Hello everybody and welcome to another edition of the Magic Show. I’m your host, Evan Erwin. Today we’re going to take a look at Wizards of the Coast’s own little money maker, Magic Online. I know I’ve spent a fortune on those untouchable digital objects, and there are new players joining every day.
But what is there to know about the game online? How does it differ from the delicious paper we know and love?
Check it out:
[The following is a transcript of the show, which you really should check out.]
Firstly, let’s get this out of the way: It’s a good client. It’s not a perfect client, and nothing ever will be. I’ve worked with online CCGs quite a bit, and while the Magic Online client is dated, as the saying goes, “It’ll all be fixed in the next release.” The next release is Magic Online 3.0. I wonder if the developers can actually stand up straight with the hopes, dreams, and aspirations that are hanging around their necks on this one.
Anyway, we’ll talk about version 3 in a bit.
Now, I want to note that this article will not take on the age-old question of “Should I keep two collections?” or “The idea of ‘virtual cards’ is ridiculous!” Either you want to have an online collection or you don’t. If you do, and this past December I decided as such, expect to pay quite a bit for the privilege. A single Standard deck features at least eight dual lands and a dozen rares. That’s a couple hundred bucks right there. The more popular the deck, the more expensive the components.
I would estimate that to get a collection of dual lands and the necessary rares for the “big decks in Standard” you’d need somewhere along the lines of a thousand dollars.
Don’t even ask me why I know this is true. All I gotta say is, I have about half of what I’d like for my collection so far.
Oh, and there’s also that whole “You don’t get expansions until a month after they hit cardboard” thing. That really sucks. If I were a Wizards exec, I would hire whatever super-secret coders necessary to keep expansions released as soon as possible to the cardboard. Stop making the online users suffer. If anything, they spend more money on the game in my experience, not less. Building on the excitement of preview weeks and spoilers with a simultaneous online release would break sales records. I guarantee it.
But of course, that’s just my opinion.
Now, a few specific words on the presence of bots. While I showed you how they work in terms of trading, setting up one yourself is not very difficult. It was the subject of an article last May entitled “Setting Up Your Own Mad Cash Machine on MTGO” by Dennis Daiber. This entailed creating a virtual machine on your PC and running a Magic Online account full time inside it.
If you don’t understand virtual machines, don’t sweat it. I truly wonder if anyone actually took the guy’s advice.
Why? Because bots are not a bad way to take advantage of the virtual economy in Magic Online.
Wait a minute – Virtual Economy? Why yes, of course.
You see, there was a time before Event Tickets. And that time was bleak and thankfully brief as well. When Event Tickets came into play, you could then assign a value to cards more easily, and as such the traders, buyers and sellers now had the virtual yardstick with which to measure the value of such cards.
Bots are like automated storefronts. Sometimes they can be like automated pawn shops, as I showed you earlier. The point is, these guys do the work that once required a pulse. Now, as the saying goes, we’ve replaced that human with a small shell script.
Now, the question is not whether bots are good or bad. Wizards of the Coast has obviously approved of their use due to their inaction. Silence gives consent, as the saying goes, and bots are an integral part of the game right now.
Currently Magic Online is setup like a mall: You have the specialty shops, which are the premier events, which have very specific things at very specific times. There are other, more run-of-the-mill stores, which are the 8-man queues in both Draft and Constructed. Then you have the Food Court area, which is Casual Play, which further branches off into New Players, Tournament Practice, etc.
The Help Desk is just around the corner, and Clans can be seen as the Movie Theater of the mall, where select groups get together to share an experience. I know, I’m stretching with that one.
Now the rent-a-cops, and that isn’t meant as a putdown, are called Adepts. They are, usually, volunteers who keep the peace and patrol the wayward streets of chat rooms and common areas, informing users, keeping trade requests out of the constructed rooms, and so on. Pissing off an Adept is bad, as even though they don’t work for Wizards, it doesn’t take much to get your account banned or access temporarily taken away. While I can’t get an Adept online to explain to me their precise responsibilities, from my experience in dealing with them they seem to strike fear in the hearts of punk Magic players the world over. I say punk because, well, if you’re not acting like one, you should have very little contact with them.
Before I finally give up this silly mall metaphor, lastly you have what can only be described as the Mom and Pop Shops: The auction room and the 1:1 room. These are user-initiated and user-driven rooms for the good of all players.
Now the auction room is ran by what’s called a “neer” and a “lister.” This stands for auctioneer and… lister. You message the lister the cards you wish to trade and the price, if any, that you’ll take for them. All bids start at 0 and the quickest fingers win. Buying 50 tickets and hanging out in the auction room is a quick and easy way to get an impressive collection.
The 1:1 room, on the other hand, is the Co-op of Magic. The give-and-take of mutual cards for mutual benefit. You take a rare, I take a rare. Now you’re not going to be trading Restore Balance for Watery Grave via these bots, but the ability to dump off crappy rares, uncommons and commons you don’t want for something you might actually play is never a bad thing.
And again, these rooms are crawling with bots. In the 1:1 room this is immensely helpful. Notsomuch in the auction area. If there’s one thing to love about Magic Online, it’s the bots. If there’s one thing to loathe, there’s the bots.
Which begs the question: What of these bots when Version 3 comes? Are the same macro and scripting-based systems still viable in this new version, such as the popular YaTBoT?
While I’ve seen little chatter or reference to this so far, I believe it is an incredibly important point to note. If there is not sufficient bot support in Version 3, it will be a lonely, stagnant place to be. To be reliant on Joe Shmoe at 3am to get you your last Scrying Sheets for your deck instead of MTGOBot3000 is a crapshoot at best. You’ll even find non-bot sellers on Magic Online all the time, accepting trades but never responding.
I believe the most important thing that Wizards can do is at least give some guidelines, help, or white papers on how Version 3 will work in regards to trading and messageboard systems. Right now you can learn and use ACTools and AutoITScript to create and run your own “trade bot.” But when Version 3 comes you’ll need to reinvent the wheel again, which I’m sure all but delights the makers of YaTBoT, as they get to resell their software all over again to the hundreds of users they currently have.
While I doubt this would ever happen, I believe it would be worth Wizards’ while to sell “bot accounts” that have no purpose except to trade cards. Disabled from Constructed play, they would be specially priced and for a singular purpose. By this same rationale, bots could then be segregated as necessary to keep bots out of places they shouldn’t be—like the auction room.
But let’s get out of the nuts and bolts and get to the actual playing of the Magical cards. Next up I’ll show you some highlights from a new and interesting build of Vore.
This also answers the question as to what is the Best Card in Coldsnap: Rite of Flame.
Could you imagine if Rite of Flame was Black and how quickly people would scream it was broken, unfair, and simply untimely?
The fact is, Rite of Flame is a bad Dark Ritual, a Dark Ritual, then a good Dark Ritual, and then an amazing Dark Ritual, all for the price of one Red mana.
What does this provide to Vore? An unbelievable synergy. Not only does it provide turn two Stone Rains and Compulsive Researches, it gives Vore +1/+1 and allows you to chain spells together with the other breakout hit of the deck: Seismic Spike.
Seismic Spike is not just a crappy replacement for Pillage or Demolish. With Rite of Flame you’re constantly doing more than one thing per turn with your mana, beyond a simple Stone Rain, it’s now Rite of Flame, Stone Rain, Sleight of Hand, Rite of Flame Magnivore. These are not imaginary God hands, these are actual plays the deck makes.
So after a solid round of pimping, let’s see that decklist!
Spells (33)
- 4 Stone Rain
- 4 Volcanic Hammer
- 3 Tidings
- 4 Sleight of Hand
- 4 Boomerang
- 4 Compulsive Research
- 4 Seismic Spike
- 2 Cryoclasm
- 4 Rite of Flame
Sideboard
Now let’s see the deck in action:
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I hope you’ve enjoyed this brief look at Magic Online, a truly innovative game that could probably use some lower prices, more bot restrictions and about 4,000 server boxes to keep it from crashing every single day, but because we’re all addicts we pay and we play and we love it.
Besides, there is just no other place to get an 8-4 draft at some god awful time in the morning.
Weekly Planar Chaos File – BEWARE SPOILERS!
Okay everybody, this week we had what will go down in history as one of the coolest things ever done by a gaming company in Timbermare. The card itself is just stellar. This guy is ripe for Standard and in a big way. But the most important aspect is that the card itself is a tribute to Jamie Wakefield wife Marian, the Lovely Mare, who passed away last year due to Ovarian Cancer.
This is a fitting tribute to the late wife of the King of Fatties. He also mentioned in his forum response that he’ll be writing a weekly series soon, and I for one can’t wait for that.
Up next we have not only Groundbreaker, the Green Ball Lightning I alluded to last week, but Gaea’s Anthem, the green Glorious Anthem, officially gives Green three tournament-worthy cards with which to kill you with. Joshua Claytor just got his follow-up to Mono-Color in Standard written for him, didn’t he?
We also have Magus of the Coffers, who pretty much sucks in every way, and Voidstone Gargoyle, who is about as narrow as can be.
It’s like Pithing Needle! No, it’s like Meddling Mage! No, it’s much worse than both of those!
You remember when they told us that Meddling Mage couldn’t come back because he hosed Suspend so badly? Maybe it was because he was cheap and efficient, the opposite of Mr. Flying Needle. That’s not to say that this Gargoyle won’t be played, he may actually see some sideboard action.
We caught a glimpse of Mirri from Mike Flores. Now, let me tell you, Wizards really, really wants mono-color in Standard. Unfortunately, until spells like Mortify go away, there’s very little chance of that happening. Then again, we do have a Black Time Walk after all…
Also, how does this cat fly? Do you see a flying Vampire Cat here?
Oh, and does Radha have to be so bad? Is there a combo with another card we don’t know? She’s got a head in her hand people, a head in her hand. Don’t make her suck, please.
And that’s it for this week. Thanks for watching.
Evan “misterorange” Erwin
dubya dubya dubya dot misterorange dot com
eerwin +at+ gmail +dot+ com
Written while listening to the Shins’ “Wincing the Night Away”