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Comments Turned Back On
January 17, 2012
I turned on the comments so you can leave responses on the blog posts. Feel free to share your thoughts and questions.
Please follow these guidelines:
- Stay on-topic. If you want contact me about something unrelated to the post, here’s my contact page.
- Respect others. You might disagree with someone but there’s no need to be rude.
- Don’t spam.
Off-topic, rude, and spammy posts will be deleted without warning. Thanks!
New Feature: Make The Play Walkthroughs
April 9, 2011
Patrick Chapin, in his strategy book Next Level Magic, wrote, “Tight technical play decides more games of Magic than all other factors combined.”
I’ve definitely found this statement to be true. I was mediocre at Constructed until I focused less on deck building and deck choice. Instead, I started recording my matches and then replaying them. I examined these replays closely to see where I could’ve made better plays. Over time, this technique improved my playskill a lot and my win rate skyrocketed.
Closed the Comment Section
April 3, 2011
I closed the comment section because I was getting too much spam. It was taking too much time to moderate the comments and clean up the spam. Plus, I’ve gotten busier with work and life so I don’t have time anymore to reply to the comments.
Thanks for your understanding.
New Deck Pricing Tool
July 21, 2010
I’m happy to announce the launch of a deck pricing tool. The deck price tags have been useful to many MTG players, so I thought it would be good to let you price your own decks. To my knowledge, this is the only deck pricing tool based on eBay prices from Magic Traders. eBay is usually the best place to buy Magic The Gathering cards if you’re looking for low prices.
Click here to price your own decks.
[Video] Chapin on M11, New Extended, and Deck Building
July 18, 2010
Great interview with one of my favorite MTG deck builders and theorists.
Full 50 minute interview is here.
Deck Price Tags Are Now Automatically Updating Daily
June 9, 2010
I’m happy to announce that the deck price tags are now updating automatically each day. My brother is a programmer and he created a program to scan the Magic Traders eBay price guide (Non-Foil Physical Magic Cards) each day and then use the new data to update the prices. Each of the deck price tags are recalculated daily so you’ll be able to see the latest deck prices.
The MTG card market can be volatile and I wanted a way to keep up with the latest price changes. I hope you find the program helpful.
If you see any bugs or problems, please contact me. Thanks!
Group Game Draft: Combining Free-For-All Multiplayer With Draft
January 6, 2010
I don’t usually cover multiplayer formats since I’m a competitive player instead of casual. But this format called Group Game Draft seems pretty fun and competitive. It’s competitive because of the draft and “Rumble Rule”.
Here are the basic rules:
- Each player uses four booster packs, rather than the traditional three (with the pass order being left-right-left-right).
- The draft is capped at six players with a minimum of four.
- All players play one big game of free-for-all multiplayer Magic.
- The “Rumble Rule” is in effect.
The “Rumble Rule” is pretty sweet and adds a fun strategic element to the game. Basically, every time you deal 20 damage, you can set aside a card in your sideboard and cast it for free anytime you could normally cast it.
This means that you can potentially play off-color bombs (Progenitus!) so you have to keep that in mind while drafting. The rule gives you incentive to attack, which is a good thing in free-for-all multiplayer since many players like to stay under the radar and not attack to avoid conflict.
Also, the rule makes certain cards insane like Breath of Malfegor.
Running Diary of the Top 8 Webcast for Worlds 2009
November 22, 2009
2:50am CST — Looks like they’re a little late. The webcast was supposed to start at 2:45am CST but there’s no link yet on the webcast page.
2:56 — Ah, just got a tweet. It starts in 6 minutes. No problem. That gives me time to make some predictions.
David Reitbauer (Jund) vs Florian Pils (Jund) – The dreaded Jund mirror. Both decks have similar decks including a full set of Ruinblasters in the sideboard. I’ll pick David since he has Stag in the board which seems better than Florian’s Mind Rots.
How to Evaluate New Cards for Constructed
September 28, 2009
Josh Utter-Leyton on using the average case scenario for evaluating new cards instead of the best case or worst case scenarios:
Lotus Cobra is symptomatic of a flaw in how we think about Magic: we tend to be pretty bad at thinking in terms of average case. We do a good job of thinking about the best and worst case scenarios for cards, but the average case, the true value of cards, proves to be pretty elusive.
Take a look at what happened with Tarmogoyf. It’s not like we didn’t see the potential of a two mana 5/6 or better. It’s just that we also saw the potential of a two mana 0/1, and the worst case scenarios seemed so much more likely. It took quite some time, and presumably a fair amount of play with the card, for us to catch on to how good Tarmogoyf was on average.
It is completely understandable that we are bad at thinking average case. It is easy to imagine the best possible scenarios for a card, as well as the worst. It’s easy to see that Lotus Cobra could possibly fuel turn three Ultimatums, and it is also easy to see that at its worst Lotus Cobra will be a vanilla 2/1 for two. It’s also easy to see that neither of these cases is especially realistic. Honing in on what exactly is realistic – that’s more difficult. We can’t just think of one scenario that will demonstrate the average value of a card like we can for the best case and worst case.
States is Back for 2009
September 27, 2009
Bill Stark brings us the scoop.
States is back on December 5, 2009. The format will be Standard and the winner gets a plaque, a custom DCI card, and free entry into all Constructed Premier Events for a year. Also, the top eight players get a custom design playmat that’s unavailable in stores.
The 2009 States website will launch on October 10. It can be found at the2009s.com.
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