutely frustrating games, or even worse you with an unplayable deck.
Over all I just don't like the format. It reminds me far too much of AVR in it's narrowness. I'm not saying it's as bad as AVR was, it's not, but it's certainly a close relation.
Sad to see 4-Booster sealed go. I had a lot of fun with ISD and M13 4-Booster events. Can't say the same for RTR and AVR ones but those formats weren't the best on the limited side of things anyways. It was still nice to have a break from drafts or constructed without having to wait for a sealed event to fire in the Events Room, which for older formats, doesn't really happen all that often.
I'm not a huge fan of Phantom events outside of Cube on MTGO. Limited sort of loses it's luster a bit knowing that you opened or could open that sweet mythic/rare and don't actually get to keep it. The lack of a decent payout doesn't help either.
Overall, I don't think this is the best of changes and I can't remember seeing an outcry for the change in the first place. I don't really understand why Wizard's felt like it was a good decision. Unless maybe we're going to be seeing more sets like AVR or RTR were the amount of good playables at common is relatively low so as to wildly unbalance it even more as a format. I don't know, I just can't see how this helps the community or players as a whole. Maybe if you're new it's a good change but I feel like new players might get put off by the fact that if they lose, they get nothing, where as before they at least got some cards out of the deal.
Perfectly stated. I think the only thing that will keep these decks in check are nut draws from Rakdos players and the price of the deck (280-350 depending on the version).
I've been watching all of the replays from the dailies and one thing that seems interesting is that UWR has a big edge in the mirror because Counterflux cannot be countered. In the UWx mirrors without red whoever resolves Jace, Architect of Thought , or a Sphinx's Revelation pretty much wins so there's usually a counter war over one of those 2 cards, but against UWR they can always stop their opponents spells or make sure that theirs resolves. I Initially started the format with UWR in mind but liked the idea of ramping to Angel of Serenity quickly and consistently to stop the aggro decks, but if the meta turns to control mirrors then maybe UWR is the way to go.
Yeah, Counterflux gives a big edge to UWR in the control matchups. Being able to counter a bomb or a Jace with no chance of them countering back can be huge. Just being able to be an extra counterspell on top of Syncopate and Cancel is an advantage itself.
While I agree that Rakdos can and does win against the control lists out there it does have the problem of limited reach. Rakdos' Return and Annihilating Fire/Explosive Impact aren't as good as Devil's Play and Brimstone Volley were in the Boros decks of ISD Block at finishing an opponent. Also, Rakdos lacks a strong or consistent one drop, something like Gravecrawler/Diregraf Ghoul or Champion of the Parish. The Bant control decks also have strong defenses against the early Rakdos rush with Centaur Healer usually main deck and Loxodon Smiter post board. Slaughter Games does do wonders but it's kind of narrow, so you have to be able to eliminate the other threats they can throw out with removal, like a Jund control style deck would do, or throw multiple Slaughter Games at them. Also, again the Bant lists play multiple threats in Angel of Serenity, Armada Wurm, Jace and Supreme Verdict.
I updated the OP with the actual decklist that won.
Is it worth the inconsistency with the green splash to get armada wurm, centaur healer and loxodon smiter? You're playing double blue, double green and triple white cards. You also want g/w on turn 3 for centaur healer. A deck that 3-1'd that daily played 4 Gatecreeper Vine in his bant deck, which seems miserable. It's basically draw a land and gain 2-4 life. Is Chromatic lantern better? If you play 4 lanterns would it be better to just play 4-5 colors?
I think Lyev Skyknight is perfectly playable in a u/w or u/w/x deck.
What about playing a bunch of detain cards into Jace into Azor's Elocutors, into Palisade Giant, into angel of serenity into winning X turns later? Is that too cute? Who can break that lock besides the mirror? I guess the Elocutors are garbage on their own. I haven't played palisade giant, but it seems like it'd be okay in a control deck. The giant protects jace from everything except vraska and dreadbore.
The fixing in RTR is much more supportive of triple color decks than previous Blocks, with both Guildgates and Shocklands it's not too difficult to get the mana you need when you need it. Most of the powerful early game cards you'll be playing don't require a huge amount of any one color except maybe Jace but you'll probably hope to be stabilized somewhat before you let him hit the board, unless you really need to search for an answer with his -2. As for Gatecreeper Vine and Chromatic Lantern, they're both dead draws later in the game and drawing multiples of either early isn't the best. Keyrunes are your best bet for fixing as they can block and attack as well as helping to fix your mana and accelerate out a threat a turn or two earlier.
Lyev Skynight is playable but it also dies to a lot more than say a Centaur Healer or a Loxodon Smiter would, so it's worse on the defense but better on the offense and in a control type deck for a three drop creature, you'll want something more defensive. Detain though can be good, some lists play Inaction Injunction in the sideboard for a little bit of a delay and it cycles which is an advantage. Elocutors is just too slow, it gives them 5 turns to draw an answer or something that goes over the top of it and trying to get it and Palisade Giant out to combo is too unreliable to really work.
I explain why I think UWx is the best deck in about 20 paragraphs in my thread. I'm watching the current RTR Constructed Daily on MTGO right now and all the top decks are Bant control. Rakdos is getting crushed and Selesnya Populate seems to be doing alright. UWx just has every tool it needs in every match up in the meta. Since this is a single block format right now there aren't a wide variety of threats to choose from but there are some broad answers. That means while your opponents are forced into using sub par threats you have powerful ways to deal with them. You say Angel of Serenity is too slow against Aggro but when you drop Jace or Supreme Verdict on turn 4 and then begin to stabilize with Sphinx's Revelation into Angel, it doesn't seem that hard. Sure Slaughter Games removes Angel but you still have Jace, Armada Wurm and Keyrunes to finish off your opponent. I guess we'll see who's right.
Basically, I agree with you on this. UWx seems to be the deck to beat in Block at the moment and for the foreseeable future. More specifically UWG but I could also see UWR making a showing if the meta develops along lines that allow it but it seems the more "vulnerable" of the two to hate.
Here's why for those wondering. UWx runs along the same lines as traditional control decks, it has the things in block any control deck needs to survive: Life gain with Centaur Healer/Sphinx's Revelation, to get out of the "reachable" range of any burn. Board stabilizing effects in Jace and Supreme Verdict to put a stop to incoming damage early on when it matters. Card draw to dig for answers and stay ahead when the game goes long with Jace and Sphinx's Revelation. And finally big finishers that are hard to answer like Angel of Serenity and Armada Wurm. It even has access to 3 pretty decent counterspells; Syncopate, Cancel and Counterflux to put them ahead against any other control deck.
Add to this the fact that aggro, the traditional enemy of control is missing some big pieces of their toolkit. Most notably a lack of good 1 and 2 drops as well as some substantial "reach" cards, such as strong equipment and burn and you have a meta where a control deck (especially with a strong walker like Jace on its side) can thrive.
There may be a few other decks that crop up in the meta in the long term but I haven't seen or found anything that has a really favorable win percentage against the current Bant lists. Maybe I'm wrong and there will be. I honestly hope that's the case because right now this is looking like a 1-2 maybe 3 deck format at most.
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I doubt it as WoTC doesn't release this kind of information publicly. That said you can make a pretty fair assessment about the number of people playing Release Events based on the price of the released set's cards, in particular mythics and rares, while the Release Events are running. It's not full proof or as accurate as aggregated data from the queue rooms themselves would be but it's all we have.
Also, Sealed has tended to be the most popular and best way to get cards into the system on MTGO during past Release Events. It was easy to play at a net gain or near break even rate in Sealed Release Event queues. Given that it's the only way in which Release events have changed since M14 and now, any dip in the number of players joining Release Event queues can probably be attributed to the recent change in payout. I know it's not empirical but it's the best we can do with limited information.
A lot of questions end up getting asked when a company makes these sort of changes in relatively rapid succession and so far we've only gotten relatively vague answers if any at all. Here's the answer Worth posted on Reddit;
This is pretty vague but my take on it is that they have a vision for how they want the system of events to work on MTGO, who plays what and why etc.
Overall, I think this is a dangerous approach by WOTC. Targeting events at a certain demographic while intentionally making it unattractive to another leads to a divided player base. It also can have unforeseeable affects on the MTGO economy as well as in other areas that WOTC has realistically no control over.
This change isn't going to kill MTGO, I don't believe, WOTC has enough info that they know that. It is however disturbing to the player base who are quick to speculation and seemingly devoid of a clear, concise answer as to why these changes are being put into place and what their repercussions are meant to be.
The problem with porting MTGO to Mac is a coding one as was mentioned earlier in the thread. Microsoft also owns a lot of the tech that games use. .Net is Microsoft owned as well as DirectX, meaning Apple would have to pay Microsoft to use them.
I think right now the initial investment vs return on creating a Mac based client for MTGO is not in Wizards favor. PCs are more common and generally cheaper and Wizards has their hands full just keeping the current client updated and running properly. Maybe when they get more adept and updates come smoother and feel less necessary we'll see a Mac version of MTGO.
Either way, the fact that Wizard's sees competition on the horizon is probably good news for customers.
This results in a format where hands that can't do anything before turn four are garbage because if your opponent goes 2 drop 3 drop 4 drop and you only have a 4 drop you're going to be in a bad place. Yes, if you know your opponent is playing a slow deck you have some room to breath but you won't know that until after game 1 and you certainly won't know that during draft or deck construction so you have to build your deck to be able to handle your opponent going 2 drop 3 drop 4 drop or something along those lines. It really narrows down what's playable and what's not, couple that with the fact that you're forced into a set number of archetypes in GTC because the most powerful cards are multicolor and you've got a format that has no depth and can lead to just absolutely frustrating games, or even worse you with an unplayable deck.
Over all I just don't like the format. It reminds me far too much of AVR in it's narrowness. I'm not saying it's as bad as AVR was, it's not, but it's certainly a close relation.
I'm not a huge fan of Phantom events outside of Cube on MTGO. Limited sort of loses it's luster a bit knowing that you opened or could open that sweet mythic/rare and don't actually get to keep it. The lack of a decent payout doesn't help either.
Overall, I don't think this is the best of changes and I can't remember seeing an outcry for the change in the first place. I don't really understand why Wizard's felt like it was a good decision. Unless maybe we're going to be seeing more sets like AVR or RTR were the amount of good playables at common is relatively low so as to wildly unbalance it even more as a format. I don't know, I just can't see how this helps the community or players as a whole. Maybe if you're new it's a good change but I feel like new players might get put off by the fact that if they lose, they get nothing, where as before they at least got some cards out of the deal.
Yeah, Counterflux gives a big edge to UWR in the control matchups. Being able to counter a bomb or a Jace with no chance of them countering back can be huge. Just being able to be an extra counterspell on top of Syncopate and Cancel is an advantage itself.
While I agree that Rakdos can and does win against the control lists out there it does have the problem of limited reach. Rakdos' Return and Annihilating Fire/Explosive Impact aren't as good as Devil's Play and Brimstone Volley were in the Boros decks of ISD Block at finishing an opponent. Also, Rakdos lacks a strong or consistent one drop, something like Gravecrawler/Diregraf Ghoul or Champion of the Parish. The Bant control decks also have strong defenses against the early Rakdos rush with Centaur Healer usually main deck and Loxodon Smiter post board. Slaughter Games does do wonders but it's kind of narrow, so you have to be able to eliminate the other threats they can throw out with removal, like a Jund control style deck would do, or throw multiple Slaughter Games at them. Also, again the Bant lists play multiple threats in Angel of Serenity, Armada Wurm, Jace and Supreme Verdict.
The fixing in RTR is much more supportive of triple color decks than previous Blocks, with both Guildgates and Shocklands it's not too difficult to get the mana you need when you need it. Most of the powerful early game cards you'll be playing don't require a huge amount of any one color except maybe Jace but you'll probably hope to be stabilized somewhat before you let him hit the board, unless you really need to search for an answer with his -2. As for Gatecreeper Vine and Chromatic Lantern, they're both dead draws later in the game and drawing multiples of either early isn't the best. Keyrunes are your best bet for fixing as they can block and attack as well as helping to fix your mana and accelerate out a threat a turn or two earlier.
Lyev Skynight is playable but it also dies to a lot more than say a Centaur Healer or a Loxodon Smiter would, so it's worse on the defense but better on the offense and in a control type deck for a three drop creature, you'll want something more defensive. Detain though can be good, some lists play Inaction Injunction in the sideboard for a little bit of a delay and it cycles which is an advantage. Elocutors is just too slow, it gives them 5 turns to draw an answer or something that goes over the top of it and trying to get it and Palisade Giant out to combo is too unreliable to really work.
Hope that's of some help.
Basically, I agree with you on this. UWx seems to be the deck to beat in Block at the moment and for the foreseeable future. More specifically UWG but I could also see UWR making a showing if the meta develops along lines that allow it but it seems the more "vulnerable" of the two to hate.
Here's why for those wondering. UWx runs along the same lines as traditional control decks, it has the things in block any control deck needs to survive: Life gain with Centaur Healer/Sphinx's Revelation, to get out of the "reachable" range of any burn. Board stabilizing effects in Jace and Supreme Verdict to put a stop to incoming damage early on when it matters. Card draw to dig for answers and stay ahead when the game goes long with Jace and Sphinx's Revelation. And finally big finishers that are hard to answer like Angel of Serenity and Armada Wurm. It even has access to 3 pretty decent counterspells; Syncopate, Cancel and Counterflux to put them ahead against any other control deck.
Add to this the fact that aggro, the traditional enemy of control is missing some big pieces of their toolkit. Most notably a lack of good 1 and 2 drops as well as some substantial "reach" cards, such as strong equipment and burn and you have a meta where a control deck (especially with a strong walker like Jace on its side) can thrive.
There may be a few other decks that crop up in the meta in the long term but I haven't seen or found anything that has a really favorable win percentage against the current Bant lists. Maybe I'm wrong and there will be. I honestly hope that's the case because right now this is looking like a 1-2 maybe 3 deck format at most.