MTGO Library 4.94 is out!

ML Bot 4.94 features a more robust automatic version updater. In some unfrequent cases in fact, the old updater was not able to correctly update the bot, and thus one had to download and use the "installer" from the Online Control Panel

Hellvault

This weekend took place an Avacyn Restored prelease. The prize structure was a little bit different than it usually is. A “Hellvault” box was added. For those who didn’t participate in the event and are not familiar with the Hellvault I have an explanation. Once, WotC announced that there will be a new award in the prelease, but they didn’t display the content of this mysterious box. Few days before prelease boxes arrived to shops organizing event and only what we knew about the content was that it weighs about 1 kilogram. It is easy to deduce that there were supposed to be something heavier inside, cause 1 kilogram of cards is quite a lot and WotC would not give so many cards away.

Yesterday (Saturday), prelease feast begun. Every participant received a check-box paper where you could mark your achievements. In total there were 20 different achievements. Some of them were funny, like “High-five someone who controls a legendary permanent.” Some more serious, like “Win a game controlling exactly one creature.” Players cumulated these achievements in order to break the seals from Hellvault. When the final seal has been broken, Hellvault was opened and its content was distributed among players. What was inside? Dices, token cards, oversized cards. As far as I read on the Internet some Hellvaults contained also judge promo cards, such as Demonic Tutor, Decree of Justice, Exalted Angel. Similar promotion to this one occured when Zendikar was introduced. Then, we could open booster pack with old nuts cards.

Did you very lucky and got a promo card that day? Feel free to comment and share with us about this great news.

Grocery Magic Online

Often I compare the Magic Online bot business to the 'real' world businesses, and I always find a lot of "things" that are much better in Mtgo.

This morning I was at the grocery store, and I realized that the merchant pays a huge rental fee to store the products. The larger inventory he wants to keep, the more space he needs and the higher the rental fees. 

At the opposite, in Magic online you can store a collection as large as you want, and none will ever complaint or make you pay more because you "take room". Furthermore, a real store has to face the aging of the products. Depending on the type of products, aging can be as fast as a day (food) or a year (clothes). It is true that when a new Magic Online set comes out, the previous set decreases its value, but this is the only drop in value and, in general, it's plenty of "old" cards still very valuable and with minimal or zero decrease in value.

MTGO Library 4.93 is out

ML Bot 4.93 is out, fixing some minor bugs of 4.92

Weekly Card Review (WCR7)

This is a new series of articles where I will review a card from the latest set Every week and its influences in constructed Standard, from the top mythic down to common cards that people might be ignoring their full potential. Between each review I will show a example of a deck where that card could fit. Please feel free to add more ideas and discuss the cards on each week!

 Huntmaster of the Fells

This is a card that has proven to be great on the current meta, not just is great as a aggro card but also both transformations gives you control and endurance with lifegain, damage on opponent and opponents creatures and token generation.

Decks around This card get a huge weapon to deal with Delver of secrets, specially as it forces them to cast on their turn, giving you more freedom so you wont fear a counter spell.

This week I will be building a Aggro/Control around this card, possibly using Birthing Pod/Green sun zenith to help reaching this Dark Ascention gem. Be tuned to see the final result!

Numbers

The profitability of a bot depends on the number of trades it performs.

For experience, I know that 70% of the trades ends up with a withdraw and only 30% with a sale. A minute or two usually occurs between two consecutives trades, thus it's reasonable for a bot to handle 7-8 trades per hours, and to perform only 2-3.

In a day this means about 65 trades, and in a month about 1950 trades . If you get these results (usually after 6 months after launch), you will most likely doing a net profit of 700-800 tixs per month. If your bot performs sligthly worse, your profit will decrease in proportion, still it is very unlikely for a bot with a good collection to go lower than 100-200 net tixs per month.

 Of course you can replicate the thing for any number of bots - the limits depends only on the computational power you have (i.e the number of PCs you can affort) and on the quantities of cards in the collections (of course an empty collection won't sell..)

Weekly Card Review (WCR6 part 2)

This is a new series of articles where I will review a card from the latest set Every week and its influences in constructed Standard, from the top mythic down to common cards that people might be ignoring their full potential. Between each review I will show a example of a deck where that card could fit. Please feel free to add more ideas and discuss the cards on each week!

 WW Humans on a Budget

23 Plains

4 Champion of the Parish 4 Doomed Traveler

4 Elite Vanguard 2 Gideon's Lawkeeper

4 Gather the Townsfolk 4 Bonds of Faith

4 Honor of the pure 2 Elite Inquisitor

1 Thalia, Guardian of thraben 2 Rebuke

1 Oblivion Ring 2 Fiend Hunter

2 Thraben Doomsayer 1 Mikaeus. the Lunarch 

This isn't the strongest deck arround, but is surely a good choice with a under 50$ budget.

 Tune in next week for another card review...