Smuggler's Copter

In the early new Standard format, Smuggler's Copter looks very good. Is it too good?

A two-mana artifact that can be played by any deck with creatures (and let's face it, Wizards have made sure there are no creatureless decks anymore) that can easily win the game by itself - is that too good?

Are we about to face an 18-month period dominated by a two-drop artifact? That kind of reminds me of the days of Cursed Scroll being a 4-of in every deck in Standard back in the ancient past.

I think it would be unwise to enter a Standard tournament today without sufficient answers for an early Copter. However, this format is filled with answers that helps.

Grasp of Darkness, Harnessed Lightning, Fragmentize, Appetite for the Unnatural, Unlicensed Disintegration, Murder, Stasis Snare, Spatial Contortion, Skywhaler's Shot, Blessed Alliance, Clip Wings, Negate, Ceremonious Rejection, Natural State,  Immolating Glare ...

It seems that Wizards will not make Mirrodin-level mistakes any longer.

If you are playing read you can get fancy with Fiery Temper through the discad trigger to deal with opposing Smuggler's Copters.

The format is still in flux. It will be interesting to see how dominant the Copter becomes.

If you are looking at this from a financial perspective, this is definitely the time to sell any Smuggler's Copter you get your hands on. A rare from a large set will not hold a price of 16 tickets for long, no matter how dominant it is.

Was Collected Company a mistake?

At Grand Prix Rimini 31,8% of the Day Two decks were Bant Company. When a deck reaches that level of dominance in eternal formats everyone is outraged and cards will get banned. Imagine a Modern meta with a 31,8% deck it. Not a very fun meta.  At the time of this writing Jund is on top of the Modern MTGO Meta with 10,32%. That is quite a far way away from 31,8%. In Pauper, Izzet Drake is tearing up the meta with 18,18% (with another 8,6% for Drake Tron) and people are crying out for bans.

I am fairly certain a lot of Standard players will breathe a sigh of relief when Collected Company rotates out of Standard.

I realize that Wizards need to push certain cards and that is what they did here. I just get the feeling that they could have predicted that this card would be too strong for Standard.

The big question is probably what will happen when it does rotate.

Standard Trends Part 1

Hi everyone!

Those of you who know me, know I’m a business guy at heart. I went to school for business…twice. I really enjoy it and am passionate about it. That’s why turning something I like outside of business into a business suits me well. I trade on MTGO. I like it because it’s a lot easier to trade than in paper MTG. The number of players is a lot smaller, but it’s still a viable business opportunity.

In the more advanced business education I have received a major theme was identifying important information. Now I know that sounds simple, but there’s a lot to it. What’s important, sounds easy enough but in practice it’s not always easy. Many business textbook authors describe identifying important information as both identifying what is actually important AND identifying what’s not important. What isn’t important is just as important as what is important information….a lot of importance there.

One common identification of important information that I find to be the most useful is identifying trends.  Trends and how to spot them is a huge topic and I’m going to have to split it into several different posts otherwise I’d end up writing a 30 page paper and you’d have to read it. It’s a lot easier in small doses.

Trends can be seen in most cards on MTGO, of course this doesn’t really apply to the bulk rares. But if we look at any blue dual land from Vintage Masters we will see a downward trend, in cards that aren’t “chase” cards like Dack Fayden, there’s an upward trend.

The part of trends I’m focusing on today are cyclical trends in Standard legal cards. Now, the trend is easy to spot, look at a line graph and see it. Simple enough, but how can we predict the trends?

The basic rule of thumb is that when a big set, like Theros is released, it gets drafted a lot on MTGO (check out my earlier article where I talk a little about drafts, the main point is that the majority of MTGO cards in circulation are opened in a draft event). So generally the price goes down until Born of the Gods comes out. Then the number of packs drafted changes from Theros, Theros, Theros to Theros, Theros, Born of the Gods. When less Theros is drafted, the price begins to climb. It climbs until the last set of the block is released. It’s because as less new copies of the card enter circulation, the demand stays the same and drives the price up. So now the block is released, what happens next? The price drops.

Why does the price drop? It drops from the theory I call the “shiny new thing” theory. There isn’t another standard Pro Tour Qualifier season for about 6 months, and cool stuff like Vintage Masters and Magic 2015 were released. I think most players have a limited budget and have to sell many of their cards to acquire different cards, they don’t have a lot of money to sink into the game every paycheck. After the first set of the next block is released (Khans of Tarkir in this case), Standard Pro Tour Qualifier season will start and things will change yet again. The price will go up. My friend Dan, who also writes here, calls it the “do not buy period”. This is because the supply is not increasing because not many, if anyone, is drafting the old block when the new one comes out. Then as the card approaches it’s end of life in Standard the price falls.

I want to go into more detail with this and this is a very rough outline of what happens but that will have to be in another article. Thanks for reading.

If there are any topics you want to hear about, go ahead and post them in the comments and I’ll talk about them in an upcoming article.

ML Bot Correction + Personal Percentages

Setting up Personal Percentages

Hi everyone, I've had a few emails asking me about the corrections and personalpercentages interactions so I've decided to make this table to make it all easier for whoever might be thinking of having different prices for specific sets.

I used Personal Percentages to allow my main bot buying/selling standard sets with a strong positive correction without affecting my "lower" classic corrections (which are harder to sell).

If you're having difficulties with what will the "final percentage" be after setting both corrections this table will help!

 (click to zoom)

For example if you have your bot set to buy all regular rares for -30% and wish to buy Return to Ravnica regular rares at about +10% above cardsmtgo3 pricelist, then you need to set it on personal percentages as +55% or +60% resulting in +9% or +12% respectively.
( RTR;RARE;+0%;+0%;+55%;+0% )

Be aware that having ML Bot at +80% and set personal percentages at +80% will result in buying at 224% above pricelist (more than triple the value on pricelist)

Hope it helps. Please comment if you have any questions or need assistance.

Return to Ravnica new mechanics Explained (Part 3 of 5)

Unleash
The unleash mechanic allows you to have a +1/+1 counter on a creature as it enters the battlefield with the downside which is not being able to block with +1/+1 counters on it.

This mechanic is designed to allow your creatures entering the battlefield a little bit stronger if you plan to just attack. But in the case of Grim Roustabout you can also opt to let it enter without +1/+1 counters and be a strong blocker with regenerate.
 Just like Overload it doesn't make it better than a specific defensive creature to defend, or a specific offensive creature to attack, but gives you the choice of being a decent defending OR attacking one in just one card.

 In my next post I will talk to you about the mechanic scavenge.

Return to Ravnica new mechanics Explained (Part 2 of 5)

Overload

The overload mechanic power up instants and sorceries to huge proportions by taking every instance of "target" in their rules text and replacing it with "each."

Overload cards themselves are not great by their effectiveness of the single target effect, neither on mana cost of overloads but the fact that gives you both options makes them more versatile.
Its also worth pointing out when you pay the Overload cost on cards like Blutersquall it will also affect creatures the opponents control with hexproof.

 

 

 In my next post I will  talk to you about the mechanic unleash. 

Return to Ravnica new mechanics Explained (Part 1 of 5)

Populate

The populate mechanic puts a copy of one of your creature tokens onto the battlefield.

 Populate itself doesn't seem that powerful as you can only put a copy of one of your creature TOKENS only and not creatures but when you keep in mind that you may have tokens of Acidic Slime and other interesting creatures in play using cards like Cackling Counterpart or Mimic Vat it shows that there is room to abuse and build around this mechanic.





Its also worth saying that Populate trigger doesn't target (making it better than Cackling Counterpart), that way the opponent cannot destroy a token creature you wish to copy as response to avoid populating (unless you just have that one token on battlefield).
If you have two 1/1 tokens on the battlefield and your opponent has only one Doom Blade there is no way he can stop you from getting a new 1/1 Token.

Its also worth saying that if you cast Titanic growth on one 1/1 token before Populating, the new created token will still be a 1/1 and not a 5/5.

In my next post I will  talk to you about the mechanic Overload.

Quo Vadis Standard?

In paper Magic there have recently been two big tournaments promoting Dark Ascension. There were held in Standard format. I did some research and checked the top8 decklists in order to see how Dark Ascension will affect on Standard. To my surprise there were only few cards from Dark Ascension there. They can be counted on the fingers of one hand. Metagame didn’t change much. No revelations. I found only one new deck - mono green agro, which is responsible for a raise of prices of Garruk’s and Sword of War and Peace last days. Rest decks are just modifications of well-known decks. Some of them don’t run even one card from Dark Ascension or they use only one uncommon.

The conclusion is really simple – don’t expect big demand on Dark Ascension cards after 3-4 weeks after Release Events. In the first days prices are always skyhigh, but later it is going to be quite cheap set, unless some professional players come up with a new decklist containing more Mythics or Rare cards from Dark Ascension. We must wait and observe how the future unfolds. Dark Ascension goes on sale in the Magic Online Store on Monday, February 20 at 9:00 AM PST and the Release Events begin after the downtime Wednesday, February 22.

Here you can find decklist from: Pro Tour Honolulu and SCG Open.

Back to the Boros?

Boros. The one deck that I still believe can be a home for Phyrexian Metamorph. The ChannelFireball crew put Boros through the gauntlet months ago and LSV became so enamored with the results that he "tricked PV into playing it at GP Dallas".

The last successful Boros list was ran by Chikara Nakajima right before Jace and Stoneforge got the hook.

Mirran Crusader and Koth of the Hammer seem to have both had their moments in the sun, but the new Chandra, the Firebrand and maybe even Puresteel Paladin are worth exploring. Can you imagine Boros with an Enchantress-type twist to really give full value to those Adventuring Gears people traded in for Swords? What about Emeria Angel? Didn't the Angel see some play before the ban in Darkblade?

Perhaps it's not really a valid deck anymore, but I tend to explore any idea that seems to have some merit. Boros was a deck and didn't suffer as much as other decks using Stoneforge Mystic when the hammer came down. PureBoros anyone?

I still want to animate a Inkmoth Nexus and cast Phyrexian Metamorph targeting the flying infectious land. A man can dream right?!

Winning on a budget! Blue green infect!

"Winning on magic online standard daily events requires a lot of money for a standard legal deck."
This statement is totally False , though many are the players  that think so and will go as far as to spend great amounts of cash in order to win in standard daily tournaments and make amends for the money they spent to build their 400$ plus decks.

Today i bring you a deck list that has won a lot during the last weeks and it has certainly paid more than double the amount of tickets that were needed to create the specific list. The original creator of the list was Pepperlips on Magic the Gathering : Online and has requested that the name of his list was to be Spicy Kisses.

Here is the original list.


4 Blighted Agent
4 Glistener Elf
4 Ichorclaw Myr
1 Spellskite

Creatures [13]

3 Apostle's Blessing
4 Distortion Strike
4 Giant Growth
2 Gitaxian Probe
4 Groundswell
3 Livewire Lash
4 Vines of Vastwood

Spells [24]

10 Forest
4 Inkmoth Nexus
5 Island
4 Misty Rainforest

Lands [23]

SIDEBOARD

4 Expedition Map
4 Mental Misstep
3 Mutagenic Growth
4 Nature's Claim

Sideboard [15]

Deck Total [60]

Creating the list i just presented to you might cost you 60$ to build. Pepperlips used this list in order to go 4-0 on 5 daily events paying him back 55 booster packs, i guess that's far more than 60$ the list  may cost.

Furthermore , this list was used during the Jace-Mystic era , I guess that it can be even more promising after the departure of Jace and Mystic from standard. The deck is very easy to play and all you have to do is to poison your opponents dead and get those 3 points!
I would also like to mention that some of Wizards of the Coast playtesters mentioned that during their playtests concerning the current era of Magic the Gathering standard environment ,they had fabricated a deck list that was infect-oriented and winning a lot!
So all you have to do is assemble the list and go try it out! Who knows , this might be the list that suits the way you like to swing spells on Magic Online!

Won't have to wait until Innistrad for a new Standard

Jace, the Mind Sculptor and Stoneforge Mystic became the first cards to be banned in the Standard environment since Affinity had the rug pulled out from under it in 2005. For official announcement: http://www.wizards.com/magic/magazine/article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/feature/148

Caw-What? If they would have banned only Jace or only Stoneforge, perhaps the deck could have hobbled around on a peg leg until Standard rotates again in October, but now the entire engine is gone! Turn 3 Batterskulls? Not as easy as you'd think anymore. Establish a board position and bury your opponent in card advantage? Maybe, but you'll only be Brainstorming in Legacy.

What does this mean? Primeval Titan you're starting again. You too Tezzeret, Agent of Bolas! Koth of the Hammer get in there! Even Venser or Elspeth might see some minutes. Jace wasn't the only powerful planeswalker in Standard. He was just the MOST powerful. Oppressively so.

I'm not saying it was a good or bad thing because these decks happen. Millions of players and thousands of Pros worldwide are working on a format 24/7 and eventually any format will find itself strangled by the 'best deck'. The post-Scars Standard format just proved to be too easy of a nut to crack. Especially when Mirrodin Besieged so conveniently windmill slammed that last puzzle piece into place.

I'm excited for the first time since Scars was released! Here's to hoping this Standard provides a challenging format and that we spend all summer trying to figure it out before finding another Caw-Blade type deck (hopefully that deck won't present itself until the month Innistrad releases). Change is definitely good in this case!