- DrWorm
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Member for 19 years and 16 days
Last active Thu, Sep, 7 2017 14:18:57
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alpinefroggy posted a message on Current Modern Banlist Discussion (1/18/2016 update - Summer Bloom/Splinter Twin Banned)Posted in: Modern ArchivesQuote from idSurge »Who the **** cares if they can now unban some blue cards when (if) those decks become strong, they WILL BE BANNED.
Because then literally anything that becomes strong is on the chopping block. Which means affinity is probably justified if twin is as well. -
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SemiMaster posted a message on Current Modern Banlist Discussion (1/18/2016 update - Summer Bloom/Splinter Twin Banned)Ughhhhhhhh.... You kidding?Posted in: Modern Archives
Better not play any good decks anymore. They are killing modern. Control doesn't exist. They are removing combo and turning things into yugioh. -
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idSurge posted a message on Current Modern Banlist Discussion (1/18/2016 update - Summer Bloom/Splinter Twin Banned)Posted in: Modern ArchivesQuote from xegaseggz »good. people can now tune their decks to ways that they dont have to be worried getting combo'd out.
Hah, you wish. Every degenerate deck that wasnt twin just said 'yeah!'
EDIT: How much a hit is Kiki going to be? 1 more mana, its a creature, etc... -
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Surging Chaos posted a message on Current Modern Banlist Discussion (9/28/2015 update - No changes!)Posted in: Modern ArchivesQuote from Lord Seth »Though, and maybe this is me looking too deep into it, I couldn't help but notice that Forsythe didn't explicitly state it wouldn't be banned. He could have easily made it explicitly clear by saying "Pretty crazy. It's not getting unbanned" but didn't add that second sentence.
Of course, it would be amusing if they originally had no intention of unbanning it... but then the sudden spike in support for an unbanning caused them to do so.
I'd say you're looking too much into it. Aaron Forsythe does not like Stoneforge Mystic at all. We're talking about the same guy who said SFM has a grave for herself concerning Modern, and that you can play Legacy if you want to play with her. -
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Crazy Pierre posted a message on Current Modern Banlist Discussion (9/28/2015 update - No changes!)Posted in: Modern ArchivesQuote from theaxman »Quote from bocephus »Until Maro, Forsythe, or someone from Wotc comes out and says SFM is a possible unban in Modern, I think all the talk about SFM is wasted key strokes. Forsythe who is the head of Modern, has said those thinking SFM coming off is crazy thinking. He even said SFM has a grave for itself in Modern, if you want to play SFM go play Legacy.
So, what probably will happen is ...
Something from Bloom may or may not be banned and SotM may come off.
Nothing is certain.
Quote of Forsythe saying SFM is too good for modern? I've never seen this.
If Sword of the Meek comes off: then it's safe to say SFM will never be unbanned.
Also: there is decent reason to speculate about SFM. This is the first time in the history of magic that a "banned card" in a major format was made into a GP promo.
Just looked this up and http://mtgsalvation.gamepedia.com/Promotional_cards states that Chrome Mox and Umezawa's Jitte were GP Promos. Both are banned, so not sure we can attribute a wish for an unban to the foil printing. It may just be a cool card they wanted new art for and so on.
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rxavage posted a message on Current Modern Banlist Discussion (9/28/2015 update - No changes!)fair/unfair are absurd and subjective. Those words grate on my ear drums. either the card is too good for the format or it isn't, none of the other adjectives matter. SFM is too good at this time. And this is coming from someone that wants everything unbanned, but I am realistic and not delusional.Posted in: Modern Archives -
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bocephus posted a message on Current Modern Banlist Discussion (9/28/2015 update - No changes!)Until Maro, Forsythe, or someone from Wotc comes out and says SFM is a possible unban in Modern, I think all the talk about SFM is wasted key strokes. Forsythe who is the head of Modern, has said those thinking SFM coming off is crazy thinking. He even said SFM has a grave for itself in Modern, if you want to play SFM go play Legacy.Posted in: Modern Archives
So, what probably will happen is ...
Something from Bloom may or may not be banned and SotM may come off.
Nothing is certain. -
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Complex Pants posted a message on <>Bx Eldrazi ProcessorsI would just like to say I lived the dream.Posted in: Modern Archives
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My thinking is that AaFo was pretty unequivocal about certain cards not being on the table when unbans were discussed. That was something like a year and a half ago (maybe two), and yes...things change, but I am dubious that they would change that much without some verbal (or social messaging) hints. This would be the first Modern unban that was almost a 180 degree turn on their feeling of the card, and as evidenced by things like preserving some secondary market prices I really feel like they see that as a bit of a screw to a portion of the player base. I think they are more cautious than that.
I won't make any claims either way about power in Modern, because I have only played the card in EDH, but my assessment of Wizards treatment of Modern makes me skeptical.
I also think that if we don't see a reprint in 5 days it is really a nail in the coffin for the card for a long time. Not that it will stop the same people in this thread talking about unbanning it almost immediately after the announcement is made.
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Proxy Changes?
perhaps it's not true, or perhaps the scope is not as big as it seems to me, but it surprised me a bit. On the one hand I can see WotC feeling that with the ongoing counterfeit problems that they combat that allowing proxy tournaments with an entry fee at WPN stores could be seen as creating a legimate reason to buy counterfeits as proxies. On the other hand this seems a tad heavy handed.
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No, I would say that with perhaps the exception of Bocephus (I would not presume to say for sure) there is no one in that category in this thread. The few people that do that talk about prices on the pay forums like Quiet Speculation. FoodChainGoblins talks about going deep on a card at times, but "hundreds of thousands of dollars" is almost certainly an exaggeration.
Guess what...this is where I fall. I disagree strenuously with your blaming, and your "solutions", but all my buying is with playing in mind. The thing you have to understand is that for a lot of people buying an extra playset here or there, or siting on a stack of Gitaxan Probes we pulled years ago, we are doing this to help us play more magic. I have a fixed amount of money I allow myself to spend on MTG. In order to play some of the chase cards in Modern I have done minor speculation to make that money go farther. I have paid more than $40 for exactly one card...perhaps ever (certainly since Modern came about), and that was recently with the last JVP I needed. Before that traded for a playset of Noble Hierarch on Pucatrade when they were $25-$30. To get those I sent people things that I had acquired that I had more than I would need to play. When Modern started I was one of the establishing voices here on MTGS for Infect, and when I thinning things out I found lots of things from NPH that were being used in that deck. I could have given those away with the bulk I was donating, but I held on to all the things like Probes and Blighted Agent and such because I knew that before too long I would be able to turn those into more expensive cards I would need. I can't even comprehend the number of copies of Serum Visions I have owned, and I took crappy care of a lot of them because they were pretty much junk for years after Mirrodin. Thankfully a few playsets did survive in tradable condition.
I would say that 90% of the people that post in this thread are in the same boat to one degree or another. Some may have a tighter starting pool of cards, so they need to be more attentive, but that is why people post here for the most part. Light speculating is a part of playing the game at a reasonable price. It always has been. It is so much easier to do it now too. Back when I started the only way to sell cards (that I knew about) was to sell for buylist at a shop or Ebay. Now you have TCG player (I've never used them). Back then the only way to trade was with your friends or by hanging out in the card shop for hours hoping for someone to have what you want, and for you to have what they want. Now there are things like Pucatrade who make trading so much more efficient and reliable.
No, it's not. First of all there is no single group at fault. It is just too complex a system for that to be the case. Second of all I would place the largest fault at the feet of all the people who buy for the prices that you think are killing the game. It sucks for you that there are enough other players that think that LotV is worth $90 and will pay that price, but they are the people constantly reaffirming the prices that the Secondary market lists. However "they" are faceless masses of players that you can't shake your fist at, so instead you blame WotC.
I hate Limited (mostly Draft). I have hated it for years. I have tried to get batter at it dozens of times since I started playing the game, and each time I don't enjoy myself. I gave up trying to play Limited well before Modern started. I hate that Modern Masters devotes so much space to cards that are there to improve the limited environment. H A T E!
...but, I know that it is a wildly popular format and that for a lot of people it is the purest expression of the game. I hate it, but I understand that WotC is not making the game just for me. Talking to probably 100+ people in the last decade about Limited one of my biggest blocks to being decent at it is I can't seem to make the shift from cards that are good for constructed formats to cards that are good for Limited formats. These are VERY different cards, and since the Limited format is dependent on random selection there needs to be more cards that are created with that format in mind.
Other factors such as EDH and casual play, the three original player types, and the fact that not everyone is coming to the game from the same experience level mean the cards have to appeal to a wide variety of players. Back in Kamigawa for every 20 people who threw away or complained about One With Nothing, there was one player who saw it and loved finding a way to make it work. Stinkweed Imp was the biggest joke card since Storm Crow for years, but boy howdy do I love casting it in my Shirei, Shizo's Caretaker EDH deck. Additionally there is a reason for some simply bad cards to exist.
I don't think anyone was "all over you" because they thought it was a bad call. It was the buyout of two LGS that people had a problem with. We don't need to rehash that, however.
So true. It is harder for that player who has a narrow pool and can make only one or two decks, because in order to keep up they need to sell or trade more liberally, but eventually they will get to a point that they shouldn't need to get rid of Marsh Flats when they decide to make an UR deck.
The deck devastates graveyards. UWR might be able to play around it well enough, but grixis relies on the grave way too much to be a force against Processor decks. If the more strictly ramp version takes the lead then both the decks you mentioned might be much better, but not with Processor focused builds. Aggro decks like little Zoo or Abzan Aggro might be too fast for it. Lingering Souls gets in the way, but it comes on pretty late. Heck, Souls is the only creature with flying in the BC and BWC builds. Can Abzan top end with Wingmate Roc? That could be a real headache for Eldrazi (note...I am terrible at blind speculating).
Heck...Wingmate Roc at rotation may be a great card to pick up. It is just the kind of card that casual and EDH will drive up if you can hang on to them for a year.
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Most of these price jumps are not buy outs, they are entirely expected organic price increases based on demand. Take a look at the graph of NPH Spellskite on MTG Stocks. Spikes like the one we are now seeing could not be happening more like clockwork. When IoK goes up it spikes in the same way. Grove of Burnwillows? Yea...the same.
There is likely some speculating, but there are a lot of people who are just grabbing the things they want to play for Modern season at the last minute, and they are by an large the reason for the spikes that happen every year.
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Strangler being $10 would surprise me. According to MTGStocks Seige Rhino has never been above $10, and most of the time it has sat in the $5 range. I really don't see a Standard metagame that will make WS more played (or even as played) as Rhino.
They were pretty clear to state that they promised to reprint Modern staples when they made sense for, and were the right power level for, the sets. I still think they could have easily reprinted Serum Visions in either Theros or MM15, but then I have no experience balancing MTG sets, so I grant that I could easily be wrong. I already had my tantrum about Enemy Fetches when they were ruled out, so I will abstain from commenting on that. GG is a really powerful card and since they are going through a Standard slow-down period, I can see not including it for power level reasons.
IoK is another thing entirely- all the Eldrazi spells are devoid, and IoK is an Eldrazi aligned card. Printing one black Eldrazi spell just doesn't make sense from a thematic point of view.
NoSB has shown up in SB as a 1-2 of in some popular decks consistently for the past couple of years. Processors is just giving it a new round of attention.
I wouldn't bank on that. There are a lot of people with hype fever about every new potentially playable Eldrazi that is revealed, and a lot of hyperbolic statements predicting exactly what the deck(s) will look like like after the dust settles.
For the reasons I stated earlier in this post the chance that IoK is in OGW very close to zero.
AC has been a conssitent point of annoyance with WotC- A rare reprint, even in a MM set, would just plummet her price to a more appropriate (IMO) level. She has been a great SB card for Modern since it's inception, but does not see a lot of maindeck play, and I feel that rare cards like that should be in the under $10 range.
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You showed that pedantry is alive and well, and that perhaps that people misuse the word literally.
This is probably the last place a person who makes magic would or should be. It is an isolated echo chamber of MTG players who think their experience represents the experience of the majority. You can contact all the major players by email or twitter, and MaRo has a tumblr that he reads daily. If what you are trying to do is communicate with them then that is the best way to do it.
sisicat:
Someone above me beat me to it, but all people who call this format a coin flip fail to explain why many of the same great players seem to year after year perform well if they put in the time, and only a few PT/GP grinders break into those ranks. If the format was as much of a coin flip as they say the distribution of veteran PT players in the ranks should be much more even. I'm not up on all the names and such, but Reid Duke and Sam Black don't end up in the top spots so often because they are good at flipping a coin or rolling a die. They get there by way of an ungodly amount of practice and lots of experience and skill at playing and anticipating the metagame.
1) Know your deck better than the player across the table.
2) Play more magic than the player across the table.
3) Pay more attention to and judge the metagame than the player across the table.
Stop blaming your Modern record on luck and luck alone. it's a lazy excuse. Random chance is not always favorable, but over time it hits everyone about equally. The players that consistently end up in the top ranks don't. If you do the above three things you will win more games and events.
There is plenty that I don't prefer about Modern, but I don't want it to just be scaled back Legacy nor do I want it to be solvable like Standard.
Sheepz:
I kinda disagree with you with regard to your Pod statement. I think a good toolbox deck is great for the metagame as it checks a lot of glass cannon strategies, and forces non-interactive decks to become at least low interactive decks. I do agree (now, I did not at the time) that Pod was too good at that and did need to be banned, but I also think that Modern would really benefit from a more toolbox deck that was not quite so potent and stifling. People like to point out that Modern got a healthier "pod" deck with CoCo, but CoCo is not a toolbox deck in the same way. It is more of a combo/ramp deck. It does that well and is a welcome part of the metagame, but I personally would like something that could play the "broad answers" role without it being quite as comprehensive as Pod was. In hindsight pod needed to be handled, but I have hopes that Modern will get an effective but healthier version in time.
It seems like par for the course in non-rotating formats. People like that the metagame is slow to shift. That is what allows them to sit on an archetype for longer and what makes Modern cost effective in the long run.
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Fair enough, but the hard number was really not the issue. The issue is that I would do what I could to keep the bulk of the stock to go to people who are just going to turn them over later with no intention to play them. Eight may be a more reasonable number. I am not making a hard rule right now- especially since I would be a TERRIBLE retail small business owner for a lot of reasons. This not being one of them, IMO.
That is assuming that people oppose your practice due to some lack of understanding of the MTG market. It is entirely possible that a person can understand the market, even accept certain realities, but still choose to take a stand consistent with their own moral code.
Quite right. The LGS would rather move units in this case than to squeeze the most they can from a card- especially bulk rares that they probably got from cracking packs at cost. Even if the person who makes the decisions has the time and interest in following the MTG market closely, they have undoubtedly seen many fly by night cards and would rather sell them now and not get an extra % (in this case probably at least 100%) rather than miss the chance and not be able to unload their bulk two weeks later when the card proves to be a paper tiger.
While it would be absurd to say that your effect on the market does anything to the larger "community", you may well be impacting other players locally. In this case it is hard to get worked up over the fact that you may have forced a player who wanted to try out the deck to pay $1.00 for Wasteland Strangler online rather than the $0.60 that they might have been able to pay at your shop before you took that option away from them. It is, however, a practice that can have more impact in other situations. You may or may not have a problem with that, but to say that there is no impact (what I think you mean when you say "harm") is overstating it. Also, for many people just because it is not unethical (no laws or institutional rules against it) and lots of other people do it, does not make it right; and spending "a lot at the store" does not justify any other actions you may take.
...but I am starting to really hate it when people refer to magic players as a "community". In a community the members have some care or regard for the other members of that community. A community works towards a common goal, and frankly reading threads about the recent controversy makes me think that there are a lot of people who put their energies towards VERY different goals with regard to the game. MTG finance could probably be considered a community, since most seem to be perfectly happy utilizing the freedom of the market to their own gain*. That is at least a largely unified philosophy. Magic players, on the other hand, are just not a community. They are probably best described as a population, as they do share the game and a desire for it to be better in common, but since the definition of "better" is so wildly differing in many cases their is absolutely no sense of community.
You also cannot call MTG players a community because they largely have no idea or even interest in what most other players think about the game. They are not reading forums, they are maybe online reading an article or two on the mothership or large retail site, but otherwise there is no connection to those that consider themselves to be part of a community.
Most here are deluded into thinking that they, or even MTGS posters as a whole, represent the typical opinion of MTG players. They spout off that "X" set is garbage as if it is bonafide fact because they and the group they draft with generally agree, and write off those that disagree as ignorant. They complain that "Wizards does not listen to the community", but fail to understand that they are not the MTG community, that this is not the MTG community, that even the folks they choose to talk to at their LGS are not the MTG community. There is no such thing as the MTG community, and if their were you could not know the desire of the whole by talking to .001% of the members.
*To be clear- I do not consider myself to be a MTG Finance guy, so would not put myself in that community. I have played this game a while and have payed attention enough to recognize gross trends, and I do pay attention to speculation so as to make my ability to play the game cheaper, but buying to flip has never interested me. I my description was not intended to moralize, only to try and distill it down to a few words.
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Just another data point, but all the shops I can think of in Portland over the last 10 years or so have had signs declaring cash transactions on store premises to be against the rules.
To be fair Bocephus is not "artificially inflating the price" of the cards in this much talked about deck. He might be inflating the price, but since he is doing so as a speculation based on genuine belief that people will want the cards to play in the coming weeks or months due to increased popularity of a deck that is getting a lot of lip service, the inflation is not really artificial in the MTG sense. An example of artificial inflation are the buy-outs of cards for no reason other than to cause other people to believe genuine demand has gone up based on play.
He is also not trying to create a virtual monopoly since his local purchase has almost zero chance of actually having a notable effect on the price of the card and the ability of the average player to buy them cheaply. Buyouts do this because the nexus for so much data on what the supply of a given card is taken from SCG,CFB, and TCG, so buying out one or more of these visible metrics creates the illusion of scarcity. That would be what I call a virtual monopoly, not buying out two shops in the Chicago area (which probably has a ton). Most people in the U.S. have pretty much adopted online retail in some part of their lives, so just because some speculator grabbed them all at one or two shops does not mean that it is at all difficult for a player to get the same cards for the same price by going online.
Morally I don't like what he did, but morals are uniquely held by each individual, and I have to admit that he has not actually done anything ethically wrong. The reason I don't like it is that if this deck does take off one of the big selling points, especially initially, will be the relatively low price it has compared to the rest of the metagame. When he bought out two local shops he ensured that, at least for a time, no other person could go to those stores and buy into the deck (buying only playsets) as a cheap way of trying out Modern. It smacks of profiting on the backs of a more vulnerable group of MTG players, but then some Randian types have no problem exploiting any vulnerability as long as it is legal.
All of Bocephus's comments (even the ones I pragmatically agree with) are pretty consistent with this kind approach to the game, so his buying all of the copies at two shops should not be the thing that makes people not take him seriously. I don't say this as a way of insulting him, even if my social and economic morals are likely the polar opposite of his (though I have used the term "Randian" as an insult before), just as a way of pointing out that his comments are actually pretty consistent. For example he (and I) have pointed out that in the case of a luxury collectible product it is the consumer base that ultimately defines the price, not the seller. He might be saying that as a person who thinks that is the way a market should be, while I am saying it as a person who sees it as an unavoidable consequence of an unregulated market, but we are both being consistent. In a perfect world I would prefer a regulated MTG market, but pragmatically I know that isn't possible and blaming retailers and WotC for prices is ignoring the consumer's roll.
If it were my shop I would not sell more than a playset of any card other than basic land to a single customer on a single day. Sure, some people's drive for profit will find ways around that, but I would at least try to do something to keep fall the cards from ending up in one person's MTG portfolio. I really don't think a policy like that would significantly impact sales either, but that is another conversation.