I noticed while I was pumping out eBay auctions for my wife's toy business that her plush dolls were costing the same price to ship as TCG auctions and pins so I did a little research.
Several years ago USPS made a change to charge the same rate for all parcel business (tracking) between 1-3 oz. As more and more buyers demanded tracking and "I didn't get it" fraud increased the small bubble mailer w/ toploaders became the default upgrade from the plain envelope (PWE).
This latest upgrade makes all packages up to 8oz $2.60. This is a boon for people who want to ship out full decks and lots up to about 100 cards, but hurts people wanting tracking in the $10-20 range for singles.
From the USPS standpoint it makes perfect sense. The bulk of the cost of handling these packages is in scanning them not weight or volume.
I'm surprised there isn't a bigger thread for this app. It is relatively addicting. I haven't figured out how to play with any other planeswalkers than Nissa even though I have them unlocked. Do the origin stories unlock with them?
I would look at some of the draft archetypes (if it's only DTK and FRF) and then try to see if they fill out to 60 cards. IE what makes this deck tick. Sometimes that means in draft a build around me uncommon, but since in constructed you have access to playsets of the rares they fill those spots instead.
Well psychobabble's article touches on why it did poorly, they removed a lot of events, then postponed block events till 3 weeks after the set came out. There's no confidence in the format, it never got to build an audience when they kept changing the schedule. No one knew when the format would be a DE format unless they closely followed their terrible website. The format was fine during ISD, RTR and THS blocks. They made it do poorly.
This. They killed the dailys. We thought Lee Sharpe would be good for MTGO. So far everything that matters to the players is on deaf ears and everything that matters to WotC's bottom line is what's up.
First they came for the Singleton Players and I said nothing. Then they came for the Momir Players and I said nothing. Then they came for the Pauper players and I said nothing. Now they came for me. (Actually I did complain about Pauper. It's the gateway to Eternal that doesn't cost $500.)
Apparently standard is rotating so fast now that we're expected to keep up. The payout on 2 Mans is so bad now that it's not worth it. I bet if they got rid of 2 mans and actually brought back leagues the marginalized formats would fire. The only people playing 8 mans are qp grinders and they want the queue that fires fastest. Standard.
What happened to Momir Basic?
Their official answer was the variance was too high to be a competitive format. Basically they didn't like having to give out QPs for it and the 8 mans didn't really fire. At least Pauper requires some new cards. Momir requires nothing but entry fees so it gets regulated to the 2 man queues.
WotC isn't acknowledging the real problem which is that the client change plus $25 redemption fee have had major economic impacts. AKA people are quitting. That's why the queues aren't firing. Grinders will play whatever fires fastest. Standard. There used to be enough other people to give those of us who don't want to play only standard a choice, but now they aren't around.
Yes, the prize support switch over is a welcome change. A bit depressing it took them this long to figure it out (MODO is such a pure supply-and-demand driven market), but this should keep pack prices reasonable for the next month.
Wizards knows for the most part with the exception of new players (which are few and far between these days) they sell tix and redemptions in their online store. With all the cashing out that's going on there are a surplus of both tix and cards right now. The bots have absorbed it because the big chains have pretty deep pockets (and speculators have gobbled the rest).
The new standard is basically block. With two rotations occurring a year instead of one and blocks only having 2 sets (1 Large 1 small), block was effectively killed off.
The problem now is that in the past you could look at block to get an early glimpse at future constructed, now it's gone.
Don't forget your cards weren't going to rotate for a year so you could sell them at peak times.
Okay, here's an interesting question - I had my first empty envelope sent to me from PucaTrade. The side was open, and thankfully it was only an Earthquake (40 points) (don't ask me why someone is sending points worth less than the cost of a stamp).
Anyhoo... they sent it in a pink envelope, so that even makes me wonder more - are there postal people out there getting wise to the increase of Magic cards getting swapped via USPS? Or was it a 'non-white envelope therefore something valuable inside' thing? Is it the probability of finally getting a sliced envelope catching up to me? Anyone else experience this? What makes me think it's the pink envelope is that the sender said I wasn't the first to have this happen to them. Also, the glue on the envelope was really cheap, so it could be that the envelope just came apart and the card slipped out.
Weird anyways.
It always irks me when someone writes on the envelope what the contents are. I trust my local mailman, but there are a lot of postal service employees, and if one of them plays Magic, I don't want them tempted when they see "UL Tropical Island" written on an envelope.
However, I wouldn't blame that on a human. I've had several envelopes sliced open over the years, and the cards are always still there (except for one case in which the seller really stuffed a PWE full of cards, and then they were all lost when the envelope tore). It's probably a machine error.
Machines do eat cards. In my experience small envelopes get eaten more than large ones and get delayed because they have to be hand sorted more often.
The lowliest paid postal employee makes enough in half a day to buy a UL trop so they aren't risking a job and that took 3 months to a couple years to get plus jail time by stealing mail. I know most of the heavy traders/ mtg purchasers in town (I see where the packages are coming from) and usually go out of my way to make sure people get their cards.
Please get this thread back on topic, which is 8 rack. Matchup and Tournament reports are fine, but the place to discuss what the top 8 consisted of is a different thread. Also please remember that discussing cards that are not modern legal is not permitted except in the designated threads.
So why did Eye of Ugin shoot up about ~$8-$9 in the last week? To my knowledge Tron hasn't done anything significant in a minute. Pretty unfortunate because I planned on finishing Tron this next paycheck.
Try searching for "Uncommon" in the classifieds. I haven't bought from one of these bots in a while, but I used to carry credit on one of the chains that started at 100/200 to one and then went up from there (so basically I would "wishlist" the cheapest one then the next cheapest et till it got to be more than what I could get the card from a smart bot.
I think MTGO Traders runs a penny bot and I think Marlon had old cards for 0.01 for a while too.
It will be good mostly for moving from Paper to Digital et. There are a lot of people who would like to be able to "store" or "lock in" digital profits too and this is a way to do that. My biggest concern is that they will NEED to have a bot or 2 up and running to do the transaction otherwise they just won't happen peer to peer.
Didn't see any loam decks so figured id take a shot at it. I did however go slightly over budget but still figured its worth putting here since it looks reasonable to be playing.
Timestamp 3/22/2015 Aggro loam
cost 22.46(2.46 over budget)
Buried ruin+bow of nylea is great and prevent you from essentially decking(hopefully baring bow getting exile or buried ruin) and allow you to after you have dredged entire deck set up each draw and stop dredging and just draw life from the loam if thats what is wanted, etc.
Can either be creeping renaissance or worm harvest as last card i just liked renaissance for some reason more.
But basically the deck is going to operate a bit slow due to taplands but how it plays out is basically you want to start find a life from the loam+ seismic assualt/ravens crime/or flame jab via faithless looting to start getting a lot of value out of your life from from the loam and take control over the game slowy while finding a way to kill them. Raven's Crime is basically how you win any control MU as that card is near impossible for them to get out from under. Lotleth troll is just being used since its just a good blocker and a decent win condition/can go aggro same is true for nighthawk(needed some life gain and a flyer with dt is great). Crusher has a lot of synergies with the deck since discarding to retrace/fetching/assault/dredging all give it counters and give you a creature that you can grow to a huge size relatively quickly. Almost at all times in the game should you be dredging life from the loam unless you need to find a certain spell/creature.
If you can upgrade the main thing to start upgrading would be the lands aim to get wooded FoothillsBloodstained Mire and Verdant Catacombs none of them need to be a 4 of but just something like a 2/2/2 split is best but 3/3 foothills/mire is fine as well. Gaven Cairns is really good in the deck and lets you technically skimp on red mana a bit 1-2 Raging Ravine and 1 Twilight Mire if possible. You will need something like ~4-6 ravnica shocklands however in the deck as well. 1 tectonic edge and 1 ghost quarter fit into the main has a lot of value in a lot of mu's as well.
Heard some kids talking about the price of it today because they were trying to build mono g infect. Legends version is ~$14 on tcglow for a nm copy. Card was $2 as recently as 4 or 5 months ago.
Lot of it has to do with infect in modern. Last PT, 4 infect decks made it in the top 16. Become immense was the real deal as the latest addition to the deck
I've had a lot of Fringe Infect foils sell off in the past couple weeks so the deck is gaining in popularity. I kind of have my doubts on a card like Distortion Strike getting reprinted.
http://blog.stamps.com/2015/10/22/usps-announces-postage-rate-increase-starts-january-17-2016/
I noticed while I was pumping out eBay auctions for my wife's toy business that her plush dolls were costing the same price to ship as TCG auctions and pins so I did a little research.
Several years ago USPS made a change to charge the same rate for all parcel business (tracking) between 1-3 oz. As more and more buyers demanded tracking and "I didn't get it" fraud increased the small bubble mailer w/ toploaders became the default upgrade from the plain envelope (PWE).
This latest upgrade makes all packages up to 8oz $2.60. This is a boon for people who want to ship out full decks and lots up to about 100 cards, but hurts people wanting tracking in the $10-20 range for singles.
From the USPS standpoint it makes perfect sense. The bulk of the cost of handling these packages is in scanning them not weight or volume.
What do you think about these changes?
Their official answer was the variance was too high to be a competitive format. Basically they didn't like having to give out QPs for it and the 8 mans didn't really fire. At least Pauper requires some new cards. Momir requires nothing but entry fees so it gets regulated to the 2 man queues.
WotC isn't acknowledging the real problem which is that the client change plus $25 redemption fee have had major economic impacts. AKA people are quitting. That's why the queues aren't firing. Grinders will play whatever fires fastest. Standard. There used to be enough other people to give those of us who don't want to play only standard a choice, but now they aren't around.
Wizards knows for the most part with the exception of new players (which are few and far between these days) they sell tix and redemptions in their online store. With all the cashing out that's going on there are a surplus of both tix and cards right now. The bots have absorbed it because the big chains have pretty deep pockets (and speculators have gobbled the rest).
Don't forget your cards weren't going to rotate for a year so you could sell them at peak times.
Machines do eat cards. In my experience small envelopes get eaten more than large ones and get delayed because they have to be hand sorted more often.
The lowliest paid postal employee makes enough in half a day to buy a UL trop so they aren't risking a job and that took 3 months to a couple years to get plus jail time by stealing mail. I know most of the heavy traders/ mtg purchasers in town (I see where the packages are coming from) and usually go out of my way to make sure people get their cards.
I saw that on twitter. I thought it was just a sweet alter. Dang those eyes in foil....
Spec on BFZ having Colorless Matters Theme.
I think MTGO Traders runs a penny bot and I think Marlon had old cards for 0.01 for a while too.
This will replace the old Extreme Budget Challenge. Thanks to shinbatsu for taking the lead on this one.
I've had a lot of Fringe Infect foils sell off in the past couple weeks so the deck is gaining in popularity. I kind of have my doubts on a card like Distortion Strike getting reprinted.