Modern Gift Control

Binkabi came up with a new Modern deck on the MagicGatheringStrat YouTube channel.

The basic idea is to combine a classic UB Control shell with Gifts Ungiven for instant game wins.

He explains himself in this video

Here is the deck list

1 Slaughter Pact
4 Mana Leak
2 Path to Exile
2 Compulsive Research
1 Forbidden Alchemy
3 Gifts Ungiven
1 Murderous Cut
1 Unburial Rites
2 Dig Through Time
2 Cryptic Command
2 Damnation
1 Darkblast
4 Thoughtseize

1 Notion Thief
1 Grave Titan
1 Elesh Norn
1 Iona, Shield of Emeria
2 Snapcaster Mage

2 Celestial Colonnade
2 Darkslick Shores
2 Drowned Catacomb
4 Flooded Strand
3 Hallowed Fountain
2 Swamp
2 Island
1 Plains
4 Polluted Delta
3 Watery Grave


Here he plays the deck against an opponent playing BUG:

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.

.

Magic Online Profiles

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/perfiles-en-magic-online-parte-4



Magic is a game that allows you to have different experiences depending on the priorities of each player. Some people like to make their decks from a random card pool whereas others prefer to select the cards in his deck. There are also casual players whose main goal is collecting. In this chapter of the series I will introduce the importance of the profiles on Magic Online to have a strategy that will minimize your expenses in cards.

Firstly I will discuss what these profiles on Magic Online are about. Then I will advance how you can get benefits regardless of what sort of Magic player you are.

Limited Players

These players are often specialized in drafts so they are so-called drafters. Magic Online launches 8-player drafts queues constantly of the latest sets. Occasionally, older expansions are also added to the drafts queues. There are three main different queues, which differ in the prizes you get and the number of matches you can play:

• Swiss: You play three games by Swiss system, always against opponents with the same victories as you. You win a booster for each win at the end of the draft.
• 4-3-2-2: Elimination system where you leave the draft if you lose a match. The first qualified wins 4 boosters, the second 3 and both third-fourth win 2 boosters each.
• 8-4: Like 4-3-2-2 except for prizes. The winner wins 8 boosters and the second 4 boosters.

Normally, the boosters won are from sets of the draft you play. A draft usually costs 2 tickets plus product (the boosters you open in the draft), or 14 tickets. In the prereleases the price usually raises up to 20 tickets (it is not possible to buy product in this mode). Although you can buy directly from the store of Magic Online, it is usually better to exchange them for tickets on the secondary market because they are cheaper.

A drafter wants to fund their drafts with prizes of previous drafts so they are for free (infinite mode). To do this, the best method is 8-4 which gives you three boosters and another one for the tickets required to play another draft. Of course, you should have to always reach the finals, to be a very good player, to perfectly know the sets and have much luck drawing.

If you like the draft, my suggestion is to start with Swiss for better knowing the cards and play some matches (low risk). When you feel you have learnt the set it is time to change to 4-3-2-2 (medium risk), and if you see you win consistently and have became a master of that draft sets, then move to the 8-4 (high risk). Note that the top players are 8-4 so winning matches here will be quite harder.

Also, you have to consider that you keep the cards you use to create your deck. Thus, you can sell them after the draft and get some extra tickets that makes easier for you to play on infinite mode. Unless it is a very expensive card, I recommend you draw cards to improve your deck before a card with a value of 1 ticket or so that you will not be able to use on your matches (it is better to win a match rather than a ticket, isn’t it?).

Magic Online has recently added the Phantom sealed queues (you build a deck with the cards opened from 6 boosters). The difference with the normal mode is that you do not keep with the cards. The price is much more affordable (4 tickets) and prizes are not bad: winner (3 matches) gets 3 boosters and if you win 2 matches you keep one booster. However, as you do not keep the cards you play this extra value of drafts are lost.

Drafter strategy: use the rewards to keep playing and as profit. Sell ​​drafted cards to exchange for tickets and/or boosters.

Constructed Player

Constructed player prefers to create a deck built with legal cards of a particular format (Standard, Modern, Legacy …). For this purpose, firstly it is required to make an initial investment in order to buy the cards of the deck. Then, this deck can be used on different tournaments as long as you like. The only extra payment for joining tournaments is the registration tickets. There are two main possible constructed tournaments:

• Constructed Queues: For 2 and 8 players, they are 2 and 6 tickets respectively. The first one prize is a booster for the winner. In the second one prizes are distributed as 5-3-2-2.
• Scheduled Events: Usually for 16-256 players with a cost of 6 tickets. It consists of four rounds on Swiss mode, and prizes are 11 boosters if you win 4 games and 6 boosters if you win 3 games.

Constructed player usually play on scheduled events rather than queued events because prizes are quite better for the same entry option. You can firstly play on the Tournament Practice section of Magic Online for training against other players.

Constructed strategy: buy the cards for the deck at the best price possible. Earn as much as possible to amortize the deck or as profit. When changing the deck, sell old cards to the maximum value to minimize losses.

Collectors

There is also a third type of casual player who does not devote much time to the game. However, he likes to have all the cards in order to get any deck or simply because he wants to keep. The goal of this player is to get all the cards of the desired collections and redeem them if he prefers to have them physically.

Collectors are probably those who invest more money in the game. Thus, they need more than anyone to find a way to get the letters with the lowest price. Magic Online offers a fast way to make trading, buying and selling the cards on your collection. The market usually puts a buy price of a card around 10-15% lower than its sell price for highest rarities, and up to 50% difference in the most common ones.

A collector can be a real merchant and go make profit from each transaction. For this purpose he needs two things: a lot of time in front of the computer and an initial investment to start making trades.

Collectors Strategy: get the cards at their buying price and sell quickly to their selling price, gaining profit. Buy the cards in your collection with this benefit.

How to trade cards and get profit without loosing time and with no effort

 All the three profiles of players at Magic Online have this common goal. Drafters want to sell their cards quickly and keep playing. Constructed players want to buy or sell their cards at a good price. Collectors do not want to be waiting in front of their computer waiting for the bid of another player.

The solution? Using a robot software (so-called bot) to work for you day and night getting the benefits of buying and selling cards on Magic Online. In the next chapter of the series I will explain what this wonderful software is about, how it changes the strategy of each player profile and will give you some details on the application that I will use for this purpose.

A comprehensive guide for the aspiring botter (Naming) Part 3

Naming your bot(s):




Last week I asked you to start thinking about a name for your bot or bot chain.
Here are some things to keep in mind when naming your bot(s):

My first tip is to keep your name "clean", you want your customers to easily be able to remember and search for your name in the classifieds. Having a name like "_______NameBot" might seem like a good idea at first as it helps your bot stand out from the crowd and places you at the top of buddy lists. But the truth is, that it will more likely hurt your business when people forget your name and or delete that black sheep from their buddy list. It's better to choose a clean, preferably short name, it helps you stick out from the crowd of messy names and looks professional. Back in the days, before version 3.0 the classifieds were sorted alphabetically so a name like "_______NameBot  made more sense but was later changed to a random order to deter people from using these names.

A good idea is to have a name that starts with one of the first few letters of the alphabet.
This places your bot in the top part of buddy lists which always is a good idea.
You don't need to be on the absolute top, just keeping it above the majority will ensure that you're maintaining maximum visibility.

Another good idea is to keep your name short. This gives a clean look and makes it easy to remember. A fitting word or name such as "Card" followed by "Bot" gives a serious look and makes you stick out from the rest.

I'd say the most important in naming your bot is having the word "Bot" in your name. This ensures every customer knows exactly what they're dealing with and won't confuse people whether you're a human or a bot. You should never claim that your bot is a selling human. This will just frustrate your customers and make sure they never visit your stores again.


Chains and different naming options:

There are different ways of numbering your bots in a chain. The most common way is to just put a number after the name: NameBot, NameBot2, NameBot3
and so on.
This is the way I prefer as I think it looks best, but there is one issue with this pattern.
When you reach NameBot10 it will not place itself after NameBot9 in the list.
It'll sort itself after NameBot, looking something like this:

• NameBot
• NameBot10
• NameBot2
• NameBot3

Which is pretty frustrating, but can be prevented by naming your bots CardBot01, CardBot02 and so on. I prefer the first way as I don't like having "01, 02, 03" after my names just based on looks so I named my bots ArchBot, ArchBot2, ArchBot3, ArchBot4 and ArchBot5 but I'll have to deal with the sorting issue if I ever get to ArchBot10.

Another good way of naming your bots is using letters instead of numbers, which ensures that you don't have to deal with any issues regarding sorting. For example CardBotA, CardBotB, CardBotC and so on.

Now it's up to you to come up with a good name for your chain, try to keep these things in mind and remember to write down every name idea you get, but don't rush it! You don't need to register the accounts just yet.

This is all I have for this time, next week we'll talk about hardware.
As always I'll gladly answer any questions you might have in the comments.

Cheers!
-Tom (Sitrec)
Archbot MTGO Store: ArchBot, ArchBot2, ArchBot3, ArchBot4 & ArchBot5

Mirror Mirror (Part 3 of 3)

Last time I speculated that the Wizards of the Coast will be making Legends and Planewalkers in the uncommon and possibly the common rarity.  The reason being that the folks in the Ivory Tower tweaked the highlander aspect of the Legends Rule and one of the consequences of this tweak is that it will allow for the printing of more Legends and more Planeswalkers.  This will allow for more interesting games and interesting games are what the casual player desires and that is good for the game as a whole.

But the 64,000 ticket question is this: how does all of this affect us?  Let me postulate a guess by asking this question: Why did WotC change the Legends Rule anyway?

The people who have “Chief” in their titles looked at the income stream and noticed that Magic was not bringing in as much income as they would have liked.  Meetings were called and studies were conducted to ascertain what the problem is.

Part of the answer lies in the available gaming options these days.  There are a plethora of first rate free-to-play games available to the gamer who is unwilling or unable to spend scarce free cash.  If one is willing to allow for micro-transaction-based games, the list grows even larger.

I suspect this research also revealed that the un-fun aspects of Legends was on par with Counterspell and Armageddon.  The Chiefs then requested that the Legends rule be changed to eliminate the un-fun aspects.  The Chiefs are banking that these changes will attract players back to the game when these changes start being reflected in new sets.

So how does this affect us? 

These future Legends and Planewalkers will be printed in the non-rare rarity slot.  These Legends and Planeswalkers will have a heavy mana cost, minimally 4 or more mana.  When players are pondering their deck ideas, they are not going to put four (4) copies of these cards in their decks.  So when these minimalist players are buying their decks, they will only be taking a copy or two and not the full four copies.  This would mean that more customers could be served with the same amount of inventory.  This would be true if a bot has 4 copies or 40 copies in its inventory.  A fully-stocked bot brings in more business than a sparsely populated one.

A great story

Two days ago I talked to a customer of mine. It was the first time I had a conversation with him. This person run 4 bots.

I cannot tell you the name and give you the exact numbers, but the substance does not change.
He shared with me his financial spreadsheets, with monthly reports. He started one year ago and he does incredibly well. With just 4 bots he is able to extract a net profit of more than 750 usd/month, real money, in his bank account.
While this person is not the most profitable one (he is half way up the ladder), he just run 4 bots compared to the usual 15-20 of top botters. As time passes, he will add bots and he will surely become of the biggest chain.

What he didn't tell is how he made it (of course). I guess passion, good prices, great inventory, some collections bought on eBay, tixs on the accounts.

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

Magic the Gathering Worlds

After four days of fierce competition, Worlds 2011 in present form came to an end. In next year Worlds will look totally different, because winning the National Championship will not authorize you to participation in Worlds. Only top16 players around the world will play there. To be in exclusive top16 you must fulfill one of these conditions: be 2011 World Champion or Magic Online Champion, be winner of Pro Tour, be the top-ranked player from each geo-region, be the top-ranked player in the worldwide Planeswalker Points. By now, everyone had realistic chance to take part in Worlds, whereas in 2012 it is almost not viable for average mortal. We will watch the same faces every year during future Worlds with low chances of any new pro player revelation. Anyway, the winner of 2011 Worlds is Jun'ya Iyanaga from Japan. He played red-green Wolf Run Ramp teched to smash all agro decks. Iyanaga defeated Richard Bland of England 3-0 in the finals. I’m not going to focus on game or neither their good nor bad plays, but on something what should interest every bot owner: producing extra tickets. Let me show present you how accurately prices changed during first day of Worlds. One of players come up with a new deck running Olivia Voldaren and did 5-1 result. Market reacted immediately. Price of this card raised from 2 tickets up to 9 what is 450% return on investment during one night. Other example might be Primeval Titan 11->16 or Inferno Titan 4->8. Personally, I loathe being ripped by those who knew such new decklist faster than me. I recommend you all to read articles or watch live coverage from such events. Thanks to this action you will never sell your cards below the market price.

Momir Basic strategy

Well, today to change things a bit, I will talk about Momir Basic, because I think it's a very funny format.

Despite what most people say, Momir is not a luck-driven format, it is a format where you need to be very careful about how you make your plays. One of the main things you have to pay attention to is when you start to build your deck, since many relevant creatures have activated abilities that demand specific colors. The main colors are black and red, so I play with more Mountains and Swamps then the rest of the other basic lands. Forests and Islands are next, leaving Plains at last.
One more thing you have to pay attention to is to have, if possible, one of each basic land in play (unless your opponent has one landwalker creature, of course), because when you start making 8 cmc creatures (normally where the game comes to a conclusion), you'll find that many of the creatures that cost 8 have upkeep costs, and in different colors, and having the mana to pay for it can win you the game, not to mention that if you reach 16 mana, Draco demands that you have one of each basic land in play, or else you have to pay for it in your upkeep.

I normally play in the following order:

When I'm playing - Mountain, Mountain, Island(make a 3cmc critter), Forest (4cmc critter), Swamp (5cmc critter), Swamp (6cmc critter), Plains (7cmc critter) and Mountain (8cmc critter).

When I'm drawing - Forest, Island (2cmc critter), Mountain (3cmc critter), Mountain (4cmc critter), Swamp (cmc 5 critter), Swamp (cmc 6 critter), Plains (cmc 7 critter) and Mountain (cmc 8 critter).
That way i avoid many losses for not paying the upkeep of many creatures that show up and if i reach 16 mana, i wont have any problems maintaning one or more Dracos in play.

Enjoy the tips and any doubts/suggestions you may have, just send me a email:
paullocabralmtg(at)hotmail(dot)com

The value of an Event Ticket

Days of crisis and bad economy, still the tixs (and in general the Magic Online cards) hold their value. You can still easily sell tixs for 0.95-0.96 usd and convert them to money.

Why is the Magic Online economy so unaffected by the real economy? Indeed it is affected, but the effects of effect are somehow filter by the following factors:

• Magic Online economy is not connected to a single country (such as "California", or "France"), thus a bad performance of a single state it's much more diffuse.
• Magic Online does not handle real value items: the items are not connected to supply and demand and not connected to "physical" resources (oil, gasoline, and so on)
• The number of players / buyers / sellers in Magic Online is growing. Three years ago we were 1.000, now we are on average 2.500 and even 4.000 during release times. In 3 years will we reach 10.000?
• It's a very liquid market, with almost no fees, no expedition costs and free adversing. In a nutshell, the costs of "running a business in Magic Online" are close to zero, opposite to real world

Am I missing something else? Please write me at staff@mtgolibrary.com!

Specialty Guy

Hello dear reader,

Let me get introductions out of the way first: my name is Paulo Cabral, to most of you a nobody, since I’ve never made any impressive results previously. Those who play Magic Online regularly may know my name, PauloCabral_br, and if it wasn’t for what happened in the last 4 hours, I would probably be the champion of the POTY (Player of the Year), specialty category.

Now, most players who are beginning to play Magic Online right now have no ideia what that means, so I will try to explain within this article what is the POTY and what are the advantages and disadvantages of playing like this.

The POTY consists of a main format and (up until now) 7 subdivisions, by specialty. Last year, talking to Carlos Alexandre (_Batutinha_)at a PTQ, I had a pleasant explanation about the advantages of playing online and a brief ideia of what was the POTY. Even having most of my funds coming from Magic, I was uneasy to leave paper Magic and go full online, because, as the people who know me personally know, I live by myself since I was 17, with no regular source of money. So, I gave the ideia some consideration, but continued to go with my business as a dealer as usual, since it was my main source of money, although not very efficient.

After making two top 8, one top 4 and one top 9 at regionals, trying to qualify to play in the Brazilian Nationals, I realized I had good deckbuilding skills, but didn’t had the time to practice enough for this tournaments. So, I decided to adopt Magic Online as my plataform of training, although at the time I didn’t had much money to build a standard deck, so I elected to start playing Momir Basic.

At the beginning, the only tournament available to people who wanted to play Momir was the 2-man queues, because the avatar started as a promo avatar and it was only launched as a product in 2011. I started playing in those 2-man queues, the prizes were in m10 packs(wich were about 4.1 tix at the time) and at the beginning it was very hard for me, because I didn’t had enough money, and when I started losing, I had to sell some of my paper cards just so I could continue playing online. After about a month of this, I managed to borrow some constructed decks (Shards of Alara Block) from some of my friends who already played online.

After a while, they started putting Momir tournaments for more than 2 players, and in December 2010 they made a free Momir Basic tournament, in wich me and two of my friends decided to play(PauloCabral_br, neofenix_br and Cordioli). Me and Bruno (neofenix_br) were eventually eliminated, but Cordioli was still undefeated, and since I was the best Momir player of the trio and without any chances of prize, he invited me to play the rest of the tournament. I finished it in second (of 700), and Cordioli gave me a large part of the prize, and so I could finally start practicing standard.

One of the first standard decks I played was featured in a Tom Lapille column on the mothership (http://www.wizards.com/magic/magazine/Article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/ld/114), it was a list that my friend Diogo (Hanna_Montana – yeah, he can’t choose names so well) gave me, a Pyromancer Ascension build originally designed by Mike Flores. It was a unusual build, since it used an active Ascension to kill the opponent not with burn, but withArchive Trap, having the support of Trapmaker’s Snare, making it so an active Ascension + a single Snare in hand + an opponent who searched his library this turn was enough for the kill.

Well, after all of that, in February 2011 I had an incident, in wich one of the players who relied on me for cards(in paper) stole all my cards, leaving me with no other sources of income, besides Magic Online. It was then that I started really dedicating myself to the game, and once I realized I could pay my bills and, with some luck, slowly start to build a pool of cards that I could use. At this time, I already knew what the POTY was, but since I was still struggling to make things work out, I decided to not pay it much attention, continued to play Momir, and started playing Pauper, because it was a really cheap format, that I could afford to build decks and play.

I started playing pauper with affinity, to whom I owe much of my 2nd place on the POTY. At the beginning, my list was pretty basic, cheap above all! It didn’t even used Gorilla Shaman, wich at the time was only 3 tix. In a couple of weeks I started winning and managed to use the money I won from the tournaments to pay all my bills, although my economic situation at the time still was pretty delicate. At the end of 2 months, I was already completely familiarized with the Pauper format, managed to buy all the cards I needed so I could customize the list for what I was expecting to face, including the Gorilla Shaman (MVP in the mirror), and all else.

So, one day, in a Daily Event, I played against a singular deck, played by a even more singular player. I was facing the Deluxe Brown deck, played by E. Hustle. So, at the end of 45 minutes, and after drawing 3x Fling, 4x Atog and 4x Disciple of the Vault, I had failed to win…

I was pretty upset with the loss, and I arrogantly said, at the end of the match: “it is the first, and last time that I lose to you, playing that deck.” I was pretty tilted, so I went to the first bot I could find and bought 3 x Relic of Progenitus. In a pretty short space of time, I faced him again, winning this time, and congratulated him for his deck and his skill as a player. A few weeks later, I realized that he was part of a clan, and since I belonged to none( I had created one just so I could control how many packs I had won), I asked him if I could join his clan, to wich he responded saying he hadn’t invited me previously because I already had one. In the end, he not only welcomed me to the clan greatly, he also informed me that I was currently 3rd in the POTY race(Specialty), wich was kinda of a shock, since I didn’t even knew I was doing okay! He asked me if I could beat the guy who was in first place, and it was then that I decided to dedicate myself full time to playing online, started asking the orcs about everything, and started chasing informations and lists about various formats.

A week ago I was 19 QP’s behind the first place in the POTY Specialty, the excellent player Digwen, who usually is pretty active, and wins regularly. So, today, at 10:30 AM here in Brazil, after a friendly talk to him, I decided to stop chasing the 1st place (I know I could do it if I continued trying), since I was so tired both physically and mentally. I think I proved to myself what I was trying to prove – that with dedication, hard work and friends, I could do it, because without them, you don’t get anywhere.

Props to neofenix_br, E. Hustle, Hanna_Montana, Adramaleque, Capoeira02, Digwen(Yes! he is a great player and a great guy), and most of all to my beloved girlfriend, Juliana (July), who has always supported me in all the possible moments.

Innistrada Da Vida Honey!

What a difference a week makes, I thought I had come up with a neat little way to deduce the other planeswalker and GenCon comes along and kicks me right in the he-grapes. But, it's kinda hard to stay mad when they give us art like this:

Yes, the second walker is apparently a new Garruk. But to be fair, 90% of us with an I/Q above our pants size saw this coming. Anyone who's been following the Planeswalker webcomics:(http://http//www.wizards.com/Magic/Multiverse/planeswalkers.aspx?x=mtg/multiverse/webcomics/main) knows that they've been dangling Lili Vs Garruk in front of us like a porkchop in front of a fat guy, so as soon as the original promo art was released with Liliana on her throne, we knew Garruk was going to be all over this. And if that weren't enough, check out the packaging for September's (coinciding with ISD) Booster Battle packs:

Please excuse me while I choke on the subtlety. Now mind you this is just some revealed art, this isn't an official confirmation. Then again neither is a positive pee stick in your girlfriend's trash can, but assumptions will be made. So what does this mean for you, financially? It means buy more damn Innistrad! There's your financial advice.

Tribal Rosters Revealed:
Thought we still don't know to what extent, it has been confirmed which five trives will get love and support this September. B/R Vampires, R/G Werewolves, U/B Zombies, U/W Spirits, and G/W humans. Its tough to make any concrete predictions at this point in time considering the limited information, but here's a few words of advice the next time you're at the trade tables or looking to make a deal on the business side of things. First and foremost: Demand for Adaptable Automaton is going to go way up and more as more people start playing tribal decks again in standard. It's also safe to assume that prices for the M12 duals will too as those color combinations become more widely played. I would expect it to be somewhat like the Lorwyn tribes where you CAN play a B/G elf deck, or you could play mono-green elves viably as well, so take that with a grain of salt. But the real news here is that Humans and Spirits are now going to be fully supported tribes. Wizards has been sticking that creature type onto stuff willy-nilly for years now, and now that they have a banner to unite beneath, digging up some of the old forgotten ones can lead to some pretty crazy interactions. Keep an eye out for Human or Spirits that could have the potential to make a splash in older formats.

That's all I have time for this week. Next week I'd like to talk a bit more about the Modern format. I kinda glossed over it in my previous article, but a new format opens up a whole new precident for business and high demand cards. Until next time, remember, (insert catchphrase here) -X

Xhypher's M12 Hot List - Part 1

My name is Xhypher, and I am about to ramble.

Today marks the paper version of the M12 prerelease, so in honor of such, and since the set is fully spoiled, I wanted to take a minute and share with you, what cards, in my humble opinion, wil be fetching the highest tix prices in just a few short weeks. I've got a lot to talk about so I'll try to make it as concise as possible.

1. New Planeswalkers

M10 may have been the first core set to give us new cards, but M12 is the first to give us new 'walkers. The new Garruk, Primal Hunter seems like it would slide well into the current Valakut decks, but even without Valakut, in a format with Rites of Flourishing and Primeval Titan, unleashing a horde of wurm tokens will be child's play. Chandra, the Firebrand's twining ability has me excited, but the applications go far beyond just double shocks. With the easily-splashable single red in her mana cost, I'm far more interested to see what she can do with other color's spells. Distress suddenly becomes an even better Hymn to Tourach. Visions of Beyond, (another of my picks, but I'll get to that more in a later installment) under the right circumstances, suddeny becomes a whopping six cards for the price of a single blue and two loyalty. And of course that's only the tip of the iceberg. Sadly though, I'm not certain what to make of Jace, Memory Adept. Blue mages want their card advantage early, and that 5 converted mana cost can make that quite difficult, especially if you're playing control and trying to keep mana open for a counterspell. So, once again, I'm reserving my opinion on this one.

Cemetery Reaper, Lord of the Unreal

I'm calling plug on both these cards. With Innistrad right around the corner and the current consensus pointing towards a gothic-graveyard theme, I find it rather suspicious that Cemetery Reaper would reappear as the figurehead black lord, ousting Beguiling Vampire after Wizard's proclamations of vampires being the new black tribe. And illusions have always been blue creatures, but since when have they ever been a tribe? To be honest, I'd expect ninjas or cephalids to replace merfolk before illusions. But, I suppose illusions do fit with a gothic-horror theme, so I'd expect zombies and illusions to both be supported creature types once INN rolls around this fall.

Okay, so, not exactly earth-shattering revalations, but I'm just getting warmed up. Join me next week when I discuss the less obvious, less fanfared cards. Until then, just keep pretending i'm insightful and we'll get along great. ;) -X

Is Magic The Gathering on steriods?

I am glad to host here an article from Serpen, and old Magic the Gathering player and a person with a deep knowledge of the game. Even if he is not a mtgolibrary.blogspot writer, welcome him!

I started playing Magic in 1994. Back then Goblins where what we called "born to die creatures". Small creature with no job but to hopefully get out quick, deal some minor damge then be used to block bigger creatures. Cards like Wrath of God was like the Loch Ness Monster. Eveyone knew someone who had seen one, But never seen one themselves. Combos where simple. Normally nothing more than putting an equip enchantment on a creature. Worse one then was Fire Breathing on a Wall of Stone. Game winners where Shivan Dragon (one of my favs), Crawl Wurm, Segnir Vampire, Earth and Air Elemental. Back then Magic was like chess. Strategy was everything.

Now there are a couple one turn kill combos. Combos that end the game as soon as they are played.

I started playing Magic Online shortly after the birth of the Planeswalkers. Like everyone else I became fasinated by them. In talking with a fellow clan member about the new Planeswalkers he had made the comment "Why don't they put at the bottom of each of the Planeswalker If I am still here in 2 turns the game is over". After that I started to look at them and saw that most of them could use their biggest ability on the third turn. As time goes on the Planeswalkers are getting more powerful. Most of them even have 4 or 5 casting making them fast to get out.

Then came Exalted. Most low casting creatures that can turn a single 1/1 into a 4/4 or bigger. This gave decks a mindless speed. No stategy needed. Just load up your deck with them and attack.

Then magic gave birth to the Eldrazi. Massive creatures with Annihilator X. These creatures force your apponent to sacrifice X permantents before you can even block. With high casting you dont see to many of them. Good call on that one Magic. But with some cards the Eldrazi can hit the field in 4 or 5 turns. I had made a deck like this and am now blocked by a couple of players who didn't like the idea I could play them out so fast. I had even used them in a tourney with my clan and ended up making one clan member very upset with me for it. Sorry.

Now its getting even worse. With the birth of infect. Nasty creatures that deal poison counter to players and -1/-1 counters to creatures. With poison it doesn't matter how much life you have, 10 poison counters and its game over. Infect decks are running wild all over Magic. Small powerful creatures that can kill with mindless speed. Like with Exalted all you need to do is throw a few of these infect creatures into a deck and its game over. Now abilities like this have been on Magic for awhile. Abilities like wither. But I havent seen much of them. Now every time I play I am seeing infect.


To me it looks like Magic The Gathering is looking for more powerful cards instead of making players work with strategy. It is taking all the fun out of the game. Even they are seeing it. They resently took Jace The Mindsculptor off the standard list. But even seeing this mistake isn't stopping them. With the release of every new set Magic is putting out even more powerful cards. When is enough enough? I am all for the powerful cards, but make them harder to play or use. Jace Beleren is a show of this. In order to put counters on you must allow your opponent to draw a card as well as yourself. So far he is the only one that has an effect that benifits your opponent. Give the cards a higher casting or in some way benifit your opponent or hurt yourself in order to get the big effect.

By Serpen

Final war mark events are upon us! Don't miss them!!

Most Magic Online players are familiar with the war marks that have been around our Magic Online accounts since the release of Scars of Mirrodin block. They could be used for various events as an entry fee and have been offered alongside booster prizes of certain tournaments.

As the era of the Scars of Mirrodin block is coming to an end Wizards have announced the last events where those war marks can be used.The most remarkable of these events are the Mirrodin block sealed events that will be held on June 25. The entry fee is 5 war marks of either side and all players will be given 1 booster of  Mirrodin,Darksteel, 5th Dawn,Scars of Mirrodin, Mirrodin Besieged and New Phyrexia in order to create a sealed deck for the 3 rounds of this swiss sealed event. Additionally any participant of these events a ristine talisman and a suture priest promo card!Players with nine points at the end of the tournament will receive a signal pest promo card ,1 Scars of Mirrodin booster pack, 1 Mirrodin Besieged booster pack and 1 New Phyrexia booster pack!

There will be four tournaments of this kind held on the 25 of June on the premier events room, though the fact that they will run on a 256 players maximum means they will fill up pretty fast as it is in fact a free sealed tournament in terms of ticket or product cost.Players have requested  more war mark sealed event and Wizards has given this reply:

Jun 13, 2011 -- 6:42PM, WotC_K wrote:

Our goal is to make sure that players can enter these events, so we will either increase the maximum number of players or create additional events.


Thanks,
Chris


Editor's note:They eventually created 12 sealed events instead of 4 initially announced!

So you should watch out for even more of those events and try to join as many as your war marks allow you, it will be your last chance to put them to good use after all!Try and make the most of this one shot complete Mirrodin booster sealed tournament,who knows, you might get your Sword of Fire and Ice or Archbound Ravager!
Good luck at these tourneys!