Magic: The Gathering C/D

how's MTGO been lately? should I think about selling out?

It has to be pretty jarring for pros the way they constantly go back and forth on these decisions.

xp yeah seems like the value of cards is dropping a lot, queues not firing, etc. I haven't been on it much, just reading what players are saying

wait does this undo the new 6 PT system they just made earlier this year?

that's some whiplash

just peeped some MTGO prices and wow

my account has a bunch of playpoints in it, what do you do with those? just sell the account and someone takes over? how could I do such a thing?

you could just enter a bunch of sealed leagues or drafts and convert the play points into cards & then sell. idk how much of a market there is for accounts

I have like 7000 of them, this might take a long time :)

Cardhoarder has apparently even stopped buying tickets or singles for cash (temporarily), so I don't know if you would get a lot for your acct

I've got like 100 tix left, and I'll probably try to just play a bunch of cube from here on out. If everyone's going to Arena for the new sets, they won't be able to justify keeping MTGO online for more than a year longer, I think. Not enough money flowing into the system

there's probably a nonzero chance they'll "buy out" old MTGO accounts if they really do intend on shutting it down

i have like a standard and a modern deck's worth of tix on there, just gonna wait it out i think since i dont think anyones gonna buy at a good price right now and if i can get a shitload of arena currency for it then thats fine with me

yeah pro-level arena tournaments seems inevitable, the question is how hard they're willing to go both in terms of $ and in terms of replacing the pro tour / gps as a focus point for the game.

prediction: serious rules overhaul in the next year which makes the game more arena-friendly

What kind of rules changes do you have in mind?

if it were up to me the two big ones would be to vastly simplify combat and to merge untap/upkeep/draw

magic has a lot of dumb rules but 'phases are too weird and complicated' are the most relevant to arena

yeah there's at least 3 priority

err priority passes per turn that you can just get rid of without really impacting the game much

Would love to merge untap/upkeep/draw, but I think that's basically saying Arena will never have older cards

End of combat seems like an easy one to eliminate though. Yes, it affects play but the times you need to do something end of combat are quite rare

Have been enjoying Arena. Haven't experienced any bugs personally since the beta opened and they're making incremental improvements the whole time. Meanwhile, I fired up mtgo for the first time in a while for UMA and filed for reimbursement on my first event.

start of combat can be eliminated too, it does affect gameplay in that you have to use tappers before the opponent's last chance to play things precombat but if we're already streamlining the game with major functional changes then i think it's fine. you could even get rid of the priority pass between declare attacks and declare blocks without changing the core gameplay of magic combat though it would have bigger ramifications than the others

birthing pod is back baby

WE'RE EXCITED WE GET TO MAKE THIS ANNOUNCEMENT! IN LEAGUE WITH DRAGONS: THE CURE FOR SUMMONING SICKNESS. 12 NEW SONGS FROM @mountain_goats, WHO PLEDGE THE OATH OF THE COWL PROWLER. RELEASED 4/26 AND AVAILABLE FOR PRE-ORDER NOW AT https://t.co/m9O2ZdSkx7. pic.twitter.com/FqrHtQFn3O

— Magic: The Gathering (@wizards_magic) January 28, 2019

that was a surprising ilx in real life moment for me

wotc investing in ilx instead of gp coverage

haha yeah I learned about this by stupid magic players complaining about just that

sweet album cover, wish magic art could still be that cool

there's been occasional arts in the past few sets that give me older magic vibes (see: Bedevil)

my LGS posted a pic of the card Snowfall on FB (for obvious reasons) and it made me really nostalgic, not just for the days of art like that but also the era of cards that featured a wall of text and were effectively useless. Ice Age was such a goldmine for that sort of thing.

This Soccer Mommy track was the last thing I cut from my ballot.

Oops, ignore

balduvian shaman is still the funniest wall of text card especially since it was a common

hahah I remember that card well, I got one in the first pack of Ice Age I ever bought and felt really intimidated by it since I didn't even know the rules of the game yet. it was really strange how early Magic was obsessed with stuff like that, cards that changed color words or landwalk abilities, given how few cards even had that sort of text to begin with. how many cards could you actually use the Shaman on, anyway? The COPs, Justice....anything else ???

another favorite was Ice Cauldron, I recall *no one* being able to figure out what the hell that thing did back in the day. not that the concept was hard to figure out, it's just the way they worded it was so convoluted (see also: Camouflage and Animate Dead). It's kind of a neat card though - I remember someone used to use it to "preload" counterspells so they could tap out during their turn. Wouldn't be surprised if there's some bizarre modern-day rules-abusing combo with that one today.

anyway, anyone have deep thoughts about deep thoughts about wizards slow strangle of gps? it feels like the business decision I would probably make if I were in charge of wizards, since nobody actually watches the coverage, but it sucks for me personally, as someone who enjoys going to gps and finds scg events pretty meh. I feel like there needs to be some sort of competitive arena circuit for the rest of the world and they haven't really planned that out yet.

oops -1 'deep thoughts about' or you can give meta-level thoughts I guess

xp yeah it was basically supposed to be an anti circle of protection card as far as i can tell, because blue is the color that needed that??

cutting gp coverage sucks but it seemed inevitable with their pivot to arena/esports model. definitely empathize with that post criticizing it on grounds of diversity - after spending years slowly trying to increase the visibility of women on the competitive side of the game, suddenly dropping that in favor of laser focusing on an elite group that afaik is going to be 100% men is shitty

also not posting the round by round standings publicly online is awful, that is the absolute minimum they should do. they'll probably just get the TO to do it though.

xp - I think that's backwards, it allowed you to play any color COP you wanted in your deck, and then 'change' the text to whatever color you needed for as long as you could handle the Cumulative Upkeep (which made it kind of worthless, but whatever, it was a 1 mana creature)

just reminds me of how brutal color hosers were back in the day, cards that literally said "destroy all islands" or "bury all green creatures" priced at 3 or 4 mana. kids these days will never know the feeling of hopelessness that comes with a turn-2 COP:Red when your deck is mono-red, just frantically trying to outpace your opponent until you get 8-for-1'd with a Wrath of God

I think they could probably get way more women on camera than they do at a gp if they host more invite only competitions w/ the goal of diversity in mind.

xp

also on the subject of women in magic, my gf opened up a foil jace in chaos sealed at the gp. (last time she did one she opened up a snapcaster.)

xp yeah i have to assume that is what will end up happening? its been a bit since i read the new plans, are there invitational events worked in that aren't just based on the top 32 performers or whatever?

my other concern is the modern format getting the legs cut off it, it was really picking up in popularity and its entire purpose was to have a sustainable non rotating format and a lot of people felt comfortable investing in a deck for it because of that, and now it suddenly doesn't seem to have a place in the ecosystem

kinda just saw scg evolving into the modern-show

i haven't paid attn to scg lately, are they running a lot of modern?

yeah quite a bit

im actually interested to see what the inevitable arena 'classic' format looks like down the line if they really don't plan on adding old sets. modern's gotten a little too critical mass-y, i always liked the extended cardpool size more

As of this last weekend, SCG finally started doing time shifted matches, which fills a bunch of dead time. I suspect they will move away from Modern a bit in the future, but they embraced it pretty hard last year.

The Magic world has done a miserable job of promoting women competitors, and making women feel welcome in general. It's pretty embarrassing and awful.

<i>anyone have deep thoughts about deep thoughts about wizards slow strangle of gps?</i>

it certainly feels like someone on the business side of wizards did the math on how much it costs to run organized play and started questioning if the roi was really there for gps and pts. i think there are ways to run gps that make sense but like, pay $100,000 for a huge tournament for a few thousand people to play is just a weird use of money and has never seemed to really drive engagement. i imagine there is also belief that in the markets where its profitable smaller tournament series can and will take the place of gps

have they cut money for GPs in ways besides coverage? I felt like the move to make GPs into Magicfests - conventions rather than tournaments - was smart. I love going to GPs for the so-many-players experience but rarely watch them at home. (though part of that is maybe self-fulfilling, due to the fact that the GP coverage has never been great.) I much prefer they go big on coverage for a few tournaments like PTs or Magic World Championship where the player caliber is higher

I don't think they've cut money but at least some value was tied to the prestige of the event, which is tied to the coverage. kinda seems like the plan is to make them 'big ptqs'.

I agree that spending $100k per GP always seemed like it was burning money, though some of the returns on that are a little abstract. NJ was my first MF and unsurprisingly didn't seem much different from any previous GP. I think to really convert it into 'not a GP' you probably need some bigger marquee side-events. but thinking about it more - I haven't seen this specific point brought up yet - killing GP coverage doesn't just save them money, it helps de-emphasize the GP aspect of the MF.