CSV and EXCEL tradelog export

Yesterday we introduced the tradelog export to ".csv" and to ".xls".

You can use them to export all your trades in a comma-separated-values or in Microsoft Excel format for further analysis.

Reviewing Born of the Gods for Standard Pauper

On episode 141 of the podcast Pauper to the People I was part of a Standard Pauper Review of the commons in Born of the Gods. These cards will shake up the format!

Here is the show:




The Standard Pauper Show
For your reference, here is the latest episode of the Standard Pauper show, running every week on youtube.com/MagicGatheringStrat

We are getting closer to the Standard Pauper Gauntlet and I am looking forward to reviewing some of the decks for the Gauntlet here.  


What is Standard Pauper?
Standard Pauper is the cheapest possible format - you can play only with the commons that are currently in Standard.

Learn more about the format here. http://mtgostrat.com/?s=standard+pauper

MTGO Library Bot 6.48

ML Bot 6.48 is a maintenance build over 6.47

• it fixes a crash happening on the final confirm window, in Selling mode.
• mtgo freezes are now better detected: the bot will restart mtgo in 95 minutes instead of the usual 130 of the previous versions

MTGO Library Bot 6.47

ML Bot 6.47 has just been released.
This is a maintenance build fixing a CPU problem happening on some computers. The problem caused the CPU to stay constantly to 50%-100% even when the bot was "waiting for trade". Now the CPU usage will stay at 5%-10%. This is important if you run multiple bots on the same machine, for example using VmWare or VirtualBox, and in general in the cases where the CPU is shared with other application.

Having a less working CPU will also mean lower electricity bills and fewer overheating problems.

Many thanks to BestDeal for helping me out with this.

Wikiprice is now on a new server

Recently we had some problems with wikiprice, mainly due to the computational power of the server and the heavy traffic. Today we had to keep wikiprice down for 8 hours while we were migrating to a new server.

We moved wikiprice to a new server that doubles the amount of ram and uses ssd hard drives. We also optimized the code. So: new server, more ram, ssd hard drive, code optimization: all should result in a very stable wikiprice with an uptime close to 100%.

The first thing you'll see it that the pages load faster. Oh, we also changed the graphs a bit, and added a login section for a plethora of things we'll add in the future

MTGO Library Bot 6.46 - Oversell protection

ML Bot 6.46 is a major release, offering a numer of small bug fixes and bringing a new tool, the Oversell Protection.

What is it? The oversell protection is a set of rules that apply to customers that buy more than "x" copies of a certain card in a 24 hour period. While not everybody needs it, it can be useful to protect your bots from someone buying all the copies of a certain card (for example to speculate on it). A user buying all the copies of a card is not necessarily a bad thing, but if you want an always stocked chain this could be annoying, especially when the prices of the cards move fast (such as during the Release Events).

You can active the tool in the Online Control, clicking on the "Oversell Protection" button. There are several things you can do there: you can decide how to respond to an oversell attempt: you can deny the trade or you can increase the price of the card. You can do this for rarity and foilness, and choose the thresholds of cards and the increase in price.

The interface is easy use, but we are still working on it and will make it better. So far the oversell protections apply to all your bots - we plan to make it chain-wide and all-bots-wide to offer a deeper control.

As final note, with ML Bot 6.46 we changed the executable packer to decrease the size of the files. This is ok, save for AVG Free that detects the new executable ("LauncherGUI.exe") as a generic virus. We are still working on the issue and try to find out why. Other antivir are fine and do not raise any alarm, we think that AVG is tuned to detect a higher number of false positives than other antivir.

Note for the beta testers: this release, 6.46, is NOT the 6.46 you are using, it is slighly less. Your version already has the oversell protection.

.

Approach MTGO Finance like Warren Buffet

If you have been living under a rock, you may never have heard of the most successful investor in the world: Mr Warren Buffet, 83 years old right now.

Here's how happy investing money makes him.

This guy has managed to get 20% a year on any money he has invested - over a long period of time. In the world of investing money, he has no match.

Based on a long article in the Swedish financial magazine Aktiespararen, I have tried to figure out how mr Buffet would approach MTGO Finance.

Here are some of his principles and how they may apply to Magic Online:

• Evaluate the company, not the market:  Think about the deck the card you are evaluating goes into. How will this deck do in the future? What will the demand be? Can the card be reprinted?
• Choose the right company and act as an owner: If you invest in cards, make sure you have played them. Be aware of the interactions of the card so you can properly evaluate if a card is overshadowed by a newer card. If you deep on a card, make sure you play it. Constantly.
• Think about the difference between a card's price and its value: Rageblood Shaman spiked on MTGO as it has a lot of value if a Minotaur deck becomes a viable (even tier 3) Standard strategy. The card has a lot of potential value but had a very low price. If you managed to sell in time, you could have earned 1000% on the first spike (5 to 50 cents) .There may be future spikes.
• Buy cheap and keep for a long time: This may apply more to stock that actually on the average have positive expected value (EV). Magic cards do not. BUT overall MTGO speculators are too shortsighted. Act on the major trends - such as PTQ season and not fancy guesses about the future. (Check out my Seasonal Trading video - link below).
• Trade as little as possible: Warren wants to avoid fees and you should also act to avoid fees! Do not give the bots 15-50% every time. Sell to humans. Get your own bot from mtgolibrary (you only pay when you sell!). You can trade a lot if you do not lose rake every time you do. Be aware of fees.
• Invest deeply in a few companies: Specialize. Choose a format or a set and learn everything about it. Do not try to speculate in all MTGO cards. Avoid more complicated areas like foils or promo cards until you are ready. We have all tried to speculate in too many areas. Consider how many speculators are trying to break Standard prices - maybe you should be the one that ignores the current set?
• Never borrow money for investments: If you borrow money to invest in MTGO cards, you are adding even more risk to a market that already has huge risk. Do not do it. I do not think there are many speculators that do this but if you even think about it - DON'T!
• Act rationally, not emotionally: Be aware of yourself and your emotions. You are your own worst enemy. Do you have pet cards? Are you attached to an investment and can't sell it to cut your losses? Learn about yourself. Know yourself.
• Be aware of interest on interest: There is probably a situation where you can get interest on interest on MTGO but I fail to think of one right now.
• Learn from your mistakes: When you have to sell with a loss think about why this happened. What could have turned out differently? Why didn't it? Did you make the right call and then something bad happened (like a sudden reprint, for example) ? How can you avoid this situation in the future?
• Take your own path: MTGO finance is different because most of the people on the market are players, not investors. Even so is it really your best option to check Reddit and Twitter and do what Marcel does? Or can you find your own niche?

Thinking like this made Warren Buffet the fourth richest man in the world:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forbes_list_of_billionaires#2013_Top_10

He was beaten only by three guys who built worldwide companies. It is hard to approach MTGO Finance like Bill Gates, btw.

Some of my other MTGO Finance material:

• Check out the Weekly MTGO Finance tips show here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RoEgvEaipZg
• Warning! Speculation on Magic Online will probably fail for you. Here's why: http://youtu.be/mHwCO4QCWqA
• Seasonal Trading on MTGO: http://puremtgo.com/articles/mtg-finance-seasonal-trading-cycles-over-year-magic-online

• Dan on Good Bots and Spreading Risks: http://mtgostrat.com/2013/09/mtgo-finance-good-bots-spreading-risks/
• The Most Important thing about MTGO finance: http://mtgolibrary.blogspot.se/2013/10/the-most-important-thing_23.html
• When do you sell your card? http://mtgolibrary.blogspot.se/2013/11/when-to-sell-magic-online-card.html
• When do you invest in the fall set (Theros)?  http://mtgolibrary.blogspot.se/2013/11/when-to-invest-in-fall-set-theros-for.html
• Is Core Set mythics the safest investment on MTGO? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WmyOxWT5qp8

Contact Info:
YouTube: MagicGatheringStrat
Web: mtgostrat.com
TwitchTV: twitchtv.com/MagicGatheringStrat
Bot:  mtgostrat. Show your support

Why wikiprice is often down

Recently we had some issues with wikiprice. It goes down almost once per day, and often the collection "resets" - and it takes 1 hours to fully populate again.

This is because we are getting a lot of traffic and a lot of visits. We had 1.000 unique visitors per day last month, and now are at 1.500. Our database used to store 8 million cards, now we are at 13 millions. It's an incredible success that brings us new and different problems, such as the computational resources of the server and the speed of the queries on the database.

We are solving these problems and soon as possible wikiprice will be stable again, for now we thank you for the patience

MTGO Weekly Finance Tips episode 3

It turns out that it was a good idea to buy Unearth. +400% in a week since I bought them.

This shows the Power of the Flashback Drafts when combined with Pauper Staples.

And look at this:

Upcoming Flashback Drafts

You love them, and you've been asking when they'll be back, so here's what's coming up for Weekly Flashback Drafts!

Jan 22 - 29	Zendikar/Worldwake
Jan 29 - Feb 5	Mirrodin/Darksteel/Fifth Dawn + Cube
Feb 5 - 12	Invasion/Planeshift/Apocalypse + Cube

From: http://community.wizards.com/content/blog/4023421

So how do you profit from this? Well, you should probably Watch this week's episode of MTGO Weekly Finance Tips!

In short: Start Selling all of RTR Block. Buy Fetchlands Jan 29-31. If you like high risk/reward, invest heavily in Pauper Staples from the Flashback drafts.


More MTGO Finance that you might find useful
-----------------------------------
Speculation 101 with Jason: http://mtgostrat.com/2013/11/real-way-go-infinite-mtgo-speculation-101/

Warning! Speculation on Magic Online will probably fail for you. Here's why: http://youtu.be/mHwCO4QCWqA

Seasonal Trading on MTGO:
http://puremtgo.com/articles/mtg-finance-seasonal-trading-cycles-over-year-magic-online

Dan on Good Bots and Spreading Risks: http://mtgostrat.com/2013/09/mtgo-finance-good-bots-spreading-risks/

The Most Important thing about MTGO finance: http://mtgolibrary.blogspot.se/2013/10/the-most-important-thing_23.html

When do you sell your card? http://mtgolibrary.blogspot.se/2013/11/when-to-sell-magic-online-card.html

When do you invest in the fall set (Theros)?  http://mtgolibrary.blogspot.se/2013/11/when-to-invest-in-fall-set-theros-for.html

Is Core Set mythics the safest investment on MTGO? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WmyOxWT5qp8

Contact Info:
YouTube: MagicGatheringStrat
Web: mtgostrat.com
Facebook: facebook.com/MagicGatheringStrat
TwitchTV: twitchtv.com/MagicGatheringStrat
This show is sponsored by the mtgostrat bot. Show your support

Decks of the Modern Noob: Gruul Blood Moon

In my ongoing video series, the Modern Noob, I play a variety of Modern decks. Right now I am playing five of them.

The other four have already been featured here. They are

Goblins: http://mtgolibrary.blogspot.se/2014/01/decks-of-modern-noob.html
Soul Sisters: http://mtgolibrary.blogspot.se/2013/11/decks-of-modern-noob-soul-sisters.html
The Time Walk Deck: http://mtgolibrary.blogspot.se/2013/11/the-decks-of-modern-noob-time-walk.html
Hartford Red: http://mtgolibrary.blogspot.se/2014/01/decks-of-modern-noob-hartford-red.html
Here I will present Gruul Blood Moon, the last of the currently played decks in the Modern Noob.

The deck is based on the Gruul Aggro Deck that was very popular last summer but has three main deck Blood Moons. I have also added Tarmogoyfs very recently. The number of Goyfs I got has been a big secret on the YouTube channel, but I am going to reveal it here. There are four Goyfs in the deck. MTGO Finance has been good to me lately :)

4 Stomping Ground
2 Verdant Catacombs
1 Blood Crypt
1 Mountain
4 Goblin Guide
2 Misty Rainforest
4 Tarmogoyf
3 Forest
4 Flinthoof Boar
2 Dismember
3 Blood Moon
4 Burning-Tree Emissary
4 Kird Ape
4 Experiment One
4 Lightning Bolt
2 Scavenging Ooze
4 Copperline Gorge
4 Ghor-Clan Rampager
2 Arid Mesa
2 Searing Blaze

Sideboard
3 Ancient Grudge
1 Blood Moon
2 Combust
3 Domri Rade
4 Leyline of the Void
2 Searing Blaze


Here you can find a longer explanation of what The Modern Noob is about: http://puremtgo.com/articles/modern-noob


The Modern Noob is still on Holiday break (sneaking in a game every now and then) but with the Born of the Gods release the show will be up and going on youtube.com/MagicGatheringstrat, mtgostrat.com and here again. New decks will be added. Do you have any suggestions? Make them in the show notes here.

Born of the Gods: mechanics

Born of the Gods is upon us, and that means it is nearly time for the explanation of new Born of the Gods mechanics.
- Inspired: A creature's inspired ability triggers every time the creature becomes untapped. That's normally at the start of your turn, but an inspired ability triggers no matter how or when the creature untaps.
- Tribute: A creature with a tribute ability offers your opponent a grim choice: either it becomes even larger, or it does something nasty to your opponent when it enters the battlefield. These effects include destroying permanents, dealing damage to your opponent, and fighting opposing creatures.
- Archetypes: it is a cycle of five enchantment creatures, one of each color. Each Archetype has two abilities: one that grants a keyword ability to all of your creatures, including itself, and one that makes your opponents' creatures lose that same keyword.

and 4 other mechanics from previous sets
- Bestow, Devotion, Scry, Heroic

MTGO Library Bot 6.45

All the botters should upgrade their bots to version 6.45 to fix a bug that is causing less trades.

Previous versions are sometimes unable to complete a Selling trade. This results in less performed trades. The issue happens on specific machines but we were not able to identify a common pattern (such as: "all the XP systems with an i3 processor") so we suggest to upgrade your bots regardless, even if you are under the impression that everything is working correctly and you didn't see a drop in the number of trades.

MTGO Finance tips of the week

I am running a short weekly MTGO Finance show on youtube.com/MagicGatheringStrat and I am doing a short financial segment on the weekly podcast Pauper to the People.

I figured I would share my picks with you this week.

Sell cards that have already spiked in Modern

Despite my general advice to keep any Modern cards until Modern PTQ season begins in June, some cards have just spiked too much not to sell them. If your Modern cards have gone up 200%, sell them, buy on the rebound and then sell them again in July. Prime example. Fists of Suns and Remand.

Buy Pauper
This weekend may have been the best time ever to invest in Pauper. If the Premier Events keep firing like they did this weekend, we are looking at 900-1000% possible gains in a year for some cards. Focus on the 15-40 cent price range with cards such as Curfew, Unearth and Coral Net. More expensive Pauper cards such as Daze has more limited upsides but generally most Pauper cards seems to be good investments right now if Pauper stays as Active as it is now (which is far more Active than when all the prices dropped - and there were Flashback Drafts on top of that!


Don't call shots and expect to make a long term profit

Also, remember that shotscalling is much less profitable than acting on major cyclical trends on Magic Online.

Here is a brief explanation why you will not be earning money by Calling what the next hot card in Standard will be:

wikiprice is up again

Wikiprice is up again now. We changed the broken hardware (a hard drive) and restored a backup  of the entire system. The collection is already fully populated and the system is now returned to a fully functional state.

mtgowikiprice down for hardware failure

We had a hardware failure on the mtgowikiprice server. We are fixing the problem - wikiprice will be online in one day.

MTGO Library Bot 6.44

We found that XP is a very "delicate" system. On XP MTGO crashes a bit too many times (Windows 7 is fine) so we were forced to release ML Bot 6.44 for all the xp users.
The main difference between 6.43 and 6.44 is simply that 6.44 avoids a "certain combination" of buttons that make mtgo crash.

All the xp users should upgrade to ML Bot 6.44.
Windows 7 users are fine and can still use 6.43

Decks of the Modern Noob:

In my ongoing video series, the Modern Noob, I play a variety of Modern decks. Right now I am playing five of them.

This is a Goblins deck by Alex Serrano. It is the newest of the five decks and is surprisingly fast. I am still Learning the deck but it seems to have enormous potential.
4 Foundry Street Denizen
3 Simian Spirit Guide
16 Mountain
4 Goblin Bushwhacker
4 Lightning Bolt
2 Cavern of Souls
1 Spikeshot Elder
3 Krenko's Command
3 Goblin Guide
4 Goblin Chieftain
3 Shared Animosity
4 Mogg War Marshal
4 Goblin Grenade
3 Dragon Fodder
2 Legion Loyalist

Sideboard
1 Combust
4 Smash to Smithereens
2 Pithing Needle
4 Blood Moon
1 Chandra, Pyromaster
3 Relic of Progenitus

My sideboard plan is not yet fully developed.
Here is a sample match with the deck.

You can follow the matches on YouTube.com/MagicGatheringStrat

More decks from the Modern Noob here
Soul Sisters: http://mtgolibrary.blogspot.se/2013/11/decks-of-modern-noob-soul-sisters.html
The Time Walk Deck: http://mtgolibrary.blogspot.se/2013/11/the-decks-of-modern-noob-time-walk.html
Hartford Red: http://mtgolibrary.blogspot.se/2014/01/decks-of-modern-noob-hartford-red.html


Here you can find a longer explanation of what The Modern Noob is about: http://puremtgo.com/articles/modern-noob

Collector coins

Wizards announced a new business relationship with the New Zealand Mint to produce a series of Magic: The Gathering collector coins. The first coin will feature the artwork of none other than Jace, the Mind Sculptor. By far the price is unknown. Each real silver coin will be packaged in a display case and will come with an individually numbered certificate of authenticity.
                                                                             
                                                                              FRONT:

                                               

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           
                                                                                BACK
Would you put money on it?

MTGO Library Bot 6.43

ML Bot 6.43 changes the order of the initial phases (right after the login). The bot first opens the Classifed room, then creates the csv, and finally posts the Classified message.

The bot is so faster (there are less clicks) and fixes an annoying crash happening on Windows XP.

MTGO Library Bot 6.42

With ML Bot 6.42 we continue the path started with versions 6.40 and 6.41, further increasing the operational speed and the reactivity of the bot. In details we rewrote the Csv creation and the Classifed opening phases. These phases used to take 30-40 seconds, while now takes 2-3 seconds. The opening of the Classified Board now clicks on "Home" and then "Trade" rather than using the "Menu"

We also fixed a minor bug regarding the launch of MTGO. The bot looks for the MTGO "Launch" buttons in three different locations on the screen and, if ML Bot is not minimized, the bot can click on its own interface and alter the settings.

ML Bot 6.42 inserts also a "system freeze" timer: if the whole system freezes, ML Bot tries to recover it

MTGO Weekly Finance Tips

Just started a series on YouTube that I will do every Monday with a couple of Finance tips. I do a segment on the podcast Pauper to the People and I will do the YouTube video right Before that segment, so they will overlap.

This is the first episode:

Basically, I am doing four different specs right now.

1. Buy Pauper. Extremely high risk. Flashback drafts and the loss of Daily Events have hurt the Pauper staples (Always very unstable) a lot. Some cards have dropped 90% or more (Snuff Out for example). If you want to do a high risk adventure speculation, invest in Pauper staples. Returns of 800-1000% in a year is not unthinkable. Only for the brave.

2. Buy Modern staples. Just five months to the first Modern PTQ season since early 2013. Prices will soar and some cards (especially MMA that was recently drafted) are still low. Pretty solid returns.

3. Sell Standard. Even Theros cards (but especially RTR Block and M14) should spike soon. When the Standard PTQ Season in Paper ends on March 9th, the stuff that will rotate this fall will start falling.

4. Buy Penny rares. I have a special place in my heart for Penny Rare speculation. I just sold 213 Nightveil Specters and now I am trying to get rid of 200 High Priest of Penance. If one Penny Rare hits, it pays off for a lot of them that did not hit. Speculating on Penny Rares brought me into Contact with Daniel who managed to summarize a lot of thoughts about Theros Penny Rares (below)


P.s. I am also buying M14 Mythics, but that is the subject for a whole other article. D.s.


My friend Daniel on the Theros Penny Rares (in response to my own thoughts on the subject):

Okay, so here is my line of thinking on the cards I'm targeting from THS right now..

Rageblood Shaman - I believe the block is bound to produce some more Minotaurs; I think that's a given. We already have Rageblood, Reckoner and Fanatic of Mogis, which makes for a decent good core. This spec may be predicated on a good 1-drop Minotaur but I also think an above-average Midrange piece could cause a spike as well. There's very little risk here at .02-.05 and a decently high ceiling.

Reverent Hunter - I've had some experience against mono green devotion and think it can be a very real deck. Whenever I see this guy hit the board, he's a 5/5 for 2G. Also working to its advantage is that he scales so he isn't a specifically bad late game draw. Casting cost is nice, typing is nice (human) and the current price is nice at .04-.06. I'm in.

Arbor Colossus - 6/6 for 5CMC, can grow and has a relevant ability (walls/shoots down cloudfin, nightveil, stormbreath and etc.). Good card overall but I'm looking to grab it for under .1 if possible.

Those are the main ones I'm looking at right now. As for mythics, I grabbed two playsets of Underworld Cerberus for .64 because I think at least one of his abilities will be very relevant in the upcoming meta. It doesn't have a ETB trigger, which is a big deal of course but the super evasion plus dissuading hard
removal seems very good.

To a lesser extent I like Prognostic Sphinx (has some appeal if control mirrors become a thing IMO), Nighthowler (is a better Reverent Hunter if GY shenanigans take off), Prophet of Kruphix (would be buying if it were .05 cheap; on the fence), Daxos of Meletis (have play tested and my opponent ALWAYS targets him first; I think it means something), Reaper of Wilds (I'd be happier here if it were cheaper and the Golgari Scryland was being released in BNG), Polis Crusher (efficient body:cost, hope ability becomes a little more relevant) and Ember Swallower (see Crusher although it's alarming that red devo hasn't made any use of him).

 

Oh, by the way, here are the exact numbers on the mana intensive 3CMC lords..
 
Knight Exemplar - high of 1.5 

Field Marshal - 1.6

Merfolk Sovereign - .13

Grand Architect - 1.4

Goblin King - N/A

Goblin General- 1.4

Balthor the Stout - .19

Elvish Champion - 2.5

Elvish Archdruid - 1.2

Lord of the Undead- 4

Death Baron - .88

Cemetery Reaper -.95

Captivating Vampire - .9

* for cards with multiple reprints, I took the high of their first Printing.

Proft Stats for single bot, chain and all bots

Recently we introduced the Stats Block and the Profit Graph.  http://mtgolibrary.blogspot.com/2013/12/profit-number-and-value-of-trades.html

We have now enhanced them to include the data from all your bots and from the bots in the same sharing credit chain. By default the Dashboard shows the data for "all" bots. Just click on the links on the right (orange arrows) to navigate the other datasets.

The "single bot" is the bot you are logged in with. You can change that bot using the dropdown menu on the left.  "All bots" refers simply to all your bots, without any distinction, while "chain" is the set of bots sharing credits with the current bot (as definied in the "Sharing Credit" Panel)

Success Quotes

If you had opportunity to meet experienced entrepreneur and ask him about the absolutely most important advice that he is able to give you would you take this chance? Reading this post is like meeting 10 such people at your own fireside.

“I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.” - Thomas A. Edison
“In order to succeed, your desire for success should be greater than your fear of failure.” - Bill Cosby
“If you don’t build your dream, someone else will hire you to help them build theirs.”  - Dhirubhai Ambani
“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do.” - Mark Twain
“The difference between a successful person and others is not a lack of strength, not a lack of knowledge, but rather a lack of will.” - Vince Lombardi
“Develop success from failures. Discouragement and failure are two of the surest stepping stones to success.” - Dale Carnegie
"A successful man is one who can lay a firm foundation with the bricks others have thrown at him." - David Brinkley
“Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever.” - Mahatma Gandhi
“The question isn’t who is going to let me; it’s who is going to stop me.” - Ayn Rand
“You have to learn the rules of the game. And then you have to play better than anyone else.” - Albert Einstein

MTGO Library Bot 6.41

We are proud the announce the second release of the year, ML Bot 6.41.

We continued the work began with 6.40 and improved the speed of the bot. Again we focused in particular on the trade opening phase and cut this time down of another 2 seconds. Your bot will be able to format the trading interface and accept commands in no time even on slow a computer.

We also fixed a MTGO freezing problem. Sometime MTGO just freezes: the cpu goes to 100%, everything is stucked, the bot and all the other softwares are still alive and works but they cannot do anything because all the computational power is drained by MTGO. In fact they can do something, but everything they do is very slow.
When this happens, ML Bot 6.41 just kills mtgo and restarts it. The detection of a freeze is somehow a "delicate" thing, so the bot waits 130 minutes before a restart, in order to be totally sure it's a real freeze and not "something temporary", such as a window stucked in front of the interface, an antivir request or a windows update request.

Decks of the Modern Noob: Hartford Red

In my ongoing video series, the Modern Noob, I play a variety of Modern decks. The deck I have played the most is Hartford Red, a different take on Burn with a little more reach.
How do I achieve reach in Burn? Well, I use Shrine of Burning Rage:

The deck list:
Lands (20)
11 Mountain
4 Arid Mesa
4 Scalding Tarn
1 Keldon Megaliths

Creatures (20)
4 Goblin Guide
4 Grim Lavamancer
4 Keldon Marauders
4 Vexing Devil
4 Stormblood Berserker

Spells (20)
4 Flame Javelin
4 Incinerate
4 Lightning Bolt
4 Rift Bolt
4 Shrine of Burning Rage

Sideboard (15)
2 Dismember
2 Dragon’s Claw
4 Pyrite Spellbomb
4 Searing Blaze
3 Shattering Spree


I have been using various cards in the Vexing Devil spot, but lately I am back using the Devils.
You can follow the matches on YouTube.com/MagicGatheringStrat

More decks from the Modern Noob:
Soul Sisters: http://mtgolibrary.blogspot.se/2013/11/decks-of-modern-noob-soul-sisters.html
The Time Walk Deck: http://mtgolibrary.blogspot.se/2013/11/the-decks-of-modern-noob-time-walk.html
This is a longer explanation of what The Modern Noob is about: http://puremtgo.com/articles/modern-noob

MTGO Library Bot 6.40

We are happy to deliver the first major update of the year, ML Bot 6.40. What is new ?

•  First of all, we increased the overall speed of the bot and in particular the accepting trade phase. Now the bot will be able to setup the trading interface and be ready for accepting a trade in 5 seconds (it used to took 10-15 seconds). This results in a better customer experience (and possibly a returning customer).

• We also coded a couple of smart "withdraws" to save time when a trade cannot be performed. This happens, for example, when a buddy opens trade and has no credit and no cards available for the trade: the bot will prompt a nice message and abort the trade some seconds later: "I cannot find any card tradable. Please make more tradable and REOPEN trade". Analogously the bot withdraws when it cannot find any interesting cards for sale and it is a "solo buyer" - it won't go back to the main menu but it will directly abort the trade.

• We also reduced the number of advertisement messages. Older versions used to adv mtgowikiprice and mtgolibrary.com: we saw this was too much and now the bot will show zero or one message.

The ML Bot of 2014

First of all, happy new year to all! 

2013 has been a fantastic year, we launched the new site mtgolibrary.com (March), the new wikiprice (September) and during the year more than 180 updates to the bot client. All this while developing the bot for MTGO v4, which is finally ended and is already happily running on our beta-tester accounts. 

If you look at the ML Bot of January 2013 and the one of January 2014, you'll see a great improvement and many major releases.

So, what for 2014? Starting from January, and following on February and March, we'll release a number of major updates. Shared inventory, trading speed, public beta v4, credit for money and much more are just under the corner and will be delivered Q1 and Q2 2014 !
In a nutshell, relentlessly, we'll take all the necessary steps to make your bot profit more.

Happy 2014!

Albert

New Year Resolutions

Happy new year, Everyone!

Just wanted to let you know what you can expect from me on mtgolibrary during 2014.

* MTGO Finance articles
* More blogging about launching the mtgostrat bot
* More Modern Noob decks
* Shameless promotion of mtgostrat.com and our mtgostrat bot. :)
* Other random things on my mind 

I am sure the Standard Pauper Gauntlet and the Pauper Gauntlet will sneak their way into my mtgolibrary writing as well.

If there is anything else you want to see in this spot, please let me know. I am currently staying awawy from  gameplay videos and articles here, as space is very limited. That could possibly change during the year.

BTW; Shoutout to Kuro for starting an excellent article series here: http://mtgolibrary.blogspot.se/2013/12/kuros-botting-journal-prologue.html

I had not seen his article when I wrote my own on Dec 29th. In fact, he is doing everything that I wanted to do. Still, I will be inspired by Kuro and I am sure people wont mind hearing from other new botters. I should probably visit that forum he mentioned

Hope 2014 will treat you well, botters!

/D

Finally, remember when it is time to invest heavily in Theros: http://mtgolibrary.blogspot.se/2013/11/when-to-invest-in-fall-set-theros-for.html