MPDC League Season 4: SilverBlack!

First, a quick disclaimer: I spent the last couple months finishing up my job, and I am now unemployed. For various reasons, this has led me to not be blogging or playing Magic very much. Maybe at some point I will write more about that. But for now, blog updates are going to be very infrequent. My apologies. So with that out of the way...

I am happy to announce that there will be a Season 4 of the MPDC League. Honestly, when I first saw the full card gallery for Ixalan, I was pretty disappointed with the new batch of Commons. So disappointed, in fact, that I'm not even sure it's worth posting a Standard Pauper review of the set. But after consulting with joekewwl, we decided that the best option would be to expand the cardpool in some way.

So for Season 4 of the MPDC League, the format will be Standard SilverBlack. SilverBlack is the common term for allowing all Commons and Uncommons. At one point there was at least one Player Run Event using this format, but as far as I can tell, it is no longer running. Therefore, this seems like a great option to help make up for a somewhat lackluster crop of cards.

Additionally, we are also going to experiment with two short segments of the league with additional rules. For weeks 5-7, we will be doing Standard SilverBlack Tribal, which means that at least one third of the cards in your deck must have a shared creature subtype. Then, for weeks 8-10, we will be doing Standard SilverBlack Monocolored, which means that every card in your deck must either be Colorless or share the same single Color. The exact schedule can be found on the schedule page, along with the new rules for card legality.

Let me answer a few questions regarding this season:

1. Why SilverBlack? Why not just stick with Standard Pauper? In addition to my disappointment with the Ixalan Commons, participation in the league has dropped as of late. Expanding the cardpool seems like a great way to revitalize interest and breathe new life into the league.

2. Doesn't adding Uncommons make decks a lot more expensive? Actually, the cost of most Uncommons isn't much more than the Commons. There are a few Uncommons with a price closer to a dollar each, but most of these are cards that have limited availability online and thus more expensive due to their demand by those trying to redeem sets.

3. Will WotC be offering additional prizes this season? As of right now, we do NOT have any sponsorship from Wizards of the Coast for this season. Thus, the booster packs we awarded during the first three seasons are not part of the prize package for Season 4.

If you have any additional questions, feel free to comment below. I'm looking forward to getting this season started this coming Monday. Hope you will join us!

MPDC League Season One Results

The first season of the new MPDC League is now in the books. You can view the results of the final week here, or check out the tabulated totals for the entire season. While these totals are still preliminary while I double-check them for accuracy, it would appear that afreeAk is our Season One Champion! Also, if you don't mind, take a minute and check to see that you received the correct total points.

Joekewwl and I have been trading Emails about the current state of the league, and to that end I have a few ideas for what I would like to try.

First, with approximately 10 weeks between the release of Hour of Devastation and Ixalan, I would like to try two five week leagues rather than a single ten week one. It has been noted that the number of participants has been slowly declining over the past few weeks, and part of the rationale behind that is probably an inability to be able to catch the top players. Resetting the scoreboard more often should help alleviate that.

Second, since Season One ended a week earlier than was originally scheduled, I have an extra booster pack of Hour of Devastation from that week. Rather than throwing it back into the prize pool, I thought it would be great to give it away as a Door Prize to one lucky player who didn't finish in the Top 8 for the Season. I will be announcing the winner of the Door Prize later this week, so keep an eye on this blog, the main MPDC League page, and my Twitter.

Third, speaking of Hour of Devastation, the names of the 1st place players from each week of Season One of the MPDC Leagues will be distributed to Wizards of the Coast this week. I am unsure when these will be distributed to the 1st place winners, but they will automatically appear in your collection once this has happened. Once I have a clear estimate of the timing, I will announce that here.

I believe that's it for today. Thanks to everyone who participated in the league. Get out there and purchase your HOU Commons, because they will be legal for Season 2 of the MPDC League, which starts a week from today!

Eternal - Omens of the Past

Although technically still in beta, the Eternal digital card game by Direwolf Digital is very close to releasing their long-awaiting second card set entitled Omens of the Past. You can read my previous posts about this great game here, or check out the spoilers here.

Anyway, in case you are a fan of this game but haven't been paying attention, this weekend you can actually play with several of the new cards in special preview events. All you need to do is "sleeve-up" a deck that consists of one of the five faction pairs for this new set, and the appropriate new cards of that faction will automatically be added to your deck when you enter the preview event. And through these events, you can start earning booster packs of the new set that will be added to your collection once the new set releases. Best of all, these events are absolutely free!

This is exactly the kind of event that Wizards should be running online instead of their prereleases. It gets players excited about the new cards, gives them a chance to start playing with them right away, and doesn't cost you a thing. Sadly, as I have mentioned before, Wizards of the Coast has a lot to learn when it comes to digital card games.

Wizards Donates Prizes for the MPDC League

The first week of the MPDC League is in the books, and from all accounts it was quite successful. We had 18 players total for the event, and of those both nate316 and afreeAk managed to go 5-0, with moromete in 3rd place with 4-1 and manaissues in 4th place with 3-2. You can view all of the results from Week One here.

But the biggest news for today is that longtime Standard Pauper support joekewwl reached out to Wizards of the Coast about this league. In response, Lee Sharpe replied back that they would donate 36 packs of Hour of Devastation to be distributed over the next two seasons of the MPDC League. After consulting with joekewwl, we decided to award one pack to the 1st place winner of each week, and then award an additional pack to all of the Top 8 players at the end of the season. Now obviously these packs won't be distributed until after that set is released online, but this is still a great show of support from Wizards of the Coast for this event. As a result, I've updated the Prize page accordingly.

Special thanks to everyone who participated in the league this last week, and particularly to those who expressed to me their gratitude for this new format. I hope this enables us to reach out to many more players over the weeks and months ahead.

Yesterday's Magic Banned Update for Standard

Yesterday, Wizards of the Coast announced their most recent banned and restricted list, which included three cards currently in Standard. Now let me make very clear that I have next to no knowledge of the state of Standard right now in Magic, so I don't have any real analysis of this decision (although, from the little I do know, it sounds like it was a good step). But what is interesting to me is the banning of Smuggler's Copter.

Just for clarity, let's look at the reasons why Wizards decided to ban this card:

Simply put, Smuggler's Copter is too efficient and shows up in too many decks, diminishing the format's diversity. We want Planeswalkers, sorcery-speed removal, and a variety of vehicles to be viable options, and believe removing Smuggler's Copter will allow them to flourish again. Of the top archetypes in Standard, very few didn't play four copies of Smuggler's Copter, stifling many creative, fun options. Smuggler's Copter was the result of a new card type pushed too far, and, as such, is now banned.

So why does this matter for Standard Pauper? Well, we recently made the decision to ban Self-Assembler, which is another Artifact that every deck has access to, is very efficient (in that it almost always draws all four copies of itself), had become oppressive in the metagame, and that was present as a full playset in virtually every deck. For me, the strongest argument against banning Self-Assembler was that every deck had access to the card, so it was more or less an even playing field. But obviously the same thing is true of Smuggler's Copter. And yet, this card is now banned in Standard going forward.

All this to say, I am more convinced than ever that banning Self-Assembler in Standard Pauper was the right call.

Should Self-Assembler Be Banned in Standard Pauper?

We’re only a few weeks into the format, but some players are already calling for a ban of the card that has proven to be one of the strongest from Kaladesh: Self-Assembler. In response to these requests, rremedio, one of the co-hosts from SPDC, created this post over on the Standard forums on pdcmagic.com to allow players to discuss this issue. I already responded briefly over there, but today I want to offer a bit more explanation.

First, though, an important caveat. Our Standard Pauper Player Run Events, and by extension the entire format, is bigger than me. It’s bigger than the three of us who hosts these events. It’s a format that belongs to the great community that has grown up around it. While I may write blog posts, publish articles and videos, and host events, that doesn’t mean that my word is the final say. Ultimately, the decision on whether or not to ban any card will always come down to a decision made by the community, for the community, doing what is best for the format – all other things being equal, of course.

So with that out of the way, here are my thoughts on Self-Assembler:

Why does Wizards of the Coast ban cards? Here’s their explanation:

One key to the continued health of Magic is diversity. It is vitally important to ensure that there are multiple competitive decks for the tournament player to choose from. Why? If there were only a single viable deck to play, tournaments would quickly stagnate as players were forced to either play that deck or a deck built specifically to beat it. In addition, different players enjoy playing different types of decks. If there are plenty of viable options to play, there will be more players at more tournaments. …
 
Cards are usually banned from play if they enable a deck or play style that heavily skews the play environment. What does that mean? If the card were legal, a competitive player either must be playing it, or must be specifically targeting it with his or her own strategies.
 
Some cards are banned because they have proven to simply be too powerful in their respective format. While hundreds of hours are spent rigorously playtesting sets before their release, the complexity of Magic makes it nearly impossible to accurately predict all the ways the new cards interact with older ones.

Essentially then, Wizards will consider banning a card if one or more of these factors are true:

1. It leads to one deck being the clear best choice no matter what other people are playing. 
2. It skews the metagame such that every deck is either playing it or is specifically designing their deck to counter that card.
3. It is simply too powerful in comparison to other cards in the format.

So does Self-Assembler fit any of these three criteria?

For the first, taking a quick look at the winning decks from the past three weeks, it is clear that there is still plenty of diversity in the metagame. There is not a single deck that is consistently beating the rest of the field. It is NOT the case then that one deck has become the clear best choice due to Self-Assembler.

For the second, it is the case that almost every deck is now playing Self-Assembler. It isn’t unreasonable to say that whichever player gets the first copy of this card into play the earliest gains a significant advantage. At this point, however, this has not resulted in decks that are skewed towards only beating this card. Additionally, the fact that Self-Assembler is colorless means that there is very little cost to including it in just about any deck, so while this DOES meet the second criterion, it would be a mistake to give this too much weight.

For the third, Self-Assembler on its own merits is just a vanilla 4/4 for 5. By itself, this would be fringe playable at best. The only reason this card is so good is the fact that it lets you search out a copy of itself when it enters the battlefield until you’ve pulled every copy out of your Library. While this effect is very strong, I would not argue that its power level is vastly higher than other cards in the format. This isn’t clear cut, but in my opinion Self-Assembler is NOT too powerful in comparison to the rest of the Standard Pauper cardpool.

At the end of the day, the best argument for not banning Self-Assembler is the fact that it does not actually lead to less diversity in the format. This card fits into a wide variety of archetypes and colors. It probably is too slow and expensive for a very aggressive deck, but should comfortably fit into either midrange or control. It’s somewhere in the neighborhood of Treasure Cruise as far as powerful level, but doesn’t force you to play any particular archetype or even color to include it in your deck. In fact, I would argue that its worse than Treasure Cruise, simply because it doesn’t actually help you dig for specific answers in your deck, but only gives you more vanilla 4/4s, which, depending on the situation, may not be at all what you need to actually win the game.

As such, I do not support banning Self-Assembler, at least not at this time.

Magic Digital Next

Yesterday my good friend joekewwl tipped me off to the fact that Wizards of the Coast is somewhere in process of creating a brand new Magic the Gathering digital initiative. He referenced this article published earlier this year, which in turn is based on a press release from Hasbro. joekewwl also mentioned that this project, which is referred to as Magic Digital Next, may already be looking for a select group of players to playtest this at some point in the future.

As you can see from the above graphic, this new digital project would be geared for casual and competitive players looking for a well polished digital experience but that isn't quite as all encompassing as Magic Online. The article states that this is no doubt driven by the success of Hearthstone, which is streamed around the clock, available on just about every platform, and has a very successful e-sport franchise. Furthermore,

"while the paper version of Magic may be doing better than ever before, its digital offerings are weirdly split between two products which at best are kinda-sorta OK. Magic Duels is their free to play side which is largely targeted towards players new to the game, but judging by reactions of hardcore Magic players, many of the restrictions the game has keeps them from getting invested. Meanwhile, Magic Online exists in a constant state of jank and inexplicably is only available for the PC."

I for one would love to see Wizards of the Coast actually launch a well-polished and competitive digital product that could be favorable compared to games like Sol Forge, Hearthstone, or Eternal. Unfortunately, Wizards has a proven track record of bad decisions when it comes to digital offerings, so unless Hasbro is willing to make a significant investment in such a product, I feel that any such new game may come as too little too late.

Pauper as a GP Format

Recently over at ChannelFireball, their weekly show Magic TV tackled the question, "Should Pauper Be a Grand Prix Format?" The final week of the Community Super League featured the format, and that was enough to get a lot of players and content creators talking more about the format and examining whether or not it was a good enough format to support premiere play. If you haven't watched the video, it's worth a few minutes of your time (the specific discussion starts at about the 8:40 mark):

Essentially, they lay out four positive reasons why Pauper could be a good Grand Prix format:

1. The format has a healthy amount of diversity, with a wide variety of decks.
2. The format is cheap, making it accessible to just about anyone.
3. The format is tons of fun to play.
4. The format has the potential to sell what are otherwise undesirable cards.

On the other hand, they do note that the format is almost exclusively online only, and even there doesn't enjoy widespread popularity. They also question whether or not this would be good or bad for stores and/or players if previously unplayable cards suddenly came into higher demand.

Interestingly enough, these are the exact SAME reasons myself and others have used to argue that Standard Pauper should be an official, sanctioned format on Magic Online. Granted, it is certainly less diverse than Classic Pauper, but makes up for that by being a rotating format. But otherwise, I would argue these arguments apply just as well to Standard Pauper as they do to Classic Pauper.

I wonder what it would take to make Wizards reevaluate the viability of Standard Pauper as a supported format?

Responding to the Rationale Behind the Removal of Standard Pauper

So in case you missed it, Robert Schuster posted a response on the official Magic Online Tumblr page regarding the decision to remove several casual formats from Magic Online. Today I wanted to post some quick thoughts about how I would respond to the line of arguments he develops. Feel free to use them in your own discussions. 

Furthermore, I will also be using this as an outline for an upcoming PureMTGO article on the topic. More on that soon.

Wizards has advanced five claims about why removing Standard Pauper is good for Magic Online. Here's how I respond to those claims.

Claim #1: Represents less than one percent of play on Magic Online.

Response: You get what you support. If a format isn’t sanctioned, is it any surprise that the vast majority of users don’t play it? Additionally, the format is an on-ramp for new players to transition into mainline formats, steadily feeding new players into them, As a result, these players eventually stop playing Standard Pauper in favor of other formats.

Claim #2: Fragments the player base.

Response: If only a small number of players are playing it, it clearly isn’t fragmenting the player base. Instead, removing the filter only disenfranchises the existing player base.

Claim #3: Players will wait too long to find a match in the format.

Response: Taking away the filter only guarantees that people who want to play in the format will actually have to wait LONGER to find a match.

Claim #4: Can’t afford to take the time to playtest and develop cards for the format.

Response: If the format isn’t sanctioned, and is based on Standard, there is no need for additional playtesting or development.

Claim #5: Frees up development time by...

a) not needing to test card interactions in the format.

Response: Standard Pauper has ZERO additional card interactions that aren’t already tested for, since all new cards in a set are automatically tested against the Standard format environment.

                        

b) not needing to maintain legality lists.

Response: Standard Pauper has an identical legality list as Standard, except that it also excludes non-Commons. This should be trivial to program.

While some of these arguments might be valid for some of the other casual formats, they simply don't hold for Standard Pauper. And, for reasons I've stated previously, the argument could be made that removing it as an official format will, especially in the long run, do more harm than good.

An Open Letter to Wizards of the Coast

On Tuesday, social media exploded after the announcement was made that Wizards of the Coast was dropping support for many casual formats on Magic Online, including Standard Pauper. I responded with several ways that you as the community could lobby to keep the format. Today, I want to post an open letter to Wizards of the Coast about this issue. Feel free to use as a template for your own correspondence with them. In particular, contact Michael.Turian@wizards.com, Worth.Wollpert@wizards.com, and Lee.Sharpe@wizards.com via E-mail and urge them not to remove the Standard Pauper format from Magic Online. 

Dear Wizards of the Coast,

I was saddened and disappointed by your recent decision to remove the Standard Pauper filter from Magic Online.  When the filter was added back in August of 2009, it was a major milestone for our community, and contributed to an immediate growth in the popularity and accessibility of the format. To see the format removed now would be a devastating blow to a community that has stuck by Magic Online through all of its growing pains during this ongoing transition to the new version of the client.
 
Standard Pauper contributes to both your company and the community in several meaningful ways:

• It gives new players a lower complexity format to learn the intricacies of Magic in general and Magic Online specifically before moving on to more popular formats.
• It provides an inexpensive way for players to experience the game without having to pay the expense of high-level formats such as Standard or Limited.
• Since it uses the most popular format as its base, there is relatively little additional programming needed for its infrastructure. 
• It is supported by a diverse community of players who participate from all over the globe in weekly Player Run Events.
• It allows players to actually play in a competitive Constructed format with the majority of cards they receive through booster packs and Limited play.

On behalf of the 50+ players who regularly participate in Standard Pauper events and many others who play more casually, I urge you to reconsider your decision. Support the community who value the casual formats that you have pledged to uphold in the past. Don’t remove what has become my personal favorite way to play this great game.
 
Sincerely,

George M Leonard
MTGO: gwyned

Don't Let WotC Take the Standard Pauper Filter Away!

Wizards announced today that they are retiring the Standard Pauper filter from Magic Online along with several other formats. Don't let them do it!

If you're on Twitter, contact @mtg_lee @mtgworth @wizards_magic @MagicOnline and tell them not to.

You can also E-mail then by following these instructions: http://wizards.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/2196. Make sure you select Magic Online as your product.

You can also directly E-mail Wizards Customer Service at magiconlinefeedback@wizards.com. 

And if you are willing to write a calm, rationale, polite, but heartfelt and passionate E-mail to people like Mike Turian Worth Wollpert, and Lee Sharpe, please contact me at gwyned at gmail dot com and I will be happy to share with you their addresses.  

Spread the word, make your voice heard. Do not let them do this!

Prizes Announced, Video Uploaded

The Standard Pauper Double League is shaping up to be one of the best events I have ever had the privilege of being a part of, and I'm not just saying that because it way my idea.

As I posted late last week, the biggest news for this event was Wizards of the Coast deciding to donate 24 booster packs of Battle for Zendikar. In fact, this was such a big deal that I wanted to post a video to my rarely updated YouTube channel in the hopes of catching people who don't otherwise connect with me or the Standard Pauper community. And on that video, I also posted the exact breakdown for the prizes. I linked the video below, and while it's perhaps not my best work, I would still encourage you to watch it and link it to anyone who might be interested in the event. But in case you don't want to watch the whole thing, here's how the prizes will be paid out:

I'm still in awe of such an amazing prize pool, and so grateful to everyone who donated or solicited donations of my behalf.

And so here's the video. I hope you find it helpful. We're already up to 44 players, but there's certainly room for many more. Let's show Wizards of the Coast just how much this community supports Standard Pauper. See you next time.

WotC Makes Major Donation for Double League

Yes, you read that right. Late yesterday afternoon, I received word that Wizards of the Coast will be donating 24 packs of Battle for Zendikar as prizes for the Standard Pauper Double League. That's almost $100 worth of value in prizes!

I have long been a proud advocate of the Standard Pauper format. I have written several articles about why I believe that this format is not only good for players but good for Wizards of the Coast as well. So this donation is a big deal. A very big deal. For the first time in our history, Wizards has taken an active step to financially support Standard Pauper.

So let's blow them out of the water with our response. If you've got a voice on social media or elsewhere on the Internet, spread the word about the format and about this event. Even better, drop a line to Lee Sharpe via Twitter and thank him for their generosity, as it was ultimately his decision whether or not to donate. You can also E-mail him at Lee dot Sharpe at wizards dot com. And while you're at it, extend a special thanks to the tireless efforts of Joe Dillard, better known as joekewwl, for his endless lobbying on behalf of the format. He was the one who made the big ask that made this donation possible.

Tomorrow I will be posting on my YouTube page a special video about the event and announcing the prize distribution for the tournament. Keep an eye here and on my Twitter account for when that goes live. And if you haven't already sign up for this event, check out all the details here, and send an E-mail to gwyned at gmail dot com with your MTGO username and time zone to register.

One Final Thought Concerning Leagues

As I was preparing my post last time discussing the announcement by Wizards regarding the return of leagues to Magic Online and the reasoning behind beginning with Standard Constructed leagues rather than Sealed, there was one other point I neglected to include. Ever since I discovered Hearthstone, I have urged Wizards of the Coast to study what makes that game so successful and to apply those lessons to Magic Online. Given the massive success that Hearthstone now enjoys, it appears that Wizards has indeed taken notice.

While obviously the exact details have not been disclosed yet, Constructed Leagues will offer the same sort of asynchronous tournament experience that Hearthstone now offers in its Arena game mode. Way back in November I noted that this seemed to be the way that Wizards was taking leagues on Magic Online, and the latest announcements have only confirmed this.

In both Hearthstone Arena and Magic Online Leagues:

• You practically have no time limits when it comes to deckbuilding.
• You have the option of playing out your matches over a short or long period of time.
• For each match, the software attempts to pair you against an opponent with a similar record, but priority is given to getting you a game as quickly as possible.
• You play a set number of games, with prizes determined solely by your record (without any consideration as to who you played or their respective records).
• You can enter the tournament as often as you wish.

Obviously, Magic Online ran leagues long before Hearthstone was even in the conceptual stage. But nonetheless, it is interesting to see these similarities.

Initial Thoughts on Leagues Announcement

Since I seem to have gotten into the habit of commenting on recent news regarding Magic Online, I thought I would finish out the week by discussing the recent update from Wizards of the Coast regarding the return of leagues. Now clearly this is a contentious issue, with a long history of Wizards making promises that leagues would be returning "soon," as well as being one of the ways that they justified the painful switch-over to version 4 of the Magic Online client. So what did we learn from this update?

Leagues now have an official release date, with a progressive "roll-out" schedule.  The code is scheduled to go live this next week, but will only be available to an internal test group, and then a wider but still closed beta, with a target of going public sometime in mid September. But as many people have noticed, this is something fairly different than the leagues in the past. These are not Sealed events, but instead are Standard Constructed format. Why would Wizards do this?

In an effort to get a quality Leagues experience delivered sooner, we changed course from the more complex Sealed Deck League to the simpler Constructed League. This allowed us to focus on key League functions and performance without worrying about deck building, adding cards to a deck mid-League, and running multiple stages that Sealed Deck Leagues include. This saved both development and testing time. It also allowed us to double down on load testing and make sure we can support the large number of players we want in each League.

While the delay is unfortunate, the work delivered has created a much better foundation upon which to build the future of Leagues. We've upgraded our testing capabilities, especially around load testing, so we can do more testing faster. We've refined the Leagues infrastructure to allow better scalability, so future releases should be easier. This all translates to a better Leagues experience for you out of the gate and as we deliver addition features and support.

While you may be disappointed by this, in my opinion this is good news. Wizards realizes they have a terrible track record when it comes to their online experience, and as such wants to take things one baby step at a time, rather than trying to release everything all at once. Of course, this means that even after these leagues go public, the community still won't have what we've been waiting for. Worse, since the primary reason many players preferred leagues was the low cost of entry, these leagues will probably not any cheaper than participating in other Standard events online. On the other hand, when Sealed leagues do finally return, there is a greater chance that they will actually work as intended, as the overall systems for the leagues will have been rigorously tested and refined by that point in the distant future.

For me, the bottom line is that while I probably will not play in these Standard leagues (since I have no desire to invest the required funds to do so), I do see this as a positive sign that real progress is being made towards returning Sealed leagues to Magic Online.

Some Thoughts on Magic Online, Part Two

Last time, I wrote about the recent decision by Wizards of the Coast to replace tickets with Play Points as the primary way that players enter Constructed events on Magic Online. I discussed how the decision was obviously unpopular with most people who play the game, since this is essentially replacing cash prizes with, for lack of a better term, Monopoly money - a currency that only has value within the game itself rather than actual monetary value. I stressed that, in my opinion, this is part of a calculated move to eliminate the ability for players to "make money" by playing Magic Online. Today, I want to discuss why Wizards of the Coast might decide to make such a move.

For months now, people (including myself) have been lauding the success of Hearthstone as the premier example of what an online collectible card game should look like.  But what we seem to have perhaps overlooked is that in Hearthstone, real money only flows in one direction - into Blizzard's coffers. With money, the only things you can purchase are either card packs or adventure-style expansions. And because there is no secondary market and no trading, there's no way to later recoup any of that investment, save for performing well in high level tournaments. Outside of that avenue though, no matter how well you perform in either ranked play or in the Arena, your only rewards are dust (an in-game currency used to craft new cards), card packs, or gold (an in-game currency used to purchase card packs and/or adventure-style expansions). Again, money flows into the game - but it never flows out.

I suspect that Wizards of the Coast may be moving towards such a system. By eliminating tickets and replacing them with another currency that cannot be traded or otherwise sold, you eliminate the ability for players to ever get any money back out of the game. In fact, if Wizards takes the next step and eliminates tickets altogether, they will essentially wipe out the secondary market altogether, since tickets are the defacto way of buying and selling individual cards. Even if trading continues to be an option, without a currency to trade, I am uncertain if online dealers such as MTGOTraders could continue to exist, since their only business model would be to sell individual cards for real money through their website - cards that could only be obtained by purchasing large numbers of packs from Wizards themselves and cracking them all open to resell individually.

This would also, as it turns out, explain why Wizards decided back in early February of 2013 to raise the cost of redemption from $5 to $25. Prior to that, one could conceivably obtain all the cards from a set online, redeem them for physical copies, and then sell the paper cards for a small but decent profit, particularly if you could offset the online costs by skilled play. And while I haven't run the numbers, I suspect it is now much harder to make a profit on such a transaction. This would certainly fit the model of eliminating online play as a method of making money while still keeping their promise to allow players to redeem online cards for paper ones.

Honestly, I hope I am wrong. If this is the direction Wizards is actually going, this is bad news for many of the online vendors who make a living off the Magic Online economy. But it certainly would be following in the success of Hearthstone, and potentially could turn major profits for Wizards of the Coast in the longterm. We shall see.

Some Thoughts on Magic Online, Part One

It's been an interesting summer for Magic Online.

It's been about a year since the permanent transition to version 4 of the online client, a transition that was designed to allow future improvements but also brought with it a great deal of confusion and frustration that ended up alienating a lot of what I would term the casual players on Magic Online. But since that time, the overall experience seems to be getting better. Bugs were addressed, load times decreased, and generally things are working the way they are supposed to, or at least as well as they ever have.

But then last month, Wizards made a major announcement that they were radically changing the way that Constructed events would work going forward by introducing a new currency called Play Points that would exist alongside tickets. Play Points can only be earned by playing in Constructed Events, can be used as an entry fee for almost any event (both Limited and Constructed), but otherwise cannot be traded for or obtained in any other way. Alongside this change, Wizards also increased the entry fee for Daily Events up to 12 tickets (or an equivalent amount of Play Points) while essentially decreasing the overall prize payout (since you were now awarded Play Points rather than tickets). Finally, Wizards also essentially eliminated Daily Events for Pauper, Legacy, and Vintage, replacing them with what amounts to 8-man queues.

Not surprisingly, the response from the online community was overwhelmingly negative, leading many people to sell out and walk away from the game. In fact, some have estimated that in the course of two weeks the Magic Online economy lost 12 percent of its value. And while lots of players are certainly still playing on Magic Online, there is still considerable grumbling about this decision.

If you're interested in the economics behind the decision, how it affects your expected value from an event, or anything of that sort, you'll find plenty of information on that available elsewhere. What I want to explore is why Wizards made this decision, and why players are so upset by it. Actually, I think the reason is pretty simple: Wizards is eliminating the ability to "make money" in Magic Online.

Tickets, as a commodity, have an actual monetary value. They can be purchased for approximately one dollar, can be traded to players or bots for cards, and can even be redeemed for actual money from a variety of different sources. None of these are true of Play Points. Their only value is letting you enter into another event. So even if the only change Wizards had made was to replace the tickets given out as prizes with an equivalent amount of Play Points and left everything unchanged, players would still be upset. It's as if you've gone from awarding cash prizes to awarding Monopoly money. Playing for Monopoly money still might be fun, but it's certainly not the same thing as winning cash.

And it doesn't take a genius to figure that out. Sadly, this means that Wizards probably knew very well that this change was going to be very unpopular. Yet they did it anyway. The more I think about it, the more I am convinced that this is an intentional, strategic move on their part to accomplish a particular goal. But why would they want to eliminate the ability to win actual cash prizes? And what are the potential changes in an economy where what you own in Magic Online doesn't have any actual value? That's what I want to explore next time.

A Change to the Mulligan Rule?

Earlier this week, Wizards made a surprising announcement in an article by Helene Bergeot, Director of Organized Play and Trade Marketing. At Pro Tour Magic: Origins, they will be testing out a new rule for mulligans. While the current procedure remains the same (drawing successively one fewer card each time you mulligan until you decide you have an acceptable hand or draw zero cards), if you make the decision to mulligan at least once, you have the option of looking at the next card in your library and either putting it back or placing it at the bottom of your deck (in other words, to Scry 1).

For my fellow Standard Pauper players, it should come as no surprise that I am often frustrated with the random elements of Magic the Gathering in general, and in particular with how dependent your success in the game is on the balance of spells and lands in your opening hand. In fact, I would say that this was the biggest reason that I was drawn to Hearthstone, since that particular issue has been eliminated by its automatic mana system. What I find fascinating is that Wizards of the Coast acknowledges that this is a problem. Look at this quote from the article:

Whether it is at Friday Night Magic or the Pro Tour in a feature match, the number of games of Magic that had no interaction due to unfortunate mulligans was larger than acceptable. Magic R&D has looked at ways to reduce the frequency of such non-interactive games.

It should therefore also be no surprise that I am strongly in favor of this change. This small change not only helps decrease the amount of variance in your opening draw, but simultaneously increases the effect of skilled play, since the player must decide whether to keep the next card or place it on the bottom. And while I can't think of a particular scenario where you would decide not to Scry 1 after mulliganing, I do at least appreciate the fact that this is still a decision the player has to make (and in real life, could forget).

Thus far the opinion of the community seems to be very positive, and I am hopeful that this rule will be implemented across all of the various formats of Magic after its initial testing at Pro Tour Magic: Origins.

What do you think of the proposed change? Let me know in the comments below.

Standard Pauper News

There's a surprising amount of recent news concerning Standard Pauper that I wanted to pass along to you today.

First of all, I am happy to report that the Standard Pauper format is now listed as a Magic Online format on the Wizards of the Coast website. There has been quite a bit of angst in the community when this oversight was discovered, so seeing it corrected should help reassure people that WotC is not trying to ignore or squelch the format.

Second, this week Pauper enthusiast Jason Moore published an article over at MTGOAcademy covering his matches from MPDC 29.04, where his Golgari Delve deck went undefeated in the Swiss rounds. This is the first time MTGOAcademy has covered the Standard Pauper format on their site, so this is a pretty big deal. Take a look at his build below, and be sure to check out the whole article.

Finally, the survey regarding the Standard Pauper Player Run Events is still going strong. We've had nearly 100 responses from over 22 different countries! If you haven't voted yet, the survey will be live through the end of May, so I encourage you make your voice heard. Here's the latest results as of this post:

Thanks again to everyone who voted! See you next time.