MTGO had a rocky week last week, and Wizards offered Nix Tix 10th Edition drafts to make up for it. Could that get me to draft a core set? Yup. Then, after a weekend of thinking about the core set more, I saw Aaron Forsythe article on changes to core sets. That has a lot of implications — let’s look at some.
The Week that Was
MTGO had a tough week last week. They announced a new build, which fixed a lot of long-standing bugs. Even problems that had dated back to v2.5, like the non-interaction of Sutured Ghoul and Tarmogoyf, were being fixed, along with some of the trade issues, new play enhancements, etc. The list of improvements was long and impressive. The new build rolled out on Wednesday.
It was buggy.
Matches hung, people could not sideboard, etc., etc. Wizards had to suspend replays of old games, and eliminate the “net deck” function. The problems got bad enough that Wizards went into no-pay mode on Thursday, and did an emergency shutdown and update on Friday. Bad times — and it had to have done some damage to their revenues for the month.
But Wizards responded. Not only did they get a fix (that fixed many, but not all, issues) in place, they also gave players a benefit. They cut the price of Tenth Edition drafts. In MTGO speak, the drafts went Nix Tix. For the layman, instead of a draft costing three packs plus $2, the drafts just required the packs.
I was kind of bored with the decks I had built, and wanted to draft. I have some draft sets of Tempest and MED II, but those drafts were not firing. I have some Alara packs, and those drafts were firing, but I’m saving the Alara cards for the Conflux release events, where I will need the Alara packs for sealed events. In short, I was vulnerable to the enticement. I found myself a half dozen Tenth Edition packs and joined the queue.
By Monday morning, I had seven Tenth Edition packs, an additional 40 or so rating points and a pile of core set commons and uncommons with no particular value. I also had a few money rares — a Hypnotic Specter, a painland or two, a Crucible of Worlds — and a fair number of junk rares. Flowstone Slide is fine in draft, but its resale value is pretty damned low.
It took a couple drafts to remember how to draft Tenth, but it came back. Basically, fliers rule, and removal is really important. It’s all pretty standard draft stuff, with the additional rule that, in Tenth Edition, Green sucks. Seriously — Green has Rampant Growth (which provides the lands to play good — meaning non-Green — spells) and Spined Wurm. That’s it. All weekend I drafted Green twice, and the Green basically clogged up the ground while the Black or Red cards won the game. I lost exactly one match to a Green deck — and I had to mulligan a total of four times in two games, and get badly mana flooded once and hosed once, to lose. The game where I was not hosed or flooded, I won.
Edit — Tuesday morning now. I now have 8 packs of Tenth, because I won another 4-3-2-2 draft last night (yes, just 4-3-2-2, the 10th Edition 8-4s don’t fire.) I played against a Green deck in the finals. Game 1 my fliers and Remove Souls basically made it a cakewalk. Game 2 he had about as good a start as Green can get — Canopy Spider, Giant Spider, and two Spined Wurms. However, I had baited him into swinging with the big Spider and locked it down under Dehydration. I also played a Sea Monster. You see, I was Blue, and Blue’s common monsters are bigger than Green’s common monsters. His only chance of winning was to swing with a Spined Wurm, then have either Giant Growth or Aggressive Urge resolve to kill the Sea Monster. Since I had Cancel and Boomerang in hand, that was not going to happen.
The core set is actually not bad to draft. It is reasonably balanced (except for Green), and you can almost always get a draft going online. The downside, for me at least, is that I have all the commons and uncommons I could possibly need. I have given away a fair number of commons, but never wasted time trying to sell them, so I have 60 odd copies of Pacifism. Since you can have the same four copies of any cards in any number of decks at once, the fifth through fiftieth copies are totally unnecessary.
Don’t get me started on my 45 copies of Regeneration, or the hundreds of basic Forests.
The Effect of Nix Tix on Draft Queues
I wish I had full access to Wizard’s data, but I don’t. However, I did count the number of drafts firing on Sunday, in different formats. I compared that to Monday. (Had I been clairvoyant, I would have started compiling data last week, or last month, but I had any number of better things to do…)
Online, drafters can, if they can find eight others willing, draft in several formats:
Shards of Alara / Shards of Alara / Shards of Alara
Tenth Edition / Tenth Edition / Tenth Edition
Mirage / Visions / Weatherlight
Lorwyn / Lorwyn / Morningtide
Tempest / Tempest / Tempest
Shadowmoor / Shadowmoor / Eventide
MED II / MED II / MEDII
Let’s look at the numbers of drafts, both during and after Nix Tix 10th Edition drafting, in each format. MTGO lists a number of recently-started drafts, but the number listed, and period covered, vary. Generally, if drafts are not firing very quickly, the time period stretches.
Drafts Firing Sunday afternoon — with Nix Tix Tenth Edition
Time period covered: 10:17am to 2:16pm CST
Triple Alara: 67 = 68%
Tenth: 25 = 25%
Lorwyn/Morningtide: 1 = 1%
Shadowmoor/Eventide: 3 = 3%
Tempest: 1 = 1%
MED II: 2 = 2%
Mirage/Visions/Weatherlight: 0
Drafts Firing Sunday evening — with Nix Tix Tenth Edition
Time period covered: 3:24pm to 7:38pm CST
Triple Alara: 50 = 59%
Tenth: 25 = 29%
Lorwyn/Morningtide: 2 = 2%
Shadowmoor/Eventide: 3 = 4%
Tempest: 1 = 1%
MED II: 4 = 5%
Mirage/Visions/Weatherlight: 0
Drafts Firing Monday afternoon — Tenth Edition full price
Time period covered: 10:38am to 5:00pm CST
Triple Alara: 55 = 76%
Tenth: 7 = 10%
Lorwyn/Morningtide: 2 = 3%
Shadowmoor/Eventide: 3 = 4%
Tempest: 1 = 1%
MED II: 3 = 4%
Mirage/Visions/Weatherlight: 1 = 1%
Drafts Firing Monday night — Tenth Edition full price
Time period covered: 10:40pm to 5:20am CST
Triple Alara: 22 = 67%
Tenth: 5 = 15%
Lorwyn/Morningtide: 1 = 3%
Shadowmoor/Eventide: 3 = 9%
Tempest: 1 = 3%
MED II: 1 = 3%
Mirage/Visions/Weatherlight: 0
This is not a ton of data. Obviously, I would like more. However, we can see that 10th drafts did seem to pick up when prices were cut, as we economists would expect. The total numbers of drafts don’t really say much, since comparing a Sunday with a Monday, and night versus afternoon, makes the relative numbers pointless. More people will be around to play on the weekends, during prime time (U.S.) hours than the middle of the night. However, the percentages are comparable, and they do show that the percentage of 10th Edition drafts was significantly higher during the Nix Tix events.
It is not possible to determine to what extent, if any, the cut price Tenth Edition drafts cannibalized other formats. It is possible that players drafted Tenth instead of other formats. It is also possible that the cut price meant more drafts overall, with no reduction in the number of drafts in other formats.
I would love to be able to see data on drafts for various time periods over days, weeks and months. However, I have better things to do then compile that data. MTGO does not let you cut and paste the events list into a spreadsheet — you have to count manually.
For what it’s worth, here’s a summation of the drafts that happened in these roughly 21 non-contiguous hours:
Total Drafts, All Time Periods Sampled
Triple Alara: 194 = 67%
Tenth: 62 = 21%
Lorwyn/Morningtide: 6 = 2%
Shadowmoor/Eventide: 12 = 4%
Tempest: 4 = 1%
MED II: 10 = 3%
Mirage/Visions/Weatherlight: 1 = 0.3%
I should have compiled these stats for my last article. As some people noted in the forums, classic set drafts — even Mirage block – do fire. They just fire very, very infrequently compared to other draft formats.
Note that I have not tried to distinguish between 8-4, 4-3-2-2, and 321 Swiss drafts. The tables of drafts which have started don’t have that information.
Why Tenth Edition was the Nix Tix Choice
This is purely speculation, but I think I know why Wizards offered free Tenth Edition drafts, and not Alara Nix Tix drafts, or all classic format in Nix Tix, or everything ticket free. After all, Wizards could have offered any of those options, and we would have been happy (to a greater or lesser degree) with any of them.
I think Wizards chose Tenth because Wizards has launched another Constructed format, and that format has become very popular.
Wizards has programmed the rules for pauper into MTGO — meaning that the program allows you to advertise for pauper games and matches in casual play, and checks whether the deck your opponent has is pauper legal. That is not the case with formats like Rainbow Stairwell or Prismatic Singleton. In those formats, you have to advertise a singleton or pauper game, and add “Rainbow Stairwell” or “Prismatic Singleton” in the comment field, and hope your opponent pays attention.
The legality check for pauper has also allowed Wizards to offer sanctioned matches for Pauper decks, and the 2-man and 4-man Pauper queues have been extremely popular. Since these queues pay prizes in Tenth Edition packs, the supply of Tenth Edition packs has been outstripping demand, and the dealer price was dropping. The Nix Tix queues should have helped reduce that overstock.
I don’t know that for sure, but I think Wizards did see the serendipity of offering a reward to players inconvenienced by the problems and reducing the oversupply of 10E packs. I’m not saying this was not a nice gesture, and I know some players will want more, but I suspect the conversation went something like this.
“We should give the players something? How about free PEs and/or Nix Tix all weekend?”
[sounds of people crunching numbers]
“We can’t afford either option, not after the loses due to no pay and the extra downtime*.”
“Okay, how about just Nix Tix for Tenth Edition?”
[sounds of people crunching numbers]
“That would cost $xxx,xxx.xx . That’s a lot.”
“It would also solve the 10E oversupply problem.”
“Okay, do it.”
* MTGO is a part of Wizards, which is part of Hasbro, which is a real business. It has to maintain its earnings, or investors will pull out and the company will go under. Profits are not optional, no matter how much we want free cards and drafts.
Again, I don’t know, I wasn’t there, but I suspect something like that happened.
The Changes to the Core Set
Anyway, that was my weekend. Monday morning I saw the Wizards announcement of the changes to the core set. I’ll summarize the announcement, and add my reaction.
More fantasy flavor.
Excellent. I know some players — like Ingrid — who miss it a lot, and miss the ability to build around the fantasy elements. Great approach.
Aaron Forsythe talked specifically about cards like Kavu Climber — and about new players wondering what a Kavu is, anyway. I can see that.
Brand new cards in the Core Set.
I have no problem with this. People should have a reason to play the core set, and this helps. Of course, this could have a real impact on the cost of Constructed play, but I have to crunch a lot more numbers before I can decide whether it is good or bad.
I would also note that having new cards in the core set does allow Wizards an additional opportunity to provide answers and counters for problem cards in the format. Bitterblossom a pain? Here’s a brand-new hoser to save Standard…
On the down side, I could see Wizards reprinting existing cards with new, fantasy-themed names. Aaron mentioned that Kavu Climber was great, from a mechanic standpoint. So will we see an exact reprint, but now named something like Ogre Spellcarrier? Maybe — but I really, really hope that they limit that sort of change to commons and maybe uncommons. I still remember seeing Blood Clock — and realizing that Wizards had just reprinted Umbilicus, but in a way that made my Umbilicuses (Umbilici?) completely worthless. I would hate to see that done with other cards — and I would hate to have to rebuy rares I already own.
New rotation schedule.
Standard keeps rotating as it has, with the big change happening when the big Expert set is released in October. Standard will continue to be composed of the most recent two expert blocks. The Core set will rotate as well — but the rotation and core set releases are not synchronized. As a result, from July 2010 to October 2010, both the Magic 2010 and Magic 2011 core sets will be legal in Standard. That is interesting, and should shake up Standard during the summer months. Since those are often dead times, in Constructed terms, that’s fine.
It should also work nicely for Limited. By late summer, drafting the expert sets was getting old. This should shake that up as well.
The new naming convention.
Magic 2010, or M10. Sure, whatever. I am not excited, but it does not bother me. My only concern is that, under the above rotation policy, Magic 2010 cards will rotate out of Standard in October, 2010. As a judge, I will hate to give a player a game loss because he is playing Magic 2010 cards in late 2010. But that’s minor.
Overall, the announcement sounds really, really good. I like the changes.
Other Impacts of the Rotation:
KeeperofManyNames on the MTG forums wrote: Is anyone else horribly bummed, though, about the fact that there are no more fourth sets? That drastically reduces the chances of seeing either an Unglued III or another return to the past Coldsnap style.
Errrr — no. Coldsnap was not all that much fun to draft, or play. Single, stand alone small sets are mediocre at best. I sort of like Lorwyn / Morningtide & Shadowmoor / Eventide for Limited, but I can live with the classic threes. As for Unhinged — I was moderately interested in the lands, except that I have a ton of Unglued lands. I bought a few booster boxes of Unglued years ago, when they were really cheap. Other than the lands, and the tokens, I haven’t played the Unglued cards at all. Un sets seem pretty pointless — and I would be amazed if Wizards made money off them.
What Lives, What Dies?
One of Aaron Forsythe factoids was that the number of classic cards that have appeared in every core set to date will be halved. At present, sixteen cards have been in every core set since Alpha. Some quick work with Gatherer produced this list:
Air Elemental
Bog Wraith
Drudge Skeletons
Fear
Giant Growth
Giant Spider
Goblin King
Grizzly Bears
Howling Mine
Nightmare
Orcish Artillery
Regeneration
Rod of Ruin
Samite Healer
Scathe Zombies
Wrath of God
I don’t know which cards will remain. Some are very flavorful, but they are also really, really bad cards. (I’m looking at you, Regeneration, and you, Fear.) Others — Howling Mine topping the list — are perennial casual player favorites, but it’s not clear how fantasy-oriented they are. Personally, I would bet heavily on Air Elemental, Nightmare, Drudge Skeletons and Giant Spider to remain. Some other archetypical cards, like Samite Healer and Scathe Zombies, are almost certain to be in the set, but they could have new names, or be replaced with either very similar cards. As for Wrath of God, I expect it to stay, unless Wizards goes for the pure money grab and prints a functional copy but with a new name and as a Mythic rare. Imagine how much outrage that would cause.
Some other cards will be back. The article showed Birds of Paradise, Serra Angel, and others. These cards were not in every set (Birds was left out of Ninth Edition), but they do indicate that a lot of core set staples will remain. I’m sure that will include a common burn spell, Terror or Dark Banishing, some form of Disenchant, etc.
It will be okay. I think.
Rare Lands
Wizards is also going to debut new multicolored lands in the core set — at least in this core set. Thier marketing studies showed that new players were unhappy with the pain element in the Ravnica duals and the painlands, and Wizards explicitly said they want something that does not involve losing life. That rules out the painlands, fetchlands and shock lands — in short, everything I own playsets of. The new lands are probably not the original dual lands with new names. I hope they are not the Invasion tap lands under new names. I hope it is something completely new.
Wizards has tried comes-into-play-tapped lands, depletion lands, filter lands, sacrifice-another-land lands, bounce lands, etc. None of those seems really new or exciting. After all, we have tried those in the past, and none (aside from the Ravnica bounce lands) saw much play. So what might the new rare lands look like? If I were in R&D, here’s what I would propose:
The Fire Swamp
Land — Mountain Swamp
White spells cost you 1 more to play.
But we know the secrets of the Fire Swamp, and we can live there quite happily.
My idea is a true dual lands, with a disadvantage that enforces the color pie. Each land would have allied color pairs, and the enemy color for both would be more expensive.
The interaction with Shards would be… interesting. It would also put the brakes on the play-all-colors decks that Wizards has already identified as a bit of a problem. Zoo would hate it, but it would be quite playable in more traditional decks.
No, I have no inside information at all. But, if I had to create a pain-free, playable dual land, that is what I would create. The disadvantage is real, so the land is not strictly better than a basic land. It is simple and straight-forward.
I’d play it. I hope I guessed right. If not — Wizards, here’s a suggestion for some future set.
And a note — at first I templated Fire Swamp to match the “new” way: “White spells cost you one additional mana to cast.” I had seen text for Silence in the preview. Wizards appeared to be bringing back the obsolete, but flavorful, terms like “cast.” However, the judge list on IRC carried the message that “cast” in Silence is a mistake. It should read “play.”
Guess that whole idea of extensively rewriting the comp rules to add more fantasy flavor (and bring back old terms) fizzled.
PRJ
“one million words” on MTGO