ML Bot 11.13 brings Eternal Masters!

We have just released ML Bot 11.13, supporting Eternal Masters (EMA). To trade EMA cards, you have to update the bot client to 11.13 and to download an uptodate pricelist ("CardsMTGO.txt") containing the EMA cards. As usual the pricelist is available for free during the update process and in the bot client installer. LITE bots should update as well.

Enjoy the events and the new set, it is gonna be big!

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.

How to survive the Born of the Gods release (or any new set)?

I am fairly new to botting. In the mtgolibrary manual, I read the following about running the pro version of the bot: "The Pro version of the Bot buys and sells cards based on card value. The Bot receives the prices from the CardsMTGO3.txt file that can be automatically or manually downloaded and is kept up to date by ML Bot staff. Each time this file is downloaded a maintenance fee of 0.20 tickets is added to the Bot’s overall fee. It is important to keep this file relatively up to date, especially when a new set or expansion is about to come out. "

So as the owner of a very small bot, how do I ensure that I do not lose all of my tickets when Born of the Gods is released? What if I can't monitor my bots 24/7?

Before I proceed, I wish to make clear that I am no expert. Having said that, I will tell you of my plan.

I will not touch Born of the Gods until March 1st. I will let the prerelease, release and the Pro Tour pass Before I let my bot buy or sell anything from the set.

I might speculate, but I will do so manually, buying and selling from bots brave enough to face the onslaught.

This is what I think I know about the release:

February 1st: Prerelease starts. Prices will be extremely inflated. It would be good to sell stuff, but I will probably not play the prerelease and if I did, I would be in a hurry to sell and would probably sell to someone else's bot.

February 7th: Release starts. Prices are coming down, but are still very high.

Somewhere around February 18th: Prices are at a low point before the PT spike. This would be the time to buy stuff. If I am feeling brave, I might let the bot buy Born of the Gods cards here.

February 21st: Pro Tour Born of the Gods start. Some cards spike hard and must be sold immediatly, which means it is probably better to sell them manually to other bots (if I have them for some reason).

Long-term we already know that the best time to invest in Born of the Gods will probably be mid June, as per this article: http://mtgolibrary.blogspot.se/2013/11/when-to-invest-in-fall-set-theros-for.html  That would be with the intention of selling into the PTQ Standard spike of February 2015.

OK, now that I have stated my very defensive stance, tell me how you are going to handle this and teach me how to do it when Journey into Nyx comes around.

Until then, let us Dream of Xenagos the god kicking the crap out of Ajani.

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

MTGO Library Bot 6.05

ML Bot 6.05 fixes some little bugs of 6.04. In particular:

• 6.05 is able to buy Theros Boosters (6.04 skipped them)
• the wishlist buying mode now buys Theros cards
• the set RTR (Return to Ravnica) is now correctly classified as "Standard"
• we removed an old message box (see images) saying that "you need to minimize the taskbar". This is not necessary anymore because ML Bot minimizes the taskbar by itself (if you did not, of course)

Magic Online Economy: Fundamentals

We host the first of a series of articles from our friends blog http://www.mtgeconomist.com , a top blog dealing with mtg and mtgo economics.
You can read the original article here: 
http://www.mtgeconomist.com/en/economia-de-magic-online-parte-3/

In this article I will talk you about the fundamentals of the Magic Online economy. With this information you will have an idea of ​​how to perform your purchases/sales of cards and the reasons that justify the price of a card. This comparison will not only be related to digital cards, but also between the value of an online and a physical card.

The main currency on Magic Online economy

Certainly there is no official currency on Magic Online. Since the beginning of the game the material was bought from the Magic Online official store, which can be accessed within the game itself. The only options available for sale are: boosters, pre-constructed decks and Event Tickets. These tickets allow you to enter at Magic Online tournaments where you can win prizes, and each of these items costs $1 plus taxes.

Due to the price of the tickets and their intrinsic value, soon people started to use them as the main currency. Their market price depends on factors such as the amount available on Magic Online, the number of drafts/limited queues to be launched, and recently also the high value of the mythic cards. Today their market price is slightly higher than $1 each, and it is unlikely to rise much more because if their value is very close to the official price ($1 + VAT) people would directly buy them from the store.

The evolution of prices

A particular feature of the Magic Online economy is that the price of each card evolves very fast. The reason is that the trades of cards can be done immediately without shipment delays, something that cannot be avoided on the physical market.

For this reason, the digital market behaves much more likely the real stock markets, and price changes are motivated by reasons like fear or speculation. However, in the Magic Online economy itself predictions can be made without being a financial guru. The important thing is that you must have a lot of experience in the game and know the cards, so you can correctly analyze the new sets and their possible interactions with the old cards in different game formats. In this way, you can overtake the market and buy a card that will be probably played (and, therefore, will rise in price) cheaper.

Giving a value to a Magic Online card

You might think that digital cards should have almost no value at all. After all, it is something that you can not own physically. In fact, your collection is not even stored on your own computer, but on a remote server managed by Wizards. However, if you look at the price of the cards at Magic Online, you can see that their value is not so different from the printed version. Normally, the digital market value is lower but sometimes happens exactly the opposite.

Why does this happen? Like I stated for the physical market, the value of the cards depends on many factors. Some of them are the same in both the virtual and real world, but others are specific to the Magic Online economy. Moreover, the effect of each factor is usually much larger in
the digital version because the changes happens instantly. Below I summarize some of them:

• Tournaments and prices: like the physical format, when a major tournament is announced for a certain format, the cards increase their price and then they stabilize again after that tournament finishes. Besides, when there are announces of drafts for a certain set the prices also get lower in anticipation of higher stock and less demand. And so on… 
• Reprints: Due to high speculation and the fast changes at Magic Online economy, the announcement of a reprint for a card makes its price collapse, especially if the card has a high economic value.
• Banning/Restriction: When a card is forbidden for using on certain constructed formats, its price usually gets lower because noone is able to play with it.
• Rarity: Although this is not a general rule, the rarest cards usually are more expensive and their foil version also have a higher value than normal ones.

These factors are may apply to both, the physical and digital market of Magic. However, there is another factor that, togeteher with the tournaments one, may have the highest impact on Magic Online economy: the redemption option.

What is redemption and why is it so important?

The redemption is an option offered on Magic Online to link the virtual world with the physical one, from both the ownership of the cards and their economic value point of view. Redemption consists of ordering a full set of physical cards to your home, only if you own all the cards of that set on your Magic Online account. You must have one copy of every card and they cannot be replaced by a foil nor another set version.

This option was introduced since the beginning of Magic Online to give extra value to the digital cards. Although nowadays the impact of this option on the Magic Online economy is smaller, it yet has a considerable weight.

The main advantage of this option is that you can buy digital cards in Magic Online at lower prices than the same printed cards. Likewise, you only apply the shipping costs once for receiving the cards in your house. Thus, it may be a very profitable option for collectors or even if you just want some very expensive cards of a specific set.

The main problem of redemption is that the big sellers flood the market with a huge amount of collections, lowering the price of both redeemed sets and those collected by opening boosters. For this reason, Wizards has recently increased the price of each collection requested the $5 to $25 (shipping not included). Although it is still an affordable price to individuals who wish from 1-4 sets, this new value limits the benefits obtained by directly selling the redeemed collections.

In my opinion, the redemption is one of the best options offered on Magic Online, and is also an excellent regulator of the economy. I could write a whole article dedicated to this topic, but I think I have offered you the basic information to know the fundamentals of Magic Online economy and how redemption works. In the next chapter I will discuss the profiles of players you can find on Magic Online. This analysis will aid you to better understand the market movements of digital cards.

How to draft Gatecrash?

The Gatecrash set features 274 cards. Prerelease have already started. New set brings new cards and new loves. With GTC there is no different. Basing on acronym B.R.E.A.D which is very useful way to grade cards in limited  I have selected commons and uncommons worth drafting in Gatecrash. I ignored rares and mythic cards, because these cards are quite easy to evaluate and to point out the best possible pick. Every letter from this acronym symbolize one group of cards. Therefore, B is for Bombs, R is for Removal, E is for Evasion, A is for Aggro, D is for Dregs. Basing on B.R.E.A.D  Here we go:

• White: Daring Skyjek, Court Street Denizen, Boros Elite, Guardian of the Gateless, Knight of Obligaton, Urbis Protector

• Blue: Totally Lost, Hands of Binding, Leyline Phantom, Aetherize, Agoraphobia, Rapid Hybridization, Sapphire Drake, Simic Fluxmage

• Black: Grisly Spectacle, Death’s Approach, Devour Flesh, Corpse Blockade, Killing Glare, Smog Elemental, Undercity Informer

• Red: Mugging, Massive Raid, Madcap Skills, Act of Treason, Cinder Elemental, Firefist Striker, Homing Lightning

• Green: Slaughterhorn, Disciple of the Old Ways, Crocanura, Adaptive Snapjaw, Crowned Ceratok, Rust Scarab.

• Multi: Pit Fight, Wojek Halberiders, Kingpin's Net, Drakewing Krasis, Deathcult Rogue, Skynight Legionnaire, Zhur-Taa Swine, Bane Alley Broker, Boros Charm, Dimir Charm, Dinrova Horror, Elusive Krasis, Ghor-Clan Rampager, Ground Assault, Gruul Charm, Nimbus Swimmer, One Thousand Lashes, Orzhov Charm, Simic Charm, Skaarg Guildmage, Sunhome Guildmage, Truefire Paladin, Urban Evolution, Zameck Guildmage, Arrows of Justice,

• Artifacts: Prophetic Prism, Keyrunes

• Lands: Gate cards, Duals

Good luck!

Gatecrash Pre-release tips!

The much anticipated set Gatecrash is finally here and boy am I excited,  Introducing 5 new mechanics Evolve, Cipher, Battalion, Blood rush, and Extort. In this article I will go over a few basic sealed deck strategies and point a few of the top commons and uncommon in the set.

Sealed deck tips:

1. You DON'T have to play your best card. Say for instance your guild is Simic (UG) and you open a Obzedat, Ghost Council in your regular packs, don't feel obligated to play it, most likely it will offset your mana curve.

2. Read the cards. Lots of times people make mistakes and play sorceries as instants not knowing or maybe knowingly. Angelic Edict is a sorcery but for 5 mana I could see someone easily trying to pull that as an instants.


3. Study the spoiler. The most important thing to remember from a spoiler is removal and playable tricks. If you take in account the opponents untapped land, colors they are playing  and play hesitation, you can quickly figure out what they maybe holding in their hand.


All and all have fun! Remember in the Pre-Release its an even playing field so following these 3 steps could give you that slight advantage to victory.

Below are my top 8 common and 5 uncommons to keep an eye out for in no particular order.

Uncommon

1.Boros Charm - So good!
2.Elusive Krasis - early blocker, late game winner.
3.Ghor-Clan Rampager - 4/4 tramper for 4 or a titanic growth your call.
4.One Thousand Lashes - not quite stab wounds but maybe better in some aspects.
5.Simic Fluxmage - Just seems good.

Don't get me wrong some of the charms and guildmages are much better, but I figured that was common sense.

Common

1. Crocanura - reach is always good and one that grows is better.
2. Drakewing Krasis - meh!
3. Executioner's Swing - can kill almost anything in the set.
4. Grisly Spectacle - just good removal and could go with some deck themes
5. Mugging - there a ton of 2 and 1 toughness creatures in this set. plus cant block feature is great
6. Pit Fight - "FIGHT"
7. Prophetic Prism - cantrip, mana fixing.
8. Smite - "Sure, today of all days, he asked to borrow my boots!"

Good luck this weekend for paper magic players and good luck Modo players starting Feb. 9th.

Next post I will going over drafting tips for Gatecrash.

Modo Handle: Teamstoge