Weekend is worthy

As a bot runner myself, I found that weekends are worthy, because my bots get much more traffic during these days (Friday, Saturday and Sunday) compared to the working days.

Thus, if you run a bot on your main pc and you have to stop it to play, to draft, or simply to enjoy Magic Online with your personal account, please consider purchasing a dedicated PC to run the bot - the extra money you'll spend will return in profits in a very short amount of time.

Either, you can virtualize a copy of Windows on your pc and use that one to run the bot - please look at those articles if you want to learn more

MTGO Library Bot 4.90 is out!

Many thanks to Kim, who suggested a couple of changes to the trading messages. ML Bot 4.90 now features better and more clear messages

Start-up with default settings

If you are new to ML Bot, you would probably wonder what are the best settings to start and grow a decent collection. 

The answer is not unique because a lot depends on the quantity of tixs you can/want spend to buy the cards - of course the larger the amount, the better your collection and hence the future business.

In general the advice is to keep the default settings, since these provide a very balanced bot and do not expose to risks. Running the bot in such conditions is a very safe business, basically because you will never over-pay a card (or under-sell it) and you will never pay a rental fee if your bot does not perform well (which is absolutely likely during the first weeks :-) ).
After you get used to the bot, experiment a bit slightly moving the settings from the default ones.

Momir Basic, part 3

We continue the Momir Basic strategy.

Play or Draw? The advantage for each is obvious: on the play, you get to make the first creature of each converted mana cost. On the draw, you get an extra card, so you get to make an extra creature or land-drop. Which is better? This question is certainly open to debate, but I prefer to play first. Even though your opponent will get the first creature, you will be able to match with a larger creature on turn 4 most of the time. The only time the drawing player has a real advantage is when they get a mana producer or card drawer on turn 2, letting them surge ahead of you in development.

As I discuss later, the 8-drop is the most important mana cost, which means that on the play, you get to make the first 8-drop, and on the draw, you only have to skip one creature instead of two to be able to make 8 drops.

Tips and Tricks
1. Play your creatures before attacking, since you may get a creature with a combat-helping ability, or a creature with haste.
2. If you already have a legend, avoid making more creatures with that mana cost if possible. You do not want to waste two turns when both of your Spirits of the Night go to the graveyard. Conversely, remember that you can remove your opponents' legends by playing copies of them.
3. The first time your opponent uses their avatar, right click on the ability, and choose to permanently auto yield to Momir Vig. It will save you a few clicks throughout the game.

In the last paragraph I made list of best possible creautes. Sundering Titan, Ashen Firebeast, Avatar of Woe, Bloodfire Colossus, Vampiric Tutor, Hoverguard Sweepers and the card we do not want to see is obviously Phage the Untouchable.

Enjoy!

MTGO Library Bot 4.89 is out!

The newest version of the bot, v. 4.89, supports the new set "Venser vs Koth" (DDI).

Version 4.89 fixes also a problem with reading the card "Séance" from Dark Ascension.

Total number of bots in the market

When I entered the Magic Online market as a bot owner, back in 2005, I counted 100-200 bots. At the time I thought that was an upper limit - I hardly could see a future with 1000 bots simultaneously online. Not enough money running in Magic Online, I thought.

Nowadays not only I can see more than 1000 bots operating, but I can see that the majority of them make a decent profit. I strongly revised my forecast. 

Where was I wrong? The fact here is that Magic Online is not an ordinary market. The customers of the market are ALL the users (not just a fraction, like in the shoes market, or in the cafeteria market): people log into Magic Online and they know that they will spend some money (drafting, purchasing boosters on the primary market, purchasing cards on the secondary market...) and this makes Magic Online extremely lively.

I am sure that the upper limit is far to come, especially if we consider that the number of players is increasing year by year (in 2006 we could hardly see 800 players connected, now we can easily see 3000)

Momir Basic, part 2

This part is about Momir Basic Strategy. You may ask yourself what strategy could possibly be in deck full of basic lands, but in my opinion strategy is equal to luck in momir decks. Let’s start with deck building. Some basic lands are better than others. Surprised?

Naive manabase might consist of either 12 of each basic land, or 60 or all the same basic land. Neither is ideal. While creatures have activation costs and upkeeps of all different colors, mana cannot usually be spent early using any abilities; you are too busy summoning larger monsters. Later in the game, though, creature abilities get much more powerful. At the seven-mana-plus level, practically no creatures use Blue or White mana. A few use Green, but the most powerful abilities are Red and Black. I would recommend playing as many Mountains early in the game as possible, other lands if you hit creatures needing the mana, and Swamps if you run out of Mountains. My current recommended decklist: 15 Mountains, 13 Swamps, 11 Forest, 11 Island, 10 Plains. When playing your lands, try to keep the option of dropping colors like blue or green back until you get a creature that needs that color of mana, otherwise, you could end up with a landwalking liability and no color-specific gain for your trouble.

While a significant percentage of the time games will be decided by one player out-randoming the other, many games will come down to large creature stalls. In situations like these, generating another eight-mana creature might not be your best bet. You need to know what creatures are available at each mana level, and choose how much to spend based on what you really need. About this in next part. See you soon.