The Top Decks of Pauper: Goblins

In this series we will walk you through the top decks of Pauper as played on Magic Online. Pauper is the Magic Online format where you are only allowed to play commons.  These are the official rules: http://www.wizards.com/magic/tcg/resources.aspx?x=magic/rules/pauper

Today we will be discussing the Goblins deck. Goblins is a deck that truly never goes away and that always has its dedicated players. 

Earlier installments in the series

Affinity: http://mtgolibrary.blogspot.se/2013/11/the-top-decks-of-pauper-affinity.html
Burn: http://mtgolibrary.blogspot.se/2013/11/the-top-decks-of-pauper-burn.html
Delver: http://mtgolibrary.blogspot.se/2013/10/the-top-decks-of-pauper-delver.html
DelverFiend: http://mtgolibrary.blogspot.se/2013/11/the-top-decks-of-pauper-delverfiend.html
Elves: http://mtgolibrary.blogspot.se/2014/04/the-top-decks-of-pauper-elves.html
MUC: http://mtgolibrary.blogspot.com/2014/03/the-top-decks-of-pauper-mono-blue.html
Stompy: http://mtgolibrary.blogspot.se/2013/10/the-top-decks-of-pauper-stompy.html
Tron: http://mtgolibrary.blogspot.se/2014/04/the-top-decks-of-pauper-rug-tron.html
UB Trinket Control: http://mtgolibrary.blogspot.se/2013/10/the-top-decks-of-pauper-ub-trinket.html

The Plan

Goblins is a surprisingly complex deck. You have to be aware whether you are the control or the beatdown at every time. The links at the bottom of this blog post contains more hints on how to play the deck. It is not as easy as you expect.

Pauper Goblins sample deck list
This list was played by GeneralPeron to a Premier Event victory on April 12th, 2014.

Here is the event: http://www.wizards.com/Magic/Digital/MagicOnlineTourn.aspx?x=mtg/digital/magiconline/tourn/6975247

Main deck

18 Mountain

4 Foundry Street Denizen

2 Goblin Arsonist

4 Goblin Bushwhacker

4 Goblin Cohort

3 Goblin Sledder

4 Mogg Conscripts

3 Mogg Raider

4 Mogg War Marshal

4 Sparksmith

3 Death Spark

4 Flame Slash

2 Gitaxian Probe

1 Lightning Bolt

Sideboard

3 Flaring Pain

4 Pyroblast

4 Raze

4 Smelt

Financially, only Gitaxian Probe is worth anything here today, making Goblins an excellent budget choice. Many people run Fireblast in their builds, but even that card is cheap today due to flashback drafts.

Notice how Lightning Bolt is not good enough for Classic Pauper in many cases. This deck only plays one copy (!)

Web resources for Pauper Goblins

For some reason this deck has attracted some really skilled Pauper writers. These articles are a little dated but contain a lot of gems for the player interested in Goblins.

Pauper's Cage Goblin Primer: http://pauperscage.blogspot.se/2012/04/mtg-pauper-classic-decks-goblins.html

David Kahn's legendary Goblin article: http://www.channelfireball.com/articles/the-wrath-of-kahn-goblins-in-pauper/

Bonus video

I am playing the mirror against a very experienced Goblins pilot in this video.

How to draft Journey into Nyx?

The Journey into Nyx set features 165 cards. We are just after prerelease in paper MtG and only 2 weeks ahead to MtGO prelease, which starts on May, 12. New sets bring on new cards and new loves. With JOU there is no different.

JOU is full of good cards in limited format and literally only few of them are totally unplayable. That's why this time I'm going to present you the list of cards in order, starting with the best pick during the draft and ending on the least desirable card. For instance, if you don't have any card from "2nd pick" card pool you look for cards in "3rd pick".

1st pick: Prophetic Flamespeaker, Ajani, Mentor of Heroes Dawnbringer Charioteers, Godsend
2nd pick: Dictate of Erebos, Doomwake Giant, Silence the Believers, Forgeborn Oreads, Harness by Force, Spawn of Thraxes, Eidolon of Blossoms, Heroes' Bane, Hydra Broodmaster, Setessan Tactics Banishing Light, Dictate of Heliod, Launch the Fleet, Phalanx Formation, Tethmos High Priest,Hypnotic Siren, Athreos, God of Passage, Desperate Stand, Iroas, God of Victory, Keranos, God of Storms, Pharika, God of Affliction
3rd pick: Ajani's Presence, Lagonna-Band Trailblazer, Leonin Iconoclast, Supply-Line Cranes, Aerial Formation, Cloaked Siren, Hour of Need, Hubris, Riptide Chimera, Sigiled Starfish, Triton Cavalry, War-Wing Siren, Bloodcrazed Hoplite, Feast of Dreams, Felhide Petrifier, King Macar, the Gold-Cursed, Nightmarish End, Akroan Line Breaker, Blinding Flare, Magma Spray, Mogis's Warhound, Riddle of Lightning, Twinflame, Golden Hind, Pheres-Band Warchief, Fleetfeather Cockatrice, Nyx Weaver, Stormchaser Chimera, Chariot of Victory
4th pick: Akroan Mastiff, Deicide, Eagle of the Watch, Mortal Obstinacy, Nyx-Fleece Ram, Quarry Colossus, Reprisal, Sightless Brawler, Skyspear Cavalry, Stonewise Fortifier, Battlefield Thaumaturge, Crystalline Nautilus, Daring Thief, Font of Fortunes, Kiora's Dismissal, Polymorphous Rush, Sage of Hours, Scourge of Fleets, Triton Shorestalker, Whitewater Naiads, Brain Maggot, Cast into Darkness, Gnarled Scarhide, Grim Guardian, Master of the Feast, Nyx Infusion, Pharika's Chosen, Spiteful Blow, Bladetusk Boar, Flurry of Horns, Gluttonous Cyclops, Lightning Diadem, Rouse the Mob, Satyr Hoplite, Sigiled Skink, Starfall, Wildfire Cerberus, Bassara Tower Archer, Colossal Heroics, Consign to Dust, Font of Fertility, Goldenhide Ox, Humbler of Mortals, Nature's Panoply, Nessian Game Warden, Oakheart Dryads, Pheres-Band Thunderhoof, Ravenous Leucrocota, Renowned Weaver, Reviving Melody, Satyr Grovedancer, Spirespine, Revel of the Fallen God, Underworld Coinsmith, Armory of Iroas, Gold-Forged Sentinel, Hall of Triumph
5th pick: rest of cards, basing upon drafted colors

 Good luck in drafts!

MTGO Library Bot 6.84

ML Bot 6.84 fixes two bugs in autotransfer mode:

• in the "Get cards whose selling price is" and "Get cards whose buying price" modes, boosters are no more searched if the filters are set to "foil" or  "common, uncommon, mythic" rarity. 
• fixed a problem with the handshake

The Modern Noob Finale

The Modern Noob is my series about learning Modern. It has been going on since October and is scheduled to end with me choosing a deck to play in a Premier Event in the first week of June (June 2nd-6th).

There are three decks remaining out of a total of 11 decks that have been played.

Soul Sisters
Deck list and details here: http://mtgolibrary.blogspot.se/2013/11/decks-of-modern-noob-soul-sisters.html

I played (and won) five matches in a row with Soul Sisters this week. Video below.

My record with Soul Sisters is now 41-11 in practice. That is 79% of matches won. Seems fairly solid. I am working on finalizing the sideboard plan. It is the #1 candidate in the Modern Noob right now.

Tron
Tron is the newest deck in the Modern Noob.

Deck list here: http://mtgolibrary.blogspot.se/2014/03/a-new-deck-for-modern-noob.html

I am having so much fun with Tron, but I am still extremely new to the deck and make a ton of mistakes in every match.

Recent video here:

I am 5-3 with the deck (63%) and I need a ton more experience if this deck is going to play the Premier in June.


Goblins
This is the Goblins deck by Alex Serrano.

I have talked about the details of this deck here: http://mtgolibrary.blogspot.se/2014/01/decks-of-modern-noob.html

What this deck has that none of the others have is brewer support. I appreciate that. Once again, thanks, Alex.

Here is a recent match with Goblins:



My record with Goblins is now 10-6 in practice. That is 63% of matches won.

The Modern Noob on mtgolibrary
I will report on my progress in The Modern Noob every Sunday here on mtgolibrary until June 8th, when I will report how the Premier Event did and then sell all my Modern cards when they peak like crazy during Modern PTQ Season. I will start playing the format again in September after rebuying everything I need.

The full play list
If you want to see all the crazy decks I have tried and how it went, check out The Modern Noob Season 1 playlist here:

Spotlight Beta testing

Hello Botters,

V4 Beta testing has resumed! 

With the Mtgo v4 spotlight coming up May 7th -10th we have decided to run a private ML bot v4 beta testing to qualified customers. If you would like to apply please write to staff@mtgolibrary.com a brief email how you could be a beneficial tester for ML Bot.

Applicants must meet the follow criteria:

- Have the ability to watch for error/bugs and report them
- Must run more than 8 bots.
- Have been using ML Bot for more than 24 months.
- Not hold ML Bot accountable for any bugs or losses.


The new bot software will have all same great features as the old software, auto-transfers are improved and will have few new secret features.

All applicants will be picked based on availability and longevity of botting. One benefit is that you will be one of the few bots online during the Spotlight.


Happy Botting!

Jason - Teamsotge.

Introducing the Price Consistency Tool

Hello Botters,

today we take the market back and ban speculators and raiders out of our lives forever. We are introducing a new tool, Pricing Consistency.

Take a look at any card on mtggoldfish.com: compared to paper magic (right, blue line), mtgo prices (left, red line) go up and down suddenly in short amounts of time. In the example Ashiok crossed the value of 5.5 tixs 27 times in a month. This happens because the MTGO Market is lively and very efficient. Without any protection, you could easily buy Ashiok at its highest price and sell it at the lowest, all the opposite you want to do. You can price each card manually via PersonalPrices.txt, but this is really time consuming and simply you cannot do for every card.

The goal of the Price Consistency tool is to decrease the amount of sudden spikes of cards and increase the overall stability of the market. As you see in the first graph the red line represents the current market, the blue represents the market of the future. Price Consistency will help increase your overall profit.
So how does it work? There are two sides of the table, the buy price consistency and the sell price consistency.

Sell price consistency:
For each card, your bots will automatically adjust the selling price to minimize your loss for market fluctuations. For example, if you buy a card for 10 tix and the market drops in value so that you are now selling it for 9 tixs, you will lose 1 tix if you do not have selling protection.

The % dropdown menus defines the force of the price adjustments. You can have a time decay so that a card bought long time ago won't affect the selling price too much.
100% means: if necessary, calculate the new price to save you 100% of the loss. Using the example above, this will result in a selling price of 10 tixs.
80% means: if necessary, calculate the new price to save you 80% of the loss. Using the example above, this will result in a selling price of 9.8 tixs.
0% means: no protection, simply use the current selling price. Using the example above, this will result in a selling price of 9 tixs.

You have the option to override Personal prices. Please note that if your protection percentage is set too high for too long you risk not selling the card, and therefore not re-buying it at the market value. This may result in a lower than normal inventory rotation and an overall loss in profits. Remember that some cards fall in price and if you don't keep up with the market you may be holding onto the card for too long.

Buy price consistency: 

For each card, your bots will automatically adjust the buying price to minimize your loss for market fluctuations. For example, if you sell a card for 10 tix and the market rises in value so that you are now buying it for 11 tixs, you will lose 1 tix if you do not have buying protection.

The % dropdown menus defines the force of the price adjustments. You can have a time decay so that a card sold long time ago won't affect the buying price too much.
100% means: if necessary, calculate the new price to save you 100% of the loss. Using the example above, this will result in a buying price of 10 tixs.
80% means: if necessary, calculate the new price to save you 80% of the loss. Using the example above, this will result in a buying price of 10.2 tixs.
0% means:; no protection, simply use the current buying price. Using the example above, this will result in a buying price of 11 tixs.

Happy botting!

Jason - Teamstoge

MTGO Library Bot 6.83 - introducing "Profit Protection"

ML Bot 6.83 has just been released. There is nothing new here at a first sight, but it prepares the field for the "Profit Protection" tool we will introduce tomorrow!

Please stay tuned because this will be something big :-)

Login error with old bot versions

Hello Botters,

The old versions of the bot (<= 6.81) are unable to login, we are aware of the problem and we fixed it with 6.82 and 6.82.

This is not an issue with your account, it is a login error from the bot itself. Please restart your bots and update to v 6.82 or 6.83

We have been down for less than 30 mins. A file we needed on Net 4.0 framework was updated and our bot was no more able to use it. We are now investigating this deeper in order to find a way to avoid these overrides.

-Jason

The Top Decks of Pauper: Elves

In this series we will walk you through the top decks of Pauper as played on Magic Online. Pauper is the Magic Online format where you are only allowed to play commons.  These are the official rules:http://www.wizards.com/magic/tcg/resources.aspx?x=magic/rules/pauper

Today we will be discussing the Elves deck. As it does have a very good matchup against the top deck (Delver), Elves comes and goes in periods. Right now it is the #5 deck on mtggoldfish, which would be about as high as it normally goes.

Earlier installments in the series

Affinity: http://mtgolibrary.blogspot.se/2013/11/the-top-decks-of-pauper-affinity.html
Burn: http://mtgolibrary.blogspot.se/2013/11/the-top-decks-of-pauper-burn.html
Delver: http://mtgolibrary.blogspot.se/2013/10/the-top-decks-of-pauper-delver.html
DelverFiend: http://mtgolibrary.blogspot.se/2013/11/the-top-decks-of-pauper-delverfiend.html
Elves:
MUC; http://mtgolibrary.blogspot.com/2014/03/the-top-decks-of-pauper-mono-blue.html
Stompy: http://mtgolibrary.blogspot.se/2013/10/the-top-decks-of-pauper-stompy.html
Tron: http://mtgolibrary.blogspot.se/2014/04/the-top-decks-of-pauper-rug-tron.html
UB Trinket Control: http://mtgolibrary.blogspot.se/2013/10/the-top-decks-of-pauper-ub-trinket.html

The Plan
The idea is to play an enormous amount of elves quickly and either attack for lethal with Timberwatch Elves hep, gain a lot of life with Essence Warden or Wellwisher and/or combo kill with Viridian Longbow. Distant Melody ensures the broken combo nature of this deck.

A year ago I did an interview with one of the best elf players out there: Deluxeicoff. As Pauper is an eternal format, much of what was said still applies. Here is the video.

Pauper Elves sample deck list

There has been many versions of this deck. This deck is by F0urL1ghts from an event played on April 21st 2014. Here is the link: http://www.mtggoldfish.com/deck/230983

Main Deck
4 Birchlore Rangers
4 Wellwisher
4 Fyndhorn Elves
4 Timberwatch Elf
4 Quirion Ranger
4 Priest of Titania
3 Sylvan Ranger
4 Nettle Sentinel
3 Llanowar Elves
2 Elvish Mystic

4 Distant Melody
2 Spidersilk Armor
1 Viridian Longbow

12 Forest
1 Island

Sideboard
4 Thermokarst
4 Scattershot Archer
3 Gleeful Sabotage
2 Moment's Peace
1 Serene Heart
1 Fog

Financially, the cards you need to care about is Quirion Ranger and Nettle Senitel. Quirion Ranger was just flashback drafted so pick it up now. You will have to wait two weeks until you pick up Nettle Sentinel which will crash hard in the coming weeks due to Flashback drafts.

Here is a bonus video of me playing Elves vs Delver

MTGO Library Bot 6.81

ML Bot 6.81 is a maintenance build for 6.80.

• It fixes a problem with the "Trading" mode that was not picking all the cards needed
• It implements a better heuristic engine to shorten the name of the cards in the #shortname# command

MTGO Library Bot 6.80

ML Bot 6.80 has just been released and it is available for download.

• we added a new command for the Classifed messages, the #shortname# command. #shortname# will replace the name of the card with a shorter / friendly name so you can save space and customers will still be able to search for cards. For example, "Brimaz, King of Oreskos" becomes "Brimaz", and "Phenax, God of Deception" becomes simply "Phenax". It's important to note that you don't have to define any "translation file" - the bot already knows how to translate the card names and will do everything by itself.

• fixed a problem in autotransfer modes causing the bot to pick more cards than necessary, using both the wishlist and the collection reading mode

• more robust handshake for autotransfer, with slighly changed messages

• larger input box for the Classified Message.

Back on wikiprice...

Just like most bot owners, I have been feeling the less volume of trades and profits on my bot chain. I've decided to go back on Wikiprice to boost the volume/quantity of trades and gather new regulars.

After being nearly one year away from wikiprice, I haven't had any "terrible days" due to a pricing mistake or a bad price list; while this seems to be a clear win/win choice, it had its disadvantages...

Being away from wikiprice is a great way to hide your bot away from bad trades, specially if you are inexperienced on mtgo botting and unsure about prices. The problem is that you're also hidden from great opportunities too, from customers who don't mind paying a little bit extra to get all from the same chain to the ones that might get a great deal out of you (at your loss) but keep you on their buddy list, for future trades..(where you'll have the chance of getting your losses back).

Overall I think I've made the right choice in coming back... any thoughts?

My party with Bogbrew Witch

Long ago I made a promise to my YouTube subscribers that there would be 100 M14 videos on youtube.com/MagicGatheringStrat. At the time, I was playing a lot of M13 Draft and I was enjoying it so I figured it was a good idea.

Now it was time to deliver on that promise.

When grinding the M14 drafts and sealed, I got some experience with the format and before this tournament I was enjoying a 13-0 win streak - 13 straight wins playing M14 limited.

So I decided to draft the Bogbrew Witch deck in a Swiss draft. Could I get to 16-0 playing what many consider a joke deck?

This is the draft

This is the deck list I played.

10 Swamp
7 Mountains

3 Festering Newt
1 Bubbling Cauldron
1 Bogbrew Witch

1 Tenacious Dead
1 Gnawing Zombie
1 Lifebane Zombie
1 Ragathan Firecat
2 Undead Minotaur
1 Accursed Spirit
1 Marauding Malhorn
1 Pitchburn Devils

1 Shock
1 Doom Blade
3 Lithurgy of Blood
2 Mind Rot
1 Chandra's Outrage

Relevant sideboard cards

1 Bubbling Cauldron
1 Mind Rot
1 Wring Flesh
1 Rod of Ruin

And what a tasty brew she brewed! :)

You will have to watch the video to see how much damage one witch can do. Rumbling Baloths, Water Servants, Slivers ... they are all going into the cauldron!


I even got a Rage of The Week in the second match for my podcast Pauper to the People. It will appear in episode #153.

Happy Easter!

 Let the Event Tickets in your collection multiply like rabbits. 

Happy Easter! 

Trades are low these days, don't kill your margins

Mtgo economy is a bit slow this week, there is a significant drop of trades among all the bots, ML Bots and not ML bots. I checked online the main chains (see attached screenshot) and I found them at least 60% less frenzy than usual.

Don't cut your margin just because this is a slow week: keep your prices and resist the temptation. Release Events are just 2 weeks ahead.

.

Wikiprice now showing chains!

Yesterday wikiprice was not working properly, online and offline, because we were deploying a new feature, the grouping by chain.

If a bot belongs to a chain, it will appear in blue with a little "+" sign on the left. Click it to expand the chain and get the details. This is useful because chains share the credits so you can shop in any of the grouped bots and your credit will follow you. This will also save vertical space on your screen so you can view more bots at the same time.

Enjoy!

The Pauper Playthrough

This is a small project I am running on youtube.com/magicgatheringstrat.

The idea is to play through all the Pauper decks I like and have kept track of in my (enormous) spreadsheet.

There will be (at least) one match per deck.

The decks are (in the order they will be played):

Affinity
Burn
Delver
Elves
Goblins
Hexproof

DelverFiend
MUC
Stompy
MBC
Trinket

AzoriusKitty
BeastDown
BorosKitty

Death Deluxe
Grey Ghost
Illusory Tricks
Izzet Control
Love Train

Slivers
Rot Wolf Control
White Life

Five Color Green
White Weenie
Zoo Domain


I have already started with Affinity today:



You can find some of the decks in the links below here on mtgolibrary:

Affinity: http://mtgolibrary.blogspot.se/2013/11/the-top-decks-of-pauper-affinity.html
Burn: http://mtgolibrary.blogspot.se/2013/11/the-top-decks-of-pauper-burn.html
Delver: http://mtgolibrary.blogspot.se/2013/10/the-top-decks-of-pauper-delver.html
DelverFiend: http://mtgolibrary.blogspot.se/2013/11/the-top-decks-of-pauper-delverfiend.html
MUC; http://mtgolibrary.blogspot.com/2014/03/the-top-decks-of-pauper-mono-blue.html
Stompy: http://mtgolibrary.blogspot.se/2013/10/the-top-decks-of-pauper-stompy.html
UB Trinket Control: http://mtgolibrary.blogspot.se/2013/10/the-top-decks-of-pauper-ub-trinket.html

MTGO Library Bot 6.77

ML Bot 6.77 has just been released, fixing a minor bug with the new Autotransfer modes (here: http://mtgolibrary.blogspot.com/2014/04/mtgo-library-bot-676.html). The "Transfer entire collection" was not working properly because the bots were not able to handshake correctly and transfer the cards.

Mechanics of Journey into Nyx

Journey into Nyx is on the way and all mechanics have been already revealed. Apart from old goodies, such as Scry a two totally new abilities will be introduced:

Constellation - this ability triggers every time a card with it or another enchantment enters the battlefield under your control giving you some bonus.

Strive - As you cast a spell with strive, you can choose any number of targets, paying an additional cost for each target beyond the first. You may target any number of creatures, however you can't target a single creature with it more than once.

Cards I bought today

There are a lot of Flashback Drafts on Magic Online these days. Right now, today, you should be picking up your Odyssey Block cards. A block usually bottoms out the weekend AFTER the draft ends. Next weekend you should pick up your Time Spiral cards.

I have been using the principles from this article about what to buy at any given moment to create my list below: htttp://mtgolibrary.blogspot.se/2014/03/what-should-you-buy-at-any-given-moment.html

I have picked up the following cards over the weekend:

Black Sun's Zenith at 0,15 tix

Cabal Ritual 0,29 tix

Deep Analysis 0,15 tix

Earth Rift at 0,15 tix

Grand Abolisher at 0,17 

Nimble Mongoose at 0,43 tix

Necromancy at 0,28 tix

Prismatic Strands at 0,15 

Standstill at 1,48 tix

Submerge at 3,42 tix

Treachery at 2,5 tix

VI Fireblast at 0,55 tix

I have also picked up Ajani's Chosen at 0,06 tix and Mana Bloom at 0,05 tix but that is very speculative 

Hope you find this useful. If you have any finance tips you wish to share, please do so in the comments below.

Randomly, I also made a video about today's buying spree:

MTGO Library Bot 6.76

ML Bot 6.76 is a major release. 

We totally recoded from scratches what was probably the weakest point of ML Bot: the Autotransfer modes. Autotransfer modes used to work but they were slow and not 100% reliable. We decided to throw them away and start coding again from zero - the result is excellent, the new modes are faster and pick every single card you need with a surgical precision.

We also slighly changed the name of the tab (now named "AutoTransfer between bots") and better explained the modes in the dropdown menu.

MTGO Library Bot 6.75 - revised make 4x tradable for large collections

Few days ago we released ML Bot 6.74 (article here: http://mtgolibrary.blogspot.com/2014/04/mtgo-library-bot-674-make-4x-tradable.html), able to mark your cards tradable to 4.
Today we release ML Bot 6.75, overcoming the problems 6.74 had with large collections (collections with more than 2500 unique items).

Please note that:

• ML Bot will mark all your cards tradable to a certain amount 'X', where 'X' can be 1,2,3,4,10,32. If you have more than 2500 different items, due to the MTGO limits in handling the collections, you first need to mark all your cards tradable to 'X' manually, by yourself, and then ML Bot will adjust the selection, trade after trade. If you don't mark your cards tradable to 'X' before and you have a collection with more than 2500 different items, ML Bot won't able to perform the task.

• If you are using the 'Balance' Autotransfer mode you may want to switch to 'Refill' since Balance mode moves the cards using the quantity for trade (and here the donor bot hides some cards). The other autotransfer modes work as intented

• Tixs are automatically made all tradable

Wikiprice highly filtered for one day

Hi all,

we are working on wikiprice today and we decided to put the filters very high, so don't worry if you don't see your bots listed! Tomorrow we will remove them!


Albert

The Top Decks of Pauper. RUG Tron

in this series we will walk you through the top decks of Pauper as played on Magic Online. Pauper is the Magic Online format where you are only allowed to play commons.  These are the official rules:http://www.wizards.com/magic/tcg/resources.aspx?x=magic/rules/pauper

Today we will be discussing the Tron deck. When Cloudpost was banned, people expected the big mana decks to go away. They were very mistaken.

Earlier installments in the series

Affinity: http://mtgolibrary.blogspot.se/2013/11/the-top-decks-of-pauper-affinity.html
Burn: http://mtgolibrary.blogspot.se/2013/11/the-top-decks-of-pauper-burn.html
Delver: http://mtgolibrary.blogspot.se/2013/10/the-top-decks-of-pauper-delver.html
DelverFiend: http://mtgolibrary.blogspot.se/2013/11/the-top-decks-of-pauper-delverfiend.html
MUC; http://mtgolibrary.blogspot.com/2014/03/the-top-decks-of-pauper-mono-blue.html
Stompy: http://mtgolibrary.blogspot.se/2013/10/the-top-decks-of-pauper-stompy.html
UB Trinket Control: http://mtgolibrary.blogspot.se/2013/10/the-top-decks-of-pauper-ub-trinket.html

The Plan
The idea is to get to the tron as fast as possible and then just do broken things for the rest of the game. Every effect you have in your deck is "bigger" than anything the opponent has and thus you win.

Avignon, the superb pauper player who came up with the original deck list, wrote an excellent article on this deck. It is one of the best Magic articles I have ever seen, actually. You can find it here: http://www.mtgoacademy.com/4-color-tron-in-pauper-constructed/

Pauper RUG Tron sample deck list

There has been many versions of this deck. I still prefer Avignon's original list from the article linked to above.

Main Deck

4 Urza's Mine
4 Urza's Towr
4 Urza's Cafeteria
1 Haunted Fengraf
1 Quicksand
1 Khalni Garden
1 Remote Isle
2 Mountain
1 Island
1 Shimmering Grotto
4 Mulldrifter
4 Sea Gate Oracle
3 Fangren Marauder
1 Ulamog's Crusher
4 Expedition Map
4 Chromatic Sphere
4 Chromatic Star
4 Ancient Stirrings
4 Prophetic Prism
4 Firebolt
1 Compulsive Research
1 Flame Slash
2 Rolling Thunder

Sideboard
3 COP: Red
3 COP: Green
2 Serrated Arrows
2 Pyroblast
1 Arc Lightning
1 Ancient Grudge
1 Ray of Revelation
1 Flame Slash
1 Fangren Marauder

Do pick up your Firebolts right now. They just stopped being flashback-drafted. Pick them up! Now!

Here is a video of me taking on Mono Black Control with this list.

This is perhaps the Pauper deck I enjoy playing the most, so there will be more videos with it on youtube.com/magicgatheringstrat. There are actually already around twenty or so :)

Enjoy! And thank you, Avignon, for creating such a fantastic deck.

MTGO Library Bot 6.74 - make 4x tradable

As promised few days ago, we released today ML Bot 6.74, introducing a much-awaited feature, the "make 4x tradable" option. The new option is available on the General Tab of the bot GUI.

So far, you could only choose to "make all your cards tradable" at the end of the trade, but this looks unprofessional to customers especially when your collection is not balanced and you have, for instance, 10x of a card on a bot and 1x on another. Now you can choose to make "4x tradable" (or 1x, 2x, 10x, 32x) and cards in excess will be hidden. All your tixs will be still all tradable, they won't be capped to 4x.
Talking with a botter some weeks ago, he told me that the psychological on customers is huge: they say 19x tradable and don't buy - they say 4x and buy.

Technically speaking, the bot performs the required actions between trades after 20 seconds of  inactivity from customers. This is an empirical rule to assess that the bot is not busy trading repeatedly with a customer. Please note that this behaviour is slightly different from the old "make all tradable" that was performed at the end of each trade.

**UPDATE: if you have a large collection, Mtgo will limit to 2500 different cards the "make all tradable option". If you are experiencing this limit, just wait tomorrow and we will release a workaround **

MTGO Library Bot 6.73

ML Bot 6.73 is ready for download. This is just a maintenance build containing a fix on the csv creation, sometimes failing and forcing the bot to create the csv a second time.

4x... coming soon

We are excited to announce that we are working on a new feature that will be available this week... something that will definitely boost the way your bot(s) are perceived from customers....

More to come.

Cards to buy right now

There are a lot of Flashback Drafts on Magic Online these days. Right now, today, you should be picking up your Scars of Mirrodin cards. A block usually bottoms out the weekend AFTER the draft ends. Next weekend you should pick up your Odyssey Block cards.

I just noticed that if a card is currently not being played, the Flashback Drafts affect it a lot more. I knew it did, but it has become even clearer lately. 

Compare the graph of Caged Sun here (only played casually)

http://www.mtggoldfish.com/price/New+Phyrexia/Caged+Sun

with Inkmoth Nexus (played in Modern right now)

http://www.mtggoldfish.com/price/Mirrodin+Besieged/Inkmoth+Nexus

That means that people are now aware of this effect and a lot of speculators and players are picking up their InkMoth Nexuses. You, the smart finance person, should then pick up all the cards that are not being played right now that are crashing due to the Flashback Drafts.

Having said all that, here are some very concrete pickups that you (or your bots) should invest in.

I have been using the principles from this article to create my list below: : ttp://mtgolibrary.blogspot.se/2014/03/what-should-you-buy-at-any-given-moment.html

I have picked up the following cards over the weekend:

Beast Within at 0,30 tix
Caged Sun at 0,30 tix
VI Fireblast at 0,55 tix
VI Funeral Charm at 0,21 tix
Inquisition of Kozilek at 0,53 tix (it has gone up)
Kaervek's Torch at 0,15 tix
Life's Finale at 0,07 tix
Mark of Asylum at 0,07 tix (This is based only on the Brainstorm Brewery tip)
Molten Rain at 0,15 tix
No Mercy at 0,6 tix
BOK Sowing Salt at 0,3 tix
Spinning Darkness at 0,28 tix
Staff of Nin at 0,07 tix (This is more speculative)

Tectonic Edge dipped down a lot for a very short while but it has not gone up far too much already.

Hope you find this useful. If you have any finance tips you wish to share, please let me know.

Also, a special shoutout to this excellent MTGO Finance blog that I discovered this morning: http://blog.mtgprice.com  Check it out.

MTGO Library Bot 6.72

ML Bot 6.72 fixes a couple of problems connected with wikiprice.

Bots with many untradable tixs showed uncorrectly on wikiprice as having all of them tradable. This made customers believe the bot had tixs for them after a sale - while this was not true. You won't see an improvement immediately on wikiprice because it will take some days (4-5 days) before all the bots update to 6.72 - probably next week everything should be ok.

ML Bot 6.72 changes slightly the mechanism of updating the "Inventory" on the Online Control Panel. We are working to make updates in real-time (exactly as wikiprice) - this will come next week.

Hungry monkeys

Why do you keep doing it what doesn't work when there are so many other ways to achieve the objective? A pack of hungry monkeys will help you find the answer to this question.

The picture shows the study conducted in 1967 by G.R. Stephenson, who investigated evolutionary psychology basing on observation of monkeys and other animals. The experiment is simple and it gives a blunt answer to the question in the first sentence.

And now ask yourself..how often do you give up to take some action, because it is incompatible with the social canons of behavior? How often do you not choose the path rarely used, because everyone says that's wrong?

mtgolibrary.com moved to a new server

Hi all,

if you had had some issues with the server yesterday it was because we moved it to a new location. The new server doubles the computational power so you will see an overall increase of speed on the whole site, and a minor increase on the bots too.

Fast pages will load more or less as fast as before while heavy pages (like the Tradelog, the Cardlog and the Inventory) will now load much faster.

Just to give you some numbers, the new server is Linux based, has 128 GB ram,16 processors, 1TB hard drive. Enjoy!

Albert