Not much Extended when it's out of 'season' for paper. The nice thing about MTGO though is that there are 2 Man Queues wherein both player put in 2 tix and the winner gets a pack.
Yeah, but that doesn't help support your local game store, which is usually we have the reason have a place to play.
That's a great point.
Completely aside from what I was responding to, but a great point.
The question that someone asked was how to be competitive without buying a box. Which is what I responded to. You buy singles. Which I'm guessing you could buy from a Local Game Store as well, if you REALLY wanted to support them.
If the question became: "How to be competitive whilst helping to support your Local Game Store" then I would agree with you 100% that the better way to do that is to buy a box from your local guy. Better still is to buy his singles and pay whatever markup he has on them, to help his bottom line even more... but that's not as economical of a way to stay competitive.
The great thing about *this* (and the last one with Honor .. Pure) promotion is that it helps the LGS' sell boxes, which helps their bottom line, which helps the game, which helps us all.
Ok, 10 to 20 promo cards per store... So without this promo there are stores that would not sell 20 boxes of Zen? If you play Type 2 and do not order at least a box, how can you be competitive? $85 is much more economical than buying $4 packs. It is also more economical for stores to presell boxes rather than sit on stock they may or may not move. This is just a little icing to help brick and mortar stores as they can't compete with online prices. If you let them die out though, were are you going to play magic tournaments?
Umm. You just buy the cards you want. By themselves. *Generally* it's more economical to build a deck this way.
I can understand some of the reasoning behind this change, but anybody claiming this isn't a blatant money grab in addition to everything else is just ignorant. Damnation was 20 in standard and that standard had Wrath of God in it. If you want to play control in post Lorwyn standard, you're going to need 4 of these if you want to win, and that's going to run you 60+ at the best case, 80-100 at the worst. At least they weren't stupid enough to put it at mythic.
Did anyone say it wasn't a money grab? Seems like almost everything done by WotC ever has been to make money.
Damnation included. And WotC built that economic 'good fortune' too. At the time of Damnation, there were no Black sweepers. No Infest, no barter in blood, no mutilate. Then lo! We get Damnation. Ka-Ching! Oddly enough, no one complained about this series of events at that time. Huh.
However, there are a few different things at work with Zen than with Planar Chaos.
1) Zen is the first set of the block, and will get drafted/sealed for the next set as well.
2) Mythic rares are now pushing down the 'rarity' of the rares.
So yes, it's about the money. It's *always* about the money. Every, single, time.
It is however, another good reason to play MTGO. Prices for rares drop super low during the release events. I mean seriously... Birds of Paradise are at $2, Hyppies are at $1... Great Dable Stag is $4... Sadly this one good thing generally doesn't offset all the things that we lack from Paper Magic, but I digress.
I do believe that there will be a lot more Day of Judgment's in circulation than there were Damnations, due to the above points. They'll be expensive, of course. And of course, they're intended to make WotC money.
is this a joke? in T2 there are no wraths because that card is not T2 legal anymore. People that need to play wrath now must play hallowed burial that has ramped to stupid prices. And this functional reprint of wrath will ramp to stupid prices unless the market will be flooded with copies of it.
He was trying to lead you to an observation which he believes will help you think Wrath is unnecessary.
If I follow his thought process, it's this:
a) There's no Wrath in standard.
b) control decks still exist in Standard
Which is his process of elimination that Wrath is not needed in Standard. Oddly enough, it's kind of an interesting point. I recall listening to a lot of information about Extended last season, and despite zoo being one of the top decks, high level players were dropping Wrath as it 'didn't do enough' to justify it.
When you're trading a Wrath for a Woolly Thoctar, you're not really setting yourself up to win. Cards that provided better cost->answer ratio's were being run instead, and Wrath was proven to be too slow.
Fast forward to our present situation... if aggro decks can put enough pressure on without over extending, Wrath's main purpose has been nullified.
Is Wrath 'unnecessary' now? I doubt it, but I think this recent stint of time where it was missing from Standard has probably helped people step up and figure out that they were probably using it as a crutch when other options might work better for different deck types.
When I asked Worth about this, he mentioned that it won't likely happen until MTGO V3's Multiplayer UI is fixed, and that's a long way off. Full interview is here: http://puremtgo.com/node/1843
Good card, and will help stabilize block... for once.
Instead of 4CMCSweeper in core, and crap in the block we get a good block sweeper which might just make ZEN Block one of the best block constructed formats ever.
2) It would take a lot of work to 'fix' packs of old cards to remove dexterity, ante, etc. Instead they decided to focus on getting cards they want to see on MTGO without going through the work of figuring how to handle replacing cards in packs.
Very much sarcasm, as I tend to do at least once in each of these threads it seems...
Meaning that we keep looking at new cards through the lens of the previous card pool wherein there were very different cards and choices.
Looking at the change in a vacuum, Planar Cleansing sucks compared to Wrath of God. But then again, we didn't have the same cards then as we do now and it's completely possible that something we got WITH Planar Cleansing will enable it to be as good or better in the new environment. I listed two such examples: Spiral and Fog to build up a position that is planned for and able to be used to the advantage of the player that has built around Planar Cleansing.
Or maybe not. Maybe it will completely and utterly suck for the next year of its life. It could go either way, but I'm not going to jump on the "it's horrible" bandwagon until it's proven to be bad in its environment. (that, and I was the guy to [o]fficially preview it so I'm really wanting it to be good!)
If only there was a way to get my planeswalkers back from the graveyard after a cleansing! It would be keen if it cost two mana so that I could replay a 4CMC planeswalker the next turn. And of course it would be extra groovy if it was in a color that could prevent damage for a turn to stay alive...
There are also 8 player queues: http://wizards.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/wizards.cfg/php/enduser/std_adp.php?p_faqid=1609
and also 16 player swiss:
http://wizards.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/wizards.cfg/php/enduser/std_adp.php?p_faqid=1879
And occasional very large tournaments.
So you can pretty much always find competition of some sort online.
Um.
Red, now, is an aggro color.
There have been times in the not too distant past where red was a Midrange color.
Or am I the only one that remembers Med-Red from Mirrodin era???
Red can, has and very well might again be a midrange color.
Edit:
Big Red: http://www.deckcheck.net/deck.php?id=791
Flores Red: http://www.deckcheck.net/deck.php?id=1359
R/G Control: http://www.deckcheck.net/deck.php?id=784
That's a great point.
Completely aside from what I was responding to, but a great point.
The question that someone asked was how to be competitive without buying a box. Which is what I responded to. You buy singles. Which I'm guessing you could buy from a Local Game Store as well, if you REALLY wanted to support them.
If the question became: "How to be competitive whilst helping to support your Local Game Store" then I would agree with you 100% that the better way to do that is to buy a box from your local guy. Better still is to buy his singles and pay whatever markup he has on them, to help his bottom line even more... but that's not as economical of a way to stay competitive.
The great thing about *this* (and the last one with Honor .. Pure) promotion is that it helps the LGS' sell boxes, which helps their bottom line, which helps the game, which helps us all.
Umm. You just buy the cards you want. By themselves. *Generally* it's more economical to build a deck this way.
Did anyone say it wasn't a money grab? Seems like almost everything done by WotC ever has been to make money.
Damnation included. And WotC built that economic 'good fortune' too. At the time of Damnation, there were no Black sweepers. No Infest, no barter in blood, no mutilate. Then lo! We get Damnation. Ka-Ching! Oddly enough, no one complained about this series of events at that time. Huh.
However, there are a few different things at work with Zen than with Planar Chaos.
1) Zen is the first set of the block, and will get drafted/sealed for the next set as well.
2) Mythic rares are now pushing down the 'rarity' of the rares.
So yes, it's about the money. It's *always* about the money. Every, single, time.
It is however, another good reason to play MTGO. Prices for rares drop super low during the release events. I mean seriously... Birds of Paradise are at $2, Hyppies are at $1... Great Dable Stag is $4... Sadly this one good thing generally doesn't offset all the things that we lack from Paper Magic, but I digress.
I do believe that there will be a lot more Day of Judgment's in circulation than there were Damnations, due to the above points. They'll be expensive, of course. And of course, they're intended to make WotC money.
He was trying to lead you to an observation which he believes will help you think Wrath is unnecessary.
If I follow his thought process, it's this:
a) There's no Wrath in standard.
b) control decks still exist in Standard
Which is his process of elimination that Wrath is not needed in Standard. Oddly enough, it's kind of an interesting point. I recall listening to a lot of information about Extended last season, and despite zoo being one of the top decks, high level players were dropping Wrath as it 'didn't do enough' to justify it.
When you're trading a Wrath for a Woolly Thoctar, you're not really setting yourself up to win. Cards that provided better cost->answer ratio's were being run instead, and Wrath was proven to be too slow.
Fast forward to our present situation... if aggro decks can put enough pressure on without over extending, Wrath's main purpose has been nullified.
Is Wrath 'unnecessary' now? I doubt it, but I think this recent stint of time where it was missing from Standard has probably helped people step up and figure out that they were probably using it as a crutch when other options might work better for different deck types.
Google cached version
Instead of 4CMCSweeper in core, and crap in the block we get a good block sweeper which might just make ZEN Block one of the best block constructed formats ever.
Nice!
I like them both, angel is very neat and the lotus is very well drawn. Kudos to both artists!
1) Power 9 on MTGO is completely plausible. http://forums.gleemax.com/showpost.php?p=17533200&postcount=39 (Worth is the guy in charge of MTGO).
2) It would take a lot of work to 'fix' packs of old cards to remove dexterity, ante, etc. Instead they decided to focus on getting cards they want to see on MTGO without going through the work of figuring how to handle replacing cards in packs.
http://puremtgo.com/articles/med-3-preview-card
Woot
Meaning that we keep looking at new cards through the lens of the previous card pool wherein there were very different cards and choices.
Looking at the change in a vacuum, Planar Cleansing sucks compared to Wrath of God. But then again, we didn't have the same cards then as we do now and it's completely possible that something we got WITH Planar Cleansing will enable it to be as good or better in the new environment. I listed two such examples: Spiral and Fog to build up a position that is planned for and able to be used to the advantage of the player that has built around Planar Cleansing.
Or maybe not. Maybe it will completely and utterly suck for the next year of its life. It could go either way, but I'm not going to jump on the "it's horrible" bandwagon until it's proven to be bad in its environment. (that, and I was the guy to [o]fficially preview it so I'm really wanting it to be good!)
Oh well, a man can dream.