It's true about the Weekly Challenges. I play a lot of pauper, and I've noticed more and more pros are joining these events. Particularly a format like pauper, where you can get a super competitive deck for under $20 easily (and most of that $20 comes from just a few expensive commons). The payout is really good if you are good at playing different formats.
Just like playing poker online and playing multiple tables, it becomes very mentally taxing after a few hours, and I would think busing tables would actually be easier (at least it's just some repetitive motions that you are going through).
Plus, I'm pretty sure you are going to be making a lot less money playing MTGO than any regular shift work, like a lot less that it's probably not worth it. I mean, I would imagine it would be pretty darn difficult to make at least $15.00 CAD (using minimum wage for Ontario * 1.5 for overtime) per hour playing MTGO. A single event often takes 2 hours to complete, so even if you multiqueue and don't ☺☺☺☺ up, you will be very hard pressed to make $15 an hour for 8 hours on a consistent basis.
So I wouldn't really recommend this option of "going infinite" to anyone unless you are super hardcore about fulfilling some sort of goal that you made yourself.
There's one big reason I don't like this method. To me, I'd rather just do overtime a few hours, and I could easily make enough money to draft more. Why spend the same time grinding release events? Would you make more money from these events than just picking up some extra shifts from work? I doubt it. Plus, it seems like it's a lot harder than just doing your regular job (queuing 3 events at a time and not just absolutely bomb)?
If I want to multi-queue and make money from the internet, I'd just play poker.
Idra has always had awesome mechanics, but it's his decision making that often makes people scratch their heads. That, and of course the rage, lol.
My favourite protoss has to be Huk also, but Nony (LiquidTyler) is also not far behind.
For terran, TLO is a given, but I like Gretorp a lot because I watch his stream quite often, as he is very intelligent when it comes to decision making and the tactics part of SC2. Check out the analysis Day9 did with Gretorp, and you can see why he is one of my favourite terran players.
For zerg it has to be Sen. Sen is awesome. Watching him dismantle 1800 terrans on his smurf platinum league NA account with utter ease was hilarious.
Think the depot change is fantastic, any Terran who doesn't realise how dull it is to play against them doing the same thing over and over and over is crazy.
Don't quite understand this part. Why would the depot before rax change anything MMM related?
The only thing the depot requirement forces is that Terran can't go 8 proxy rax anymore. It basically took away any sort of "cheese" play from the terran. Going MMM has nothing to do with the supply depot, since the standard 3 rax reactor + starport MMM is always depot, rax, refinery, orbital, it doesn't actually change anything if people still want to MMM.
Reaper I'm fine with. It's still useful to harass with it a bit, the factory requirement only really cripples the reaper allins, which was already nerfed by the 5 sec patch (plus, nobody actually thought the reaper 5 rax allins were actually going to be unnerfed anyway).
Fungal is nice, now it actually "works". I always thought it was retarded that you could blink away from a Fungal Growth.
But Shakuras is actually not that bad, since you can't spawn in vertical positions. So since you always spawn in cross positions, you won't be getting 6pooled all day long on it, or getting tanked from your opponent's natural.
No, but that's because you didn't maindeck pure artifact destruction cards like Shatter in Ravnica, so I don't think that applies here.
Though in the old Mirrodin, you also didn't Shatter Myrs often, but that's often because there were tons of REALLY good common artifacts that could very easily wreck you if you weren't prepared. Stuff like Viridian Longbow and Leonin Bola were just so good when they were active.
Well, Trigon of Corruption I think is still quite good, even if you have to pay so much mana, since there are quite many X/1s in this set. Being able to kill something like a Smith, even on turn 5, is often very good value. It's like a worse Serrated Arrows, but Serrated Arrows was a very legit card, so paying 2 more mana to activate the ability I find is still worth it.
I don't really care about the other Trigons, and I've only really been happy with the black and the red one. I don't think they are THAT overrated (or maybe because I don't rate them that highly).
I know it's vague, but sometimes it's the right move to make, particularly if you are going to hit curve on turn 3, 4, 5 and potentially putting your opponent 1 mana behind all game would actually be pretty good in your favour. But if your hand is 4 lands, 1 mana Myr, Shatter and an equipment, I don't think playing Shatter on the Myr is the right call at all.
I like the staff a lot, as I've been adjusting to the speed of the format (it's a bit faster than I thought it was going to be), so before where I just thought this piece of equipment was alright, now I'm thinking it's much better than where I originally put it at.
Also, I think many cards have pretty varying values when they are used in different matchups, particularly with Infect being in this block. The 3 life is pretty useless against Infect, but quite good against something looking to trade (decks with many myrs for example), and just OK against that RG artifact hate deck (since they often play tons of big dudes, and you don't really get to trade up too often with the +1/+0, but the 3 life helps). So I think its value varies a bit, but overall, I would still pick this 5-7th pick-ish. Getting one on the wheel usually makes me pretty happy about it.
Oh btw, I've been rank 1-7 in my plat bracket for like...3 weeks. I finally just decided to save up some points for a few days and see if that can help me catapult out of plat finally. Does anyone else have some pointers other than the obvious win your games?
The answer is really just to win. But there are maybe a few things you could do facilitate winning, particularly if you are serious about it.
Check out teamliquid.net for some strategies you can use. Re-watch your replays, and try to find places where you could have tightened your play. Helps if you have someone that you know is better than you critiquing you on it, you can probably even submit them to teamliquid.net for some critiques, or here, there are several players that's pretty good on this board. And in general, just try to be more efficient everywhere and you will find that eventually you will be winning much much more than losing, and that's when you will be promoted (and you will still rise in diamond too once you are promoted, because you've been buffing your mechanics/decision making skills/timing sense, etc, etc).
Hm I have the opposite problem. I would like to get out of plat for a lower league. Got there because I was lucky in my placement games. Now I've lost 12 of my 15 games as a plat player, but the games insists on ranking me higher in my division, above players who have 10 tiems bettre scores and ratios...
Just lose :p. Seriously, like, worker rush every game, and you will see your rank drop like flies. Or you can try to play a new race, and because you will be unfamiliar with it, you will find that you will be losing a lot, so you lose ranks, but you can manage to maybe gain some insights on another race even if you don't want to permanently switch to it.
I think Mimic Vat is just good, period. Well, at least that was the consensus from sealed play, but I don't think it's that different when we are talking about drafts. I don't know if people are missing it (at least a couple of players in the pre-release did), but it doesn't just say your own creature, and you can Mimic Vat whatever creature that's going to end up dying from both players' fields, and things are going to be dying in any regular match.
I don't care about the other rankings, but RUSTED RELIC sucks balls.
I @#!*#^$ hate this card so badly. Maybe it's just me, but I've been wrecked by this card, and have had it just straight up not do anything. It's so hard to swing with him on your turn 5 or 6, and when you do, you are usually barely triggering Metalcraft, so having someone Shattering a Glint Hawk Idol in mid combat to turn off 2 attackers is such ridiculous loss of tempo for you, that I vomit every time I see it happen. Or you play it on your board, hoping to use its 5/5 body as a blocker, and they kill something and he becomes useless and your opponent gets to swing past you basically unopposed.
Molder Beast is technically the card that works the best with Scrapmelter, as I've been recently trying some RG artifact destruction in netdraft, and Molder Beasts are pretty important for that archetype.
However, Molder Beast I feel shouldn't be going this early, and we shouldn't really need to force RG artifact destruction.
Mana Myr, I feel, is a card that we will always play, regardless of colour. So that's my choice, and I feel that mana Myrs are pick 2-4 things anyway, so I don't feel bad taking a Myr high.
I haven't had any really good stories about the Battlegear, other than that it's really good in RW metalcraft when paired up with Sunspear Shikari or the double striking metalcraft dude. Scrapmelter is also quite good in RW, so I think that's another possibility, but I just think the Leaden Myr fits into more things.
Plus, I'm pretty sure you are going to be making a lot less money playing MTGO than any regular shift work, like a lot less that it's probably not worth it. I mean, I would imagine it would be pretty darn difficult to make at least $15.00 CAD (using minimum wage for Ontario * 1.5 for overtime) per hour playing MTGO. A single event often takes 2 hours to complete, so even if you multiqueue and don't ☺☺☺☺ up, you will be very hard pressed to make $15 an hour for 8 hours on a consistent basis.
So I wouldn't really recommend this option of "going infinite" to anyone unless you are super hardcore about fulfilling some sort of goal that you made yourself.
If I want to multi-queue and make money from the internet, I'd just play poker.
My favourite protoss has to be Huk also, but Nony (LiquidTyler) is also not far behind.
For terran, TLO is a given, but I like Gretorp a lot because I watch his stream quite often, as he is very intelligent when it comes to decision making and the tactics part of SC2. Check out the analysis Day9 did with Gretorp, and you can see why he is one of my favourite terran players.
For zerg it has to be Sen. Sen is awesome. Watching him dismantle 1800 terrans on his smurf platinum league NA account with utter ease was hilarious.
Don't quite understand this part. Why would the depot before rax change anything MMM related?
The only thing the depot requirement forces is that Terran can't go 8 proxy rax anymore. It basically took away any sort of "cheese" play from the terran. Going MMM has nothing to do with the supply depot, since the standard 3 rax reactor + starport MMM is always depot, rax, refinery, orbital, it doesn't actually change anything if people still want to MMM.
Reaper I'm fine with. It's still useful to harass with it a bit, the factory requirement only really cripples the reaper allins, which was already nerfed by the 5 sec patch (plus, nobody actually thought the reaper 5 rax allins were actually going to be unnerfed anyway).
Fungal is nice, now it actually "works". I always thought it was retarded that you could blink away from a Fungal Growth.
But Shakuras is actually not that bad, since you can't spawn in vertical positions. So since you always spawn in cross positions, you won't be getting 6pooled all day long on it, or getting tanked from your opponent's natural.
Though in the old Mirrodin, you also didn't Shatter Myrs often, but that's often because there were tons of REALLY good common artifacts that could very easily wreck you if you weren't prepared. Stuff like Viridian Longbow and Leonin Bola were just so good when they were active.
So is PV the Chuck Norris of Magic? Or is that still Finkel's job :tongue:?
I don't really care about the other Trigons, and I've only really been happy with the black and the red one. I don't think they are THAT overrated (or maybe because I don't rate them that highly).
I know it's vague, but sometimes it's the right move to make, particularly if you are going to hit curve on turn 3, 4, 5 and potentially putting your opponent 1 mana behind all game would actually be pretty good in your favour. But if your hand is 4 lands, 1 mana Myr, Shatter and an equipment, I don't think playing Shatter on the Myr is the right call at all.
But in general I don't really think you should.
Also, I think many cards have pretty varying values when they are used in different matchups, particularly with Infect being in this block. The 3 life is pretty useless against Infect, but quite good against something looking to trade (decks with many myrs for example), and just OK against that RG artifact hate deck (since they often play tons of big dudes, and you don't really get to trade up too often with the +1/+0, but the 3 life helps). So I think its value varies a bit, but overall, I would still pick this 5-7th pick-ish. Getting one on the wheel usually makes me pretty happy about it.
The answer is really just to win. But there are maybe a few things you could do facilitate winning, particularly if you are serious about it.
Check out teamliquid.net for some strategies you can use. Re-watch your replays, and try to find places where you could have tightened your play. Helps if you have someone that you know is better than you critiquing you on it, you can probably even submit them to teamliquid.net for some critiques, or here, there are several players that's pretty good on this board. And in general, just try to be more efficient everywhere and you will find that eventually you will be winning much much more than losing, and that's when you will be promoted (and you will still rise in diamond too once you are promoted, because you've been buffing your mechanics/decision making skills/timing sense, etc, etc).
Just lose :p. Seriously, like, worker rush every game, and you will see your rank drop like flies. Or you can try to play a new race, and because you will be unfamiliar with it, you will find that you will be losing a lot, so you lose ranks, but you can manage to maybe gain some insights on another race even if you don't want to permanently switch to it.
So it's a card I'm not unhappy to first pick.
I @#!*#^$ hate this card so badly. Maybe it's just me, but I've been wrecked by this card, and have had it just straight up not do anything. It's so hard to swing with him on your turn 5 or 6, and when you do, you are usually barely triggering Metalcraft, so having someone Shattering a Glint Hawk Idol in mid combat to turn off 2 attackers is such ridiculous loss of tempo for you, that I vomit every time I see it happen. Or you play it on your board, hoping to use its 5/5 body as a blocker, and they kill something and he becomes useless and your opponent gets to swing past you basically unopposed.
God, I rage when I see this card.
However, Molder Beast I feel shouldn't be going this early, and we shouldn't really need to force RG artifact destruction.
Mana Myr, I feel, is a card that we will always play, regardless of colour. So that's my choice, and I feel that mana Myrs are pick 2-4 things anyway, so I don't feel bad taking a Myr high.
I haven't had any really good stories about the Battlegear, other than that it's really good in RW metalcraft when paired up with Sunspear Shikari or the double striking metalcraft dude. Scrapmelter is also quite good in RW, so I think that's another possibility, but I just think the Leaden Myr fits into more things.